The more I think about this the more I agree. However what might be even better is moving some of the gold cost to food. I know FE increased the gold cost cause SL were too gold efficient compared to other options, but SL also got hit with a bazillion other nerfs. I think moving 5-10 gold cost to food, would make them a little less affordable in the mid game where they’re too good right now, but also make them a little more affordable in the late game where they aren’t used much.
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Ok, So Viper came out with a reaction video to Hera’s balance suggestions.
I’d say most of vipers response was in the “i don’t feel strongly either way” or “let’s try half that change cause x reason”.
The one thing tho I found most interesting was the steppe lancer discussion, because we have two pros that as of their most recent recorded thoughts, have different opinions to what even the problem is.
To summarize:
Hera believes SL are too strong in early castle age ESPECIALLY mongols.
Viper believes SL are fine maybe even a little weak, EXCEPT for mongols who are too strong.
Thoughts?
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I’d agree with Viper. Steppe Lancers have never struck me as particularly awesome except for Mongols who basically can do a super-early rush combining almost all their bonuses.
That’s okay for a weaker civ like the Celts, but not so much for an already-strong civ like the Mongols.
Personally, the easier solution would be to just take away the mongol HP bonus to them.
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ok, but again, what exactly is the problem? Is the problem that mongol SL are too good because of the HP bonus or is it because SL in general are really good IF they can be on the map soon enough AND it just so happens mongols are able to do that?
If you gave Tatars for example a free lump sum of food so they could have a lightning quick uptime comparable to mongols, would their steppe lancers be too good?
Is it the timing, the hp, the combination, either?
Would mongols be bad if they DIDNT get a bonus to their steppe Lancers. Theyd still have a great hunt and scouting.
That or scale the HP bonus. 10/20/30% for scout and lancers. It depends if 12 HP is still too much bonus HP or if 4 whole HP breaks scout cav who should still die in the same number of spear hits
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Perhaps part of the issue is to do with breakpoints. Normally Steppe lancers die in 3 pikeman hits, but mongol lancers with an armor upgrade can survive 4. It’s hard to get four attacks on the same cavalry unit with pikemen, and steppe lancers always get the first attack, and you’re already fighting back with lower numbers, so they can shred the defensive pikes and then destroy the eco into GG.
But honestly, it’s everything together. Steppe Lancers are extreme potent vs palisades and building foundations, but take more resources to get to and die harder to archers. Mongols have an early eco boost and can survive 30% more archer fire and 33% more pikemen. So they get that critical mass and afterwards are just impossible to stop.
It also bugs me that Mongols have the best lancers of the three, despite the others being the civs that brought them to the game. I’m fine with them having lancers, but they should definitely be the worst of the three, not the best.
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Let’s assume that the SL hp bonus is the singular reason Mongol SL are too good. In that situation I think you can change nomads to give SL an hp bonus.
And then if SL for all three civs aren’t good, then buff the SL.
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I mean without the HP bonus the mongols have arguably the worst ones and by end game yea the 1/2 armor can beat out 24 HP in many situations nevermind the extra 5% speed or 1/1 armor
Sure, end of game, but what Hera and Viper are specifically talking about is early castle age. Also +1/+1 for tatars is a UT so not going to have that early castle age. Cumans would have +10% speed until a mongols or tatar player researched husbandry.
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Again without the HP would they really be overwhelming?
I honestly don’t know. It could be they’re bad without their hp bonus, or it could be that Mongols are able to go up so fast that SL are good enough for a short period even without the HP bonus, that you can get an advantage and then it doesn’t matter after that.
Balance change suggested by me:
- No balance changes necessary. Focus on other things in AoE2:DE that cater to the more casual, non-ranked game players of the world
Do I have any supporters out there? Smash the like button. Let’s see this post reach 10 subscribers
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100% agree with The Snake on SL. Just answer his question Hera (I know he is not in this forum), how many times you have faced or gone for Cumans and Tatars SL compared to Mongols?
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This change won’t make it meta but a little better when going for it, kinda ok.
This sounds like too much and reducing the cost would just make viable the cheesy 1 tc fast imperial strategy again, which is not fun imo. I would argue that the real problem is the creation time of archers compared to skirms. An archer is created in 35 seconds while a squirm takes 22 so apart from being hard countered you can keep up the production of enemy archers from 2 rages with only one of your own. I would make skirms to be created slower from 22 to 27 and make the elite upgrade reduce it back to 22.
I agree, towers are bad right now
This is a nerf to a specifical civ related strategy, im not a fan of it. I would suggest a creation time increase too, make it similar to the knight and revert it with the elite upgrade. This will diminish the early agression potential as they are slower to make.
I don’t know hows gonna play out with the cost reduction of towers but i’d say the bulgarians need something more apart from this.
I like it, without the discount.
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Hera balance change on Militia line is kinda bad tbh…like 0.92 speed? heck, when I mod the unit to have 1.0, they are still bad.
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The only part i disagree with is the crossbow price, Arbalest price i agree with but for me crossbow price is only 25 resources more than fielding your first monk(175 wood for monastery and 100 gold for the first monk).
One argument people have already factored in is what about bodkin price which at the end of the day is a moot point because then i could counter with what about sanctity fervor and redemption if they field siege. what about if your opponent has their own monks and you have to get atonement.
Which ultimately ends up with IMO crossbows buff should not be a crossbow price nerf but rather lets calculate the upgrades you need to purchase for fully upgraded castle age crossbows. Numbers below mite not be exact but i think it is pretty close.
- Crossbow = 1,925 + 200 for the wood needed for university.
- Monk = 1,115 OR with Heresy it is 2,115.
