Buff suggestions for Aztec and India in Treaty

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Hi All,

I know most people don’t play Treaty so the balance patches tend to skew towards supremacy tweaks. I have a few minor buff suggestions for two civs I am quite comfortable with that I don’t think would effect supremacy. I am currently hovering around rank 100 for treaty if that changes anyone’s opinion of my thoughts. I have included a Tier list below which is used in the Treaty League and is created through discussion with players ranked in the top 10.

I want to start off by saying these buffs are not supposed to catapult any civ from Tier 3 to S tier, or even Tier 1. I think trying to buff in one big jump is how civs become way overpowered, or way underpowered if you nerf everything at once.

The reason I want to buff India and Aztec is they are consistently considered at the bottom of the tier list for Treaty Civs and there is no reason to not buff them. The problem is how to buff them without buffing supremacy games. As an aside they may or may not need a buff in supremacy but I don’t play that mode so I am assuming for right now that they don’t need one.

For India I think they should make troops train faster through a card buff to the existing training time card or add a training time reduction to another card. Just making them come out five percent faster would be really helpful in helping them sustain a fight. I think adding a new card would hurt India more then necessary based on their current rank as they already have so many cards they want. India has decent units and a strong eco but their main weakness is how slow units train. This change would keep India’s core identity the same, provide a small buff to their weakest aspect, but not push them into OP status. Also, by using a card you are severely restricting its use for supremacy players as there are much higher value cards.

A more controversial change, which would benefit India for all game modes, would be to make their siege elephants have slightly higher range when attacking but not when sieging. India struggles vs civs with culverins because of how short their range is compared to a culverin. This change is something I would be fine seeing, but also understand if it did not happen, as it would remove some of the skill expression present in India. High level players can macro their cannons really well so moving them in and out of the fight is an advantage. For worse players, macroing in a massive 100 pop army can be very hard and the low range means your elephants will die before they even fire sometimes.

For Aztec I would suggest a simple buff to their late game eco by buffing existing farming and estate cards. This again should not really effect supremacy but would benefit Treaty a lot. The problem with Aztec in a 1v1 game is that you need to win on the first or second push or you are going to drain. If they added a slight increase to gather rates, say 10%, that would let solo Aztec players survive and actually trade with players, rather then just overwhelm the opponents at the beginning. This would buff Aztec in 2v2 as well but since you can pair them with a civ like Germany which has a massive economy the buff would not be as prevalent. This could be accomplished by reducing unit costs or something along those lines but that would effect supremacy games and would make them really imbalanced in team games where allies can feed you. That is why I think increasing the gather rate is the best path forward.

Let me know what you guys think. Personally I would love to see changes to other weak civs and nerfs to the strong civs because I like to see variety. I think we should aim to have all the civs around the Tier 2 level.

Tier List:

S Tier: China, Inca, Lakota, USA, Ethiopia, Hausa

Tier 1: Spain, Portuguese, France, Japan, Sweden

Tier 2: British, Haudenosaunee, Germany

Tier 3: Russia, Ottoman, Dutch, India, Aztec

Tier 4:

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We suggested that again and again, but for the moment no luck. It’s sad because that could be so easily done.

For infantry, I suggest to but the missing -25% training time to the card Green Jacket (it’s the one used to get +1.00 bonus against heavy infantry for Gurkha), while removing the (totally useless?) part about gaining Gurkhas with consulate techs.

For Camels, I’d just work on the monastery tech adding an extra -15% that is missing.

How easy would that be?

I thing one of the main issue is actually that they are tagged as Light Cavalry, so they are countered by Skirmishers, a type of units they will need to walk into if they want to get in range to other sieges units.

I think people underestimate their eco.
They have the best farm gathering of all civs after all.

To me the issue is that the army is too weak and need to be replaced too fast for the eco to keep up.
That’s why in my post about Natives Civilizations boosts I suggested to only change their army.

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I agree with both your points about India. I think there are a few buffs that could work depending on what way the devs want to go with it. I think the training time is an easy no brainer though. It’s a why not for me.

As for Aztec I don’t find their units too bad personally but that could be me. I haven’t played them in a few patches outside of casual games where opponent skill varies greatly. I am not sure I agree on the farming though. Every time I play them or see them played I find their score at 40 minutes to be very low compared to other civs. I think a better eco is still an easy buff for them.

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For India I had suggested some improvements in the wonders to make it more feasible for the treaty.

