A Few Civ Balance Suggestions (March 2019)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Cumans

The nerf on Kipchaks were too hard and now they aren’t getting used at all.

The problem for them rn is the damage output is too low.

I suggest:

​ Increase their base attack from 4/5 to 6/6.

Goths

The goth dark age buff was unnecessary.

They don’t need stronger military but some kind of eco bonus.

I suggest:

​ Revert the previous buff (remove discount from dark age).

​ Make houses cheaper for goths as an eco bonus, maybe at a price of 10w per house, because goths don’t have stone walls so it helps with house walls as well.

Persians

Persians are too overpowered atm, they’re the no.1 pick on a lot of water/hybrid maps.

I suggest:

​ Remove the HP and work rate bonus on their docks, because they’re so tanky especially against fire galleys, and the work rate makes their production so much superior, they can overrun feudal fire galley wars so easily on maps like medi against civs like mongols/italians which they shouldn’t.

​ The Kamandaran tech is still too cheap, it’s way more useful than techs like Druzhina but way cheaper, so i suggest making it cost 1000f 400g.

Tatars

Tatars is still a mediocre civ that doesn’t get to be played often.

I suggest:

​ Give them free Thumb Ring too (or instead of free Parthian Tactics).

​ I’ve heard the idea that makes Tatars unit don’t get the -25% punishment fighting from lower elevation and i think it’s good.

​ Increase the gold generating rate for Keshiks.

​ Make Timurid Siegecraft increase the HP of trebuchets from 150 to 200 as well.

Teutons

Increase the default speed of Teutonic Knights from 0.7 to 0.9 (same as champions), but making them 10% slower each time after researching a blacksmith armor upgrade.

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Upgrading to a :snail:?

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Don’t agree with the Kipchak proposal. Sure they are weak, but also inexpensive and really fast.

As of Goth, just slightly toning down the dark age bonus (IF necessary in the first place, because there is counter play) makes much more sense. Isn’t it logical for a barbarian antiquity civ known for its conquests to be an early game military powerhouse?

Persian docks shouldn’t be touched, they have been that way (besides the +5% workrate in Dark) since 1999. As of Kamandaran, everyone agrees 11

Free Thumb ring sounds a bit too brutal. Not having penalty should be good. I’m going to make a point for leaving Timurid Siegecaft as it is: sure, it’s a bad tech, but the boosted hill bonus can allow Tatars trebuchets to deal tremendous amounts of damage, that’s why the tech shouldn’t be too strong.

That would punish you for researching techs, that’s so weird.

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I like most of your suggestions. For tatars and cumans I would just buff steppe Lancer, and take Way the 30% extra hp from mongols. Also, make silk armor affact tartars sl. Goth bonus is a original.

I would make it 15 wood though

Persians, well, I rather make archers cost more wood, or wood and food, cause you cN always save up to research the tech, and then they’ll still be broken.

And for teutons, I’ve wrote a post about it (Deus Vult) basically, give them 5% speed bost per relic (3 or 4 relics max).

In general, I like your ideas

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Keshiks are already god-tier, no need to change them. Probably the best cavalry in the game.

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Yup, if my calculations are correct that will take them to their AoK 0.65 speed FU, and AoK TK was faster after squires lmao

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I agree steppe lancers are probably going to need to be rebuffed a bit.

Warning, going off on a bit of a tangent here: I ran some tests using some of my favorite units yesterday using an in hindsight horribly overcomplex formula for equal value in units, accounting for things like upgrade costs and buildings needed plus counting gold as a bit more expensive than food and wood, and the elite steppe lancers got shredded by the hussars. They were 20% cheaper Berber hussars, but they won by so much that that wouldn’t have mattered. Much of that was in the cost of both the units and the upgrades. Steppe lancers are basically quite a bit more expensive than camels now. I’ll update this post when I get a chance to look at my numbers again to include the generic camel numbers, but I know I could afford 40 Berber heavy camels for the price of just 28 steppe lancers.

So the steppe lancers can probably use a cost reduction, maybe a bit of a stat buff (cost reduction seems more thematically appropriate if I have to pick one or the other). I also agree that for any buff to have the appropriate effect on Cumans and Tatars without making the Mongol lancers (backed by a rapid boom and mangudai) seem overpowered the Mongol +30% HP bonus will probably have to go, or the others will need similar bonuses. But being roughly 5% faster at all times, while not a bad bonus in general, is pretty underwhelming compared to 30% more health, and harder hitting downhill is strong but situational.

