considering the winrate at 1700+ is 53%+, i’d say the impact is there, but small. is it an even smaller sample size? absolutely.
but i completely agree with you - two weeks worth of data, post nerf isn’t a lot.
do knights need a potential nerf? yeah maybe.
but should it be something that will hurt them overall? no.
I’d say either nerf the cost of BL, Husbandry, or Armor upgrades if they do need nerfs.
So you want that we only talk about 3.67 % of all games in the sample? Well this I just don’t accept.
Mayans was just a special example. And only people who know something about statistics know why this is the civ you should look at there. Call it inside knowledge but it’s how good statistics and research works IF you want to analyze stuff correctly.
Nah, also disagree with that.
But ofc we have the issue that flank position usually HAS to play archers for a lot of differet reasons. Maybe we need a brainstorm to think about an alternative to this. But changes to the archer line woulen’t even really impact this. It’s a lack of alternatives.
I don’t even think we need nerfs for knights. I would instead just make spearmen faster.
Idk if this is really “adaptable”. The thing is if your macro was just “fine” before that patch you usually had banked the right amount of ressources to make these upgrades. If this change now forces players to adjust their macro they built up for several years… this might not happen fast and probably even never happen. You see, these upgrades are outside of classical buildorder setups, so there is a lot of stuff going on there and if it only affects like 5 % of your games it is even unlikely that you are able to readjust your macro for that sake. And definetely not conscoiuosly as this isn’t worth investing that amount of time. Other aspects of your game improvement are just way way more influential at every time not just at one timestamp.
But yeah maybe it’s not that bad this is now how it is now. This potentially reduces the technical complexity of xbow/arb play and therefore allow more players to make effective use of them once they are buffed in retaliation. Maybe the cav players then also enjoy playing archers more…
considering archer line has been nerfed(incrementally) i think the next step is to buff pike line / minor nerf to knights
buffing pikes reduces the viability of knights, which in turn promotes the usage of militia line
what if pike tech fee was reduced from 215/90(45 sec) to 150/90 (30 sec) speed increase from 1 to 1.05 (slower than lith pikes are currently, incrementally faster than celt pikes w/ squires)
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of nerfing Bloodlines, and make it similar to thumb rings for archers.
People complains a lot about archers, but everyone can go archer/crossbow while not everyone can go scout/knight (as a viable strategy) as you need Bloodlines or a strong eco (celts/vikings).
Doubling the cost or Bloodline is a nice idea to consider.
Why that ? I would like to understand that…
It is argubly the best archer civ with no possibility to go knights (even though mayan eagles are probably more popular than britons knights or viking knights), but I do not understand why watching this civ is so representative while it gets carried by eco and discount.
I would have expected the typical bloodline-less archer civ (like ethiopians or byzantine) to be a better reference to see whether or not archers are in a fine spot
Agreed, this is a big problem… People going archers will often forget that they need to bank more resources until they change their habit. Then they lose their timing and may lose the game bevause of that.
Koreans could use a buff (that does not affect their UU) independent of this patch. They were always a low tier archer civ, only good on Nomad.
I agree with this. I think people are still reacting to the patch notes. We should wait for at least a month and even then, it might be too early to judge maps and civs with low pick rate.
Nerfing bloodlines means buffing Franks, which no one wants.
What does this mean?
Gurjaras is still in the top spot
Would it be fine if we also nerf Franks from “cavarly have +20% hp from feudak age” down to +10% in castle age, +20% in imperial age?
Then we kind of increase the “frank cavalry weakness” from all in feudal scouts to late castle age, while giving their knights a minor buff of +10 hp until other civs have enough resources to invest into bloodlines.
Ps: I have absolute problem if Franks do not have the best castle age knights, even moving their bonus to imperial age would be fine with me…
That just make Franks quite medicore in castle age, like why you want Knights with 10% HP lol.
That is partially the point. This nerf idea comes together with the idea of nerfing the cost of bloodlines in a way that bloodline is too expensive late feudal age / early castle age (just like thumb rings), so that civs without bloodlines suffer less in castle age from missing the tech, just like civs without thumb rings do not suffer much from missing the tech in early castle age.
Besides, I would rather have knights with 110 hp than knights with 100 hp.
But maybe doubling the cost of bloodlines is not enough, and we should triple it, if 300f/200g is that easy to invest for that much of a buff…
Well, for one thing it’s free.
