I know Slavs are, maybe, in a fine spot balance wise, but at the same time this civ feels so boring to play, maybe really good and historical suggestion could work, which also can offset the lack of bracer…
Orthodoxy removed, is just not a worthy UT, monk armor becomes a civ bonus (Monks have 1/2 armor in castle age and 2/3 in Imperial. New UT: Russian Citadels: (Upgrades your Castles into the powerful Kremlins, which have more range and resistance, also can train villagers) costs 600w, 450G.
HP: 5200
Range: 10
Armor vs Siege attacks: +15
Rest of the stats are the same as a castles, so they still have less HP than Byzantine castles and less range than Teutonic Castles.
I don’t know what picture could accurately represent the Kremlin, but should be something more attratctive than the eastern european castles.
Another option is, but maybe not that neccesary given Slavs have Boyar, infantry with trample damage and cheaper siege workshop units, that gain access to Hand Cannoneer and a unique upgrade to them like the Houfnice, the Strelet, could cost 850f 600g (must be somewhat expensive) so Slavs also gain another UU
HP: 45
Attack: 20
Armor: 2/1
Bonus vs infantry: 15
Rest of stats stay the same to prevent powercreep.
I really want to make some passive aggressive comment about how overpriced it is, but I don’t think it actually is that pricey. More importantly:
Do you think they look ugly? They are some of the coolest looking generic castles in the game, and they have one of the coolest architecture sets (Except for the blacksmith).
My idea personally, would be to keep Orthodoxy, and make it that when monks are healing units, the units get +2/+2 armor while being healed. Monk healing range and/or speed could also be increased.
My biggest problem with the Slavs is that they kind of just are the bpring farm civ. Their gameplan is all built around milking the farm bonus and everything else is either trivial or too expensive for what it gives. I like the Kremlin idea (except for the stats) and I like the monk change (although I have asimilar but imo cooler idea for it) but I think we need to inforce the infantry and siege stuff to diversify them a bit.
My ideas would be:
Increase siege discount
Give them free arson and squires
Give them monks who benefit from infantry armour upgrades
Make the imperial Ut and/or the Boyar cheaper
I think the Kremlin would be cool too so I would include it too although with better stats and a cheaper price
Eh rather just increase it to +5/5 or +5/6 at that point. Tankier vills at only +3/3 seems pretty weak and tankier trade is useful but it is still pretty bad for a UT
Perhaps believing in the Orthodox Church made vulnerable commoners and monks better able to protect themselves.
More armors is okay. The 2nd effect to affect other units or economy is the important point.
As long as the tech only affects the monks, it would be still rare to be used.
The Madrasah does not need the another monk effect.
I would like to give it the 2nd effect to make Relic generate +200% gold (1.5 gold per sec).
It means any type of educational institution. People study and research Islamic knowledges at there so it increases the value of Relics.
Eh, not too sure how defensive Slavs are supposed to be, while using them I haven’t really found any issue with how strong my Castles are. Not really relevant as an investment, in the end you get 11 range anyway. If it costed only wood and food, maybe.
Good concept that I support, more UUs is always better. The identity of Slavs is to not have gunpowder, but that wasn’t even the case historically, at least for what is currently represented as a timeline in aoe2.
Protecting SO with Champs isn’t that easy and they can still get sniped, and Slavs can definitely use a strong ranged unit in their post imp composition, considering they are one of the few civs to not get anything resembling that, bar scorps and SO. The only other one might honestly be Celts and well… Celts are Celts with their siege.
So, yeah. Good idea. The civ is definitely waaaay too bland right now.
First of all i completly agree, that Slavs need some minor changes. They perform quite nice on closed maps but lack too much on the open ones.
I even think, the suggestions in the thread point in the right direction. The only problem I see with them is the point, that they adressthe verylate game, where Slavs are more than decent already.
Slavs problems are:
slow and therefor weak early game
weakness against archers, especially Cav archers.
no capeable source for pierce damage besides scorpion
civ plays too generic and therefore a bit boring.
As a result, I would change the suggestions this way:
Cstles: Changing Slav castles is a nice idea, but doing that byanincrease i defesive power is just a lategame bonus, which would not change a lot. I would do a different route and give Slav a bonus, which makes cuts their first castles cost but also its hitpoints by half. Construction time shall remain the same. Doing that woul give Slavs th opportunity, to mix Boyars in a
Knight rush. Since bonus counts just for the first castle, it would still not be possible to create
A huge army of Boyars alone. This would make Slavs and since Franks cheap castles are also in balance, I doubt there wouldbe a problem.
