Interesting changes. I especially like the Bulgarians change, which should really help their early Krepost potential. Before, they could produce Konniks about 50% faster from a Krepost than Knights from a stable; now, they’ll be able to do so very close to twice as fast.
That means one Krepost gives nearly the same value as TWO stables(350W) and 4 houses(100W), or 450W for 350S, plus the arrows of course. Even accounting for stone’s slower collection rate, that’s easily worthwhile now.
the nerf for mongol is nice but 20% is still strong, need to nerf down to 15% in castle age.
If they buff Scorpions, hopefully they nerf Scorpion pass through damage, because the black forest type maps give silly amounts of value at the chokepoints… or maybe the militia-line can resist onagers & scorpions like the royal heirs tech idk.
Also wished they’d nerf tower rushing this patch by just lowering the garrisoned arrows bonus against stone defense from 5 into 2… that bonus ruins so much early game and turns tower into an offensive tool which is weird.
Wish Bulgarians got more. And Sicilians should get a nerf on Serjeant. Maybe a 5 food cost increase. Ladder games till 1600 elo or maybe even higher will be dominated hard by YouPudding strategy. Also Bengalis is one trick civ now. They will be a bit better in Arabia though.
Don’t forget they have better battle elephants now. I’m guessing the goal is to move them more towards the melee side of the tree.
Damn, mass scorpions in team games gonna make damage ! I will train my skills with onagers and bbc ))))
Nice changes, especially for sicilians, but donjon change mainly keep them in line with towers, and the “fortifications” faster only really affect walls as a new thing i guess, which isn’t bad but certainly not game changing
They still need their bonus damage reduction back and a buff to (elite)serjeants. And maybe a new UT changing First crusade for good
Farmers are 8% slower compared to pre-nerf.
My 2 cents - This change will have very small impact in its usability in 1v1.
Some random patch in 2027 maybe.
Exactly. The lancer problem from Mongols isn’t going to end with -6 hp. Its mainly an issue because of their timing advantage. Hunters should work 25% faster instead of 40%
For Sicilians, Donjon construction time should be 120 seconds instead of 125 so that after the bonus its the same construction time as a regular tower.
Agree on sicilians, but donjon would still need something more to be worth the cost imho. Folwark cost the same as a mill and has multiple benefits, being a true asset of the civ. Donjons cost more but if you had Watch tower for sicilians would probably never to be seen.
For mongols, i think nerfing their Hunt bonus would gut the civ. They need their window of advantage and they have their identity on that timing. With that reduced to 25%, why even bother picking the civ?
SL nerf serves the purpose of not giving the mongol player that easy of a finisher move in Castle Age after collecting feudal advantage. Without that, a civ could recover the damage since mongols have no bonus in castle age, until they peak again in imp
So i agree that they should address the steppe lancers problem more, but i would do it in another way. I would actually buff steppe lancers since they are never seen or almost never seen for anithing but mongols, and then remove the mongols buff and put it on the Nomads tech
I liked how were Armenians…
Otherwise, the patch seems fine.
Battle elephant buffs are nice but it isn’t enough to address the main problem why no one uses the unit. It’s the combination of Slow speed (even at 0.9) and expensive (even at cheaper 100f) and especially very easy to be converted by monks. If they can address the monk problem, people will start to use Battle Elephant even if they are expensive.
The solution can be that converted elephants will become neutral unit (Gaia) and they need to be converted again to switch side. Therefore, the players with elephant don’t just lose such expensive unit immediately by one conversion and have a chance to get that elephant back. It also prevents players with monk from deleting the elephants after successful conversions.
Agree on this. Maybe the structure could also support 10 population saving 2 houses.
25% is still huge and a much bigger bonus than what most other civs get at that stage. They’ll probably be 40 seconds sooner than other civs instead of 1+ minute.
40% faster hunt was needed at a point where they didn’t have Lancers and needed a bigger lead to get to Mangudai. They don’t need that much of a lead anymore. Both 40% faster hunt and Lancers is too much.
Its a very minor nerf, just -6 hp and a very small percentage of games will differ without a change to hunt bonus. I’m happy with slow incremental changes instead of drastic ones but I do believe unless the hunt bonus is modified the civ will remain very strong on all open and hybrid, overpowered on maps with extra hunt. At the very least the bonus should scale down with the amount of food collected from hunt. (something like Gurjaras mill)
That’s fine too. -18 hp is a quite decent nerf.
Ypu would pick the civ for the OP mangudai, amazing siege, and great hussars. 25% is still pretty decent. With the usual 2 boars + 4 deers start, you need 80% of the time to collect this food. You still go much quicker to Feudal age compared to most civ, and in Feudal when you ate all the hunt are the equivalent of 200w to 250w (around 10 vils.min) compared to a no-bobus civ. This is still up to par with the early eco civs (Dravidians, Franks, Burmese, Japanese,…) while still having FU-castle knights and bracers arbalester in you tech tree. Plus the camels, lancers and a top5 UU in the game.
There is no way gutying the bonus from 40% to 25% would make nobody play them. I am convinced they would still at least be top 15 most played civ.
Whether we should gut them or not is up to debate, but I think Mongols need either a hunt nerf or a Lightcav/SL hp nerf.
I think the better change for Mongols would have been making the HP bonus the Castle Age UT but keep it 30% and then make Nomads a civilisation bonus.
When will we know about the April event?
Heavily disagree.
I don’t think Eles are under-utilized for the design flaws they currently have.
I don’t want such a terribly designed unit to become more part of the meta. It’s a terrible idea.
And there are several good ideas shared in this very forum that adressed the design flaws. Devs should start with testing some of these ideas FIRST before coming with the sledghammer of cost reduction. It’s a pathetic move you only should ever do when you are out of ideas. But we aren’t.
Maybe this change won’t be enough to bring Eles in the meta. But I make the bold prediction: WHEN this kind of blunt changes actually brings Eles in the meta it will be a terrible meta everybody hates. Becasue it will be super unfun first to play against and then even to play it, cause it doesn’t feel “revarding” anymore.
These are the kind of changes that can destoy a game. Especially as it will be kinda silently. As it will first affect the less vocal parts of the community at lower elos. And when it reaches the vocal parts of the community it will be too late and many people will be lost.
PS: Btw also similar to be seen are the tower changes. I can’t really tell if this will happen. But when the tower rush meta at low elos comes back the change needs to be reverted immediately for the exact same reason.
Unmentioned QoL addition - you can place farms now more easily as I showcase in this video:
I hope it’s not only for Poles 
I kinda like this, at it means I personally can focus more on the “fun” part of the game.
I will miss T90 Farms, RIP
Yep, works with any civ, I just used Poles because placing Farms around Folwarks is kinda fun
Appreciate you taking it in stride. Wish more people reacted like this.