Way too many changes at once. If all of this was implemented at once, it would be utter chaos. Moreover, it would be nice to address the underperforming civs instead, like Burmese, Spanish, Persians, Incas
how about waiting to see how the current changes shaked out before changing them again?
yes let’s make Franks useless until they get a castle down. Franks need a nerf, but this isn’t it. and a castle unique tech that is basically what they had before is a slap in the face.
we should wait and see how the recent nerf affects them.
absolutely not - this is way too strong for a civ that already saves hordes of wood on eco upgrades and has more HP on their archers.
too much like Lithuanians.
why? they still won’t see much use.
I agree flemish needs to be nerfed but this is still a bad way to go about it.
yeah you guys know that unit that was so strong they had to take away the last armor upgrade to help balance them? let’s go back and give them that last melee armor anyway.
Uhhh balance changes without reasonings are pretty much useless. I think from now on I should post a link to this reply whenever I see balance change like this.
Make every civilization unique but balance out its strenghts and weaknesses without destroying that unique identity.
Make every civ the same so they will be balanced.
Most of these suggestions seem to fall in the latter category and it will just make the game boring and less diverse. Britons without extra range? Generic archers. Franks without extra hp? Generic cavalry. Poles with last armor? Generic heavy cavalry. I know you moved the bonus to the unique tech but that still means they won’t always be able to rely on that bonus. It simply takes away from their uniqueness of a civ until you get a castle up and invest in the tech, whereas now doing so complements earlier bonuses.
Similar to the militia argument… You’re basically contesting things for the sake of contesting things…
So iaw nothing should be balanced unless it makes a massive difference?TK shouldn’t be tweaked unless they become completely viable in tons of matches?
Wut? It takes playing 1 match with them to realise how much the nerf hurts them. They weren’t an s tier civ. So any sizeable nerf hurts them even more .
I don’t agree with more map dependent changes like increasing the relic affect, but you’re just contesting or parroting for sake of contesting…
Yes a cheaper cavalier(no paladin) with a massively lower attack is just like Lithuanians /s
Nevermind the rest of the differencces in tech trees, massively different UU, and eco bonuses…
Refer to above…
Might help if you mention the current cost before changes, makes it easier than trying to recall or look them up.
Could be wrong here but I think the +2 Vils by feudal is the bigger issue.their opening is too punishing for most of the ladder yet too rewarding for the top of the ladder.
It’s a similar case to Devs choosing to nerf burg and sicilians even when they were underperforming simply due to their interaction with players.
No. I’m contesting change that does nothing to make the unit actually see use. If the goal is to make them see use consistently you would be better served nerfing the melee armor to their infantry, or increasing their speed or increasing their pierce armor.
I’m not anti change. I’m anti useless change. Let’s take LS for example. Is giving it 1 more attack really going to help them see more play? Not really.
No I’m saying that cost isn’t a big part of why tk don’t see use, so improving their cost isn’t going to help them see play
Depends what type of map you’re talking. Arena? Hybrid? Absolutely were. Team games? Close to it.
And honestly? How often do you actually see lithuanians getting 5 relics? So if the goal is to buff them in a way that is meaningful, upping the relic bonus to 5 isn’t going to help.
there are some good ideas in there but overall I’d say 30% good and 70% bad. In some cases you don’t understand how 1v1 works and that some civs are not as good as they look. For example, Burgundians already get punished fairly hard in the Archery Range, lacking many key upgrades. No need to punish them in Barracks also, “Cavalry civilization” =/= must make ONLY Knights.
Burgundians already have some of the more awkward tech transitions (especially in Imp) if you exclude their Flemish Revolution tech.
To give another example of a change that wasn’t thought through, Britons as an ARCHER civ can’t lose +1 free range in Castle Age. It’s already an Archer civ without eco bonuses until Castle Age AND they lack Thumb Ring. There are civs whose eco bonus kicks in much sooner (eg Burmese) AND they have full upgrades for their desired unit comp.
the -20 food (in most cases) per farm wasn’t much of a nerf to stop them from being the most preferred civ in tournaments and ranked at high level.
Literally no other cavalry civ in the game that gets too many bonuses for cavalry as Franks do. You still have the berries and farm upgrade bonus, knight +2 los bonus. Getting a castle is tough usually but easier with Franks because they’re cheaper. It’ll bring Franks down quite a bit but will make them comparable to other cav civs. Magyars, Huns, Bulgarians, Lithuanians etc.
just the tech tree. Poles still have Arbs, stone generates gold and Liths have fast spear-skirms, relic bonus. Unique unit usage are different.
True. But something needed to make them used atleast once in a while at mid and higher elo levels.
