But remove the +1 range is a HUGE nerf to Britions. Just imagine any archer civ without bodkin arrow…
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To all of this:
If it works, don’t touch it.
Also most of those are utterly nonsensical from a design perspective, like teutons getting light cav, putting a cap on everything, BUFFING IMP CAMELS???, making franks a bad cavalry civ, britons a bad archer civ, burmese getting second armor, cumans now get instant feudal TC that costs as much as an archery range?
The only one I can get behind is Vietnamese, and even then, meh. It won’t fix the reasons they are underperforming.
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For most cav civs, they need some anti-halb unit for 1v1. And hand-canons with +4 attack would fit the role well. I wasn’t talking about using them as the only unit but in mix with cav as the civ is usually played.
I get your point here. But I mean you have a civ with strong eco bonuses, cavalier in castle age and Paladin upgrade that nearly costs the same amount of cumulative resources as halb upgrade. Why would you be in a point where you could never use that mobility. You can still do skirms vs halbs, they have bracer unlike Franks, Slavs or Teutons and thats more important for playing an anti-halb role. Maybe Flemish militia with 0 base melee armor could be an alternative to losing plate mail armor in this case.
800f that’s almost available in most standard maps is a lot. Its about 30-35 mins of total villager work time depending on how many vills you use. 25% of it devoted to some other resource would imply 150-180 extra resource collected which is a lot more than the bonuses of many civs. The thing is you get food faster than other civs even when you use 1 less vill amongst the first 6 vills. This opens up more opportunities like straight archers after hitting feudal faster (with 1 less vill), smoother man-at-arm into archer, pre-mill drush into FC and so on. For archer civ, when you don’t know where to put the extra vills, send them to wood. Might help get walls or blacksmith or farms sooner in feudal.
With Arabia wide open these days, its a good option IMO.
Most archer civs are played in castle age and 20% more numbers along with cheaper town centers for eco is a big advantage already which most other archer civs lack. You can add more ranges sooner or get ballistics earlier. +1 free range on top of it is a very very powerful bonus. Its like giving Huns, the armor bonus of Indians. In this case you still get those but would need a castle drop.
I seriously doubt its top 10-15 atm and that’s why I suggested a buff. The Folwark bonus is good but the stone bonus is limited. Like you don’t want to invest many villagers into stone collection early in the game. Its still preferable to use about 10 vills on stone and have 5 less vills on gold. Most of that extra eco will be fully spent on getting castle up and getting the unique tech soon. Right now I think all-in castle age is kinda your best bet with Poles. Cav civ with no +4 armor in imp is so strange and bad. Yes you’ll produce a lot of cavalier or winged hussar but they’ll all die like flies to Arbs in imp. If game drags to a point where opponent has lot of Arbs or unique archers, you won’t be able to directly engage. Honestly its better to give them plate barding and maybe remove Arbalests. Otherwise arbs + obuch will be the better main combo for them in imp with few winged hussars just for open raids.
Good in castle age sure but not very strong. Arambai’s training time increase would mean people won’t be able to mass a lot of them quickly and they won’t be easy to replenish. So it would be a good balance. Good usability when made but not too OP nor vulnerable and hard to re-mass if a bad fight is taken.
We haven’t had tournaments since then and I dont know where you’re getting your data from.
Literally no cav civ is as limited as franks are tech tree wise either.
Considering most of the time you won’t even see a castle until rhe mid castle age at earliest its a huge nerf.
I meant their cavalry though. Especially when you look at their winged hussar.
So give them a change that won’t accomplish that does what? You know where they will see more use with this change? Low elo games.
With more health then farimba camels, and faster training too.
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Your changes make no sense whatsoever, and people there probably has been saying that to you.
I won’t go into details, but it seems recurrent that you have struggling against aggressive civilizations, and makes your “whole personal balance patch” very biased.
I advice you to train vs AI (very hard is already a nice milestone) on map like Arabia, or play some unranked matches against player to improve, and it will probably helps you apprehend better the game as well 
!
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Oh really, a civ that’s used mainly for its cavalry having light cav is nonsensical?
OH IMP CAMELS…OOOHHH scary. No they’re not. No 5 p.armor anymore, so they’re just similar to Malian, Saracen Heavy camels which is awful considering they don’t have knights. 1200f, 600g upgrade gives nearly nothing compared to other imp unit upgrades of similar costs. Its a late imp unit and Indians are quite bad in late imp.
