Over the past few years people have been talking about Franks being OP, then Gurjaras and Hindustani being OP and then nerfed…berbers is a civ secretly stays at top 5 or even top 3 for all the time, current patch Berbers is highest winrate on Arabia above 1200 elo, at 56%, according to aoepulse.
Opposite to Chinese, Berbers has a very high winrate at mid level (top 5 civ), and starts to fall behind only at above 2000 elo, all pros ranks Berbers only B tier or Mid tier, despite the winrate being top 5 for every patch, across the majority of player base. What’s the reason behind?
15% cheaper knights is very strong, easy to use and hard to fight against. Also it’s somewhat easy to get there unpunished unless it’s very high elo (from what I remember I felt up to like 1600-1700ish elo you can pretty much get away with Scouts into fast Castle and can even skip Skirms).
Berbers need more nerfs, especially the stable discount and the vills speed. Their vills speed should remain 5% at all ages and their stable discount should be 10% castle, 15% imp instead of 15%, 20%.
The civ honestly is so strong (almost broken), S tier UU (so strong like Mangudai), and also have UTs both of them make their UU created faster and generate hp.
They have a very big tech tree and great eco with the faster vills.
they lack Halberdier, they lack Arbalest, hurr cav civ is good at using cav, pls nerf
I think one thing newer players don’t understand is that lacking Halberdier in late game is a HUGE deal because Halberdier is a bit of a universal unit in late game, it has everything you want, including: costs mostly food, has enough attack to be an OK raiding unit, protects Siege which at this stage can only really be threatened by mounted units (which Halbs get a huge bonus vs), does acceptably vs Arbalest (meaning that it forces opponent to micro or stand next to a Castle) and does reasonably well vs Skirms. Lacking Halberdier alone is worth like 3 slots in what you call a “wide tech tree” (meaning that if Berbers gained Halberdier and lost BBC, Hussar and 1 more tech, they would probably be about as strong). So don’t let the number of items fool you, counting the number of techs a civ has is NOT how you judge if a civ has a wide tech tree.
Berbers are literally a noob stomper, yes Knights are hard to beat but that’s because lower elos can’t micro Monks properly and transition into Pikeman when appropriate. They are still a civ with no bonuses in Dark/Feudal age, civs like Khmer, Mongols, Lithuanians outpace Berbers with a more aggressive early game, and having a better early game is generally more important than having a good Castle Age.
In Imp they are strong but not overly so, Cavalier is not comparable to Paladin in terms of power level, and here Berbers are restricted by pop efficiency: yes, cheap Cavalier is nice, but it’s still Cavalier, it’s not something like Lithuanians Paladin with 4 Relics or a mass of Elephant Archers.
Their UU, aside from the fact that you shouldn’t judge the power of a civ by how strong the UU is, is most definitely not comparable to Mangudai. It is a good UU, with 8 base attack in the Imp version, but its DPS is MUCH lower than Mangudai. While Mangudai stomps any unit (including Paladin for example), Camel Archers are barely better than a generic Heavy CA vs non-CA units.
As for their Castle Age, yes cheap Knights is strong and has potential to end the game on the spot, but other civs have similar power spikes. For example, you can die to a Tatars player selling Stone, rushing Castle age and killing your (few) +2 Knights with Thumb Ring Xbow. It’s as strong as Berbers cheap Knights but I don’t see people complain about that. Much like many power spikes, what you gain in terms of power, you lose in terms of predictability. Without scouting, you can generally guess Berbers will go Knights in Castle age, and open for example 3 TC + Monastery, BAM, suddenly you outboom them + already start making the counter unit.
tl;dr: Berbers are a noob stomper but most certainly not OP. They are in fact one of the most well-designed civs in the game. if you hate losing to Berbers, you hate losing to all Cavalry civs.
I have to disagree with you. Berbers are top tier civ any Elo and any range. They are top choices picking at all tournaments in all types of maps. The civ has a very hight winrates at a wide range of the players base at any level.
They indeed need nerfs, 5% should remain for all ages and also their stable discount need a nerf if not even also their UU.
I used to do this mistake up until DOI. Bengalis and Dravidians tech tree taught me how important “Knight” alone is.
While that’s true, they are almost as good in pro’s hands. From 1200+ elo they have 54%+ W/R in Arabia. Which falls of very very slowly with elo to 53% at 2400+ elo. (Using Xbox update patch, so Hindustanis and Poles didn’t get nerf). Things are looking even better in current patch with minimum of 57% W/R in 1200 and maximum 62% W/R at 1800+ elo.
I feel this is only half of the truth, because it still loses to every unit besides heavy cavalry. And when playing Berber we are kind of the cavalry guy anyways.
I never heard anybody complaining about Saracens, Berbers and italians trash units. Not necessarily the best, but very well ranked (especially berbers with hussar discount and smooth transition):
Berbers got a nice back line and tools against melee cavalry and halberdiers in 1v1.
Maybe the lack of eco bonus (sleeping on the vil movement speed) make them afraid of falling back in the early game ?
Maybe knights are very dominant nowadays and people do not want to go cavalry against them ?
Yes we want to get as close as possible to 50%, that’s how you balance civ bonuses. In aoe3 the civs are so unbalanced there are civs with 70% to 75% winrate…that’s why I quit that game.
Most random thing of the day. The first time ever I see someone call Berbers as broken.
That’s their only benefit economically.
Its one of the worst economic bonuses in the game, nearly negligible. It has like 3-4% impact on farming rates pre-wheelbarrow and afterwards its like less than 1%. Very moderate impact on lumberjacks as well until much later stages of the game where you might not rebuild camps often.
A tier UU. The stats you look when you click the unit don’t show certain hidden items like attack delay, rate of fire, bonus damage against siege etc. Heads-on they might win Mangudai but Mangudai fare so much better against most of the units.
If you’ve been facing them a lot on the ladder that’s because Mongols, Franks, Huns, Gurjaras have been picked too often in the last 6 months and they do well against some of those civs.
In general I agree that halberdiers add a lot of late game value, especially for a civ which doesn’t contain good eco bonuses like Berbers. But its not a HUGE deal if civ has stronger early game eco like the pre-nerf Poles, Hindustanis and Gurjaras. On the other hand civs with bonuses on their halberdiers like Dravidians, ######### ###### Burmese are mediocre at best. So the premise of not needing a nerf or buff isn’t dependent on having halberdiers. The halberdier upgrade adds value after 45 mins while 70% of the open map games finish before that.
This actually is the reason why they don’t need nerfs. They fall behind a majority of the civs before castle age and then play catchup for quite sometime. So they have their ups and downs. And like you said good players know how to estimate their up-zone and handle it better.
If cavalry discount gets nerfed they’ll become nearly unusable and comparable to the likes of Bengalis or current Goths, Dravidians. Ok maybe that’s a bit too much but they’ll become significantly weak on open maps and they’re already a below average civ on closed maps.
