Increasing the price of Bloodlines sounds interesting.
Though it also hurts CA, Camels, late feudal scouts, cavalry UUs…
Nerfing knights by 5hp seems a lot simpler.
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That would be terrible. Knights need to be strong unit since they cost lots of food and gold.
Maybe just buff their counter units? Like Spearmen-line upgrades being 50% cheaper, spam pikes, bye bye knights.
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so archers get a non permanent nerf but knights get a permanent nerf? nah no thanks.
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‘permanent’ meaning until Imperial is researched?
The crossbow upgrade extra cost costs the equivalent of 2 knights or so. Accounting for the loss of hp and dps, the loss of 2 knights is equivalent to the loss of 5% hp after the production of 40 knights. Which is a lot for castle age.
That doesn’t even account for the way you can take better trades with higher numbers, nor the way hp doesn’t matter for things like monks.
And that’s just the problems with your argument if we accept the premise that the pre-patch state of the game should be taken as the reference state (which is rather arbitrary), and that tradeoffs of short term boosts for long term strengths are bad design (which is ludicrous in the context of AOE2, which contains civs like Vikings and Aztecs).
I’m back for ten seconds
Mayans is a bad example if you want to have a genuine conversation on the crossbow nerf, because they are the civ that is likely to be most affected (along with the other Meso civs) since you’re nerfing one of their options whilst they lack an entire building line. Of course the change for the meso civs is going to be dramatic if you nerf one of their two options.
That and short timeframe, small sample size, adaptation, yadda yadda, I’ve been over all that ad nauseum, I just wanted to point out that freaking out about the Mayans (a civ that gets Archers, Rams, and Eagles, practically nothing else) dropping in winrate because Archers got nerfed is foolish.
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permanent meaning for the duration of knights.
xbow and arbs got a 1 time cost increase to their upgrades.
there is zero reason knights need a permanent for the duration of knights nerf. you want to make armor upgrades or bloodlines more expensive? I’m kosher with that.
50 food and 50 gold is 2 knights?
you mean units that cost more and have to be in melee trade better? what a shock.
you want proof that xbow/arb was more problematic then knights? pros are more likely to go xbow as a cav civ then they are to go knights as an archer civ.
and considering that not even 2 days later and Mayans are already back over 52% win rate
no, Casus said in the original post that they were “just barely above 50%”.
I thought the whole point about Mayans was that Mayans still have a >50% win rate.
And I think he was being sarcastic. Because that seems like the charitable interpretation of his post 
(As for the rest of @casusincorrabil posts, that’s just him arguing with you about statistics. And He seems to be mostly right.)
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Would dropping Knight HP by 5 be too much? It also nerfs Franks and gives Bloodlines a window of having stronger knights than them by 1 HP
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would nerfing archers by 5 hp be too much?
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Not sure honestly. There’s also the consideration that Knights have a lot more HP so the % of lost health of 5% with 2/2 base armor doesn’t hit as hard as going from 30 to 25 HP with 0/0 armor is a 16% drop.
I’m mostly just running numbers in a vacuum.
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the whole point is - Why should KNIGHTS Get a permanent nerf when Archers didn’t?
Honestly if it keeps all things in balance and prevents both units from being dominant, I wouldn’t mind nerfing both if that’s what you’re getting at.
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Except cav and archers are what the game is balanced around.
100 rescoureces. That isnt even enough for one knight and everyone goes crazy? I think the reason archers before worse than Knights on lower elos is due to worse. Micro. 100 rescoureces are how many villiager Workminutes? Most rescoureces collect faster than 10 rescoureces/Minute right? But lets Just assume 10 per Minute so its ten Workminutes, anf assume you get to Castle age with Like 30 villiagers, which would be very few and fast uptime after feudal play, it Takes about 20 Seconds to collect that. I know, a Lot of assuming, but im also assuming in favour of the Archer Player.
20-30 Seconds to collect the rescoureces. I dont think that alone makes such a huge impact, especially If you consider all the different factors that determine the Outcome of a Game.
I think the Nerf is fine. I havent even noticed it when i Go for xbow in my Games, and i think its definitly Not enough to justify a hp Nerf for Knights.
I’m still convinced the reason why knights are better at lower Elos is due to the (in)ability to secure your resources/vils if knights break into your base. Lower Elos are worse at quick walling and generally saving vils. Watching some viper matches he’s loses only 1 or 2 vils from a knight break in whist 1200 Elos lose half their eco.
It’s for this reason I still propose a reasonable nerf is to give tc’s and towers a small amount of anti Cav bonus damage to make diving more of a trade off.
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I think we agree on the idea that cavalry raids in general are a bit too strong.
But I think it’s fine WHEN they get into your eco. The right tweakpoint for me would be to make it a bit harder for knights to get into the eco and stay in the eco to raid IF the defender has good defence.
If you gave TCs bonus vs cavalry this would only aplly when the cavalry is already inside the eco. So it would directly nerf the raid impact. But I think that’s not such a good idea cause in many games when you are behind a counterraid is basically the only chance for a comeback. So I would prefer to adjust the tools versus letting the knoghts in your eco in the first place rather than make it easier to defend when they are already in. I hope this point was understandable.
Edit: One idea would be to make boiling oil pots that can be used to heavily damage the attacking units in an area. The pots could have high bonus damage vs cavalry.
Makes perfect sense, but I think realistically that means a buff to walls which >80% of this forum (and more generally pros) are against. For the record I actually like wall meta of building and protecting a base rather than split concentration of multiple raids and sprawling bases. But that’s just me.
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I don’t mind at all for CA. Resources for them are better invested into husbandry or thumb ring imo.
The problem of expensive bloodlines would rather be late feudal scouts. They are good to punush a greedy castle age. But I’d take the deal.
This would acvomplish a different goal. My idea was not strictly speaking to “nerf knights” (even though it does) but to decrease the discrepancy in castle age between civ with bloodlines and civs without…
Probably hit the nail on the head. Along with a few other things, but quick walling is probably the larger factor.
Monks are exponentially better with skill.
Xbow line inherently relies on very tight builds, powerspikes and a lot more decision making along with multi tasking (not APM)
The knight as a unit is muchmore forgiving than xbows. You make a mistake with knights you might lose some, but knights don’t need big numbers to be effective .
You make a mistake with xbows you lose a load of them, which can massively hinder their effectiveness.
It’s much easier to send a few fast tanky units to various points to raid. Do that with xbows? You need to manage them more. Doesn’t mean they’re weaker. Just more work.
That’s why I think things like indirect nerfs to knights are better. (Eg Pike buffs)
We know the Lith pike line isn’t OP. We know the bohemian pike line isn’t OP. We know drav pike line isn’t OP. Meaning there’s room to buff speed, bonus damage and tech cost.
But then I’m also coming from aoe4 where the spear line are fantastic counters to cavalry (maybe overtuned that side) but even there where basically all infantry beats cavalry, cavalry is still superior due to mobility and all the inherent advantages that brings, compared to aoe2 where people are too afraid to see LS conclusively beat knights for some overly conservative reason .
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