They’ll just get one of their bonuses a little later. This will give the opponent civ some time to breathe instead of raking up defenses as soon as Franks or Britons hit castle age.
How is 240 seconds considered “instant” when castle age tc construction time is 150 seconds and -20% on 275w, 100 stone DOES NOT EQUAL 175 wood. And why is it so awful to buff the bottom tier civs in the game like Cumans, Burmese.
Says it works like as if everything is completely balanced and then goes to ranked ladder and picks the same old Aoc civs to boost rating. If its working, play rate of all civs will be in 2-4% range atleast on standard open maps.
Britons aren’t so strong rhey need a nerf. And franks you could easily tone them down by making rhe 20% hp not kick in until castle age.
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Aww that’s so sweet of you to motivate me. But I’ve already won vs 2 extreme AI my dear friend.
I’m struggling against the fact that top-5 civs on most maps ranked games and most picked civs cumulatively across multiple tournament formats are still the age old legacy AOC civs. The pick+ban, play rate in tournaments like Kotd-3, HC-4, TOC etc. It just shows how incompetent or very situational most of the new civs are.
I saw plenty of discussion threads unhappy about Khmer, Leitis, Imp camels but none against these legacy civs. Its as if those are the civs meant to remain in throne forever and dominate the competitive level. Anything that interferes are to be nerfed.
My thoughts over the balances are after thinking about the role of a civ in general and what their competitors are. How are the early and late game bonuses of their competing civs, how those civs are currently being played, the average game length of these civs and so on. Most of these super strong civs are omni-present because of strong double-bonuses either in eco or military or both. And the civs that are too weak are at their place because of unusable or underwhelming bonus or some other handicap. So I propose some changes that might even things out.
Its 75w, 55g
Ya but that’s their strength. Usually when topped with the cheaper tech, it gives them a very smooth eco and army transitioning. If that’s removed they become mid or lower mid tier with just the tech discount.
I think Scutage → Hauberk was a good buff. And for Burg, I think flemish were too strong and only they got nerfed while relic bonus and eco bonus were buffed the previous patch.
I mean… tournament (except Kotd of course, but it’s like long time ago) civs differ from RM civs. Some civs are way better than others on specific map, like Magyars on land madness, Britions on Arena etc. You cannot simply judge civs by tournament apperance without discussing their map strengths.
In particular there are some maps where TC is surrounded by water and Khmer is op on those maps too.
And I still cannot see any reasoning from your changes. What is the point if there are only numbers?
Hand Cannons have a lot of drawbacks, notably can only be massed in Imp AFTER Chemistry, also cost a lot of resources (iirc 40f 45g). Awkward to transition into them, generally the problem with them is getting enough mass before you fall behind too hard.
Bottom line is that Hand Cannoneers are one of the more awkward infantry counters. These considerations are not small, either. Timing and being able to do tech transitions (resource-wise but also mass a good number before it’s too late) are KEY in this game. From a theoretical point of view, you can otherwise argue that a unit like Elite War Elephant is the best unit in the game, but the problem is that getting there AND retaining an advantage is currently impossible. Lots of units are in the same boat of “viable in a vacuum and strong but not good in 1v1s”: Mameluke, Organ Gun, etc.
other civs have bonuses also, it’s not impossible to not get ahead as Burgundians, either. Here are some less than obvious flaws the civ has:
- no Bloodlines prevents you from going full Scouts all in and you are behind vs Scout civs in early Feudal like Magyars or Franks
- no long term Arbalest with full upgrades means that Crossbow can only be used temporarily and you need to back it with booming or transitioning out of it (so you can’t do early Imp Vikings trick basically).
- Cavalier tech takes long to research and gives you a net +2 attack over other civs and their Knight line. Many cav civs can compete with Burgundians Knight for Knight: Berbers (cheap Camel + Knight mix), Lithuanians (Relic bonus makes their Knight basically a Cavalier from Burgundians), Franks (no Bloodlines research needed and rly good early game eco). Burgundians are very vulnerable early Castle before Cavalier research is complete, the main way you beat Cavalier tech in Castle Age is by attacking the Burgundians at the START of Castle Age where you face 100 HP generic Knights and can force an equal numbers fight.
As for Skirms, here more armor is more important than Bracer, you want tankiness in your Skirms as main damage source is the bonus dmg. Persian Skirms is better than Burgundians for sure in most cases.
