I don’t think houfnice are broken anymore. They are strong, but not ######### ### in any stat (as others have pointed). And Bohemians don’t have much going for them before houfnice.
The way to beat Bohemians is to take relics, map control while they boom and starve them of gold in late game. Can’t make houfnice if they don’t have gold. This is obviously easier said than done, which is why they are top tier closed map civ. Bohemians are bad on open maps where the game ends before they get to houfnice, I they are fine as is overall.
As for Shrivamshas, I think nerfing speed is the best way to balance them while keeping their identity. But Gurjaras were just nerfed now, so I am not yet sure they need to be nerfed further. Need to play/see more games/stats before I can be sure.
If you honestly think that’s the case you should learn arena before complaining about balance. Get map control and push in early imp.
Btw turk bbc can totally take the fight. If both players have perfect micro turks bbc are even better (but indeed in most cases bohemians have better bbc precisely bc most people don’t have that perfect micro).
Also you can make monks. And no you don’t research heresy or faith here that’s too expensive. You do that against a monk rush but not against 2 monks trying to convert hofnice. Cav archer is also a good unit. Oftentimes it forces bohemian player into skirms.
you don’t know how good I am on arena so please don’t tell me to learn it, I do play it in 1v1 quite a lot against good players. Early imp push vs a civ with instant bbc (and better eco bonus than turks anyways so they will be up faster than them if it comes to that…) sure thing bro, that’s probably the hardest civ to defeat that way in the whole game.
Also keep bringing up turks… now tell me what you can do with a civ which isn’t also unbalanced on arena lol, not everybody perma locks turks to do 24+2 castle drop like morg (2 civs I mentioned are top tier at stopping turks even on arena tho? Shrivramsha+camel can’t be dealt with by turks ever, must be luck, definitely not op units), what to do with other “top tier” arena civs like teutons, britons, burgundians, malay? I guess just take map control, take 5 relics, go forward castle fast imp, lose the treb war because he has bbc faster, finally see houfnice, resign.
And you definitely get heresy if the only viable play for your opponent is monk+redemption+block printing, good thing they have a gold bonus so they can ge# ## easily right?
The civ being reliant on this unit is bad, not good… Do you want a civ that only ever does 1 thing because it’s the best play, or do you want the player to actually decide what to do, in a “strategy” game? Nerf Houfnice, Shrivramsha, Ghulam, give the civs something completely different.
Starve them from gold how the hell do I do that on Black Forest 4v4? They even have a trade team bonus! The ultimate one trick ponies civs.
Well you asked how to prevent them from getting houfnice and that’s how. Ofc bohemians get insta bbc so they are good at defending but you can still push with arb monk for instance which will likely force bohemians into skirms and probably prevents them from getting houfnice (simply too expensive here). If they invest into houfnice here they’ll likely die.
You said yourself turks bbc don’t work which is nothing but a false statement.
Forward castle crenelations and force them into trebs. Houfnice useless because it doesn’t have more range than normal bbc. #### ### yourself. If bohemians #### ### you make monks (and you have the better ones).
Bohemians are probably a bit better overall on arena but in a straight matchup teutons are actually the favorite.
Had that matchup several times and longbows are pretty goos vs houfnice. It’s actually super tricky for bohemians as if briton player doesn’t slip up with micro bohemians are kinda forced into wagons in the long run which aren’t an ideal unit (too expensive, take too much time to mass).
They have much better eco and better hc. Since the bohemian nerf probably a better civ than bohemians generally on arena but not sure in this particular matchup. I don’t see any reason to favor one over the other tbh.
Fastest imp time with great eco behind so just go for the regular push. They’ll probably have chemistry almost in when bohemians reach imp so their bbc timing should actually be kinda close. Bohemianshave the better long term comp but that’s not uncommon vs malay for the other top civs either.
These are usually too expensive if ecos are close. You normally are only able to get them if opponent goes for all in monks with potato eco behind. If players have equal eco chances are you’re getting steamrolled. Remember that you’re already investing a ton into houfnice which can make bohemians vulnerable early imp because besides one or two ### you won’t be able to afford anything.
Them and Poles are really broken level OP in Arena from 1600 - 2000 elo.