The last p.armor was what made them very strong, not the melee. They removed the melee armor bonus back during African Kingdom release but the extra p.armor just kept them very powerful. Its a 1200f, 600g upgrade to get a unit that is only as strong as Farimba or Zealotry Heavy camels.
You still get 20% faster ranges, sheep bonus and cheaper town centers. The extra range is available when you build a castle and get Yeomen. So it becomes a late castle age upgrade and doesn’t keep Britons as an insanely strong archer civ in early castle age.
Franks again have very strong bonuses at every age. This will atleast make them weak in early game and strong in late game. And also would make axemen a bit more useful .
Cavalry civ without +4 p.armor is so bad. Every civ without last cav armor has huge bonuses for infantry or ranged units except Poles. What’s the point in having a unique bottom tier unusable civ?
True about the archery range but they also get +4 attack for hand-canoneers and those have been buffed recently. The Flemish rev is just too strong in closed maps.
like clicking 650f, 375g Paladin upgrade or doing chemistry?
My god, which game are you playing. Shepherds work “25%” faster. Combine that with 20% faster working archery ranges, you can get a ton of archers with straight archer or man-at-arm into archer builds and get fast ballistics while being able to add town centers comfortably. First and most drafted archer civ in most RM tournaments. No other archer civ with these many early game bonuses.
Similarly, giving 1 extra attack (through proposed UT) to vietnamese archers sounds OP, because vietnamese archers are fully upgrades and they have a wood bonus that can even be used to get a castle sooner (by buying the sone mining techs)
Bohemians already have +1 attack crossbows in castle age (chemistry required) with a similar eco bonus (wood discount on blacksmith and university, and free goldmining upgrades) but are balanced because they lack thumbring. Imagine if bohemians had thumbring.
Now imagine rattan archers with extra attack raiding your eco. Or a bunch of 30 crossbows that cannot be killed by a mangonel shot (remember they have extra HP) oneshotting your +2 armor knights
Is this the buff vietnamese deserve? I dont think so.
I think you need to reconsider the further consequences of most of your proposed balanced changes. How can they be exploited by the player (or their opponents in case of nerf proposals)
The even bigger point is that in case of Bohemians the total sum of damage the archers can get to isnt changed from normal archers. They get +1 in castle age giving them an edge in some situations even without having thumbring. But once hitting imp they are just normal archers again without any boni but just the downside of no thumbring.
Viet +1 attack UT archers would be FU and dominant in castle without losing edge in imp but also remaining with a higher total damage sum. THey would overcome for example Palas extra PA compared to a Cavalier already. FU arbs are already a damn good Imp unit and imo we dont need a civ with Arbs that can probably melt Palas and are more beefy than other Arbs.
Sorry I got that part wrong. Vikings are the most drafted actually followed by Mayans. But my general point is after 22 years, the top tier civs are Chinese, Mayans, Vikings, Aztecs, Britons, Franks in terms of popularity in tournaments, draft priority even though so many new civs have been added. Depending on the tournament format, you might see either Lithuanians , Berbers, Khmer, Italians, Ethiopians too but those civs are the ones that are prioritized in ALL tournaments and formats. Khmer remained popular in Kotd-3, and very soon got nerfed heavily and so was Lithuanians. But any changes done to those civs are very minor and mayans foolishly got a buff to skirms too.
Hand-cannoneers is a VERY situational unit, and even after the buff, they can’t compete in equal numbers trades vs say Arbalest or even Skirmishers, on top of costing more. They do well vs infantry, and they do OK vs cavalry in small/medium numbers, but that’s about it. More importantly, “full hand-cannon” is not a thing in 1v1. The unit is still extremely exploitable. Perhaps vs Aztecs or Goths “full hand-cannon” is a viable strategy, but vs most other civs it’s total troll, even if you mix halbs/siege.
I agree that Flemish is too strong on some maps (I would say, on all maps and it’s the ultra late game power spike for Burgundians, generally a very common transition even on Arabia after you run out of Paladins is to go for FR), but it is also very expensive to research. Overall though, being said that you can almost always tell when a Burgundians player is going for a 150+ vill boom, so you can drop pre-emptive Castles to mitigate the damage, and given how even if you survive with ~50 vills and kill all Flemish Militia you are likely ahead, I do agree that the design of the tech is at its core horrible even though it’s not as unmanageable as some claim (but it is to a degree, and horribly designed for sure).
Paladin, even cheap upgraded one, dies still to mass Halb spam, Camels etc. Counters are there. The bottom line is that if you are countered you likely have to do a tech transition at that point, you can’t just keep spamming a unit, much less an expensive one like Knight-line.