They are. You can refer to Viper’s tier list for example. They are a very misunderstood civ but rly strong and versatile.
this is not true, you can’t engage under Castles, but equal numbers of Hussar still beats Arbalest. Most Arcgher civs rely on winning EARLY Imp, because Arbalest as a unit is far less pop efficient than basically any cav (bar maybe Camel). Test 40 Polish Hussar vs 40 Arbalest, Polish Hussar decisively win even before you research the UT. The lack of +4 hurts Cavalier a lot but in case of Hussar, it hurts them only when you try to raid.
this would just make them into a bad copy of Lithuanians, I think Poles are unique and strong now, just you need to play unconventional compositions in Imp.
getting Castles up is hard enough as it is, ALL unique units need low training time because you obviously can’t spam Castles as easily as you spam Stables or Barracks.
Also, Arambai is not such an OP and problematic unit that it needs nerfs. In general, on Arabia at least, getting to UU is too hard, not too easy so I don’t see the need to nerf a UU.
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I think your reasoning is flawed, unless i didnt understand you
First, vietnamese also can raid the enemy before taking that upgrade as well.
Second, raiding rattan archers laughs at defensive castles thanks to speed and pierce armor.
And third, if you meant “by the time they could get that upgrade the enemy may already stonoed them”… then what is the sense of such buff?
Yes and for that matter any civ could but most of them have better bonuses earlier in the game and its going to be tough for Vietnamese to be the aggressor.
Town centers I would agree but not under castles in Castle age. You might pick off a few vills but in the end you’d lose rattan archers under castle fire.
The possibility of all-in castle age play with rattans and light cav when you’ve map control. Better arbalests in imp, which makes them quite good on Empire wars and team game flank.
I have to second this and I think OP doesn’t understand that the game has a certain flow and pace to it, in general yes you can in principle make the case that “you get it back eventually”, but saying for example that Britons bonus should be held hostage by a Castle tech is preposterous when similar civs to Britons get similar power spikes without the need to invest into a Castle. For example, Mayans get extra Villager which if you count its lifetime it’s A LOT of extra resources gathered over time, and furthermore have cheaper Archers from Feudal (better bonus than Britons faster working ranges, imo), BIG powerspike in early Castle with potential Eagles, a rly nice double gold comp that is rly hard to stop with EEW + Elite Plumes which also synergizes nicely with their longer lasting resources. Ethiopians get literally a fully upgraded, machine gun Crossbow that all other things equal allows them to trade vs most archer civs efficiently and always outmicro opponent resulting in duels where losses are like 30-70 in favor of Ethiopians.
Furthermore, on Arabia, in general, going to Stone is a MASSIVE pain, I can’t stress this enough. In most high-level games, doing it before 30 min mark is impossible because your economy and production suffer too greatly to the point where you can’t defend against a proper push when 5+ villagers (which at that point are 10-15% of your economy) are literally “trolling”. Like if you think about it, there are A LOT of rly good techs that are held by a Castle: Silk Armor, Kamandaran, Howdah, Anarchy. But most of the civs that have such techs are systematically bottom tier because GETTING A CASTLE UP IS HARD and then you also need the resources for the tech itself which often are like 800+ resources which is an Imp age bill and way too expensive for mid-Castle, generally.
The thing about “opponent JUST gets a COUPLE of defensive Castles”, I mean you might as well write “opponent shows at you door with 20 Elite War Elephant”, we are clearly in the realm of “anything is possible”.
This is just false and bias. According to Viper’s tier list (which most people would agree with):
S tier: Aztecs, Chinese, Mayans
A+ tier (commented by him as “could belong in S tier” in his recent video): Tatars, Burgundians, Vikings, Poles.
Of those civs, Tatars are relatively new, Poles are totally new, Burgundians are very new. It’s just not true that the “legacy civs” are dominant.
Here in contrast an example of “legacy civs” that are garbage (just to show that distribution of power level of civs is random and not date-related):
- Goths (almost universally agreed to be a bottom 5 civ)
- Spanish (rly old civ, belongs to 1st DLC from iirc 2001something)
- Incas (iirc “Forgotten” DLC, one of the ones released somewhere in the middle)
- Burmese (one of the later ones)
- Persians (he put them in B tier but said "easily can be C tier)
- Teutons (same considerations as Persians above)
Really you are seeing what you want to see. And Britons are not as strong as you think. Their tech tree is also fairly awkward. The no Bloodlines for example hurts a lot. They also lack key techs like Siege Ram and Bombard Cannon which in high level play are fairly important (BBC especially to counter what counters Archers normally on closed maps aka Onager). They shine on Arena where they are like a top 5 civ but on Arabia they are like top 10 and that’s fine.
