Hmm if I remember The viper lost that match lol, but he won a burmese vs cuman match, with Daut being said cuman player. But still, Malay are crazy good. You also forgot Turks don’t need Sultans since they have +20% gold mining speed from the start and all gold upgrades.
Wow, removing Heavy cav archer from Turks would be a huge nerf, right now Turk HCA can defeat all other cav archers besides War wagons and Elephant archers. The cavalry archer is a unit that needs a lot of ugrades to be effective, and many people refuse to create them even if they have a civ that merely lacks Parthian tactics. Even Indian and Japanese cav archers are underrated, because they are FU but without any bonus. For your trash unit idea, you can ask people who like Portuguese if the gold discount makes them create cav archers at least in Castle age, and I think you will have a hard time finding people who will answer “yes”. Only game that I’ve ever found where a player who doesn’t have access to HCA used cav archers is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imQ3pKpulYk&t=950s, and it was effective because of the surprise effect since Italians have 0 bonus for CA. But if Tatoh was say, Malay or Viking (no HCA, have thumb ring but no bloodlines) he wouldn’t even have thought about this
There is NO balance anywhere. Some of your brothers is better than you, some are worse. Somebody has better car and more gold than you. The same with your friends. It is the same in the game. Same civs had advantage at some ages. The Mongols defeated the second, third and forth civ , you write for.
If you want a balanced game, you and your opponent may chose the same civ. In 1x 1- two players chose the same civ. It may be also in 2 x 2 or 4 x 4.
The Programmers, from Asia, who added Asian civs, may just change the name of other civs to only these 5 Asian civs. SO every game you play , you will see only these 5 civs, but with different unit and civ stats.You will chose from 5 turk civs, 5 Malay civs, and etc… in stead of Celts, Byzantines and etc…
I’m not sure I got what you say but what the OP is asking is more balance, not equality. They of course don’t want all the civs to be the same (there is all-tech for that) but they want all alternate playstyles given by the civ bounses to have roughly the same chance to lead to a win if all the players involved have the same skill level.
I agree with CactusSteak2171 here - you make it too simple.
AoE 2 is much more complex than just Civ A being straight up better than Civ B. It is good for the game if there are different power spikes. Let’s take Mongols on Arabia. Very good until mid Feudal with their hunting bonus. Then they drop a lot and in late game they get back to being good again. Another Civ like Vikings on the same map has nothing special going for them during Dark Age, becomes very strong in Feudal by getting free Wheelbarrow and stays strong throughtout the game from there. In late game though they lack an absolute power unit, so if the game goes very late Mongols would probably get the upper hand again.
I would probably argue that Vikings are slightly better on Arabia than Mongols (maybe I should have used an example where it’s more clear xD), but that doesn’t mean that Vikings beat Mongols in every phase of the game. There are windows where Mongols are better and those can be used by them. Those windows make balancing good, if they’re avaliable in the best case for every civ in every matchup (it’s very hard to get to that extreme though).
Bad balancing now is if there is a civ like Vietnamese or Goth which is at a disadvantage in most matchups and in most phases of the game. And that’s what people here want to change. And it’s a good thing to change.
People don’t want 50/50-situations at every point of the game. But they want well designed power spikes (and drops) for every civ.
It’s so much more complex than just A>B.
2 Likes
Teutons and Goths need a buff too.
1 Like
Im not sure I got what you say but what the OP is asking is more balance, not equality. They of course don’t want all the civs to be the same (there is all-tech for that) but they want all alternate playstyles given by the civ bounses to have roughly the same chance to lead to a win if all the players involved have the same skill level.
exactly what I mean. I want every civ to have more or less the same amout of chances to win (of course, some civs may be better for some kind of map and/or type of game). But right now, I feel that some civs are simply worse than the rest.
Spirit of the law, Tatoh, and Nilii all agree on both Vietnamese and Goth need a buff. Also, they talk about Khmer getting a little buff, so I guess those three are for sure. Turks could get a little buff aswell, and maybe, just maybe, teutons.
I have a split opinion about malay, since everyone seems to (still) love them. What about Burmese, people?
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Am I the only one in favor of ALL civs having at least one economy bonus? As there are some civs where it doesn’t matter how much you buff them in other areas … if they have no eco bonus then lots of other civs will kill them early.
Some civs should have more than one eco bonus and stronger eco bonuses than others … to compensate for them having weaker tech trees. I do think that’s good.
But I think that even the civs with strong tech trees should at least get one SMALL eco bonus. (And, at least a little bigger than the Inca team bonus 
)
I mean, what do the Vietnamese, Goth and Khmer all have in common that make them weak, hmm? No eco bonuses. At least give them small ones.
The Teutons have cheaper farms … but they are still very slow compared to many other civs. So give them a bit of an eco buff too, I say. Would 30 wood farms be overpowered? if so, what about 35? Or even give them another small eco bonus in addition to their farm one if there’s REALLY no way to buff their farm bonus, giving them a better eco, but not making them overpowered.