Hand cannoneer: the idea to give Slavs a handcannoneer or even a unuqe one, has its merits. Slavs would finally have a reliable source for pierece damage. Anyway, this would also adress ultra late game, where Slavs already shine.
The change would have sense, if the proposed uni
Qe hand canonee would have decent pierce armor and range but less bonus damage against infantry.it would be a unique concept to counter archers.
Orthodoxy: I agree, that the tech is crap. The problem I see is that all monk techs
Are rarely used. What might work would be
a tech, that allows workers to carry relics. Since building a castle and researching a tech there is much more effort to build than
building a monestary, the change won’t make rushing to relics easier, but it would offer interesting steategies with offensive castöes in early CA and colkecting relics with the tech i th background.
That Kremlin sounds too weak, only +200 HP and +1 range means it’s worse than a castle with architecture and bracer, and the gimmick just makes it even less likely the Slavs will build boyars in castle age. The strelet is too weak too, its damage output isn’t any better than Spanish or Burgundian hand cannons, and it’s after having paid an elite upgrade. So you end up only having a not very meaningful HP and armour advantage which isn’t the best thing to have for a ranged unit.
Question for Kremlins, did you mean that after an upgrade all castles turn in to Kremlins? Or did you mean that every castle could be turned into Kremlin for 600w, 450G?
More an un-orthodox suggestion no? (Yeah I know that’s bad joke, but sometimes they need to be said :D)
I agree that Orthodoxy is a bad UT. It doesn’t really help the monks. They still die to all kind of ranged attacks and also when engaged in melee.
One Idea could have been to give their monks super pierce armor (I had this Ideas for Poles at some point but discarded it). This way monks could be used against ranged units. (But maybe this bonus would better be suited for burmese (like +1 pa for each monastery tech?))
But one major problem with the monks stays and that’s monk micro. I am pretty sure > 95 % of players never even attempted it once. And only the very best can really pull it of. Maybe there should be a way to make monk micro easier also for less experienced players?
But back to the topic:
Slavs don’t really need a change. Yes they have some weaknesses against cav archer civs, but they have a lot of good matchups in compensation. So if I would change anything about slavs I would look for a solution against cav archers more than anything else and maybe even nerf them on other things in compensation.
Why do people always think that the problem of monk UT is the effect? For the price, they are essentially very helpful to monks, but players who use monks often don’t have the spare resources and attention to build castles and research them. Later, although there are castles and resources, it is no longer suitable to continue to use monks as the main force for most of civs, which naturally makes these technologies unfavorable. So just buffing the effects won’t necessarily improve usage rates.
As long as it has a secondary effect that affects the economy or other units, it can make players more willing to research them in other occasions, such as Orthodoxy also provides armors for villagers and trade carts, Madrasah also greatly increases the gold generated by relics, Inquisition also causes the opponent’s monk who does convert and the converted friendly unit to lose 50% HP.
How? I have never once used it, or seen it used. They still die to archers and still counter knights. If it gave anti-monk armor so that light cav don’t kill monks MAYBE you would see it once on arena if for whatever reason the relics haven’t been picked up by the time you have a castle. But such dubious circumstances would happen something like once every 10000 games with Slavs.
Slavs are a balanced civ, there is no doubt about that. And ofc every civ tends to have most of good matchups against “bottom of the barrel civs” also the top dogs.
Claiming Slavs would be “another” bottom of the barrel civ is weird.
I meant the price of tech itself.
I explain the 650 stone just at the following.
I explained it at the same part.
Since it is almost impossible to gather 30 monks for other civ except for Aztecs. But if there are 30 Slav monks, +3/+3 armor are still cost-effective at such the cheap price of 200 food and 300 gold.
When players dike opponents to raid, Orthodoxy can increase the survival chances of villagers and trade carts. When enough relics are stored, Madrasah can provide the player with more gold in the late game. When the player suffers from opponent monk rush, Inquisition can help the player fights back more easily. Even if you don’t use monks, it’s still suitable to research them, which greatly increases their use.