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if india had maybe 10 or 15% train time reduction on infantry and siege elephants were not randomly tagged as anticavalry (thus being randomly and entirely stupidly countered by skirms. yup an artillery countered by skirms, goons and culvs what a great unit) and we just classified like a real artillery unit then india would be absolutely fine in treaty. especially if you know how to use tigers

Azzy is complicated. in my opinion they need a riding school card to fix erks and coyo train times. Their eco is fine generally, they mostly drain because they’re always sitting at like 160/200 pop so they’re always outnumbered. Erks are terrific units if you manage to get enough of them out simultaneously. with a train time fix they could utilize attack dance more and thus be drastically more competitive

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Interesting. I hadn’t seen that post. My only problem with changing wonders is that it can also effect supremacy. I don’t think that’s the end of the world personally but it makes the changes a little harder to do as you need to consider more factors. That is why I tried to limit my changes to cards.

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Yes. That is why it is more focused on the late game. All units are good and do not require radical changes. Zamburasks should have more range and troop training should be faster in the late game.

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Seems like training time is the one thing everyone agrees on. As for Aztec I agree that it is much more complicated. They are just in general a more complex civ then India I would say. There are a few ways to change Aztec and I would be happy to see any of them. I don’t find that I am constantly underpop though. The key for Aztec is to change dances a lot to fit what you need. You can spam units if you want with the dance swaps but it takes a lot of micro.

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Yeah but supremacy does go late sometimes I assume. I am not an expert on that so I didn’t want to comment on supremacy balance and seem ignorant. I can’t comment on the camels other then to say they are very weak and I never use them because of that.

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For aztecs I would buff their coin eco by adding (maybe to vills temple, its a worse eco theory in my opinion) the efect of rising base gather rate of estates to 0.65 to reach european lvls, it can sound too much but natives have 30% less by upgrades having less cards too without factories or similar and needing dancers. With this change they could move more villagers to food while they have a strong plaza. Most players dont go full plaza but this is their main feature, if they dont do that inca can reach a better plaza without sacrifying villagers.

About army, Coyote runners dont have any bonus while other shock infantry do, maybe a bonus vs skirmishers like the asian cavalry one could improve their durability.

Also I hope that JPK attack keeps as high as it has been until right now. They can change them as they did with sepoys, boosting their imperial upgrade if they want nerf stats for supremacy OR move the nerf with the cost reduction to the card that enables them at age 2.

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I was thinking the main thing they need is a stronger coin eco so I agree on that front. I also hadn’t taken into account the 15 vils that can go on the plaza and therefor can’t gather for you. Another good reason to buff eco.

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The problem is that their units are kinda expensive, especially in gold which they have only 2 card upgrade for late game. Jaguar prowlers are too slow right now, they can’t even engage other units so they are mainly a waste of resources and get you drained really fast.
Aztec players are forced to produce eagle warriors (the only effective cav counter they have) for every porpuse even vs skirmishers, and those require half food half coin production.

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Could always add some extra permanent effect to all the one time big buttons of aztec.

The big button in military buildings could reduce train time by 10% each.

Big buttons on farm and es ate could give extra gather %

Big Button in town center for jaguars could buff them somehow, like 5% HP each time.

In my opinion atzec need a 1000 wood infite cars in age 4. Even thought aztec aren’t very wood dependant with that card that turns unit cost to gold, still they have one of the hardest timecto get wood lategame.

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outro post sobre a índia acho que ja e o 5º ou 6º pedindo pra polir o treinamentos da infantaria mais os devs não escutam índia em tratado e perda de tempo jogar com ela muito raro ganhar sem ser o mapa dos andes com tecnologia inca !

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Too expensive for a civilization that didnt use gold as coin and instead used food as currency (cacao), but I’m going off tracks.

What about having a “unique” animal like the Incas with the llamas to replace villagers in the plazas?

Or increasing by 50-100 pop limit of native civs?. Also some civs like natives need a factory type building, don’t know how Plaza resource trickle % compares to factory or the like.

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I would be happy with an animal, although dancing animals does seem odd but it is just a game.

I don’t think increasing the pop limit would work personally. It would just make them way more of an overwhelm civ or they lose the push and drain faster. There are some other wierd things they could do along these lines too, like extra villagers and 20 extra pop so it doesn’t hurt the army but that just feels like a bad work around. I think buffing the eco enough so that it can hold a bit but doesn’t become OP would be best. That way you can choose if you want to fight with a full plaza and drain resources or use a less effective plaza.

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Please add a card to increase Indian units train time, or as a tech in the monastery. For treaty purposes, its abysmal train times make it impossibly hard to sustain many cycles of battle without quicker reinforcements.

Altering the Royal Green Jackets card to include a reduction in train time would make for an unfair advantage to the Indian player in supremacy games, which is something best left untouched.

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They already have Warrior Priest, have you ever played aztecs?

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Warrior priest is not an animal like the llamas for the Inca. If you wanted to say its like the Inca priestess you would be right.

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Do they use that card in supremacy and if so how far into the game? As I understand things in supremacy shipments are used on resources or units mostly so I don’t see this card being sent much.