Slavs have never been that great of a pocket civ- no early game eco bonus and no paladin turned them into the ultimate “close, but no cigar” cavalry civilization that could in theory have potential with boyars and that’s about it. In 1v1s they have also been underperforming to say the least due to how punishing their transitions in early imp are- maybe with the new patch that will change, but we are yet to see.
I do know that their identity is to be sort of a mixed bag civ with good monks, siege, cavalry, and infantry, and they do that with decent success in long drawn out games once they have set up their eco- but even then, there are Celts, there are all the other, better, cavalry civilizations, and infantry doesn’t win games, unless you are goths. And in the current state of the game Bulgarians do exactly what Slavs are supposed to in 1v1s and 2v2s, except faster and smoother, because of the instant/cheap upgrades that save about as much as Slav farmers generate extra anyway, on top of having Kreposts and cavalry archers as an option, as well as better cavalry to begin with.
My second point is this- Poles, Slavs, Khmer farming rate. As expected, Poles outperform Slavs initially, but that’s expected because they are required to build folwarks and be perfect with farm placement as well. But Khmer, even after all the nerfs, have faster base farming rate than both Slavs and Poles on top of not requiring you to place proper farms. Now, I know there is the cap of 24 food/sec, but by the time it is reached with hand card and paid for itself with all the upgrades, most 1v1s have ended and even 4v4s are wrapping it up as well. In addition to that, Poles have the not at all weak eco bonus of stone miners generating gold- if one presents an argument that Poles need to place their farms in a specific way to get the benefit, therefore they should have at least the same farming speed as Slavs.
Lovely civ, and truly a forgotten empire in its current state- all of it’s bonuses have been reiterated in better forms since the launch of DE. Even Orthodoxy, their castle age UT, hasn’t been touched yet, despite being arguably the most useless tech in the game, bordering boiling oil pre-DE.
Slavs seem to be in the lower half of the civs, but not in the range to demand a huge buff like the mentioned 15 % farming. Still, I think Slavs could use something, but more something to make the boyar play more appealing for them. Maybe a reduction of the training time of the boyars would help them in open maps to play more around it. 15 secs in a castle is quite high training time for such an important part of their unit roster.
Even right now Boyars don’t need a buff, especially after the melee armor increase, they made up for the cost.
As for the 15% farming bonus, no, Slavs were OP as hell at HD/Voobly with that bonus, and at that time the Boyar was much worse and Tracking was free, which was a useless bonus.
Sure Slavs aren’t seen stellar as they used to be at pre DE era, but still are much, much more powerful than several civs in the game.
As I said before, as long as some civs still continue to be that strong (Mayans, Franks), Slavs will look like too weak, which is false, nerf Franks and Mayans, then we will see more Slavs being picked at 1v1 and TGs, and Boyars will see more action if Frankish paladins are nerfed.
Would rather buff literally everything else over the farming bonus, that would just be reinforcing the identity of Slavs as a bland civ with nothing spwcial beyond the farming bonus. Give them free squires and arson and increase the siege discount as well as do something with orthodoxy (tbh I rather remove it as a UT and use it somewhere as “monks benefit from infantry armour upgrades”)
Boyars are one of the fastest, if not the fastest training unique cavalry unit. I doubt it’s gonna get much lower than that.
People thought were good because no other civ had a farming eco bonus, besides Vikings to an extent. Now that Khmer and Poles exist, I struggle to see reasons for it- Khmer have a better 1v1 tech tree, a better eco bonus, and a smoother gameplay because of their unit options- as well as better cavalry overall.
The devs haven’t showed any intentions to do so, instead nerfing Lithuanians, which weren’t even the top tier pocket civ.
Yes please. I would be fine with the state of Slavs as they are if powerhouses like Franks, Mayans, Burgundians didn’t exist, but even then, Slav imp is very generic. Nobody would mind a more useful castle age UT.
tbf he’s talking about a farming speed bonus(as he pointed out khmer and poles), thus only really aztecs…
this was super weird…
slavs arent bad, so for now this is probably the better idea… its a semi useless tech, if it were made into a useful tech, slavs might not need anything else to be a solid A tier civ
maybe free arson can be a consolation for the discount to supplies (not that they necessarily need it, but its less useful than squires so a compromise for “losing” 75f 25g)
at least eagle counters were buffed, we can only hope for actual civ nerfs… it will be so weird when franks arent an auto pick in TGs anymore, and they dont have something like 300% the expected playrate in 1v1
Eh I think we can give them both of those techs considering we are talking of barracks techs. Tatars save way more in their tech didcounts for way better units
No, just like with spanish, there shouldnt be just one thing carrying a civ. For spanish it was conqs and for slavs their farms. Slavs are pretty balanced right now, just really boring and generic. Which also comes from the reason that they have a very weak bonus i.e. free tracking or now free supplies and two useless unique technologies. Orthodoxy just shares the problem of most monk UTs that its timing is not helping a monk rush cause you need a castle and UT first. And druzhina is strong, but also that expensive that it basically doesnt matter. Also having druzhina wont change the fact that champs kill trash already and halbs kills cavs and they still have their weaknesses to range. It would only matter if it happens that you fight other specialized infantry units - any other civ wouldnt even dare to take the risk of running against druzhina.