Turks have an eco bonus to gold … but that makes them very weak early game and post-imp. They could benefit from a small wood or food bonus (of some sort) as well. How about this: portugese have cheaper gold units, koreans have cheaper wood units (excluding seige) … how about Turks have cheaper food units (excluding villagers)? And if that seems too powerful … then just make the bonus smaller.
I think it would be awesome to make it a rule for all civs to have at least one eco bonus … kind of similar to all civs having at least one unique unit (and some have more just like how some civs have unique warships as well).
If Viper not used Malay, he would lose it more early.
Well, I’m a GKT_Cloud’s fan and I was watching the match on Cloud’s stream at that time.
It’s impossible to make the game perfectly balanced. The only problems actually is that some civs really never shines. Some of these “bad” civs, are already good in some maps.
Actually the real problems with Viet, is that UT are weak (bonus on their ele is weaker than other civs), rattan archer are meh compare to arbalest (arbalest are better 80% of the time… and more easy to spam) and free conscription is cool but it’s not enough. When you get a free tech, not only you save the cost, but also the time to research it and you get it without the building. But conscription is cheap, quite fast to research and you usually (not always, i agree) have a castle when you reach imperial. Most player will research conscription in the minute they reached imperial. I think they don’t need a buff in early game but a reward if they reach castle age/imp age without being too far behind.
My personal idea for viet (one of these bonus):
- elephant are created 10% in castle age, 15% faster in imperial age
- elite elephant upgrade is 50% cheaper
- free balistic (does not required a university)
- Thumb ring is 50% cheaper and researched 100% faster (free thumb ring would be crazy)
and give to rattan a bit of resist agains skirms. Cataphract got resist to pikeman, so i don’t see why rattan cannot get it.
For goth, i think we simply need to change their boars bonus to something that matters. Carry more food from boar? Nice but you already lure them. More damage vs boar? Ok you gain 1s per boar because you take 1s less to kill it. If hunted animal lasted 15% longer, i would call it a real bonus (and i think it should be all animal, it could matters on some maps).
Turks are ok. i still think gunpowder units accuracy should be a little bit better for them, but i feel they are in a quite fine spot.
For teutons, i think they should get the bonus from herbal medicine right in the feudal. It seems stupid, but it could help a lot during a tower rush i think. (gain few hp on vill after garisson, ability to heal unit in TC in defence…). I don’t think they need crazy buff, cheaper farms is already a good eco bonus.
Khmer are tricky… maybe cheaper siege workshop (125 wood for example). But like viet, i think we should reward them when they reach castle/imp, not buffing their early.
(sorry for the long post and bad english)
I like the idea of free ballistic to vietnamesse. Also free fletching/bodkin arrow /Bracer is an option. I don’t think buff their elephants would buff them, since their are not an elephant specialized civ. I think is either buff their eco or their archers. Rattans are good, though.
For the khmer, I’ll go with some eco bonus, but not for wood, since they can save buildings. Maybe free siège engineers, or free cav defense.
Goth, maybe it’s as simple as give them supplies…
Welp, Goths had supplies for 1 week during the beta and they had the OP spot for this time lol. So the solution is elsewhere
2 Likes
Well, maybe give them supplies and reduce their bonus? IDK really., it’s a complex case
Maybe givr goths the last infantry defense.
For teutons, I would bust their infantry somehow, or maybe give them some good monastery tech for free
I want to give Vietnam something, but it should be something that benefits them in the later part of the feudal age. I feel that this is important because there ability to know other peoples starting location might lead to an unhealthy amount of rushing.
I think free atgack upgrades for archers is the way to go. Or maybe +1 attack for archers. Or free ballistics. Anyway, better archers, overall
Cheaper blacksmith techs might interesting. Or something that moves away from archers, like free armor techs.
The thing is that they don’t have really good archers. Extra life in archers it’s not that important. Other archer civ have more important bonuses for them (British, Ethiopians, mayans). Even Chinese as jack of all trades are better, since they have cheaper techs. I think that vietnamesse should get better archer line, since the other lines are not that good (cavalry, infantry)
It does matter though. It’s an extra hit from knights on your crossbows, which could mean an extra knight killed.
And it makes a difference in archer vs archer fights, or when you have skirmishers.
It’s not all powerful, but that extra survivability means raiding for just a few more moments.
And the Rattan pretty much defeats any or none skirmisher archer with equal resources.
Of course it helps, but it’s not as effective as other bonuses. British and Ethiopian bonuses help you in raiding, plus they have economic bonuses. All in all, they’re better. What I mean is either they need an ecobonus or a better military bonus.
And ratan Rocks. Hanoi rocks as well
Mainly responding to the Turks proposal: they are made to literally require gold income so they can flourish. They aren’t meant to win or even hold out in a trash war because of how strong their gunpowder units are and their range.