An East Asia Civ Tech Tree - Xianbei

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Final Edition of the Xianbei tech tree I’m trying to make into a mod, not gonna discuss the idea of Xianbei itself here.

Xianbei (4 century BC ~ 672)

•Foragers and hunters don’t need mill;
•Cavalry armor upgrade research automatically;
•Imperial Age research 100% faster;
•Cavalry can generate infantry; (This works as Light Cav and Hussar can create one militia-line unit and knight-line can create two militia-line unit, each cav can only do this once)
•Can upgrade monk to royal monk(+20 hp +5 range, this tech replace block printing, cost 350 gold);

Team bonus
First monk free;

Unique units
Liuzhen Cavalry:
Xianbei unique unit, worrior of the Six Frontier Town. Light cavalry unit with bonus vs. cavalry and gunpowder.

Frontier Cav Stats
Frontier Cav Stats483×1190 79.5 KB

（A mistake here, pierce armor should be 0,1(elite) not melee armor)

Unique techs
Luoyang:
Relics produce double the gold & monks trained much faster(8s).
400 F 200 G
Fubing system:
Pikeman-line units and skirmishers cost 50 % less food.
200 F 300 G

Tech Tree
Tech Tree1920×288 69.6 KB

(A change here,Two-Man Saw and Siege Engineer should be unavailable)

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For the idea of Xianbei itself please go to
https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/east-asia-civ-idea-xianbei/157940/63

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I know if units can generate other units, this might bug at narrow spots, so cavalry can’t genrate infantry when fully blocked like transport and ram can’t ungarrion at such spot.

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I think this would fit better with the uu rather than a normal unit.
It might be pretty broken as well if you have lets say 20 paladins which could train 40 more champions which inside the enemy town.60 high power units would totally wreck the opponent.

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How about when cavalry do this it can’t move and it takes some time to generate infantry. Like treps unpack.

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The unique unit is basically a halb and a light cav packed together, so I dont want the UU to produce infantry. Another way this can be is that cavalry can build camps and then the camps can make infantry.

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The simplest alternative I had is cav regenerate hp starting castle age.

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This alone makes them really really strong. They would have a better dark age, since hunting deers would be better then milling the berries. And armor on cav is super important, so they would have a really good scout rush into knights.

Although, seeing the tech tree, and that all units from the range are basically useless, it might not be broken.

This might mess their build order, since you risk to get to imp with few resources. Although, imp is probably the transition that suffer less from this, if you boom properly in the castle age.

Now, this is what worries me.

What do you mean by generate? Is it free? Is it immediately spawn? Or they have to pay for it and train them? Does it work like in aoe3, where the unit that train other units has to be immobile until the training is complete?

Overall, it’s actually a strong civ. Your dark age will be faster, and in feudal you have a really good scout rush. In castle age you get FU knights and immediately the armor, and then you get a faster imp with again immediately the armor.

All together, it’s a solid civ, and borderline OP. It’s not completely OP just because this bonus makes them a one trick civ, and because there isn’t an eco bonus beyond feudal.

Then there are UTs, and suddenly you get a gold bonus for castle age and a discount for the late game. And the civ becomes OP.

Then there are the UUs. A super monk and what is basically a camel unit. So against archers you have FU cav with free and immediate armor. Then you get 2 UU to counter enemy cav, and good pikes too. You have an early eco bonus (about 100 wood delayed, maybe another 100 wood saved, and a faster food entry) and a mid game eco bonus…

Do you see the pattern? The civ has no weakness, everything is covered. For every hole in the tech tree, for every weakness, there is something else thay compensate. Maybe only the super late game is their weakness, when they lack decent skirms. But again, they have cheaper halbs and FU hussars, so they can still do it.

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Yes, like aoe3 the unit can’t move or atack when training infantry and it’s not free, unlike aoe3 it can only do this once. It’s obvious this civ rely on a mix of cav and infantry so I want to make a bonus that works the best when cav and infantry are mixed together(like the Poles mix their UU with archers) So my original thought is cavalry increase the speed of nearby infantry like some aoe3 unit, but then experienced modder told me this is basically impossible in aoe2. So I came to the idea I present here. I consider this similar to celts faster infantry but works differently. As you can see Xianbei lacks efficient way of raiding buildings so this is to cover it. Imo this can be balanced by making the production time longer. I really can’t think of other ways to buff infantry that works significantly different from other civs already in the game.

If the player want to make full use of the above bonus he need to research infantry armo, and making militia-line and cav both is not easy with normal civ, this bonus is to make it easier. Kinda like Slavs farming bonus but encourage more agressive raid.

I actually consider this as a scouting bonus and dark age food lead cause you don’t need to chase deer. I wanted this bonus to benifit about the same as franks faster forager and free farm upgrade, so if in the end it doesn’t, it’s easy to let them have lower hunting speed like khmers have lower farming speed.

Yeah this is intentionally. This makes Xianbei very predictable, like it does have very good knight in caslte age but that’s also the only good to use unit. That’s why I give Xianbei a gold bonus with a cost in caslte age, so player can choose to go for relics if raiding with knights doesn’t work very well.

This is to allow Xianbei makes more hussar in trash fight, so they have average level mixed trash units with higher percent of hussar in the mix.

Now I feel paladin should be removed and player should be encouraged to mix UU, cavalier and hussar. Then choices are more limited.

I’m thinking remove crop rotation so it doesn’t have very good food eco in imp like teutons or slavs, for a cav&infantry civ this pull it down a bit(since it has good quality units then make it can’t have quantity)

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Btw their monks and Aztecs monks are like poles and Lithuanian winged hussar. One is good at agressive and one is better at defensive while both being super monk. And the royal monk things better simplified as block printing add two more range.