Anyway the transitions that I was talking about are like, if opponent is doing mass Halbs, you don’t have Arbalest at your disposal and you are forced into Hand Cannoneer which is still an awkward unit to make. Your Skirms lacking last armor is sort of a big deal vs Archer civs should you be unable to get a big ball of Paladins rolling. You lacking heavy CA/Arbalest still means you don’t have these 2 Imp options (lacking Arbalest for example means you can’t do the classic early Imp power spike that a civ like Vikings loves to do).
Are Burgundians strong? Yes, don’t get me wrong. But I think it’s fine that they are strong, except for Flemish Revolution it’s nice that it’s not only oppressive Archer and Eagle civs at the top. What I’m also implying is that it wouldn’t take much to catapult them from strong to trash tier, the civ is very fragile because like I said, while they have power spikes (Cavalier/cheap Paladin, Flemish etc.) they also lack A LOT more versatility than people realize (can’t go full Skirm vs Archer civs, can’t go heavy CA, have bad Hussar, lack Arbalest etc…)
You are right. Apologies on this, I play Britons rarely (I mostly go random and get them drafted rarely) and I somehow forget about the sheep bonus. Sheep is a limited resource, generally limited to 800f per player so I tend to underestimate it. Generally their bonus translates to the food villagers being free sooner to do something else, the problem is that it’s not easy to find what they should do because if you finish food under TC as you are aging up, it’s not like you have extra wood to seed farms. I guess you can get straggler trees though so that’s something I suppose.
Faster working archery ranges I don’t consider a good bonus in Feudal unless you go 2x Archery ranges which is rare nowadays. It shines in Castle age I suppose where you can overwhelm people with it.
Bottom line of what I wanted to say though, even with the sheep mistake is that Britons are a civ that gets a power spike in Castle age. Before that, even with the Sheep bonus, they are very generic. They really need the +1 range per age and it’s what makes them competitive, Britons being forced to make a Castle to recover a bonus that is now given for free to them would make them garbage tier instantly as you lack Thumb Ring, you lack Bloodlines so the civ would feel extremely awkward in terms of unit composition in Castle age.
Also I think Britons are top5-10 at the moment on Arabia but I also think they are 1 of the harder civs to play, their bonus being somewhat micro intensive and gimmicky to use (opposed to say Ethiopians bonuses which are very noob-friendly). They are fine in my view.
Anyway your post has also good ideas, the ones I like are:
small change that shouldn’t hurt too much but can start nerfing 2 civs that are top tier on a lot of modes, Mayans and Aztecs and addressing their problems.
this also goes in the right direction.
this is overall a buff to Poles and I think they are top 10-15 atm, more importantly it would make their Imp Cavalier rly rly strong, maybe too strong. I also think that lacking last armor is interesting game design and balancing a civ around that is fun. Poles were given A LOT to compensate for their awkward tech tree to a point where them lacking last armor might still see them viable. Bonuses that are rly insane in particular, aside from Folwark etc, are the mining camp one (you get +50% villager efficiency from Stone miners basically which is INSANE as it gives them one of the fastest gathering rates in the game when you go to Stone) and the Castle Age UT. Those imo rly give them huge boosts at some points in the game to a degree where them lacking the last armor stinks but is acceptable in the grand scheme of things.
Also their Winged Hussar is the more aggressive of the two, 13 + 1 vs archers + trample damage potential means that when this unit gets into melee, it WILL hurt, and getting them into melee is not that hard if you have 40+ of them, last armor or not.
I like that you recognize that Burmese are probably still bottom 5-10 civs in the game atm, giving them 2nd armor might make them too strong though. I would like to see them lose something in return for 2nd armor, perhaps even Arambai costing +5g compared to now as an exchange.
Like my proposed changes doesn’t reduce +6 range for Britons. It instead removes the free +1 range in castle age and stacks it on top of their UT. Any bonus through a UT is going to be a power spike only in late castle age or would force the player to go more all-in on military with less eco.
Honestly its one of the most mediocre eco bonuses in the game compared to other civs. Handcart and the castle age upgrades are the ones that yield impactful benefits and they’re done much later in the castle age usually.
By the time you’ll get your castle up, get that upgrade, collect 30+ xbows or a handful of rattan archers,
your opponent would most probably get a couple of defensive castles, would be half-way to imp or might have raided your eco hard, pushed your tcs with mangonels. Most UT based bonuses like Yeomen, Stirrups are usually done only in imp or on the way to imp, IMO. People would still prioritize hitting imp sooner than investing a lot into UT but the late game all-in castle aggression could be an option for them.
It certainly would make Vietnamese quite better in games that go beyond a certain length, than where they are now and get them on par with other archer civs. That’s the point of the balance changes. What would be the use of making minor non-impactful changes like the Serjeant or Karambit buff which had negligible impact in the civ or unit’s usability and kept the meta unaltered.