Lets open up a discussion about how to proceed with balancing the African civs. Clearly they are too strong on many levels, and it’s not just above-average units that contribute to this. Many design factors also contribute to their overall dominance. That being said, I mostly like how they’re designed and I think they’re fun to play.
First and foremost, lets tone down the units that are clearly too strong. In an ESOC thread, it was pointed out that Javelin Riders have the same cost, hp, and base damage as Janissaries, but they also have a horse and range resist. With just one card (the one that increases stats and resist), they trade evenly with skirmishers. Javelin Riders are not the only culprit, but they’re an easy example.
Next, it is my opinion that these civs should NOT gain access to extra native units upon age-up. The upgrades are fine and cool (and I realize that some upgrades wont make sense w/o the unit, so something has to change there as well), but the unit selection is nearly unscoutable, and the units are often too strong (or weird). You can narrow it down to 2 based on whatever type of wagon or resource arrives at the opponents’ shipment point, but it’s exhausting to try to scout this out and guess what possible unit compositions your opponent might throw at you on each of their age-ups. Additionally, many of these units are really confusing in terms of their place in the counter system, the two african civs lose much of their identity due to the overlap, and automatic access to these units further disincentivizes players from actually constructing native TPs.
If access to the natives units persists, I would strongly recommend cleaning up the mechanics of all these natives, as these units are often very difficult to decipher in terms of their place in the counter-system.
Lastly, the cows are too extreme. To summarize, 4 starting cows (not including the one that gets eaten) collect as fast as 1 vill. once they fatten they become 4 vills, or they can be sold for 500 res a pop, instantly depositing into your bank. this is like 4 additional age2 shipments that come at no cost. as they can finish fattening in a pretty short amount of time. It’s a lot too much, considering this is not the civs’ only economic bonus. And livestock maps are far from proper balance.
I have two suggestions to fix this. One or both could be implemented. The first idea is to reduce the starting number of cattle from 5 to 3, and to only 1 on livestock maps (or found live-stock could be prevented from using the market). The second idea is to limit the trade-in cap by age. 100 per age would be fair: so in age 2 you can sell your livestock for 200 res (of course they only need to fatten to 200, so there’s plenty of room to optimize and maximize value), in Fortress Age you can sell for 300 and so on.
These are my ideas, but tbh I haven’t played the civs all that much, so I’m sure other people have some better ideas.
