I have to preface these are in my best estimation the quite weak but serviceable balance changes I think we need. There’s more about Egypt because is the faction I know most off. I’m sure a few more tweaks should be done into greek/atlantean/norse, but I’m not confident enough to propose anything.
Ra: Berries Bush gather rate down from 25% boost to 15%.
Gaia: Economic guild and technologies are 35% cheaper instead of 40%.
Tone down a bit the two main economic major god outliers. People agree that at the very minimum are top tier, others are saying are completely broken. I think that resource advantage is not that big of a deal, but a small nerf shouldn’t destroy these gods.
Serpent spear: from 0.75 divine damage over 6 seconds (0.125 per second), to 1.2 divine damage over 6 seconds (0.2 per second).
Why this change? just compare it to Bite of the Shark or Phobos’ Spear of Panic, that are similar techs in effect and also both classical. Not only they affect more unit types, one is 1 divine instant, the other also gives them more attack, and bleed doing the damage over 3 secs instead of 6 secs is already better.
Camel rider: from 50 food 70 gold, to 50 food 65 gold. Alternative: 20% base hack defense instead of 15%.
Camels are mostly fine, but the cost is a bit out of place IMO, specially considering gold is extra important to Egypt. Chariot archers are also expensive but they are worth their cost. Another option would be to buff camels maintaining their expensive cost, as they are countering cavalry, a bit more hack defense would make this main role a bit better, and also gives them a bit extra endurance if thrown into a frontline.
Fishing ship base fishing rate up by 15% but both technologies give 60% fishing rate speed instead of 75%.
Well, this reverts partially the changes from retold initial adjustments, but, as we all are seeing, having sea control doesn’t translate to winning a game, in practice, we all are seeing how anyone can just forgo the sea, switch to land food and win a game just fine. Water control when available should be more rewarding faster IMO.
Towers have 5 base damage instead of 4, but 650 base health instead of 750.
This change also is a partial regression on initial retold changes (but far, far from the 8 base damage on vanilla). I am fine with fortresses and town centers damage, not great but serviceable. Towers are just too expensive in exchange of tickling the enemies, yeah you can garrison more and they are more durable now, but their role was mainly providing vision + dealing damage, we are seeing in practice how towers doesn’t help at all in defense, and are ignored usually by players.
Bronze weapons from 10% damage to 12% damage.
Iron weapons from 10% damage to 15% damage.
All heavy line upgrades from 20% damage to 18% damage.
All champion line upgrades from 30% damage to 25% damage.
Move some damage from line upgrades to armory upgrades. The total damage ends up being the same. Why? two reasons: to give a minor boost to fortresses, town centers and towers, so they keep up better against stronger units as thet get the armory and line upgrades, and to make bronze and iron weapons more worth of their heavy resource cost.
Wild take: adding a total cap of all resource gatherers (fishing sips / caravans / workers) of 125
On many scenarios, the economy of full caravans + full workers is so insane, you can pump units into the front non-stop, while building extra production buildings non-stop making the arguably rare late-game experience quite tiring. 125 workers is still somewhat insane but you have to make decisions: cut some workers into caravans or fishing ships, also think a bit more about spamming buildings.