EDIT: Okay, it’s a little better now. Going with non-discounted units 28 elite step lancers have the same complicated cost as 32 heavy camels or 43 hussars rather than 40 h. camels or 54 hussars. If I let them go against the hussars in this ratio the hussars still win, but now with “only” about 15 units remaining rather than around 36. And these are relatively low numbers, the lancers are going to get better with larger groups. On the other hand, the hussars have more pierce armor and a special monk resistance they’re not using, meaning if anything this matchup suits them a little less than it does the lancers. So I still feel like this goes in the “evidence that a lancer buff would be nice” pile.

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Also, I don’t think doubling down on the Tatar hill bonus is a good idea. They’re already less useful on maps without hills, no need to make that more noticeable.

Did you try sending a mixed force of Hussars and Steppe Lancers? With the cheaper Hussars to serve as meatshield, you might get better results.

That said, I do think they could use at least +1 damage.

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With the 1000 food cost proposal for Kamandaran, a Persian player wouldn’t be able to research it in Castle age so easily, as it would delay their imperial age. And it’s there that trashbows are the weakest, since they get beaten by normal arbs.

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Its actually the other way around. They are strongest in late imp low gold situations.
In a common situation you re not gonna have a castle, spend 400f/300g on the upgrade and keep making crossbows instead of going imp. So you are hardly going for them in castle age. Earliest in your imp transition.

However I do agree the tech is way too cheap.

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NERF GOTHS !!!

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I have seen your passion for goths in several threads recently 11

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This is just stupid.

There are much better suggestions in the actual teutons threads.

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That combo is still weak to heavy cavalry and camels. Lancers struggle with everything that has more than 90 HP backed with some form of melee armor, I find camels mixed with lancers to be a decent combo

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I came up with this idea when I was watching viper’s stream, typed it in the chat and he said that’s a pretty good one among all the ideas he was getting.
I guess both me and him are stupid then lol.

The problem with TKs is if you just give them speed without nerfing anything else, like those “much better suggestions” u mentioned did, suddenly they are just too op, having 80/100 hp and 2 pierce armor as an infantry with decent speed.

What’s good about my idea is that it creates this interesting scenario where players decide whether or not to upgrade the armor (sacrifice the speed) based on situations, instead of making them useless without any upgrades but then super op after all upgrades.

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People gotta learn to separate idea from ego. It’s absolutely not a good idea within the Age2 setting, but even smart people can have dumb ideas.
The thing about trade-offs is there should be a compelling reason to pick either side. Why, as Teutons, would you ever forego important blacksmith upgrades that affect all your melee units for the dubious benefit of having one niche unit (TK) move slightly faster (while also being less effective in every other way)? You wouldn’t. If this had been a universal game mechanic from the beginning of AoE2 that affected all units, your idea of tradeoffs might have some validity, but making this exclusive to the TK is clunky, overly punitive, and feels more like a needless nerf than anything else. This kind of “tradeoff” is not how AoE2 is designed at all - it would be like if the fletching line upgrade gave archers +1 attack but -1 range because they were using more powerful, shorter range arrows, and players would find themselves in the “interesting scenario” of deciding whether the upgrades were worth getting. The reason they’re called “upgrades” at all is because they’re supposed to be unequivocally beneficial.

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The scout becomes a bit slower on upgrade to light cav.

It’s not a situation in which that matters as much, or where it influences other units, but it is a thing. Aoe2 has a bunch of those exceptions that break the games general rules a little bit.

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I get your idea about having a certain methodology throughout the whole game design and I have no problem if the devs decide to keep the game that way.

But what harm would it do to the game for breaking this “universal mechanic” by having an exclusive exception? Why is it important? Could you explain it a bit further?

If there’s a rule we have to follow without knowing what the reason is, then I feel like this rule is just someone else’s ego.

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Mainly because it would be more considered a nerf than a buff, rather than for any sort of ‘fundamental gameplay’ reasons.

Take the Khmer farming change for example. It’s something never really seen before, but because it ended up being both balanced and an overall buff to a weak civ, people like it.

Your suggestion just takes an already D/F-tier unique unit and penalizes players for using it, which really does nothing beneficial and quite a bit detrimental. Of course people won’t like that.

If TKs were OP I’d actually like the suggestion, but as-is, it just doesn’t work to achieve what TKs need.

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If I remember well it’s the only exception. Also, Light cav has more base speed, but the trick is that it loses the free speed boost given to Scouts upon reaching Castle age. It’s a really different situation from TK.

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