Balance is so close to being perfect

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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the balance is really good except for 3 things in my mind

  1. US can rush with a large army then follow up with gatling easy age 3 + 4 because they can’t be pressured at all if youre most civ. first rush isnt hte issue its the follow up gatling gun wave where your economy is squeezed into a corner of the map with no hunts + etc. no way to successfully counteract that army especially because they have tercio pikemen for some reason. as the game goes on situation just gets more hopeless bc theyve already got total map control, insanely strong units, and gatling guns, etc. Gatling guns should be more expensive or nerfed, I don’t know. that would probably fix it.

  2. Sweden caroleans are just flat out OP still - the movement speed is insane, their health, etc. unless you can successfully position yourself around all mines that sweden might be going for, even then their initial army will always win bc caroleans, their economy is going to outpace yours. the amount of time it takes for them to be OP seems longer given the last few patches but, idk, just seems insane.

  3. China is close to being balanced but, in the same way where they can pressure you consistently while you just fall behind as time goes on - I think they are not as bad as the other two though.

honestly feels like you might as well resign if youre playing brits vs. US at this point. no reason to waste the time. same with sweden.

I will say I never see Japan now so I guess they were successfully nerfed? not sure.

also still feels like certain players somehow shift their units to protect artillery in ways that are suspicious bc I don’t think they can see through fog of war but somehow always micro perfectly, but ive been reporting them.

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the most glaringly unbalanced civ is Italy which could use a major tune-down, followed by swede and china and otto which could use more minor tune-downs.

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Honest question, what is it about Italy that seems unbalanced to you?

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Simply put, no. There’s nothing wrong with a civ having a strong unit; in fact every civ SHOULD have one unit that’s better than the standard. Nerfing gatlings or caroleans further would ruin these civs; Sweden has already been through that several times.

Gatling guns have already been nerfed heavily. They’re in a good spot. There’s nothing wrong with gatlings being a strong unit. They’re quite weak to ant-artillery, dying in one shot to culvs. Brits can out-eco USA in the early game. Longbows and British musks can beat USA if focusing on Age 2 play.

Caroleans are only strong in the late game once they are fully carded. They’re actually really weak musks in Age 2 and 3.

Both civs are counterable and yes, have strong units, but not overpowered. The best way to learn how to beat civs is to play them and see what they are weak to.

And as far as protecting artillery, it’s just good game knowledge and scouting. If they know you’re making cav, a smart player will keep pikes or musk in a control group protecting the artillery. It’s highly unlikely that anyone is cheating.

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The OP and myself have been playing Sweden, China and USA and we simply just lose all of the time. Your advice doesn’t seem to be working. USA is the least hard to beat of the three, because you just need to deal with 5 gatling + 20 musks in early fortress somehow. I’ve been watching other peoples games too, what I see is Sweden and China usually just win. The typical advice given versus both Sweden and China is to rush them quickly and not let them get too big, but most games versus Sweden I see the opponent is lucky if he can get one or two torps down and always loses more pikes in resources than it costs the sweden player to make another torp, which he immediately does after the pikes are driven away. The few times I have beaten China it was by early rushing and sieging down his houses so he cannot make units. It hardly indicates either civ is balanced.

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Carolean op because it counter cav at range, not the stats. Opponent can’t use cav to snipe cannons. And carolean is fast. They can get out if there are large number of archers, they can charge in and win if there are low number of archers. On top of that sweden eco is one of the best. They always make more carolean than you make your units

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Exactly brits as a civ have no early game counter and your eco also cant outpace not rushing him to try and attack the eco. every game its the exact same.

same thing with US - you can’t not try to pressure, but you fall behind every time they pressure you.

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With these OP civs, the advice inevitably is ‘rush hard before they get out of hand’. I heard that a lot about Japan also, but since no one plays Japan anymore (thank god) they aren’t a concern anymore either. That being the only solution indicates an imbalance for sure.

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Sweden was mostly balance but then, they for no reason had to change Hakkapels, becoming them OP, and then they added Giant Grenadiers to their roster.

Other point are Dutch, with their extra villagers plus extra pop slots they were in a good spot but they have got buffs patch after patch. The addition of mercs at barracks feels too much as is the swede bonus while becomes South Africa very strong on team matches as all they do is spam highlanders.