Granted I took some old patches for more matches. But I think These 2 are really problematic for that elo range in Arena/closed map in general.
Edit: From 2000+ elo sample size is really small. And obviously other than Incas, pretty much all supposedly good arena civ are top 10 there. And for 1200 - 1600 elo Bohemians are pretty similar to 1200 - 2000.
Guys just surrending after a 5 minutes game are really cancer. You can have your preference but by doing this you just ruin the experience of other player. You hate michi, fine. I love it. I have few hours to play each day. People coming and surrending just prevent me and my friend to have just fun. If you don’t want to play on this map just ban it.
I just want to elaborate on this a bit more formally. Think of a strategy space as a space of effects that you can generate with units. Things like long range pressure, counter-cavalry, counter-infantry, etc. Each army will be associated with some vector in this space. A good game enforces trade-offs in this strategy space (e.g. not being able to counter everything simultaneous) to prevent balance problems and allow for a variety of strategies to work. If it helps you can think of the “ideal” strategy subspace as a sphere with some thickness. If you go past the outer boundary of the sphere it means you’d not enforcing trade-offs well enough somewhere and it’s likely to be overpowered. If you undershoot the inner boundary of the sphere it means you’re enforcing trade-offs too harshly.
Now given that the job of developers is to enforce the trade-offs (i.e. stick within the inner and outer boundary of the sphere) consider what happens in the extreme case where you only have access to 1 unit. Clearly in a game like AoE2 where unit stats are fixed, with 1 unit you can only reach a small portion of ideal strategy subspace. Maybe you make it good vs infantry but bad vs archers or maybe vice versa. In any case you can’t move around in the strategy space; you’re stuck with what you got. If you design a 2nd unit to be used (assuming no splash damage or other similar effects) you can make a linear combination and draw a line between two points. Of course a line between two points is very likely to either undershoot the inner boundary or overshoot the outerboundary of a sphere.
This pattern holds as you keep adding units. With lots of units the player has many combinations at their disposal which means you can more easily ensure a smooth transition in trade-offs. With fewer units the curve gets less smooth and is more likely to either A) undershoot in certain critical areas or B) overshoot in certain critical areas. Balancing an army around one or two power units inherently forces one to make other units weaker often to the point of being effectively unavailable which creates the poor smoothing that we see. It also is very risky because if you over-estimate a power unit’s ability or underestimate a complement you’re very likely to undershoot or overshoot in important areas respectively (or vice versa).
We have seen this time and time again in AoE2 with more narrow civs generally having higher variance in performance than the more generalist civs. The Mayan roster has long been one of the most contentious because their archers + el dorado eagles create this undershoot overshoot problem. Britons have a similar problem to Mayans. Burmese obviously had/have undershoots in the counter-archer department and over-shoot in the counter-cavalry department. Sicilian cavalry was overtuned to make up for infantry and serjeants being generally weak which created very weird matchups. Mongols heavy cavalry focus + mangudai has created all sorts of matchup dynamics where the civ generally undershoots vs foot archers. Bengalis (no I will not elaborate).
Ghulam doesn’t really fit the bill as Hindustanis have tons of options but the corollary is that because Hindustanis have tons of options changing the Ghulam is inherently less risky than e.g. changing Mayan eagles.
From the perspective of this analysis Houfnice just need different trade-offs. I know AoE2 devs are in love with pareto improvements on upgrades but sometimes that constraint can bite you. For example if Houfnice had it’s bonus damage vs siege removed but the upgrade were cheaper. The goal is (as the analysis suggests) to smooth the curve and make the trade-offs fit better.
I’m in two minds about this. I do really like Michi, and dislike when people leave after 5 mins. However, there are more than one maps I really hate sometimes, and I can’t ban them. It’s just not an option. What do you do in that case? Michi is a 1 hour map. I don’t want to force people who hate the map to play it.
Actually, Bombards are just one thing and require a lot of micro. Siege Onagers and Siege rams do. There’s a reason civs like Mongols (who don’t get Bombard Cannons) are ridiculously strong on michi.