Slavs just need some cherry that makes them unique. This can be like a unique building or a second UU. Kremlin as a heavy 5x5 castle could be possible or streltsy
This is a great video. Poles farms are honestly broken. having the food instantly is such an insane bonus, poles coudl queue 3 vills immidietly after just building the farms when slavs are still basically at 0.
with the statistics available seeing poles being by far the best arena and imperial age civ in game, due to their insane eco bonuses, knights discounts, and the obuch and the s tier hussar, a nerf is really justified.
give folwarks 5 garrison space and nerf that instant food to 5%, please.
poles weakness on open map is adressed as well as their opness on closed ones.
on a sidenote, poles folwark broke my nothing map creation due to being too good, which is really sad
Oh, thanks for asking. It’s called almost nothing (it’s on the work shop).
It used to be the only scenario that has koth +regicide ikpelented by triggers, but with the last patch that’s a native option with a single click so nothing special anymore.
The maps is almost empty besides a few deep fish around the edges. The map works like this, you can train sheep in your town center, and research cows too. While you are researching double bid axe (it never finishes) your food is exchanged 1:1 to wood. The more lumbercamos you have the faster the exange rate.
Lastly birds spawn randomly, fly around a bit, and then explode, leaving behind some gold deposits and then reapawn again.
My previous work exploding birds nothing was basically just build around that with birds randomly exploding for elefants, stone, wolfs, gold, even wood. It is super chaotic and very different. But I haven’t updated that map in a year.
I think it must be at minimum 8 garrison space. Every time you can garrison less than the units you would put to work around that building all the units that can’t be garrisoned are usually doomed.
So it must be 8 minimum for the folwark.
And I agree that the amount of food is just too much if you get away with the greed. We see it in arena where poles currently dominate. As a cavalry civ with very limited tools.
That’s absurd and need to be adressed. I mean I don’t even play arena but if I see that kind of stats I say “holy xxx, how can this be a thing?” - ad it’s the second most played map. Why do the arena players accept this civ being totally OP on their map?
I think in general giving the folwark garrison space but reduce the effect is the right approach. But I also would increase the area of effect so you can place a folwark in a way it influences all farms around a tc. TCs are just too important for your worker’s protection on open maps, I think the current stats show that the idea of “eco vs protection” is just rigged as in open maps raiding is so extremely powerful that you only get away with that kind of greed if you play extremely defensive.
So we have a tool that let play a mid-game cavalry powerhouse civ greedy and defensive on open maps… What could possibly be wrong with that?
I’m not opposed to it being 8, but I typically try to place the folwark 3 tiles away from a TC, so that 3 farms are adjacent to the TC. This means that only 5 farmers are really exposed so 5 garrison space could be ok.
? What kind of precision do you have? Really it’s hard enough to garrison your vills in time when you are raided. How do you mage to select exactly 5 vills to garrison?
And how do you place your first folwark close enough to the tc? don’t you forage your berries?
Sorry but please be a bit reasonably when it comes to that kind of action under pressure. They must be a bit forgiving, otherwise it’s basically useless.
Fair enough. It wouldn’t be easy. As for berries, sometimes that first Folwark has to be further, and is very dangerous to farm around (except on arena). IMO its worth building a 2nd Folwark for farms in this case, especially if berries are forward. Then the first Folwark just becomes a part of the wall. Other times berries are 7-8 tiles from the TC so placing the Folwark ending at 6 isn’t bad. 5 does seem like a cleaner number though, adding 5 pop space and holding 5 villagers.
I would just make it 10. It’s not far away from 8 and a round number.
My Idea was to make folwark 50 Stone 100 Wood but the vills can also shoot arrows from the folwark like if you garrison in a TC (maybe lower range).
I know that wouild make the folwark basically the opposite it is currently, but as poles are clearly a cavalry civ it would fit that civ way better than the current folwark design. Then they would have better eco protection on open maps and could play way more agressive instead of defensive.
It means Poles can also build regular Mills as well? Stone is required to just build mill would be quite absurd.
I think just give garrison space of 10 and not available to shooting arrow and nerf folwark bonus to 5% is enough with maintaining current Folwark cost. It makes Balanced between open and closed map.