Russia, I dont get why they received infinite huge wood crates when their army is stronger than legacy. Same for their pop cap addition, a chinese bonus.
How is china suppoused to stop russian strelets and cossacks?

Not sure about the neecesity to buff european economy when they are the strongest ones with factories while they have complete rosters with artillery. Spain deserved that rework as their economy was in the weak side. Portugal feitorias still produce too much while they have church card.

Then, we have India, with 5 training cards, really??

And inca with shitty army and useless kallankas as they are too limited.

Germany shouldnt got 2 pop cav, their huge economy doesnt fit with a huge army. Or one or another, not both.

Etc, etc ,etc…

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Honest question, what is it about Italy that seems unbalanced to you?

Let’s see. Elmeti available in age 2. Lombards and the ability to spam towers for free that enables a completely safe, unstoppable Fast Industrial with a good eco behind it. The complete lack of the need for map control, allowing Italy’s economy to keep up with or exceed other civilizations without ever being exposed to raids. Age 4 SHADOW-TECHED SPEEDY skirmishers, which you can start massing as soon as you hit age 4. These things are extremely difficult to kill and complement Italy’s turtle FI strategy very nicely, as you can just park them in your base / behind your lombards and snipe anything sieging, and then dodge cannon shots because they are so fast. Additionally, randomly good shadowteched artillery shipments that means you can easily win the artillery war, even though artillery is literally the only thing that has a chance at countering the Italy FI. Unlimited ability to spawn the elmeti / papal lancer unit.

There’s just no reason Italy should get all these good bonuses. A place to start would be to nerf Lombard gather rathers, forcing them out onto the map, reducing the speed of the skirms, making them so they don’t shadowtech to guard, and slightly nerfing their artillery shipments and also making them not shadowtech to guard.

Sorry, no other civ mentioned in this list even comes close to being as broken as Italy is right now.

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I assume you mean this card?
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The Papal Spearman is available for training starting in Age III.

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Your complaint is that not being able to make an effective Rush against Italy a defensive civilization? Also, good economy? You literally sacrifice the entire Italian economy on upgrades to make up for the lack of villagers at the start.

Why do you think the Italian economy is good? also because you think it doesn’t need map control?, especially with how demanding it is for resources for the Lombards.

According to this App the Bersagliere does not have shadow technology that affects its speed, maybe your complaint is the ability?

It has the same shooting distance as a normal guerrilla, and also I see no difference between using the Lombards as a wall and having Bersagliere to fire against units or using the Dutch banks as a wall and having guerrillas to fire against units.
PS: Can’t the other civilizations attack by taking cover behind buildings?

Besides, your complaint is basically that the civilization is well thought out, having units that complement a strategy is good design, all civilizations should be equally well designed.

Cannon shots can’t be dodged, what are you talking about? This isn’t AOEII where you could dodge artillery.

Again, what shadow technology are you talking about? The Espingarda has a slight improvement in the attack with the industrial technology, which is not free.

Defensive FIs are not countered by attacking the opponent with a constant Rush, they are countered with an FI + economic boom that allows attacking with economic superiority.
In short, you are using the wrong strategy. :expressionless:

The Papal Spearman is an Italian unit, it’s not a mercenary, and it’s not easy to use either, especially since it interrupts shipments, has a fixed number of 3 Spearmen per Papal “ship,” and requires you to have 300 of each resource.

Lombards don’t gather resources, they require a lot of cards to be profitable, they are theoretically the reason Italy only has one factory, and they also require a lot of micromanagement to be useful.

PS: Villagers gather resources, Lombards only transform them into half of the other two resources.

That doesn’t make sense, that would just make them more like a normal guerrilla fighter, plus you should worry about something else about the Bersagliere, but I’m going to keep that to myself, because you clearly have no idea how the unit work. XD

Of course, the Swedes with giant grenadiers, the Dutch with banks that directly give resources, the English with a housing boom that only requires wood and the United States with its invincible machine guns are clearly nothing compared to Italy.

The only thing I get from this conversation is that Italy is well balanced and there are too many people complaining without knowing how civilization really works.

The Lombards are not that great, they are unbearably demanding at the micromanagement level and they don’t give you anything, the Bersagliere are good, but they fall short with no cards in your deck to compensate for their late acquisition and the artillery only has an extra damage bonus in industrial, which is good for people who like revolutions.

