In the following post, I took Arabia and Arena as generalizations. Arabia = open map. Arena = closed map.
Hey, so I watched SotL’s latest statistics video (it will be released for others 12 hours later). Here is the crux of it:
Bengalis - HD Khmer like performance on Arabia, mid tier on Arena
Dravidians - bottom 5 on Arabia, (I don’t remember on Arena), and consistently top 5 on pure water maps
Gurjaras - top 5 on Arabia and Arena (best civ for 1600+ by a good margin)
Hindustanis - top 3 on Arabia and top 7 on Arena
Dravidians being good on water maps is really no surprise and not really being needed to change.
The pattern I notice here is that civs with Elephant Archer focus are performing poorly, while civs without EA-focus are doing great.
Another point is that Gurjaras kept getting better with elo, which really showed the Chinese-like pattern of being favoured but even better.
With that out of the way, I have the following suggestions to make:
Gurjara fishing ship bonus transferred to Bengalis - Bengalis are supposed to be a naval civ, and having this random fishing ship bonus for a civ which won’t be picked seems out of place.
Hindustanis lose Imperial Camel Rider. They are already pretty good with the new stuff like Ghulam, extra bonus damage on gunpowder units. Instead, they get Camel Scout.
→ the point of giving Camel Scout to Hindustanis is more about taking Camel Scout away from Gurjaras. Gurjara camel scouts are just better, because of +50% attack bonus and faster creation.
→ Hindustani camel attack speed bonus starts in the Feudal Age (to prevent landslide victory of Camel Scout).
Gurjaras: attack bonus on Cavalry reduced from 50%, which is huge, to 33%. No other attack modifer bonus in the game is that strong. Bohemians 25%, Burgundians 25%, Siege Engineers 20% (40% for Petards). Heated Shot is obnoxious with towers at 125% though.
To compensate for this nerf of Gurjara cavalry, I would like to buff Gurjara Archery by giving them Ring Archer Armor.
Dravidians seem to die to good Siege civs, which is understandable due to their focus on foot archery and infantry. There are 2 options which I see - better stable or BBC, neither of which I like, since I feel the civ is designed around these. I won’t hesitate to grant Siege Engineers though, which is a soft counter to enemy Siege.
Bengalis are built around Elephants and Rathas, while the former takes a lot to get going, which explains their absymal performance on open maps, and decent performance on closed maps. The Ratha is a complex but balanced unit for me. The thing is, they lack tools to play any other unit. Infantry lacks Plate Mail. Arbalesters lack Thumb Ring. No Hussar, regular CA, Knights etc.
→ We could add Thumb Ring, but prevent Paiks from affecting Elephant Archers and Rathas. Rathas gain 100% accuracy and almost the same attack speed boost from Thumb Ring (this is not a suggestion, this is what actually happens). This boosts their Arbalester play, their EA and Ratha play become more accessible.
Paiks reworded accordingly [Melee Elephants attack 20% faster].
Another buff I want is to Mahayana. Mahayana is a religious term but it affects villagers. I would suggest that the current effect be made free and from dark age (less housed problem, not really a buff otherwise till mid imperial age). Elephant resistance bonuses are now locked behind Mahayana, which is now a Castle Age technology. Paiks becomes Imperial Age technology.
Optional implementation: Melee Rathas attack increaed by 2, Ranged Rathas attack increased by 1. This comes with the attack speed of the Ratha increased from 2 to 2.4, which Thumb Ring reduces to 2.04 (almost the previous value). Also Paiks (which doesnt affect EA) affects Rathas to bring it back to the current level.
I also feel EA have been overnerfed. They were not a good unit to begin with, and they were only good with the old Indians, because they had 3 base pierce armor and all armor upgrades, taking their pierce armor to 9. Apart from Bengalis, no civ really is even close to that.
Their archer armor be increased from -7 to -4. Their HP be restored by +50 to begin with or their pierce armor be increased by 1, but not both. Elite EA gain +1 melee armor, like HCA. PT gives EA +4 attack vs Spearmen because they are not unique anymore.
While it’s true that bad stables are part of their identity, I don’t see why lacking BBC should be. IMO BBC with or without SE is a must to make their infantry/archers more viable The enemy’s generic SOs +frontline units absolutely demolish everything Dravidians can make, to say nothing of more specialized siege civs.
I don’t know that they need great Arbs. You’re welcome to make an argument for that of course, but considering that they (supposedly) already have 2 archer units to rely on, I’d rather work out the kinks in those 2 than give them a FU generic. I also don’t love that this suggestion basically just turns Paiks into a Tusk Swords clone, albeit via a different mechanism. Paiks is a fine tech and its being weaker than thumb ring is balanced by its affecting more units.
