Another list of balance ideas

I want to get in on the fun too. Just a few ideas that you can tell me are trash and never should be implemented.

General changes:

Long Swordsman Upgrade: Costs 120 food 50 gold, researches in 30 seconds

Two-handed Swordsman: Researches in 50 seconds

Champion: Researches in 75 seconds

Supplies: Costs 100 food 75 gold, researches in 20 seconds

Steppe Lancer Rework: Costs 60 food 40 gold, 50 Hp (Elite 75), ROF 2.0 (Elite 1.9), Attack 10 (Elite 12), +1 Melee armor, +5 damage vs villagers, Elite Upgrade: 750 Food 450 Gold, Elite speed 1.5

Hand Cannons and Bombard Cannons (not bombard towers) can be made before chemistry is researched. Before chemistry, Hand Cannons have -5 attack and -5 bonus damage vs infantry and Bombard Cannons -50% building bonus damage.

Civ Changes

Franks:

  • Castles 20% cheaper
  • Bearded Axe and Chivalry swap ages

Chinese:

  • Start with -150 food -75 wood,
  • Technologies -5%/10%/15% cheaper in feudal/castle/imp

Burgundians:

  • Eco upgrades 5%/10%/15%/20% cheaper in dark/feudal/castle/imp
  • Stable techs research 20% faster
  • Flemish revolution unlocks Flemish militia at both TC and Barracks (faster creation at TCs), all current villagers can be manually upgraded

Sicilians:

  • Donjons cost 150 stone 75 wood
  • First Crusade produces one serjeant at every donjon (up to 15) every 5 minutes for the rest of the game
  • Dock techs researched instantly

Malay:

  • Archers move 10% faster

Portuguese:

  • Get squires
  • Feitorias available in castle age, give 20 pop space along with taking 20 (you don’t need to make houses to make feitorias), Feitorias can be garrisoned by villagers to increase gather rate (a fully garrisoned feitoria containing 20 villagers would double its collection rate) and fire arrows (similar to TC fire)

Italians:

  • Foot archers are created 15% faster

Cumans:

  • 2nd TC built at faster (Idk how much)
  • Siege workshop costs 150 wood

Burmese:

  • Howdah gives BE +1/+2
  • Get thumb ring

Spanish:

  • Military techs (not upgrades) don’t cost gold (This would be bloodlines, arson, and supplies)

Saracens:

  • Madrasah affects the gold cost of all units

Koreans:

  • Team bonus reverted to +1 range mangonel line
  • Wood cost reduction affects siege units
  • Towers +100 hp

Vietnamese:

  • Infantry armor upgrades free
  • Get blast furnace

Magyars:

  • Hunters carry +100 food
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Looks all right. Militia line usually doesn’t see much use beyond feudal, and none of this seems OP.

I don’t think this is a good idea. If you need a unit to raid and kill villagers, just use the Hussar. Adding an attack bonus to a unit means the unit needs to have increased costs, or some other stat needs to be worse. Villagers are probably not the main threat to this unit…

I think it’s better to lock the units altogether behind chemistry. A huge balance change like this has too many unpredictable results, especially concerned about how this change would affect Arena and similar maps. I can see what you are trying to do with the damage reduction and all, but this would probably still make a fast imp viable more often than we expect.

Not sure if the civ needs another nerf so fast after a recent nerf, maybe better to wait out a bit.
Agree with the UT age swap, have never, ever needed Chivalry (in the Castle age especially) for anything, ever.

Hmm, I would much rather tone down the strength of the Chinese UU. Keep the eco bonuses, but Chu ko nu needs to be a little bit weaker.

I would not change Flemish revolution. I don’t even know how I would select all my vills and upgrade them all one by one. I do very much prefer the one button do it all convenience of the current tech.

I would not give them faster stable techs. They already get cheaper stable techs, the two together just sounds like too one dimensional. You already get two power spikes from early Cavalier and Paladin, this is not the issue.

The Eco upgrade cost part is where I agree with you. I’d replace the Gunpowder buff with this Eco upgrade cost reduction, to finally make it actually viable to grab them early. I’d probably just reduce only food cost, but maybe at a higher margin than 5%, 10% and 15%.

I only like the donjon cost change.

The first crusader tech is actually very useful as it is right now. Situational, but useful. It can basically prevent a castle age push, and help the civ survive into the late game.

The Doch tech buff is a waste of a buff, I’d rather have a -5g and slightly faster training time for Serjeants as part of the Castle Age stat buff to the unit. So this way they don’t get oppressive in feudal, but the unit becomes a bit more viable in late game.

Interesting idea. Although the Malay honestly don’t come off as a weak civ needing buffs to me. They seem to have a lot of (good) options for many different map types.

Interesting idea, could potentially make the building a lot more viable than it is now. Pretty cool.

Interesting idea, I guess it should help buff them on land.