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It’s actually a food bonus mixed with a wood discount. You may not have designed it this way, but vills that doesn’t need to stop gathering from a deer to drop the food is a huge step up in gathering the food in the early game. Also, you can send vills gathering deers quite early, without fearing to leave them exposed, and delaying berries, which means a faster age up time. Then again, you can delay the mill potentially up to castle age (since horse collar isn’t important as heavy plow).

Yeah but it’s still strong. Paladins anyway aren’t usually researched in 1v1, so even spamming cavaliers and hussars that immediately have the armor is strong.

But you keep nerfing them in post imp, and a lot of games don’t reach that stage. Most games doesn’t doesn’t even reach imp at all.

If you want to keep the free armor bonus, you need to nerf them over something else, or you need to nerf the bonus to something like “only the first armor is free”, or remove the late game trash discount.

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Yes because aoe3 style mechanics are so loved in aoe2 as is.

You do know that crop rotation is rarely researched even when a civ does have it right? It takes so long to pay itself off you’re usually talking trash wars

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Just like Franks bonus, what is I intended to.

Exactly what I want to offer, at first I want to make only hunting like this but then it’s simply a slightly food lead with better scouting(hunting effciency is already high when everyone knows how to chase deer today) so I decide forager doesn’t need mill too. Then it’s closer to Franks bonus effect and not as much as Mongols one. If the player choose to delay mill to caslte it only saves like 1 or 2 choppers casue you chop faster in castle depending on how much food you spent on chopping techs.

Xianbei only has mediocre eco in caslte and imp, the gold bonus cost gold and food itself (plus a castle) and can delay the army, that bonus is for if the player want to turtle a little bit. It won’t be more op than magyar (auto melee attack upgrade) or mongols(auto better ca attack and auto hussar hp), these three have similar eco in castle and imp(with mongol the worst of them). Xianbei doesn’t need a castle and early imp nerf, cause the seemly cover everything units combo is based on average eco. A lot of civs have such combo if ignoring economy.

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Becasue aoe2 run out of unique buff to infantry.

For a cav and infantry civ if you reach imp without having upper hand, crop rotation is important. Unless you play on water map. No crop rotation means now you choices are limited and you must go all in.

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not really.

nope. not really - rarely does it pay for itself.
if you get horse collar in a standard game right when you hit feudal, even that won’t pay for itself until around 36-38 minutes into a game roughly. how long do you think it would take Crop Rotation to pay off?

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Farms get destroyed more often in imp and faster farming is important if one reach imp with enemy knocking the door, Crop Rotation pays off faster if your old farms are risking being destroyed and you need to turn wood into food fast as a cav&infantry civ. Crop rotation doesn;t worth only if your base is comfortable. No crop rotaion means your strategy is even more predictable for pro players.

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Crop rotation doesn’t make you farm faster though.

I often see pros not even get the second farm upgrade and you’re gonna sit here and say crop rotation is super important?

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I think I mistake crop rotation as second farm upgrade.Sorry. Then cancel crop rotation only affect late imp.

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But this is even stronger. Again, by itself it’s not broken, but you need to see how fast it snowball with the others.

If instead of sending 4 vills to berries, you send 3 to deers, you can age up as fast as mongols, and with stronger scouts than franks.

The wood upgrades doesn’t matter, you always pick them, they are a must. But the farm upgrades are often delayed, since in reality, only heavy plow matter. Unless you are going for a super boom, which isn’t probably the case for such aggressive civ.

If you age up with a lead, either because you got your resources sooner, or because you have you dealt damage, you keep that advantage.

You also need to consider the resources saved in the cav armor, and more gold for relics isn’t bat at all, even if it requires a castle. It’s a long term bonus, that usually doesn’t work well with strong early eco bonuses.

Magyars don’t get an eco bonus, and mongols have just a dark age bonus, and that’s it. They don’t get free techs or long lasting gold bonuses.

In my opinion, you gave them a super strong scout rush, on all aspects, and that alone is enough to have them an advantage.

If you can’t capitalize on that advantage and keep it, then it’s you fault. The civ should not give you even more advantages, because then together they snowball out of control.

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Imo that’s how popular civs work, a perfered strong unit in early game and a long term snowball eco bonus. Like britons mayans franks aztecs and ehtiopians, one unit is strong doesn’t mean it will always work as you want. If a civ’s strategy is predictable there is always many ways to counter, it’s not like the opponent doesn’t have his own bonus.

As I said, the biggest economy snowball beyond food is sending fewer choppers in dark age and feudal and scouting more area(cause chasing deer is common these days). If one rush to castle(you can only do this if you don’t use the extra food on feudal scout rush) without any mill he actually would end up with worse base, cause he has a small “debt” of mill-and-farm to pay in castle age, it’s like a celts castle age rush – powerful but definetly not safe. The long-term relic gold bonus can’t co-exist with any kind of rush(*actually it can, if it’s a monk with UU rush, that’s why I make the UU doesn’t cost gold and anti-cav), cause it delay such rush, it only has its theoratical bonus effect when you spend micro on picking relics and build castle and monastery(nobody can do a full knight rush while picking relics). Similar with if you rush castle with britons, the tc wood bonus can’t work that well. The bonuses seem to cover everything but they can’t work full power at the same time, they only work seperately when conducting certain strategy.

Btw magyar’s free attack and cheaper scout actually helps mix some infantry, that’s why they dont have any more food bonus.