BALANCE SUGGESTION - Regarding Korean free archer armor

hi everyone,

considering the korean civilization, they got their archer armor upgrades for free in one of the previous patches of the definitive edition. at first i thought that this was a nice change to strengthen their archer play and they needed something for sure. is still think that this change works perfectly fine if the korean player goes for an archery range play. the problem in my opinion is that the unique unit, the war wagon got too impressive in early to mid castle age. +2 free armor on an already solid unit can make it really hard to deal with them. 150 HP with 2 melee and 4 pierce armor could be a nightmare to counter. i know most of you will say, just make skirms. the thing is tho that you need to invest a lot (elite skirm upgrade, fletching, bodkin, both armor upgrades and at least two ranges) and even then they function only as a light, kinda underwhelming counter. i am certain about the fact that koreans also need a castle to create those units (on nomad start maps its too easy, especially if you consider their stone mining bonus). monks are also not the optimal counter units cause they can get focused down pretty easily if you have 3-4 war wagons out. camels also have a hard time to shred through 150 hp with their +2 free melee armor.

my suggestion would be to remove the free archer armor upgrades and give them +1 pierce armor for foot archers (starting in feudal). this will help them to maintain their role as an anti archer civ while also give their general archer play a little buff because you can still research the archer armor (+1/+2 for their archers in feudal). in addition war wagon play would be still be strong and viable in some scenarios but loose some of its snowball potential. it kinda works like the +1 extra pierce armor for the turk scout-line. i know italians can give their archers +1/+1 with their unique tech, but so can tatars by giving their scout line +1/+1; so designe wise it would be fine.

please let me know that you think about this small, but possibly impactful change. i want to remind you that war wagon were totally fine throughout the whole pre-DE era of the game.

Good change.

WWs are obnoxious because TCs deal 1 damage to them and in turn the wagons have a ton of bonus. They can just dive TCs and snipe vils, or straight up right click with sufficient mass, something no other ranged unit can do.

Koreans will need a small buff though, for the earlygame. Cool part about this is, Koreans have a bad post imp without gold, it will buff them a bit.

Overall very good change, but needs to be coupled with some other small early/midgame buff.

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Oh, also, let it be for all archery range units, not just foot archers. Otherwise its too weak.

Wagons are still easily countered by monks in early castle. This only gets difficult if there is huge mass of wagons at which point you should have good boom and can spam skirms in addition to monks. So I don’t see the problem tbh. Only situation where it can get bad is arena tgs when you get 2v1ed and second opponent makes light cav. But tbh arena tgs isn’t the most competitive setting either way.

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please consider that a monk dies to 3 hits (if war wagon player has fletching). i played monks vs war wagons multiple times (both sides) and i can assume you that the monk player can have a really hard time if rng is not on his side. the wagons will snowball to victory more often than you might think.

but monk vs war wagon is not the discussion which is indended here. it’s about their free armor from the upgrades (which does affect the playstlye against monks at all)

not sure if it should affect skirms. wood save -20% in combination with the extra pierce on skirms could be really strong

From the free archer armor currently, we have seen that it isn’t. Besides, you know with 95% certainty that koreans will open on ARs anyway, so you usually mix in scouts to begin with.

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Yeah but wagons are slow, expensive and take time create from a castle. If you make double monastery once you spot castle and you have decent monk micro monks are the perfect initial counter because they force opponent to mass wagons until monk micro gets difficult while you boom behind.

And sure free armor doesn’t really affect monk play but that doesn’t change that monks are a counter to wagons. That’s why war wagons aren’t op imp precisely bc the counter is super easy to make.

yeah, all that might be true, but it’s about the interaction with units that actually have a rough time due to the free armor. it takes away strategy tbh. lets say if the opponents has a formidable amount of archers and you pump out some war wagons: right now you just roll over them, cause they will deal 3 dmg (xbow + bodkin) (50 shots to take one down). without the free armor you have to make a decision. do you invest into armor upgrades? should you make a mangonel or some skirms?

On thr other hand Koreans is one of the few civs actively encouraged to go its unique unit in castle age, whereas your change encourages them to go straight foot archers as their archers wiuld not only be cheaper but take less damage, which means less diversity.