Just remove the whole Siege workshop bonus, it’s one of the most pointless bonuses in the game. Just give them some unique tech (replacing their current castle age UT) that makes their UU more than a paper tiger in Imperial.

Nice suggestions, would have no complaints here.

Sure, why not, wouldn’t really change much, no complaints.

This might be a little too much? It feels like this would be way too strong in game. Saracens have a lot of strong gold unit options, so I’m not sure that I’d really want to see this.

I think this civ is so messed up right now, that it would be better to redesign it from scratch, but I can see the motivation behind your suggestions for sure.

That’s quite a lot there actually. I would just try giving them the free armor upgrade, and see how that goes.

Why? Doesn’t seem like a very impactful bonus. I’d much rather have a bonus like bonus to the amount of food found in hunted animals, but then something else in the civ would probably need to be nerfed.

Turks already have free chemistry and a gunpowder buff on top of that. I was trying to make fast imp more viable for other civs with strong gunpowder buffs which would be ok but not as good as Turks. I’m not sure any civ could do it better than Turks even after this change.

Yeah it might be a little strong. I just wanted to suggest something more unique than reducing the cost of mamelukes. Maybe if it was reduced to 20% it could work

A small eco buff is what they need because, while they are good at most levels of play, at the top Magyars fall off a bit. Making it a smaller bonus that high level players would use more effectively was the idea.

Yes, I see the intent. Not sure if the giant carry capacity will do much. Hunters already carry a lot, boars usually end up below the TC, and deer only have 140 food anyway.

Ok… but it’s not what keeps the sword line back, which is the fact that LS don’t have a place in castle age with the exception of eagles counter.

But less resources never hurt…

This is crazy OP, especially the bonus damage vs vills, which is unnecessary since 5 SL already can snipe a vill in the box formation.

Never gonna happen, it’s to early to produce BBC as soon as you hit imp, it would be a crazy good buff not just for the gunpowder civs, but to any civ that have BBC, like franks too for example. And civs like franks don’t need buffs.

The UTs swap could have been a good idea before the berries nerf, now I don’t think it’s necessary.

And the castle are fine, they lack bracer, so they aren’t OP.

The nerf doesn’t compensate for the buff. Having the resources for a vill and a house at the start of a chinese match is a crazy good buff, you would gat even more ahead that what they are now, and 5% more expensive techs don’t compensate one more vill gathering resources.

If you want to nerf chinese, increase the cost of their ridiculously strong UU…

The eco upgrades discount isn’t that “pretty”, but some eco buff is necessary for burgundians. I would suggest instead to give them 50% cheaper stables too.

And faster researching stables no, because the 1 thing that balances the early cavalier is that it idle one of your stable for more than a minute, you can’t remove that.

The donjon cost reduction is fine, if not needed.

The 1C UT could be nice, but not this way. You either have the option to train them, or you have them spawned in just 1 time. Otherwise it’s a mess and you may find yourself pop capped whan you don’t need it.

The dock buff is OP, and not needed. If you want a buff for water for them add dock to the 100% faster building castles and TC.

Crazy strong and OP bonus on a civ that needs no buffs…

Agree on the squires, but I don’t think that we will see a change on feritorias, especially now that pros seem to have figured out the meta.

That was already suggested time age, but never made it into the game, so I don’t think that it’ll be different this time…

The extra feudal cuman TC was already nerfed in this way, so to re-buff it back isn’t a good idea.

As for the SW, 50w isn’t that big of a deal, so it could be something else more instead, like having more wood at the start of the game, of each eco building giving 5 pop.

The howdah buff is unnecessary, and tumb ring is missing on purpose, so that the arambai (which are CA) lack that 100% accuracy, and have that sort of “area of damage effect”.

Pretty weak, TR doesn’t even cost gold, and basically none of that techs are researched early enough during the game to make an impact. It would be just 250g saved, almost all in either castle age or imp.

It wouldn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t either solve their problems.

Maybe limited to the gold cost, not to all resources, and it may be decent for mamelukes.

But I prefer simply a cost reduction of mamelukes and an actual purpose for the UT.

I can agree to the second one, but hard no the the other 2.

The TB was changed because korean onagers were able to outrage the castle of any civ that lack bracer, which was OP. And the towers were purposely nerfed in DE.

Both unnecessary, viets are already strong and fine.

What? This is just random right?

1 Like

i don’t think these need to be touched.

these numbers make it better then pre nerf steppe lancer in some ways and that is something that would need to be watched.

this is a good change

the net result of this is a buff. something chinese don’t need.

this is a laughably small boost to an already weak as crap eco bonus. i’d say just make it a flat 33% cheaper and 33% faster.

this has huge early castle age implications

Feel like this treads on britons toes

so basically arson and supplies

this is a huge buff.

why infantry armor upgrades? also this makes there drush very dangerous.

problem is, short of an entire rework of infantry game balance, the longsword will never be able to do much in castle age.

