China buffs are all wrong. New army is the biggest change for Age II play, and Chukonu/pike strategies didn’t need to be buffed. It’s EVERYTHING ELSE in age II that is garbage. Age II china still has just 1 option in terms of age II unit compositions. a steppe rider still loses to a villager with great coats. An extra 7 steppe rider HP tacked onto a bad card isn’t going to make standard army playable. 15% → 20% doesn’t change the number of hits a steppe rider can take from a hussar. Keshiks are still too squishy to be viable in any case where the opponent has a unit.
Village cost reduction is nice, but it’s just a band-aid, not a solution to china’s horrible age-I QoL and lack of decent options. Worse yet, it’s a direct buff to china FF strats, which are already perfectly competitive.
More initial food for torps is nice, and removing placement restrictions is obvious, but another blueberries nerf? torps used to gain 375-500 food upon sending blue berries and now (including the higher initial food, comparing to last patches’ 125) just 275. You’ll have to build tens of torps after-the-fact to get more food value from torps than sweden was getting last patch. I like that blueberries is less necessary than before, but torps didn’t need another nerf.
Idk I think most of the balance changes are reasonable.
Also BB changes the normal berries into blueberries and the new torps spawn with new blueberries.
That is pretty much a buff.
I dont know about the changes with the Chinese but time will tell how they will perform.
200f blueberries. just a 75f increase per torp in food value from last patch on subsequent torps, which doesn’t cover the nerf on a single existing torp from last patch, since each existing torp is getting at least 100 less food. So now blueberries is better than last patch if you send it at about 8 torps, in which case it’s terrible anyway.
Yep, but the card is relevant without giving swedes a broken eco where you could wreck their base kill half of their vills and still loose, or they could easily go industrial while having a steady unit production.
They have good options age 2 with the bow age up, they can have more torps on a mine, and maybe the devs could buff ironworks so sweden can be more effective with merc play.
But I think the civ is going on a good spot right now.
We just need time to figure whether the civ is headed on the right direction or not
Most competitive play has relied heavily on blueberries in the latest patch. My guess is that the civ is simply worse than it was yesterday, but we will have to see. access to xbows might rise to new strategies.
Idk
Blueberries gives less food but it also affects previous torps. So in some ways you can argue the card is better.
Also there is the blackberries card on age 3 which you can ship once you run out of berries on torps
How much time will the development team continue to spend to discover the problem?
Why are they excited about a few houses near a mine?
Sweden does not have Skirmisher and Dragoon, and development team hopes to use mercenaries universally.
What is needed is a cheaper cost and a faster training speed.
It’s not about powerful mercenaries and more cost-effective shipping mercenary cards.
Because there is not enough gold!!
Or consider copying Russia
Mercenary cost reduced by 12.5%(All mercenary costs are gold. Actually 25% of total cost)
Health and damage reduced by 20%
The addition of “Crossbowman” this time is a good start, use mercenaries if you have enough gold.
If not, use “Crossbowman” instead of getting into trouble. I think the cheap Archer Cavalry should also join.
The Swedish falcon still exists…The burden of gold so players do not want to use mercenaries
I got mixed opinion about the torp change. I support of the more useful card change but I’m afraid that would make Sweden to only once again train 30 villager or less.
I argue that now with the addition of xbow and the 5% bonus stats for merc, it should also revert the cheaper fusilier contract now that Sweden have a way to deal with age 2 zamburak. That’s all my opinion about the Sweden change.
About the chinese change I was like wut? The village, wonder, and forbidden buff is small but good enough. The problem I see is the 5% bonus increase on the standard army increase.
What Chinese army need is flat increase instead of a percentage increase. One can argue that flat hp increase would make China ff mass army more difficult to deal with, but that mass army is comprised of only infantry, so I say increase the base hp of all Chinese cavalry unit. Keshik from 110 to 125, Steppe Rider from 150 to 165, Meteor Hammer from 217 to 230, Iron Flail from 292 to 300.
Reason with the change above is: for Keshik when they’re fully upgraded their hp is only like 300 which is similar to non royal guard non carded musketeer, for Steppe Rider, Meteor Hammer, and Iron Flail it is because this 3 units is too specialized and bad at what they do, and only when combined then they are comparable to what other civilization Hussar-like unit do. Steppe Rider have the (25)siege damage and speed but worse in other things, Meteor Hammer have the normal (29)damage but do not have survivability and their siege damage is only 13, and Iron Flail have survivability but no damage.
The saddest army Chinese have is Changdao and Flamethrower. Once the old dynasty card is sent Changdao have no use as Qiang is still the best option, late game Changdao only have use when the player runs out of wood. Flamethrower ever since they’re available in age 2 are already lose to Chu Ko Nu, in age 3 they lose to Arquebus, and in age4-5 there is no more need for this unit.
I don’t think sweden can stop building vills at 30, unless they go all-in with the newly improved blueberry income. but blueberries last 3 fewer minutes than before. I’m not sure how this is going to play out, but historically sweden has had too much income, but too few resources, and these changes will exacerbate that problem. The 10-15 minute window is going to be very strong for sweden this patch.
More standard army HP is never going to fix the issue that it loses hard to pure cav, and you can’t buy anti-cav with gold in age II (unless you build a castle or monastery, which are both too expensive to couple w/ a barracks). Standard army is just never going to work in 1v1, and probably never in team either unless the opposing team builds no cav. I agree that base HP needs to be increased for keshiks and steppe riders, but not meteor hammers and iron flails. China’s age III cav is plenty strong.
Changdao + flamethrower doesn’t exist anymore right? I think the Changdao + meteor hammer replaced it.