Really we need cavalry nerfed?
At higher levels players do better vs cavalry so is fine.
Not a single pro said that Crossbows/Arbs were broken. This has been a change demanded by averagely low ELO players here and on reddit. This change has destroyed many civs, many strategies and made many strong civs even stronger. Koreans and Malay and possibly others are beyond garbage. 1TC Imp is dead (No one has ever complained about it) and Crossbow+Knight is impossible to afford now so Eagles and Camels are much stronger and people have now started campaigning about nerfing Cavalry while in the past 20 years they were never broken.
Hera and viper both said it was a good change.
Cavalry does not necessarily need to be nerfed. But I think it would be fair that civs without bloodlines have a chance to perform decenly as a pocket civ in castle age, just like civs without thumb ring have a chance to perform decently as a flank civ in castle age.
Yes but to be fair, many pros are saying that the nerf is not such a bad thing.
Probably not that bad, but it is entirely correct that in the previous patches, in the bottom 10 civs (win rates) there were always at least 6 archer civs. The nerf hit them hard.
So the we need to make the non cavalry civs competent with cavalry? Why would you want Britons and Ethiopians be decent as pocket when both are powerful as flank? (With Britons being literally broken).
I think the crossbow nerf was fine but the arb nerf was unnecessary
I had a hard fought game vs a guy 150 elo points lower than me where he could keep up despite inferior skills just by going knight mango vs my archers
I did win but it should have been easier vs that elo difference
Problem is with micro u can counter mangos so in higher skill archers are op but in lower skill levels mangos can level your whole army
What about Franks ? Are they a decent flank civ for you ? They are pretty powerful as pocket…
Britons being being broken as flank means they need nerfs, not that they and 7 other civs (boh, byz, cel, eth, kor, mly, vik) should not be able to be decent as pocket until castle age.
Imo that’s exactly why archer upgrade cost is increased. Unless you are Spanish or Bulgarians, you will go archer line at some point. You open DRUSH or M@rush or scout, you switch to range, add 10-15 archer and go up. As soon as you’re up, you research xbow+bodkin. And then, you’re planning to switch into knight if you’re cav civ, or drop a castle if you want to play UU, or continue to play archer if you’re archer/infantry civ.
This nerf is to prevent Franks, Teutons, Lithuanians (even Bulgarians, especially in EW, sometimes as fletching, bodkin is too cheap) to go into xbow, or at least thinking twice if it is worthy as they can’t continue this unit in the long run.
The complains of this change are coming due to not having any sort of buff for any civ to compensate. (Unless you think getting treadmill crane is enough buff). This whole patch is nerf patch. There are only 2 civs that got buff - Bengalis and Dravidians, the 2 absolute terrible civs to such a degree that people were literally wondering why they exist. And still their buffs were not big enough to give them the minimal 45% W/R.
I’m very positive next patch will be mostly buff patch. Low tier archer civs Italians and Vietnamese, half archer civs Koreans, Malay, Portuguese all you will get buff. And hopefully some buff on anti-cavalry options as well.
I don’t think so. Because they nerfed the upgrade cost if arbalest by a lot and the cost of crossbow by a little. Franjs, Lithuanians, and Teutos have no arbalests.
For me they wanted to make the usage of the archer line power spikes more risky by saying "if you age up too early to make use of the power spike, then better do damage because it will be harder to make eco (and eco upgrades) behind it.
I do not see how it would annoy Franks with free farm upgrades or Teutons with cheaper farms to go for a crossbow timing, compared to Koreans or Portuguese. For sure it will make it harder for Malays who are counting on this timing though.
Forme, you ccould discourage Franks and Teutons to go crossbows by making thumb ring mire accessible, hence saying “if you want to go crossbow, fine but your opponent can do it better than you”. For lituanians, if crossbow it not an option, cav archers might become one if they want a ranged unit (I know cav archers are too expensive in castle age and need numbers to work, but it still becomes an options if the crossbows were less accessible)
It is possible. I am biased so cannot really tell what would be the best for the game regarding cavalry. I’m interested to see where we will be going for next patch for sure !
I think their problem is that devs are pushing them too much on the EA side. But EA are probably way worse than cav archers regarding castle age viability, due to 70f cost (compared to wood cost)