I’ve decide to make a new post about it, just to make it easier for the devs to see
Voilà my suggestions:
Byzantines: reduce elitr cataphracts upgrade cost and logistic cost
Teutons : knight line amd teutonic knights get +5% movement speed for relic (max 3 relics)
Sareacens: camels have +1/+2 attack in castle/imperial age. (that, or camels have +10 hp, but I preffer the first option).
Mameluke creation time reduced 2 s
Goths: good luck balancing this. They need some buff. Again
Khmer: lose crop rotation, or maybe handcart
Mongols:hunt bonus reduced to 30%
Indians: fish bonus reduced to 10%. Get access to battle elephants and elite battle elephants.
Elephants archer +1 range
Turks : ELITE SKIRMISHERS
Persians: kamandaran archers cost 60 wood 20 food
Vietnamese: tc bonus shows all enemy tcs. Rattan archers gains bonus against chu ko ku and kipchak
Samurai- woad raiders-Jaguars warriors - boyards - leitis - some type of boost (maybe make them cheaper) to make them more viable.
I suggest these:
-Bizantines: cost reduction for Logistica and Elie Cataphract upgrades, lose Paladin (not needed since no Bloodlines or Blast Furnace, and it is an expensive upgrade that competes with Elite Cataphract, and you would never chose it over EC).
-Teutons: Teutonic Knights benefit from Fervour and Sanctity, as they are warrior monks anyway.
-Goths: +1 building damage bonus brought back to Dark Age, -20% discount in Dar Ages and -35% from Feudal onward, gain Plate Barding Armour.
Leave paladins like they are. I would choose paladins over EC, because I can actually train them from everywhere (stables), unlike EC (castles). If you think, that they are useless, then fine, don’t train them, but there is no need to remove them.
Paladins without Bloodlines and Blast Furnace are just an overly expensive Cavalier. It makes no sense for a Bizantines player to actually upgrade Paladins, specially when they have a lot of other better options.
They can still eat much more arrows than Elite Cataphracts since they have more HP and more pierce armor. And they are still better than Cavaliers. Not enough to justify using them in a 1v1 but in team games they are nice to have.
But you have discounted Elite Skirmishers for that. the ECs are your shock unit, that hits real hard, and fully replace Paladins at their job, specially because Bizantine Paladins are the worst in the game by a wide margin.
There is, if it comes as a trade off of EC upgrades being cheaper. Otherwise, because you have access to both, it makes sense that EC upgrades and Logistica are overcosted, since you are NOT supposed to have both Paladins and EC in a 1v1 game, and games are always balanced around 1v1.
I don’t really think, that it is a good idea to make civilization too dependent on unique unit, because you need castles for them. Paladins can be trained from stables, which makes it much easier to train them everywhere.
I don’t really want to be forced to build castles just to train heavy cavalry.
Skirms are just a waste of population slots in team games, so you would chose cavalry anyway.
You need two upgrades to make the Cataphract good enough (even if they are made somewhat cheaper it would still be more than Cavalier+Paladin) and you still can’t produce them out of Stables. And they still are way worse vs archers and other heavy cav.
Then why do team bonuses exist?
I don’t get it: why would you punish Byzantine and remove stuff from them just for a buff on an overated unit? It’s like wanting to buff Teutonic Knight but take away Champions at the same time.
Team games exist for variety, but games are always only balanced for 1v1.
A team of Mayans + Britons + Saracens will go through anything and is unbalanced as all ■■■■, but you would never nerf those civs individually, since they are balanced in 1v1, and are not OP.
Funny fact, in that Matchup the Britons player would only even Boom and spam their UU, since Saracens would go for Archers + Camels, and Mayans would go for Archers + Eagles.
Well, your example is basically 3 dudes smurfing 11. Even the vid where they won by spamming Flaming Camels had more balanced teams.
Regarding the other point:
Buying all Militia upgrades: 1350f 560g
Elite Teutonic Knight: 1200f 600g
They definitely conflict like Paladin/Catas do: not the same role, but too expensive to get both. And the Paladin upgrade still gives +40 H, +2 attack, +1 pierce armor, and +1 line of sight.
Still is a perfect example of why Team games cannot ever be the focus of balance. Stacking Team Bonii are meant to break the game.
The whole fun of Team games, is that there is no balance. It is pure mathematical chaos.
A team of Franks + Huns + Berbers will always outspam you with Cavalry, no counterplay.
A team of Goths + Aztecs + Malay will always outspam you with Militia line units, no counterplay.
And so on…
No one even trains Teutonic Knights in the fisrt place, so it would be more practical to remove that unit.
Still, Teutons need a UU, Bizantines do not at all need Paladin.
Byzantine paladins are good vs everything paladins are good against and bad vs everything paladins are bad against. I go paladins most of the time as byzantine pocket and never miss bloodlines or blast furnace. Civs that have those techs but miss paladin upgrade all have worse knight line than byzantines.
Bizantine Paladins are a noob trap. Thy lose against even Castle Age Pikemen in a humiliating manner, to the point that anyone who even knows the game, does not even make Knights as Bizantines.
I would gladly trade them for Blast Furnace, as that would mean that the discounted Heavy Camels and Halberdiers would have much better value, even without Bloodlines.
Bizantines need a reviewing of their Cataphract upgrades, the Heavy cavalry they are actually supposed to be using.
Also, Malian Cavaliers trump Bizantine Paladins, with much more cost effective Farimba upgrade, even though they also lack Blast Furnace.
Byzantine paladins are stronger than farimba cavaliers because they have better stats that actually matter: hp and armor. The point of paladins is being a tank or a raiding unit that stays alive in your economy forever, not a glass cannon. Try to make farimba cavaliers+ranged units vs byza paladin+ranged units and see yourself how hard the cavaliers get rekt.