I have millions of opinions, but here’s an attempt to balance the issues caused by the Last Chieftains South American civilisations in the early game (especially Dark Age, but I’d argue all of this is useful anyhow):
The Champi are very likely too good: a start would be to give both Militia-line and Knight (for later in game) a 0 attack bonus against infantry, and to give Champi Scouts and Runners (and maybe other…) e.g. -2 Infantry armour class. Until Castle Age, they basically don’t have a counter, as they can just run around and are fast enough to produce. Hitting the Champi Scout training time by at least ~8 seconds also appears necessary.
Outposts: Maybe giving it “stone defense” armour class would allow Villagers to quickly destroy them. Another solution is to give them -5 melee armour when being built.
I’m not saying all this needs to be implemented at once, but a tweak appears necessary…
The Champi Scout’s Dark Age training time should be increased to 70 seconds, over double what it currently is. That way, it’s not possible to mass a great number of them before the opponent can counter them. Also, they should probably have the shock infantry armor class.
I know, I know, that would gut their viability, but it’s the devs’ fault for trying to make a unit that can replace both the Militia and the Eagle.
I think the answer is to buff the militia line in a defensive context. The problem is, right now, the champi line can basically pick their fights, while the militia line cannot, and that means that slowly the militia get worn down and there isn’t much you can do about it. If they healed at like 18 per minute like I suggested a few weeks ago, then they could just keep engaging over and over again at full health.
That being said, it does strike me that the currently evolving meta does not really take into account the fact that people are investing thousands of resources into early rushes. That’s getting to the point where it really should be vulnerable to just straight up stonewalling or going equally all in on Towers.
Yeah 8-10 more seconds would help for sure and should be the first nerf.
They sort of lack a clear counter in Feudal Age though, and even if scouts, men at arm and archers are sort of fine, I’m still unsure if one shouldn’t be a clearer counter, or at least defender. Given the archetype of the unit, it cannot really be archers or Scout cavalry, so Swordsmen makes most sense, at least when they can engage, just like for Eagles. I see two main solutions: either Champi Scouts (and Runners?) have negative Infantry armour, which only Swordsmen (would) have effect on in Feudal Age, or they get the Shock Infantry armour class, with possibly a ton of class armour in the later stages, to prevent Champi being as hard-countered as Eagles.
They could adjust its pierce armor from 2/2/3/4 (in DA/FA/CA/IA) to the following:
Dark Age (Scouts): 0
Feudal Age (Runners): 1
Castle Age (Warriors): 2
Imperial Age (Elite Warriors): 3
Then have Gambesons affect them, which would bring their PA back up to their current values in Castle Age and onwards. But you’d need to invest into it.
Add a few seconds on the production time as well in Dark Age and I think the unit should be pretty balanced.
What does lowering the pierce armor do? Well, you will be able to counter it with archers as soon as you hit the Feudal Age, and even more if you get a faster Crossbow timing.
I think the starting wood for the four SA civs could be toned down. If you’re going all-in on a Champi rush, your eco shouldn’t be that smooth. Settlements just feel a bit too cheap for how strong they are early on.
For the Champi Scout, I’d reduce the speed, maybe give it a bit more LoS to compensate, and increase the training time.
The Champi-line only feels broken in Dark Age because it comes out so early and nothing can really compete with it then. After that, it seems fine.
That said, it’s still too early to judge, the DLC’s been out less than a week and the meta is still forming. I don’t expect any update addressing the Champis anytime soon, unless something happens in TTL.
I think champis will be somewhat like early MAAs in AoE4: OP on release (they only took one damage from archers), and over time people will figure out how to handle them (less than a year later, high level players in AoE4 had no problems using archers to deal with early MAAs).
That said, I do think a training speed nerf for champi scouts would be appropriate, along with removing incas dark age food discount. And maybe slower build speed (for champis building outposts). But I don’t think much change is needed, and certainly nothing that would weaken their scouting abilities.
Not costing gold isn’t an advantage in early game, especially once natural food sources run out - AoE4 archers are more like AoE2 skirmishers than AoE2 archers. Comparison between games aren’t perfect, but I think the point remains: which units are OP can change without balance changes. And aggressive gameplay is easier and tends to be strong early in a games life cycle, and weakens as players figure out exactly how much they need to spend on defense and how much they can greed. With champis being new, I expect their offensive uses to weaken over time.
Settlements already cost 125 wood, but they could still increase it. Wouldn’t want to make it too expensive though.
I still think that the militia line should get a bonus against them. I think they should get the shock infantry armor class and the militias and MAA should get (more) Bonus Damage against that.
As these civs get Slingers they have then a tool against Infantry, which could be either already available from feudal (weaker with shadow upgrade) or get back a bit of the former high anti-infantry bonus damage,
The bigger issue though is that some of these civs have so strong dark age bonusses which also heavily depend on the maps actually, with the multi-utility of the settlements. That’s what makes the crush so problematic imo.
It’s a combination of multiple small factors and really tough - but I think if the militias would be slower but have bonus damage against champi we could find a healthy solution that is fine for most maps.
I also refer to the very aggressive maps where you still would make an early champi rush just because you can get them out a bit faster with the dark age bonusses of these civs, and then aim to get to feudal and other tools like archers, towers or potentially even slingers there. It would probably require a lot of finetuning, but conceptional it’s a path that can work.
The problem is that they want to put too many roles on 1 unit. scout, melee infantry, anti pierce unit, cavalry speed to catch archers. it just simply can’t be anything else than broken at this point.
Also would make them far more vulnerable to TC fire. Really wouldn’t want your starting champi scout to run underneath an enemy TC if the pierce armor is reduced (they’re already more vulnerable to that than a normal scout)
I agree. 130 or 135 sounds fair. Even when a settlement is placed on just one resource, it still can get extra value from being usable as a mill for farms (though that doesn’t apply when the settlement is placed on food specifically).
135 wood settlements and longer training time for champi scouts should keep things in check. Eagle scouts take 50 seconds to train (in feudal age), and used to take 60. Some dark age bonuses could be weakened or pushed back if an individual civ can still do a champi scout rush particularly well.
Each of those roles are shared with eagles. But eagles get a weakness to other infantry to compensate. I get the impression that champis aren’t quite as good as the militia-line in the role the militia-line plays (militia-line has better stats), and not quite as good as eagles in the roles that eagles tend to play (eagles become faster and get conversion resistance). But in exchange, they don’t get as much of the weaknesses of those unit-lines.
Yes, but eagles are countered by infantry and heavy cavalry, I think champi are that infantry which counter eagles even have bonus dmg against shock infantry. than only heavy cav is the counter to champi. or what is, mybe HC but that is imp?
I thought the same. This is really necessary. Scout cavalries work well vs champis now, but civs without scouts have to rely on archers.
This also allows the archer player to decide whether to counter attack or defend, because archers no longer auto die to 100 champis while moving across the map.