Regarding the papal units, I think your complaint is unfounded, especially since Italy has the slowest start and needs to invest all its resources in improvements to not be left behind, you are almost never going to invest those resources in papal units, at best in Age III you send yourself something.

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what’s your ELO, and what was your ELO before you started playing Italy

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Zero, I don’t play competitive.

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he is saying that they are shadow-teched and they are speedy, not that they are shadow tech to become speedy

they can be you do need to have very good micro for them but cannons lock to position before they fire so if you know the animation you can dodge it

the way its played on the high level is you use the spam of buildilngs, lombards and basillca for xp to send the deposit shipments which fuel your eco, doesnt matter if they are as long as there is some res in there it generates xp and that matters more. since they get enough xp from their in base activity they also dont need map control

were you not here just like 1 month ago when italy was completely dominating the top end?

in most short 1v1 games you dont need to care about profiting from the res if you can get your res to align to get you where you want. so the lombard’s role as unraidable crates gathering is more then enough eco for a lot of situations. and since you dont need to use your natural res they dont need map control

italy FI by 10 mins with and can start pumping guard skirms immediately, you aint getting a civ that can try to out eco them and get on par units in the same time frame

it would still be a skirm with higher base attack and a stun abilty, and im pretty sure he knows more than you tbh

if you dont play competitive whats the point of commenting on balance?

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Zero, I don’t play competitive.

this answer was even better than what i was hoping for.

yea sorry man idk what to say, if you play the game competitively so many things matter that just won’t even occur to you if you don’t have experience playing competitively. it’s just a completely different game, where timings down the second matter a whole lot more than in casual lobbies or single player. in competitive play, Italy is very, very strong, and should be nerfed.

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We need a “supremecy” “team” and “treaty” tag cause unless you are familiar with such modes people’s love of just making statements without clarifiying what mode they are talking about makes these discussions hard to have
Just like 1v1 italy is op and treaty italy is bad for the same reasons but people will approach different modes as if they the same and say “italy is shit” when its banned in almost every single 1v1 event.

Seriously people it takes .5 seconds to type " X civ is good/bad in Y mode because…" and would help conversations not be so circular

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I think if people are talking about treaty or team balance they will generally say so, otherwise the default is usually supremacy 1v1

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ok, that makes more sense, thanks for clarifying.

If he is spoken of as a competitive player, I can understand his complaint, but it seems to me that he is trying to impose his opinion on the rest of the players.

It doesn’t seem logical to me, what prevents him from taking full control of the map and its resources? ?Why not counter that strategy with a higher boom thanks to natural resources?.

Yes, but Italy never seemed like a strong civilization to me, just a good defensive civilization and useful for making an FI.

But if the Lombards consume a large amount of resources, they don’t spawn out of nothing. You have to invest, I at least collect natural resources to feed them, the only way I can think of in which an Italian player could do that, would be abusing the city cards, but you are losing shipments and there is no guarantee that they turn out to be profitable.

Ok, if this is really happening (I don’t know how), then it’s a serious problem, maybe some of the Lombard invention cards could be removed, but the things the other user was asking for are unreasonable.

Do you agree with the stun mechanic? I would remove it, I consider it an abuse, regarding the speed of the unit, it never seemed like a problem to me and I don’t understand why it should be.

Because I don’t like civilizations to feel excessively strong or weak, the idea is to win in similar conditions, that’s why, in addition, many competitive players tend to have biases when it comes to “balancing” civilizations.

Added to the above, some civilizations are better defensively and others are better at rushing, but if we only listen to competitive players, all civilizations would end up being the same, but with a different Skin.

Sure, because competitive gamers are clearly the majority of gamers, represent the interests of the majority, and have never ruined a civilization by “balancing” it.

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top player on the ladder essentially exclusively plays italy and has an insane win % with it, simple as that. Its a fairly mediocre civ outside of 1v1 sup balance, which points to a design issue more than a direcy balance issue, if that makes any sense

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Sure, because competitive gamers are clearly the majority of gamers, represent the interests of the majority, and have never ruined a civilization by “balancing” it.

i mean, what interests/stakes are there for you in competitive multiplayer balance, if you yourself don’t play competitive multiplayer? how can you “ruin” a civ for casual/single player by balancing it for competitive multiplayer? why does it matter at all?

like what do you have to gain by having Italy be so strong, lol? You don’t even care about winning , right?