played several matches of the new pup and the game has gone a long way from hunter/killer town centers, infinite relics, 700 range spearmen, and many other exploits. it was hard taking the game seriously when players could make untouchable walls around sacred sites and abuse techs for unlimited resources.
here are two general issues with the game that would make it better:
cavalry torch damage is too high. it results in degenerate gameplay, especially in team games and with the new Malian landmark. it should be reduced.
rams are too expensive and build too slow. making a 1tc ram push requires so much more effort than your opponent. why put in the effort when it’s easier and more rewarding to just build another tc?
matchmaking for quickplay ai should allow you to checkmark which difficulties you are fine playing against similar to the 1v1/2v2/3v3/4v4 checkboxes.
the rigid difficulty search lowers the potential matchmaking pool by needlessly segregating when players are fine with multiple difficulties.
also allow players to checkmark if they want to be added to both pvp and pve matchmaking pools at the same time, lowering matchmaking times further.
Mali army in feudal seems too one dimensional. javelins outshine both sofa knights and musofadi warriors.
sofa knights are too fragile in feudal against ranged units, especially for their costs and train time. consider moving the +2 ranged armor from the imported armor tech to the base unit. they do not seem to perform against an archer/javelin mass.
meanwhile javelin base damage seems too high and is contributing to sofa not being a great age 2 option. reducing both cost and base damage would help avoid monotone army compositions.
the musofadi warrior is the opposite of the javelin, too cheap and weak. increasing cost and bonus damage/attack speed would help them be effective even when being killed by an archer backline.
Maybe it’s time to remove the siege engineering requirement, the initial hp of the siege is 300 and the technology reduces it to 240 hp (this, to not benefit civilizations with cavalry and heavy infantry)