- Knights = 890.
- Light cav = 1,090.
- Pikes = 990
It is clear where the problem begins and it is not the price of the original upgrade of the unit but rather the fact that the cost of all the castle age upgrades costing nearly 1000 more resources than other fully upgraded bread and butter units in the castle age.
Right now as it stands crossbows are not being used IMO because other strategies are more appealing to players but also players are also not being played due to pathing, No one can really gauge how well they work when half your forced patrol in to the opponents knights when trying to regroup.
Useless non-change. Still can’t chase villagers or run away from archers. At best they might run one extra tile before they die.
Awful change. I watched his video and his explanation of drush-fc is deeply flawed. Back then the attack move was bugged and made archer line artificially more powerful, plus melee units had even worse pathing and used to freeze all the time. Otherwise crossbows are in a good spot and still quite useful in quite a decent number of maps.
This is a positive change but I don’t think its enough to make tower rush a solid option. Maybe in some maps other than Arabia, towering could become a reasonable choice.
Another awful change. There was a different thread where I mentioned this - The problem is MONGOLS and their timing advantage, not Lancers. The Mongol lancer bonus should be toned down to 10 or 15% in castle age or be kept strictly only in imp or their hunt bonus should be significantly decreased. Probably made to scale down with the amount of hunt gathered. Like 40% initially, 30% when 100 food from hunt is gathered overall, 20% when 300 food is gathered, 10% when 900 food is gathered (which is 2 boars and 3 deers). That will make them less OP, boar stealing by the Mongol player less problematic and they won’t have a huge timing advantage and lancers won’t seem broken.
Its a very minor yet decent change. But I wonder why he was explaining to justify its not OP. Can make them start the Krepost rush a bit sooner. Definitely not enough to make Bulgarians useful and popular but makes them less weak.
3 or 4 seconds longer to produce is more than sufficient. Extra armor is given to compensate for the low hp. At 4 base melee armor and 15 second production time, they won’t be good enough to compensate for the weakness of Georgians. The melee armor nerf can be justified if Georgians get the starting -50 food removed or the work rate bonus extended to mule carts within a smaller radius.
In general I don’t understand the unnecessary hype for this unit. Is it a “new is broken” mentality? Because 60 food 45 gold is not that cheap compared to other cavalry unique units like Keshik, Coustillier and Leitis. I’d actually make the argument that Konniks and Boyars are overpriced. Monaspa trades off better productivity and extra melee armor for lower hp and losing its extra attack when split into different groups for raids. Its obviously a great unit but don’t see the reason to strongly nerf it, especially given the fact that it belongs to a civ that’s quite weak otherwise.
I like the addition of Lancers but not with the discount.
Amazing change, I’d also reduce the build time of Donjon by villagers and increase when its by Serjeants.
Has a lot to do with changes to map layout and walls. Maps were very close and easy to wall, deer were closer and there were 4 of them. Walls were built faster and costed 2 wood instead of 3 as well. Just an one time additional investment of 50 food and 50 gold alone isn’t going to make a strategy almost irrelevant.
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Isn’t for the civ perfomance but rather what kind of game create to the player against it, if a civ is too weak but has a broken UU as the best and only thing they can do then is a flawed design and bad balance, same thing happened when Bulgarians were too weak at release but Konniks were overpowered, or Burmese just rushing out Arambai to win games in Rajas times.
Georgians are rather a weak civ but once you hit castle age and get at least one castle then is impossible to deny the Georgian player to simply mass Monaspas and just kill everything you can ever do vs that, I ve had game where players already know that Monaspas are coming and go into units that counter them (and I mean some really strong ones, Hindustani, Saracens and Romans), yet I managed to win vs those simply because the Monaspa is soo strong and fast to mass to the point you are just fine by overhelming with higher numbers (also you scale the attack quite quickly), combine with self regeneration, less damage from hills and less pop space, broken beyond level.
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Of course weak civ, strong uu is not a great design. Thats why I said Monaspa can get nerfed if and only if Georgians as a civ get buffed. But given the current state of Georgians I don’t think Monaspa should get any nerfs.
Unless the units are absolute garbage like urumi or rathas, the casters and a few players always hype new units a lot and get them overnerfed. Lancers, Kipchaks, Arambai, Ghulam, Karambits, War wagons, Organ guns all got overnerfed and rebuffed at some point. Eventually at some point Konniks might follow this as well. These units were all strong in their prime form but it was mostly the civ that blew up their image. And if Hera’s suggesting a nerf to Monaspa, he should probably mix it with a buff to Georgians in general.
They have 30% winrate in games under 30 mins. Monaspas are basically a comeback mechanism. They still only have less than 42% winrate (1200+ and 45% at 1900+) in 30-45 min games. The games where you won, you did because opponents failed to do damage to such a weak civ until 30 min. Its the same winrate vs game length distribution as Poles, Slavs. “If you get to boom with 3-4 churches + 1-2 castles or 5-6 folwarks + szlacha privileges, you are unstoppable” yes but its not easy to get there. If you did get there, either you played really well or your opponent played poorly.
I think you probably waited to mass 25+ of them before going offensive while you might not do that with Leitis or Coustillier since they don’t need numbers to become more effective. And you might lose numbers with premature raids with those units. That special ability just naturally forces good gameplay. And if you won, very well played you deserved it, its you and not just Monaspa. But stats show that majority of the players are not winning like you even after 30 mins where Monaspa mass must have begun. I’d suspect they fall too much behind and opponent is probably hitting imp.
Its probably a sign of a bad balance design philosophy if you need to keep buffing and nerfing
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