Armenians are too strong

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

My Elo Spike. That spike in elo is me just playing as Armenians in 4v4 team ranked games. I’m on a winning streak. The Armenians are overpowered, and need to be nerfed. Once they mass Composite Bowman they can’t really be stopped.

In both of these records I am the the frontline player. If I was in the back in the pocket, it would be even more easy for me.

Here’s a record. Where I beat fast Turks IMP with ease. MP Replay v101.102.30274.0 @2023.11.05 205650 (6).aoe2record (3.5 MB)

And another record where I would have lost if I was some other civ. I am being rushed in this one. I would basically lost my lumber camp, but I can simply flee in this game with my mule cart.
MP Replay v101.102.30274.0 @2023.11.05 171928 (8).aoe2record (3.5 MB)

Elo Jump

I am a low elo player but from my personal experience Composite Bowman is a murder machine. Many civs simply do not have an answer with mass Composite Bowman with other units to cover their weaknesses.

I’ve seen me slaughter many enemies on the receiving end of my armor piercing arrows, I beaten higher elo players with this unit. My team elo jumped to 800 to nearly 1000 just by massing these units. I think when I have time, my elo will get even higher. Plus the insane Armenian economy just makes things so much more easy, instead of making a new lumber camp, I can just move my mule cart. I’m a bad player, normally I am simply dead from a rush like a scout rush. But when I see a rush coming I can simply flee (and even garrison it) with my mule card and gather woods somewhere else and make some counter units with ease. Before that, I would lose my lumber camp. I would not be able to come back from that and then I would simply quit. It’s so much more easy to hunt deer with a mule cart, than to lure them to my TC.

Composite Bowman are borderline unkillable with allied unit support. Their only counter is siege units. Archers and skirmishers struggle to fight them head-to-head. And when you have like 30 to 40 trade carts you can just spam Composite Bowman and kill nearly everything. They are both cost effective, and do insane damage.

Mule Cart technologies are 25% more effective. Remove it. Their economy is insane enough already. Replace it with something else. With this removed it would at least slow them down a bit. It’s that or simply make skirmishers immune to ignore armor, only from the Composite Bowman. Gives them some sort of cost effective counter. Cause otherwise they will just slaughter nearly everything.

Only siege units like Organ Guns, Ballista Elephants, Onagers and Scorpions can kill these units, since they receive little damage. Most other units just die. Even longbowmen will die if they get in close.

2

The thing is, if the Armenians are overpowered in more Elo brackets consistently, then they MIGHT need a nerf.

Yours can be an individual case.

And they are infantry civ, right now infantry is totally useless. At 800-1000 Elo most games are just inadequate and isn’t hard to win if you get little skill-up.

3

You have to have more confidence in yourself
Maybe the Armenians are fine, maybe you are improving

4

You getting up in elo simply means the opponents at your elo range haven’t yet seen the new unique unit or figured civ combinations and strategies that can work well vs yours.

This is OP, that is OP, broken, nerf it to the ground. please STOP. The game balance isn’t based on 4v4 tg whatever type of maps you’re playing. There’s plenty of civs and units broken under certain niche settings. 4v4 closed maps is one such category.

There are plenty of players who are civ pickers and stay at their elo only because of 1 civ and strategy which is uncounterable in some niche situations. Like Mongol extra hunt fc lancer, Nomadic map fc conqs or Frank pocket on Arabia or saracen flank market abuse 3 range xbows especially in empire wars tg etc.
First of all with the low range and weakness to siege I don’t think the unit is broken. But if at all in your favorite maps the civ and unit is broken, be an Armenian picker and have fun with the new civ that you paid for. There’s no rule that Mangudais and Conquistadors are meant to be the evergreen broken units of the game. Why should the guys who paid 0 money to support the game development get the most broken units.

The cart moving is beneficial after 10 mins into the feudal age. Until then the regular civ woodlines aren’t that inefficient and you won’t even get half the resource benefits of most civs. Almost every civ in the game gets 150+ resources worth benefits till castle age. Mule cart and the lumber camp benefit combined should be a bit higher than that. Only problem is those civs get it by early feudal age while you need to wait until you’re about to click up to castle age to get this benefit. And this early game economy matters a lot on open maps.
In castle age the wood rates are somewhere between Romans and celts. That’s when the civ gets a real advantage. The churches, extra relic, warrior monk etc. Roughly quite similar to former Bohemians in terms of eco getting stronger in castle age except this civ needs a castle and uu instead of chemistry and handcanoneers.
Overall just in terms of economy for boom this is not even a top-10 civ. Meso, the new Persians, Khmer, Franks, Portugese, Malians, Britons, Slavs and several other commonly picked civs are much stronger.

As you get better, you’ll learn that people push deer and do pre-emptive palisade walls on wood and a couple of spears to defend from scout rush. They’d also use their own scouts if opponent gets skirms.
Its a great bonus if you’re playing maps like African clearing but you’d still die to fc conqs or Arambai on those maps.

Elite Mangudai, persian elephants, Aztec monks, Roman/Khmer scorpions, Ballista elephants, elite longbowmen, houfnice, Turk canons and bombard towers, Ethiopian siege…So many units are broken in some imperial age situations…
And just don’t hype it this way based on a few boom games. What if you play a game tomorrow where something like Hussite wagon+halb+houfnice or organ gun + turk canons+ elite mamelukes from opposite team beats you out. What if you play an Arabia game where you lose all your castles to Britons flank and then 11 range Arbalesters clean up your composite bows.
Enjoy the civ and the unit and try it out on different maps. You’d reach a point where you’d start seeing the limitations of the unit.

That’s literally the only economic bonus. Its like Hindustanis without villager discount or Poles without folwark bonus. If that’s removed, the civ will literally become the worst right away. You have to realize that every civ in the game except Sicilians and Bulgarians get some decent eco bonus. In 1v1s it will be worse than Dravidians on open and worse than Huns on closed.

100% guaranteed terrible engagement for the Armenian player. You’ll lose about half the army before you walk those 5 tiles and spread out to kill.
That’s not even going to be close. If you heavily outnumber, longbow player will move under their castles. If you’re up against Britons 100 hp champion + elite skirm is the best combo for this civ.

To you and everyone else who want brand new civs to get nerfed to the ground and become unusable…Why do that? Why should new civs be useless, why pay for those civs?
Why not let composite bows the best foot archer against melee instead of genoese or chukonu?
What is the necessity for keeping archaic civs the strongest? Who’s going to play a new unfamiliar civ in ranked if its weak and useless?

5

Simply should not make new units the best or there will be power inflation, so it is a bad design.

The archaic civs are more historic accurate , and people got used to them. I have never heard of some new civs. Some of them are not even exist in the same time period, why should they fight each other in the same game ?

The people who are complaining about Armenians are TG players mostly. Armenians are weak to siege so they are not OP in 1v1.

6

That’s true if its broken. Like Mangudai ignoring armor or Leitis dodging arrows. But this is just better than some of the existing. If a TG situation demands a unit like chukonu, composite bows might now be a better alternative.

Sorry if it was confusing but by archaic I meant civs that released 20 years ago not based on their historical time period. That’s irrelevant for game balance. Many people don’t care that meso, Mongols, Franks etc are very powerful but something new seems good, they can’t tolerate. I’m questioning that.

Ya exactly and mostly closed map TG. Don’t think this civ will survive the early game in Arabia TG. Its mainly Michi or BF players who don’t realize their 4v4 games are a niche setting.