Are eagles getting nerfed ? From 20 to 25food?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
41

if you want +5f per Eagle, why not give +5f per Knight or +5w on Crossbow? You can nerf any meta unit.

Mayans are overtuned, I would like nerfing them, but they are also fairly predictable, basically they have 2 units they can make. “Oh look he is doing Skirms, I wonder what the Mayans player will do!” You can see the Eagle switch come from a mile away, it’s either that or 3 TC boom, Mayans really don’t have much in terms of strategy variety. Late game you can see Plumed Archers, and their dreaded double gold comp of Eagles + Plumes (they need their longer lasting resources to get this comp btw), but if you let a Mayans mass El Dorado Eagles AND Plumes, you probably deserve to lose anyway.

I don’t 1 trick Aztecs, in fact I have no particular preference for any civ. If I had to pick a civ I like, I like gimmicky civs that revolve around weird units or UUs, such as Portuguese, Gurjaras, and so on. Malay and Burmese are some of my favorites and both are pretty bottom tier on basically any game mode. But I go random civ in RM like 85% of the time.

I do like Aztecs all-in as a design but you can’t argue that Aztecs are top tier. Their eco bonus after the nerf is very bland and I would say the Eagle all-in, the better micro player wins always. It never feels bad to lose to Aztecs like it does losing vs say Mayans Crossbow spam.

Monks are some of the hardest units to unse in the game.

And you should learn to read, I said that Aztecs have nothing AFTER their EARLY Castle age power spike (keyword “early” because even in late Castle, Aztecs suck quite a lot).

Eco bonus means that you can make the units you want with the extra resources.

If the discount applies to only 1 unit, or 1 production building, it’s not an eco bonus but a military bonus because say you are Berbers, if you wanna use your “eco bonus” of cheaper Knights and you go vs Pikeman, unless you tech switch it’s not a very good eco bonus when you run into Pikemen only.

Also you can invest your “eco bonus” into developing your eco further, generally, whereas that’s impossible with a military bonus.

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42

Thats a bad bonus. Its just the Aztec carry bonus but needs the texhs as well as only affecting farmers

43

And it’s the only time it is really strong, Eagles don’t really scale well into late game, even if gold cost is reduced. Any civ that has Hussar will still be much better off. All meso civs will struggle in late game by their design of lacking Stables. Even with cheaper in gold Eagles, you’ll just be out-trashed by Hussars.

44

So you plan on giving them more attack after that change?

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45

I think you are conflating eco bonus and eco.

Goths have an average eco. But infantry discount is still an eco bonus. Just because that eco bonus applies to a bad unit line, doesn’t mean it isn’t an eco bonus.

Nevermind unit discounts: eagles are an eco bonus

The resources required to train eagles require a significantly lighter eco than cavalry. You don’t need the up front cost of farms, you simply need to add more Vils to gold. That makes it effectively an eco bonus

You can dance around semantics if you want. But the end result is mesos can produce effective military much easier.

The same for unit discounts like Berbers. Whichever civs either produce resources faster (Vikings) or use less (Berbers) or a combination of both (Mayans) are almost unanimously stronger civs.

And most civs required eco buffs to dredge them out of lower winrates

46

i think the distinction of bonuses into eco bonuses and military bonuses is kind of pointless:
every eco bonus is used to gain a military advantage, and most military bonuses are used disrupt eco/kill villagers/secure resources, ie gaining an eco advantage

47

In a certain sense yes but also military bonuses are obviously conditional upon making military. Like part of why franks eco is so good on some maps is due to not having to research bloodlined. So if you don’t go for knights their eco isn’t as good as that of other civs.

Aztecs are very strong up until gold runs out. In fact the one tc eagle all in is a fairly new approach. People played aztecs more like other civs for a very long time until they figured out that the all in is even better. Ofc the nerf made them a little bit weaker overall but you can go for some aggression and boom behind just fine.

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48

i dont want to completely discount your point, but a similar argument can be made about several eco bonuses. free loom is only good if you go for loom, faster stone mining is only useful if you want to make towers/castles.
similarly bulgarians’ and britons’ cheaper town centres or cumans’ extra feudal TC only relevant if you make extra TC(s) etc.
but yeah, some bonuses are always useful. however some ‘military’ bonuses like cheaper ranges and stables for cumans or faster military production (aztecs), free blacksmith upgrades (magyars) are also universally useful

49

Mayans need nerfs that target both things OK?

