Hello fellow players.
Disclaimer:
As mentioned in the title, the discussion below is geared for Late Game and most definitely Treaty plays.
The suggestion might seem a bit extreme if you do not consider the following point:
- They must be only active in Late Game (have close to no impact on balance for Supremacy)
- They need to be balanced correctly, with associated cost if needed
They could be implemented in various ways:
- Imperial shipments: USA recently added shipments for the Imperial Age. It could be cool to have a 5 spots only for Imperial cards (this would make other civs have 30 shipments like USA). Add a cost to them and they will rarely see play outside of Late Game.
- Civilisation Unique Techs: USA included many of those in the Capitol.
- Reworking existing underwhelming techs or shipments.
The civilisations discussed are those generally considered the weakest in Treaty. I chose to exclude Dutch and Russians, as those are complex cases and the post was long enought and well… we need to start somewhere, right?
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Germans
Main issue: One of the most powerful economies in Late Game, Germans are plagued by an extremely population inefficient army.
Fun fact: Did you know a fully carded (4 stats increase cards) Uhlan barely survives an encounter with the worst Hussar in the game (USA without any card boost)?
Uhlans are a good example of this. For the same population as a Hussar, they underperform by a Large Margin due to their very low HP pool. They end up with around 200 HP less, but 10% more range resistance. This is offset by the lower cost, but this is not really important for Germans.
Then you have the Doppelsoldner and War Wagon. Contrary to the Uhlan, those units are better than their equivalent (Hallbs and Dragoons), but they pay those stats increase with a higher population cost.
Finally a saving grace: the Skirmisher. The Royal Guard status sometimes makes players forget the fact that Germans only have one card to boost them, making their Skirms being outclassed by Dutch’s and probably even by Spanish’s ones (with Unction)… which would put them as the worst basic Skirmishers in the game! Nevertheless, the basic Skirmisher is still a powerhouse in itself.
Conclusion: Germans are forced to play with less units on the field and some of them being less powerful than most of other similar units.
How do we fix this? (See Disclaimer before reading this)
Reducing the population cost of Uhlans and Doppelsoldners would significantly open options. Melee units are harder to abuse and more situational, while the Artillery and Skirmishers would still be average to balance things out.
I am not convinced this would solve everything, but this could be a good starting point.
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Ottomans
Main issue: Terrible unit variety and slow training time for infantry.
On paper, there is nothing wrong with the cavalry options. Sure, cav. archers are not a fan favorite, but you have access to Royal Guard Hussars, which gives you a serviceable stable at worst.
With more cards than most civs, the Artillery options look great as well.
However, making a front line is complex to say the least. Two major points:
- The Church card replaces Dueling School for reduced training time. There is a lack of 15% reduction time for Ottomans. Thus ottoman infantry still takes 40% of the normal time to be created (25% for other Europeans) or 25% on Upper Andes (10% for other Europeans). Therefore, you could say other civs create infantry at nearly twice the speed or more than twice as fast on Andes.
- The two main units, Abus Gun and Janissaries, are split between two different production buildings.
Combine both points (and I won’t touch the fact that Abus Gun costs 2 pop space) and you have one of the most complex infantry lines to mass in the entire game.
Conclusion: Ottomans are widely considered the worst Treaty civ of the European tech tree and it’s pretty obvious that it is not because of their artillery or cavalry. It is a shame, because they have many unique units and some interesting plays thanks to the Battlefield Construction card.
I’d note that Abus Gun are technically a good counter to Caroleans (they do Siege damage, not ranged damage like other Skirms), boosting Ottomans would (possibly) help keep in check the top civ that is Sweden.
How do we fix this? (See Disclaimer before reading this)
The first obvious fix would be to give access to the missing -15% creation time for Infantry.
Having a way to move Abus Gun to Barracks is also a logical step.
It has been mentioned many times here, but it would be incredibly fun to be able to train Nizam Fusilier and maybe Spahi. With the correct cost/balance, this would spice things up.
Finally, a way to toggle off the TC would be nice, as this would open the option to delete settlers for more military pop.
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Indians
Main issue: Abyssal training times and lack of a regular artillery unit to deal with massed infantry.
The issues of Indians in Late Game have been discussed here already extensively, so I’ll be brief on that one. Outside of the two points above, it was said they need more wood options as well as better siege options.
Feel free to disagree, but for me, those issues are corollary to the first ones: the slow training rates and lack of artillery put you on a defensive stance that costs you more units and buildings, therefore putting extra stress on your economy.
How do we fix this? (See Disclaimer before reading this)
Here is what is missing for the training times to be on par with Europeans civs:
Infantry: -25% (mandatory, right now European infantry is trained 2 to 4 times faster!)
Elephants: -5% (this one might be skipped to not have Instant Elephant on Upper Andes)
Camels: -15%
Without rewriting the Indian tech tree, an infinite cannon shipment would do wonders, similar to the Infinite 2x Crow of the Chinese. Otherwise, reworking the consulate to have easier access could be an option.
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The Natives civilisations : let’s start somewhere
We could do an entire post about the issues of those civs.
One of the main factors to take into consideration is the economy. The Native tech tree has one very big weakness: a smaller gather rate for their Estates. Researching all techs increases the gather rate from Estates by 80%, while Europeans get 110% increase (Asian 120%). This is because they lack one of the technologies, only having 3 in total (though they increase mining as well).
This varies even more when you take cards into account. The biggest extreme being Lakota with a 90% bonus VS an European civ with all cards reaching 200% bonus. That’s right, with a similar number of gatherers, the European player would outproduce the Lakota player by more than 50% gold!
Adding a (renamed) Raffineries tech for the missing 30% would already be an improvement.
But this does not take into account the fact that most Natives civs use up to 25 villagers on the Community Plaza, reducing their economy further…
The Community Plaza issue
As you must know, this building offers a lot of flexibility in mid-game for Supremacy players. However, by Late Game, it becomes a burden, as outside of Incas, a big part of your villagers must be sacrificed to it.
How do we fix this? (See Disclaimer before reading this)
Add the possibility to perform 2 ceremonies at a time and include a new ceremony that increases the gather rate of villagers by 1.4% per unit on the Plaza.
How OP does that sound? Let’s see…
On the gather rate increase, let me quote the original poster:
The ceremony would thus make the villagers working on the Plaza no longer a burden on your economy, only the Incas could really abuse this, so we might avoid them for this.
What about the 2 ceremonies at the same time? Well the idea is to give the option to have either the new Labor Ceremony active at all time and/or the Fertility one as well.
As you know, the Fertility Ceremony increases the production of units. For 25 villagers, this is 224% faster.
It is hard to compare the increase in creation speed to the reduction in creation time, but luckily for you, I made the calculation and tested to be sure!
The Lakota Cavalry, with a full working Fertility Ceremony + Riding School card + 10% reduction from Immigrant = -74.5% training time in total.
Europeans with the card, Immigrants and Church tech get -75%.
That is right, even with Fertility Ceremony active at all time our Lakota friends would still produce their cavalry at a slightly worse speed than any regular European civ!
Conclusion: If we were to give the options for Natives to do two ceremonies, it is unlikely to be OP. As seen above a combination of Laborer+Fertility basically would give you the same economy and training time as what European civs get by default.
Adding the Laborer Ceremony AND the option to do 2 ceremonies at a time is an elegant solution that should put most Natives on par with others in some fields, but some small balancing will probably be needed as there are differences between civilizations.