I much prefer someone else’s proposed nerf of giving them bloodlines and reducing ww health and bonus damage to buildings

3 Likes

i will remain the same, foot archers or war wagons. thats how the civ is designed at it will no get changed with this change because war wagons would remain very viable, even without the free armor upgrades.

but wouldn’t then the war wagon get +1 free armor and another armor from the blacksmith, making them even harder to counter?

mangonels and monks is the best counter. Also even if you make tons of skirms to deal with them, it’s a very cost effective trade in your favor. Personally i’m a huge fan of going full war wagon. I’ve also noticed that most people have no idea how to counter them. However i got my behind handed to me one time by some dude who went full cavalier in castle age and completely destroyed my 30 or so war wagons at once lmao

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nono, foot archers will get the +1 pierce armor :smiley:

Except your change encourages foot archers. They are cheaper and easier to mass up and available earlier. And less risk involved. And you just buffed them. A permanent buff too. Not just a temporary buff like free archer armor

Except you’re more likely after your change to see less ww and more standard archer play.

Well we could take away 1 armor from the war wagons then.

I am interested in this change. I am not sure if this woul make them even stronger against other archer civs actually… IMO Koreans are still the best “archer counter” civ and if we change them it would most likely be better to reduce their power against archers but give them better tools against cav civs.

I don’t play Koreans much. Can you explain why they struggle against cavalry? Their Halberdiers seem pretty good on paper, only missing Blast Furnace, while costing 5 less wood.

It’s quite easy, the lack mobility. And the Halb line alone isn’t enough to just neutralize knights. If it was that easy nobody would play the knight line.
Whilst the war wagon gives koreans a nice midgame powerspike right now (even against knight civs), once this is pushed back koreans have nothing really.

Especially paladins are a problem for koreans, the missing of blast furnace means that their halbs need one more hit to kill them. The slight discount can’t make up for that.

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No Koreans are fine with free archer armor upgrades, is always the less priorized archer upgrade, plus only giving a brief boost that later became obsolete, is fine.
Is only too strong on War Wagon, but is the problem of the War Wagon that has wayy high attack in castle age, plus also having high HP, and on top of that the wood discount on units and faster stone mining.

So the solution is:
Reduce the attack of WW in castle age to 7 (so the elite upgrade is more relevant).
Remove extra attack vs buildings (I watched many games where WWs destroy castles and is silly).
Negative cavalry archer armor class (-2) so skirmisher deal more damage, but still keeps them strong vs archers.
Wood discount bonus replaced, honestly is just useless because archers, spearmen and skirmishers are already cheap in wood, Korean cavalry archers rarely see action because the lack of bloodlines and parthian tactics, and Korean navy, while is really cheap in wood with shipwright, they just don’t have anything more for their navy (Basically, Portuguese have a weaker unique wasrhip, yet they do everything in water better by a massive margin than Koreans, don’t gonna name Italians and Vikings, hell even Byzantines, Saracens, and Spanish are better in water lol), repace it with each lumbercamp technology granting +2 carry cap to lumberjacks, which is wayy more useful for military production, water maps and even for booming, to compensate, War Wagon and Turtle ship current wood costs are now by default.

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Why people keep complaining about War Wagon even though neither of the ladder winrate nor pro game play backup claims of War Wagon/ Koreans are OP?
Koreans are nowhere close to top5 or top10 in any map setting, maybe exception is 4v4 Black Forest. Koreans have actually lowest winrate in last clown tournament (Master of Arena 6) because in high level Arena game play, monks are one of the most common unit in castle age and there is no place for War Wagon to take action. WW is not one of the unit that is hard to counter in Arena. Maybe 3v3 or 4v4 Arena team game is different story but games are not really balanced there. We have to nerf War Elephant because they are too strong in closed map TG?
Otherwise, Koreans definitely need WW for their military option. They have the weakest cavalry and they need some unit mobile and tanky and only WW can fill this role. Nerf to WW will make Koreans even more awkward in open map (and closed map). Only reducing building bonus damage is understandable nerf targeting closed map TG.

Btw, Hussite Wagon is just plainly better version of WW. It needs redemption to convert which WW totally aren’t needed. Civs without redemption are forced to go mangonel to counter Hussite Wagon and it need huge Wood investment and so difficult to micro. It also don’t even take bonus damage from Camels/Skirms.

Leave aside Hussite Wagon and nerfing WW is just silly.

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Hussite wgon also needs other nerf on the HP too.