Interesting idea. I don’t think giving them this tech earlier would be OP since it would mainly function as a weak housing bonus until Imp, although I am wary of just giving (previous) techs free as bonuses without exceptional justification. If I were to change Mahayana, it would be just to expand its effects to fishing ships (trade units are already arguably covered by their TB, but that’s a potential candidate as well.) Now if I’m reading you right, you want the effects of the Mahayana tech to just be ele damage/conversion resistance? I would classify that kind of bonus in most cases as “nice to have, but not good enough to pay for” until mid-late Imp when you’re actually likely to make lots of eles (and makes the conversion resistance less impactful). Overall, this change would make Battle Eles and Ele Archers less viable in Castle. IMO they need more viable military options in Castle, their main problem is the lack thereof.
Yes. Besides fixing the Dravidian extreme siege weakness, making EAs more viable would do a lot to make these civs more balanced.
Well at least he said to indirectly warn for spoilers.
But generally I think that premium early access users shouldn’t share their insight before something is freely accessable, to give others the chance to watch the content unteased.
It’s not even spoilers that I’m worried about so much, it means we can’t watch the video ourselves, and come to our own conclusions and stuff first, although spoilers are also bad.
That sounds good to me. You can delete the topic yourself, and then @moderators, one of you could close and unlist it for now.
Edit: Nevermind, don’t worry about it
Nah, leave it on. It’s in already and it’s good to have this discussed for once.
Otherwise this may happen more often cause people are too exited to share early access content insight.
The video is also not that “new” content for anybody who is in the forum, we discussed that stuff already.
Edit: BTW I would like to have a “Spoiler” functionality here in the forum. Sometimes I like to write long explanation texts that are tl;dr for most people and I want to hide them unless somebody wants to get the deeper information. This feature would be really cool.
+50% is the equivalent of +9 bonus in imperial age
How mych bonus do Burgundians hand cannons get when you total up their extra attack? Not to mention the bonus also applies to all gunpowder, not just hand cannons
How much bonus do japanese halbs get from attacking 33% faster (hint its over 9).
Stop looking at percentages and look at how much that impact has
No, your method is wrong. Hand Cannons attack once every 3.45 seconds, Halberdiers attack every 3 seconds. If pure attack were a factor Bombard Towers would have been better than Castles, but BBT attack every 6 seconds and Castles attack every 0.5 seconds practically.
And for your context:
Hand Cannons gain +4 base attack, +3 attack vs Infantry and +1 vs Rams, which doesn’t sound amazing to me even before putting in 3.45 attack rate.
Percentages put things into perspective and good context. Bloodlines is huge for Scout Cavalry, but not Elite War Elephants, even though it is +20 for both.
Imp camel still is a rather expensive tech and it’s not like you have many universally strong gold units at that point. Mostly all you make is counter units (ghulams even lose to hussar for instance). I mean you’re doomed when opponents gets imp camel and your mongols or the like but that’s fine imo.
Because most other atk bonuses are much stronger. A significant portion of dmg dealt by camels comes from their base atk. So if pikes get 25% with 22 bonus dmg that’s similar to camels getting 50% with 9 bonus dmg. If you reduced it 33% it just a worse version of hindustani bonus.
No matter what will happen to them their tech tree or bonuses need some kind of rework. It might be the single worst late game civ atm.
Maybe the urumi could get an anti siege bonus dmg instead of the charge atk. It just feels pretty unbalanced because with urumi triple bonuses (charge, splash and ignore armor with UT) you nuke every melee unit but you die super hard to ranged units. So imo remove charge, give anti siege bonus, give splash dmg to every atk(not just the first) and balance base stats accordingly.
Also I’d give them at least siege engineers. Why would you give a civ SO but no siege engineers. That’s literally worse than having SE but no SO (value wise).
Guess what happens when you give a strong eco civ FU arb? It’s gonna be the new arb civ. I think changes to the civ should enhance their mid game defenses in order to make them have easier time to get to their costly but powerful units. That’s how the civ is designed anyways.
So we had this in the other thread recently and my favorites here is extending the elephant bonus dmg reduction bonus to siege weapons (and exclude armored elephant from former so that it doesn’t get the bonus twice) and give free sanctity.
Why? Mahayana is a perfectly designed UT. There is absolutely no reason to change it. It would be ill designed civ bonus because it’s useless for most of the game too strong in late game. Just leave it as is.