So I was thinking about it.
It is really hard to win against archer and cav archer civs with Bulgarians in castle age and later in imperial age.
Generally the most intuitive is to buff their siege.
I like the idea of giving Bulgarians free Siege Engineers or making their SW upgrades cost less.
But those come into play just too late.
I think a better solution is to give their siege +1 pierce armor as a civ bonus. Makes it so much better to counter archers in castle age with mangonels or scorpions and the effect is still but much less visible in Imperial Age.
Huh? They have skirmishers with most upgrades, and Idk why you would be struggling against archers in castle age when their cavalry options are so good. You could also try pike siege. a mangonel and two scorpions do wonders against an archer army
I would propose giving them Siege technologies costing 40% less. Bulgarians were tough at sieging cities and even wanted arabic mercenaries for that purpose, and I feel that having just ordinary siege is odd.
Exactly you don’t have any eco bonuses or direct military bonuses for the military you produce (apart from krepost). Realistically Bulgarians fall back compared to any other infantry civ when playing against archer civ.
Lacking defensive armor for skirms is a huge deal against arbalests and again - you cannot justify going it.
Mass knights die to monks+crossbow.
But how youc can give them eco bonus when Knights with Stirrups are close to be invincible, there’s basically a reason why they don’t have eco bonus, and what one could get whe all other are already taken by other civs.
I don’t buy all those “archers are OP” reasons for balancing civs. If you look up the winrates you will notice that none of the archer civs shows outstanding results. Also, the stats for Bulgarians do not display anything special about archer civs.
PS +1 pierce armor on siege makes no difference against crossbowmen.
yeah ive also made this mistake before… but as SC pointed out it makes no difference to xbows in castle age… it specifically only helps vs imperial archers…
Oh, please prove me wrong. Do tell me how a civ that gets amazing elite skirmishers, siege onager, siege ram, faster attacking cavalier and hussar with full upgrades, elite konnicks, and kreposts struggles against archer civs.
1111
If you have problem countering archers as Bulgarians then I fail to see how you counter archers at all since they have more than enough in their arsenal to deal with them; way more than most civilizations
Then make eco
You can make byzantine cataphracts work if you, ya know, actually boom into the option as opposed to just saying “they don’t have the eco for that” because they don’t have an economy bonus. Make vils, research heavy plow and double bit axe, it isn’t that difficult.