Give Poles Halberdiers and either Paladins or Plate Barding Armor in exchange for a nerf of Szlachta Privileges by 20-30%.
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they cant get armor husars would be waaay too broken
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I think that was the reason the elephant tech was set on castle age instead of imperial: to upgrade an expensive unit after a long castle-age. It is true that elephants are almost useless (in 1v1) and the Chattras doesn’t make them a lot of better, but moving chattras to imperial age will make elephants even more useless. And contrarily, giving extra damage to archers (even if it is only for either crossbow or rattan) would make them to become the obvious option to deal against anything (archers, knights, even siege) so we would let elephants die instead.
The idea of replacing paper money sounds good, still. Paper money in imperial age is almost useless except for stalling the battle before trash wars (or recovering after losing the trade). Vietnamese late game is very gold although their composition is gold heavy, so the 500 gold is welcome. After that, they have an “slightly above average” trash wars composition with light-cav and halberdiers without blast furnace, but imperial skirms otherwise and the possibility of bombard cannons as siege. If we want to replace Paper Money as a tech, I would make it to reinforce some of the vietnamese strengths without making archers too obvious.
For example, vietnamese archers and elephants are “tanky”. We could reinforce that without messing with the balance a lot (tankiness is safer to modify than archers damage). By giving regeneration to cavalry will make their light cav more useful in trash wars and their elephants more fearsome (and having 50 extra HP would make more sense). Similarly, we would give regeneration to archers with extra HP or rattans, so they can recover slowly after holding archer fire or even an onager shot in extended castle age. This would make rattams even better raiders, although the tech wont be an obvious option because regeneration is not as broken as extra damage (see maghrebi camels or berserker gang), so vietnamese can skip castle if they need so instead of depending on it every time.
Of course, this is a silly example, and I think that maybe allowing papermoney to reduce the market fee (as a sarracen-like style) would work similarly for making them better in the late game( by replacing the dead units by new bought ones) without adding more balance issues.
In any case, vietnamese lower winrates are mainly due to their weakness in early game. So discussing about castle UTs is not enough. I am partially against of giving them another eco-bonus (because we would be causing an eco-creep problem by buffing every bad civ through eco bonuses). So I would give them a defensive bonus (This is a personal preference, though). Stacking with the tankiness theme, maybe regeneration to their halberdiers and skirms , or archers and skirms, or m@a and halberdiers … (Scout excluded because their scout rushes would become obnoxious). This way, their defensive capabilities in feudal age would be slightly better if they are under pressure in feudal age (and also the offensive ones if archers or m@a are affected) , and their trash wars composition would be also slightly better so I am reinforcing one of the civs theoretical strengths.
But I acknowledge that it is difficult to find the correct way to buff them without taking their personality out. They currently have few personality compared to other archer civs.
Isn’t it already 10/15/20% in feudal/castle/imp?
I don’t get why you want to change perfectly balanced civ… yeah sure they are strong, but far from broken.
Well, maybe let’s go by baby steps on nerfing the El Dorado eagles, so you don’t have to go from 40 to 25, but you can pass first by 35, 30 and see how it behave.
As for the starting bonus, removing the hunt is a big nerf… yeah it still affects berries and sheeps, but still it’s a lot…
Then you would make franks useless… their scout rush would be weaker, sure, but their knight rush would be useless…
It wouldn’t be worth to build a castle (even a cheap one) just for getting a tech that is basically BL in castle age.
Just stagger their cav HP bonus by 10% or 15% in feudal and 20% in castle-imp.
Again, I don’t get why? Aztecs have super monks because everything else isn’t FU or available (no halbs, no FU arbs or cav).
To me it doesn’t seem that lithuanians suffered much from the nerf… maybe they are even stronger…
Why? Viets foot archers are already strong, the HP bonus automatically makes them on the level (even better on some cases) of italians pavise xbows, and they have a strong wood bonus. That +1 attack on castle age seems just broken, and a cheap copy of the bohemians early chemistry.