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Erm, this is very dangerous combined with Vietnamese knowing where enemy starts. Their drush into m@a would become very annoying.
(i want a vietnamese buff otherwise)

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Also nerf to eagle bonus of Militia-line, because they are really hard counter eagles, eagles even can’t go near of them, 1 champion kills 2 eagle, when knight can kill 1 pikeman
Eagle warrior training time reduced to 30 (35 now which is slower than knight tt)
And Tarkan buff

yeah but eagles don’t have a trash counter, move faster then champs, and are much cheaper then the knight overall, to the toon of 40 food and 25 gold cheaper. furthermore a champion is much more expensive then 1 pikeman. so it absolutely makes sense that a champion would perform better against eagles then a pikeman does against a knight.

furthermore you are literally the only person i have ever seen complain about how good the militia line performs against the eagle line.

the eagle is not just a knight. its also got the conversion resistance of a scout. that is one of the reasons its training time is so high, because unlike the knight it can not be easily countered by a monk. coupled with its insanely low food cost and the lack of a trash unit it counter it like the knight has. but sure go ask the pros what they would think about aztecs being able to mass up eagles even faster, i’m sure it would be totally fine and balanced.

why do tarkans need buffs? they belong to one of the strongest civs in the game and do their job well. they aren’t supposed to a unit built around taking out melee units. they do decently well against archers and absolutely wreck buildings.

2 Likes

Are they paying people to write these kinds of threads or what? There are even more of these lately than usual.

But meso civs lack scout cavalry which needed to counter counters of archers. Eagles should do job of both of scout and knight and it is really hard to transition to eagle warrior when you see enemy’s have many siege or skies. It is why 3 sec decrease can be a little good.

Yes eagles don’t have a trash counter but you can’t counter champion too… when you easily counter pikes with siege+knight or skirm+knight. For counter. champion you need to go archers %100 and it is a really expensive combo to do eagle+archer, this is why champs shouldn’t counter eagles that hard, also cost of them lower than eagles.

But aztecs can be a little dangerous, they are not good as before btw this buff will turn them back to before eco nerf of them

Yeah Huns a good A tier civ. But Tarkans not, my general idea is every unique unit should be good as you want you choose them and %90 of time
Huns player will never use them, because paladin better vs archer and Rams doing better job. Completely useless unique unit, a paladin can destroy a town (a little slower than tarkans)and destroy enemy’s army better than tarkans

yes because meso civs are SO BAD right now. oh wait, no they aren’t. you’re argument was that the training time should be lower because it fills a similar role as the knight.
but you ignore all the advantages the eagle warrior has over the knight. (conversion resistance, no trash weakness, and cheaper cost).
so yeah knights beat pikes 1v1. knights are also more expensive then eagles and pikes cost only wood and food.
and yeah champs beat the crap out of eagles, they are also much more expensive the pikes and much closer to the cost of an eagle then a pike is to the cost of a knight.

which requires a more expensive compensition to do so. by your logic i could say that meso civs can counter champion by going eagle + archer units.

so knight + siege isn’t expensive but eagle + archer is? boy you sure are biased. also the cost isn’t that much different and all told one costs 65 resources (assuming a tech is researched, 80 otherwise) and the other costs 70 resources. you’re seriously going to say that is cheaper?

and there is a reason aztecs were nerfed. because they were overpowered. so the idea of buffing them is foolhardy

but your idea would require rebalancing the entire game completely, as you would have to buff pretty much every unique unit in the game that isn’t an archer.

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Do you have any idea how overpowered this team bonus is? Bringing it back would just break the game.

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because there will be an event tomorrow, and soon after that, a patch.

this kind of threads appears days before and after patches.

is patch confirmed though? i haven’t been paying that close attention.

not but yes?

Last huge patch was at the end of january. So it is likely to have a patch in april.

There will be an anouncement this weekend during the fan preview event.

Some patches have a trailer 2 weeks before them

So it is likely that there will be a patch with the announced things at the end of the month.

they also had some balance changes shortly after LotW went live. so i’m skeptical

True, but the LOTW patc had few balance changes compared with other patches.

I thing they delayed the balance changes to test the DLC patch.

This may be the same case so we still would have a balance patch next month. So it is a good time for posting balance ideas (according to forums perspective)

honestly the game doesn’t need wide sweeping changes anymore imho.

The idea was more to make it easier to tech into sword line when needed, not to make LS a super viable unit.

Idk if it is OP as it would be less bulky than light cav and slightly lower dps than knight while costing in between the two. The vill damage was to make it better at raiding since it is less bulky than the other two cav options.

The idea was just the gold cost I will clarify in the post.

Arambai aren’t affected by thumb ring according to the wiki. I haven’t tested it myself.

Goldless bloodlines is kind of big as you wouldn’t have to start collecting gold to go all in scouts.

It would allow 1 villager to collect 1 whole deer assuming it rots at least 5 food. Using micro you could use 3-4 villagers to gather all the deer in one trip.