50

Mayans need nerfs only to the Archer line, if you think their Eagles need nerfs too, you hate Meso. They have worse Eagles than Aztecs and nobody cares if El Dorado Eagles are good in some dream post-Imp scenario where Mayans is allowed to boom undisturbed.

Like if we want to nerf El Dorado Eagles, why not nerf Elite War Elephants too while we’re at it: most pop-efficient unit in the game, U N S T O P P A B L E when massed.

51

Bad news for you, I don’t hate meso civs, but I hate how broken Mayans are on open maps in 1v1 and TGs to the point to have very few (to none) bad matchups and other archer civs can’t compete with them (only Britons, which are OP on TGs too). And is fun how people want newer civs nerfed when Mayans (alongside other older ones) are left untouched because the bias towards those.

Mayans not only need their archer discount toned down to acceptable levels, their longer lasting res also need an nerf (In dark age is way too impactful to ignore, esp on huntables), El Dorado probably needs to be more expensive too, and even the plumed archer happens to be just too good for how are priced (- 1 range for elite is neccesary IMO).

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52

I think they need a stronger eco bonus - start with 2 or 3 llamas and houses and eco buildings support +5 pop or houses support +10 pop. Slingers by default shouldn’t have minimum range and the other UT should be something else. (This is if eagle food cost becomes 30, otherwise just the eco bonus changes should be fine)

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53

I agree with Mayans but I think Aztecs are balanced, likewise Incas, if anything these civs got powercrept a bit and are overrated atm. Mayans need nerfs but not a super huge one, we should still remember they are mostly a 2-trick civ, they can do Eagles and they can do Archers and that’s pretty much it. Their eco bonus, while shining in 1 hour+ games, doesn’t translate into faster gathering rates and as such is not as huge as say, Mongols early eco or something.

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54

As well as herdable.

If so, I wish old Chinese TB. New Incas TB is okay in 1v1 but no use in TG. Chinese can get an useless TB like Ethiopians or Koreans. For example : Scorpions -1 minimum range.

220 free food in dark age from hunts and sheep, another 110 free food in feudal age from berry are definitely faster gathering rates.

55

Aztecs +3 carry capacity is like 8% faster farmers pre-wheelbarrow, 4% post wheelbarrow and 2-3% faster wood after first few mins. This combined with +50 gold in the start and faster produced military are huge bonuses.

Mayans 1 extra villager from the time opponent researches loom (7th min onwards approx), 1 wood less on palisades, 300 extra free food from gaia even without pushing any deer, 7 resources saved per archer in feudal and 14 resources saved per xbow in castle age. That translates to atleast about another 300-400 saved resources by mid castle age. Now if you add up all of this without even taking any good fights or doing any damage, you’ll be ahead by 700 or more resources.
In which world are these “not huge”?

On the contrary its the Mongol bonus which is mediocre on standard maps with no extra hunt. You get a big lead early on but by 16-17 mins it wears off if you don’t do enough damage and then the rest of the game is generic. At least you could have compared them to Franks, Britons, Hindustanis or Vikings which probably end up saving nearly the same or slightly more. Incas is the only one which gets below average eco bonus amongst eagle civs.

I agree that the Incas TB is below average in most situations but man, the Koreans TB is good for 1v1. Players can’t go pro and dance their xbows and charge towards korean mangonels.

56

Team up with Gurjaras for 2v2, add Tatars for 3v3.

Maybe. I’m not good with mangonel. I personally think this is a very weak TB.

57

Not being good with mangonels doesn’t make the bonus bad, it’s pretty good actually.

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58

Should apply to all inca unique units, the discount, or turn 50% of their gold cost to food cost.

For a civ with such a gold heavy comp and no bonus for gold gathering whatsoever, it’s kinda obvious why they underperform, especially in the late game.

They can’t even utilize the fact they are the most well rounded meso civ simply because there isn’t enough gold on the map.

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59

I can’t utilize the bonus. So I thought it is weak. Anyway, hope you got the point. Scorpion minimum range reduction will be worse than mangonel line. Chinese will be nerfed and Incas will get an eco bonus. Also there will be a reason to choose Incas in TG over other 2 American civs.

60

That is such a weird argument to make. Scorpion with minimum range reduction is also very powerful if you have a Heavy Scorpion civ. Ballista Eles are for example an example of how strong they could be in mass with no minimum range.