The +80HP instead of +50HP can be fine, either way it’s unlikely that it will change something…
Arambai have been changed already a lot… I agree on the second armor, but first let’s add that, and then see if it’s necessary to further change the arambai.
You would just push cumans more into scouts and early TC more than what they are now… the second TC needs to be slow, otherwise you would return to the early days, when it was just broken. As for the stable, maybe just reduce the discount to 75 wood, but with the range included.
As for kipchaks, maybe a rework of cumans mercenaries is more important…
Won’t change much… especially since their halbs lack squires…
Why? I get that and hussars without the last armor isn’t great, but the polish hussars should be a “glass cannon”, fragile but strong. On the melee side, they are still stronger than another hussars. They are only weaker vs archers, and they have a bonus damage against them to compensate.
Also, people are already complaining about their cheap knight being too strong, so maybe let’s wait to buff them.
Won’t change anything… and actually on early castle age, teutons scouts aren’t bad on melee with that +1MA.
The first is a huge nerf, I instead would remove squires for them. A nerf that still makes their infantry usable.
As for FR, well 50 instant units will still be a lot, so I don’t think that it’ll make a difference…
IC are already a strong unit, no need to further buff it…
Also, other civs like spanish, incas, italians, magyars could use some changes.
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Ya and my suggestion is to keep it at 10% throughout instead of staggering it out.
They’re not just strong. They’re super strong and versatile under multiple settings. Open, closed, hybrid, empire wars maps.
My opinion is that +25 hp will be of the same level as compared to +1/+2 armor or +4 attack. +40 is just a huge bonus to a civ that’s already super strong.
My initial thoughts were Franks castle are quite cheap and they have good eco bonuses, so a castle tech costing something like 200f, 100g should be fair. But I also like this staggering bonus idea.
The eco bonus, relic bonus, military production bonus, castle techs. At least let them be vulnerable when opponent has somehow managed to not die and massed some Hussar or archers army. Sanctity +20 = 65 hp monks. That’s quite powerful enough. 95 hp monks wont even die to a deleted siege onager.
How exactly they’re stronger. You need to fight even harder now to get more relics and even if you get all 4 its still only just 2 extra attack on your Paladin. They might be better for semi-closed map 1v1 where Winged Hussar’s 5 hp and 1 melee armor might be a bit more beneficial but certainly don’t think on open maps and tgs. Anyways collecting 5 relics isn’t easy at all. For the investment Lithuanians have to do to get relics now, they should atleast get a fair reward in the end.
Yes and you can see it didn’t make Bohemians broken. Less than 2% play rates at all levels, about 46% or lower win rates across most standard commonly played maps. One of the least picked civs in 1v1 tournaments across all formats. If they’re already a strong archer civ with great eco bonus why doesn’t anyone pick them and why do they still pick Mayans, Britons, Chinese, Vikings and Ethiopians for maps that are well-suited for archer play. Imo their eco bonus is very mediocre and beneficial only in mid-late castle age when you want to get the second mining, mill upgrades and hand cart. Atleast this will give them a powerful late castle play.
+80 would basically mean 1 more hit needed from halbs.
Ya I’d prefer that. But given how the community pushed a lot for Arambai nerf in the wrong way because they got destroyed by 2 castle Arambai pushes, the same thing will happen again. If training time is increased, the player can use Arambai in imp but this funky all-in 2 castle arambai push would be more difficult.
Pre-2020, the reason why they couldn’t be killed easily was the monstrous Steppe lancers and Cumans having husbandry apart from the 10% bonus. Not the case anymore. I feel they die more often than not to pike-knight-mangonel pushes. Also now their walls are a bit weaker.
Cuman mercenaries giving +2 attack or +2 arrows is also a good option.
why exactly organ guns speed increase won’t matter. You can use them better for raids and running away back to castle.
Will be good for raiding in late game. Scouts → light cav is actually a more impactful upgrade than Light cav → Hussar.
haha yes but atleast its still better than 130+ armies.
Strong how? Now they have same p.armor as any other civ’s camel and 1 less melee armor. Farimba, Zealotry heavy camels match them both 1v1 and against other heavy cavalry units. These upgrades are actually much cheaper than Imperial camel upgrade and apply bonuses to more units (like Mamelukes for Zealotry. Cavalier, light cav for Farimba). Just don’t understand why these are still being considered as a strong unit especially when the civ doesn’t have knights and has the worst uu in the game.
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