At the laucnh of the game, there were three civs. English, French, and Abbisid.
French beat English
Abbisid beat French
English beat Abbisid
Fortunately, we were able to move away from this over time, and just as a balance was struck, JD launched and the population of the game died faster than a pygmy goby as we entered the power creep era and team games went from chokepoint walls to mass knights seemingly overnight.
Today, we have come full circle. HOL and KT launch with JD powercreep + the return of counter civving wherein winrates at the top are something like 33% to countercivs with the exception of the top 3 players in the world (who could probobly win with a hand tied behind their back playing a cavless JD)
Xu Shi beats KT
HOL beats Xu Shi
Abbisid beats HOL
KT beats Abbisid
Meanwhile, some civs have just fallen off the deep end altogether such as english and byzantine. English forced into a 1 dimensional cheese strat and byzantine just a lesser goblin civ than its counterparts.
Some civs became “mid” in the sense they’re basically for LARPING such as OTD, china and ottoman.
I think it is time for an extended gap between new DLC civs & variants and time to bring balance to the force for a few years. The framework is there with landmark choices, but the polish is not.
Ideally, no civ would have absurd “Weaknesses,” as some fandom concepts do, but rather “Strengths and Unique Aspects,” and the rest would be “Balanced.”
Spearman: All civs need at least 1 anti-cavalry unit
Horseman: All civs need at least 1 anti-range unit
Archers: All civs need at least 1 anti-spearman unit
After that, they can balance the rest however they want, or make one unit stronger than another, but not create loopholes that cause a unit to lose 100% of its encounters with another civ.
Of course, I’m always going to go with the path of historicity: If the civ in question has several ways to increase its unique unit count, or unique technologies and bonuses, I gonna suggest to apply them, even if they nerf other aspects of this civ to balance it.
Thas justly one of the “Loophole” that i mentionet make some civs to lose to others and need to be balanced.
For Camel Archer Unit (Abbasid case)
Tecnically, because they are “ranged units” their ideal counters are Mangonel and Horsemans. But, the problem is that they reduce the attacks of those horsemans, and for their speed, they can faint the mangonels shoots.
Until now, horse archers, (as camel archer), don´t have a proper counter, in another unit that is not mangos. And thats is a problem, specially with unique horse archers with abysmal power.
At least in feudal and Castle Age are countereable with enough numbers of horsemans + mangos, but in post-imperial, specially in team games 4vs4, are really broken.
For Horse Archers in Post-Imperial, Counters Suggestions:
Cannons bonus: I strongly suggest that “Cannons” (Bombards, Culverins) gets a “horse archer bonnus”, similar as they have aggainst elephants. So, they counter properly ranged units in post-imperial, including Onna-musha, (the japanese crossbowman substitute). At least historically, the Rus use musket and cannons, as a substitute of pikemans aggainst the powerful Mongols Horse Archers.
Have you seen the video, or are you just answering for the sake of it? It was a screenshot from the video.
WATCH THE VIDEO!
And if you don’t want the video: Spoiler: The Rus won.
1).- "an immobile emplacement-based army"
Here I can confirm that you didn’t even watch the video, nor did you realize that cannons “have wheels” or the “Wandering towns” part.
2).- “Heck the horses can just remain still and they’ve basically won. What’s the other army gonna do? Stare at it?”
No, the cannon has more range, and more precision, so if the mongols don´t retreat enough, they became bombarded aggain. Again, the Rus can advance with the canon and even the defensive emplacement, thats the best part of the rus strategy of “Wandering Towns”.
And I was like a fool, thinking this was meant a topic to discuss new mechanics or counters, and it was just a topic of a Cheater to demand nerfing the civs he has the most issues with.
This may come as a shock to you, but at diamond+ a good chunk id say about 2 in 4 players are cheating. I would prefer a cheat free game, but you know, its like going to board game club where a few folks came with blinders and a bunch didnt. This isn’t OG starcraft days where it was like this super rare thing, its more common than you think. The person who took that vid didn’t include the game their account was on, becouse they were cheating, and they got mad that someone else was too.