#1. Halberdiers are slow. Their halbs are good, no doubt about that. #2. Houfnices require micro #3. The Bohemian army is immobile and this can be exploited. Apart from that, both their Unique units take attack bonus from Mangudai, Magyar huszars and other siege. #4. Teching into the Houfnice and massing them is also expensive. #5. Turkish Bombards can be more troublesome to deal with since they get them as soon as they hit imp, have 100 HP… for FREE… and then, get +2 range after researching artillery. It’s true that Bohemians can research Chemistry while in castle age but they’re still paying for it unlike the Turks.
The problem has been the lack of awareness from the devs, walled maps and boom maps are one of the most played maps, turks and bohemians are clearly the most disgusting artillery civs to face cause they have all the tools to success and they can do 2 up to 4 different strategies suited for those maps, like FI, castle push,UU+petards monks, mini boom and all of those work exceptionally vs most civs given how powerful is the early imperial or army compositions from those civs.
Poles are too strong on any map where they can play farmville and their options are also too strong and solid, the latest nerf on them was a joke, obuch needs -1 PA to stay balanced and the blast damage on winged hussars needs to be lesser or get a massive nerf on the farm eco bonus, i’d prefer a nerf on their most broken units, their cheap knights are not an issue contrary to the most popular opinion around.
As for gurjaras, well they aren’t that strong or dominant anymore with the exception of maps with +20 herdables and their shrivamsha rider which is still beating mamelukes face to face on the same tile or mangonel attack grounds.
Hindustanis needs a better nerf, the ghulam unit was a really strong addition tot he civ, they should should lose camel attack speed bonus and get a harmless bonus instead, they already have superior economy and imperial camel upgrade so they can counter mounted units with ease, that bonus was plain broken and excessive.
As for turks they are just broken on arena and they got stronger with the artillery tec cost change, that civ needs an adjustment like jenissaire losing +1 range on castle age and not getting free hussar, while houfnice could lose some bonus damage vs buildings to balance it.
Is, in fact, one of the biggest reasons why Poles are soo strong, once Poles are fully walled and get the castle, isn’t even hard to click the UT and then spam Knights like a ###### and just go full Knights and wish your opponent the best luck countering that, the tech is simply too cheap and must be more expensive to adress this at least.
MAybe we can start talking about CA somewhere…
Cause Turks have one of the best, if not the best CA play in the game, still having a hard time on open maps…
I feel like CA could receive a buff.
I actually think the opposite. The effect is too big. I would tweak it cheaper and with less effect. 30 g knights are just ridiculous, you can spam them like crazy…
Pretty sure this isn’t a problem anymore with how food gathering from sheep changed last time, at around 10 sheep you’re already getting as much as you can
Terrible argument by mixing 4v4 black forest in a 1v1 balance discussion. Nothing ever should be balanced around 4v4 Black forest or Michi because 90+% of other games don’t play out that way. You can’t enjoy a 30+ min boom with lots of trade in other maps and settings.
Units like Shrivamsha, Ghulam are actually part of the decision making. Those units are terrible against cavalry and most of the infantry but great for raiding on open maps. So its a decision of how much you want to invest in them. The Gurjara uu and Hindustani Camels have been nerfed recently to make the Shrivamsha-uu or camel-ghulam combos less effective. Nerfing useful units to make them useless and giving the civ something less useful like lets say a bonus on Elephant archer or battle elephant is just an awful change.
Do crenellations and monks with Teutons. Britons, Poles, Burgundians have the better eco and should be significantly faster to take map control and also Burgundians have the BUTTON. With the remaining civs yes you would most likely lose but that’s the story with every map. You have 5-10 civs that are the meta and have high odds of winning against the rest. Spanish, Malians, Persians on Nomad for instance.
Its only broken if one civ is meta on many maps and settings. This is why Poles, Gurjaras and Hindustanis have received impactful nerfs in the past 2 patches but not Bohemians.
That was bugged during the PUP, and it was fixed when the patch released 4 months ago. The garrisoned food count is now global. If its a map with more than 10 sheep, don’t build the second mill, even if you can place 4 or 5 ###### ##### Anything after 10 sheep gives you food at less than 1.2 food/min. If you’re playing TG, don’t waste your sheep by donating them to the Gurjara player and don’t request sheep from your allies if you’re the Gurjara player.
