Not gonna argue halbs ruining this but the scenario didnt mention them and was specifically monk/bbc implying the player wasnt using Rax for some reason
Honestly, I disagree with them having a limited tech tree. What are they lacking? Fortified wall? No, their only real weakness is on their archer line, xbow specifically. But I would not want them to have access to xbow, it’s one of their most distinctive traits.
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Good for you. I also said I don’t dislike them as much as others.
I liked them for not having eco bonus. And I want to have them that type of play style. If anything I’d double down their aggressive style instead of throwing another eco bonus.
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The question is, how?
I’ve been looking over their tech tree, and what more can you really give them that wouldn’t feel completely out of place and would actually help? Exaggerating the Barracks bonuses would make them more powerful at rushing, but wouldn’t really help with the weakness to archers. Giving them bonuses to Skirms might help alleviate the archer weakness but would feel pretty out of sequence with the other bonuses. Buffing the pierce armor on their scout cavalry might help but could make them pretty OP in the lategame combined with Stirrups. Free Bloodlines would undoubtedly help but would also be pretty dang OP.
I dunno…maybe… “Infantry +1% speed per blacksmith technology researched”?
That would put their MAA at .95 speed in feudal, which might be enough to keep them from being as hard countered by archers, while simultaneously allowing their scouts or skirmishers to counter them in turn?
What about skirmishers +1/+1 armor? This doesn’t help in the late game more than normal since they lack the armor upgrade.
Siege bonus that will help in Castle Age and not need to wait till Imperial.
Anything other than monk and foot archer will be fine. Even Cavalry Archer fire one additional arrow will be within their tech tree imho.
Looking at the stats, all the 5 worst match ups - Huns, Mongols, Berbers, Magyars and Tatars, are Cavalry Archer civ (less or more). So a skirmisher bonus make sense. But that’s one of the “Out of place” thing imho. Hera in one of his video said scorpion is underestimated against CA. They are harder to dodge compared to mangonel and they have 1 extra PA and take only 1 damage from CA. So my scorpion +20% speed bonus will actually help them where needed. If you want some original bonus, scorpion +x attack vs cavalry archer also work.
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Final archer armor would be nice AND play into their smithing bonuses and might even encourage cav archer play/support
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I’d support some sort of scorpion buff, as that would synergize really nicely with their infantry, but I don’t see 20% being enough to make too much difference, as I feel that would still be too slow to dodge mangonel fire effectively. After all, archers are pretty much balanced against mangonels(when they’re pathing correctly), and they move 47% faster and have a much smaller hitbox. And even there, it’s almost impossible to effectively micro against 2-3 at once.
If you can still lose all your scorpions to one undodgeable mango shot, they’re not going to be terribly useful.
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I’m not against it. But thing is their most vulnerable point is Castle Age.
Bulgarians have some good cavalry to snipe the mangonel. But yeah, the speed boost can be higher. As I also mentioned scorpion in general should be 0.05 tiles faster. That will result in a +30% from current speed.
I don’t want to reverse the counter mechanics though. Let the battle be CA + mango vs Knight/Konnik + Scorpion.
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Decent cavalry, but nothing special, and somewhat weak to archers going into castle age, same as many knight civs, unless you’ve already got some scouts massed. That’s the big thing, I think; they’re not just weak in castle age, they’re weak in early castle age, especially going into a pre-existing mass of archers. That’s how their winrate curve reads to me; if they can survive even a few minutes, they can improve their winrates dramatically, but that means surviving through when the archer line is at its peak.
The more I think about it, the more it feels like castle age scorpions are going to come in too late to make much difference, even with a speed bonus. Siege already counters crossbow play effectively, after all. More scorpion speed might steepen the curve a bit after early castle age, but I can’t see it doing anything to where they’re rock-bottom.
I think changes need to come in earlier, to help give some counterplay to archers earlier, like in late feudal.
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First mango at every siege workshop trains instantly? Not a lot of archer fear now boys
Xbow for open maps, monks & BBC for closed maps, navy for water maps.
This is the Spanish identity, they lacked xbow long before Bulgarians were introduced. Bulgarians are not special for lacking it.
Access to xbow lets them make better use of the blacksmith bonus for aggression. It can also force the enemy into skirms which require 2 blacksmith techs/age. The more the enemy invests in the blacksmith, the more Bulgarians catch up to the enemy in terms of total resources.
You are power creeping on Celts who are already not being played much in tournaments and were already power crept on by Lithuanians.
Celts have more speed and still don’t use MAA that much. Not to mention how much Bulgarians have to invest just to max out this bonus and catch up to archers while the opponent only invests into 2-3 techs.
Except Bulgarians don’t need RAA to play CA. They are viable right now, CA + Hussar is their best comp. RAA is the least important upgrade for CA and even CA civs like Huns lack RAA. Bulgarians are already strong in Imp, they need support in Castle age.
You are power creeping on Mongols. I don’t like buffing Bulgarians in a way that makes existing civs feel less unique.
Simplest solution is to give them xbow. They could make archers in Feudal and transition into xbow in Castle. Xbow are an aggressive unit that the enemy cannot ignore and forces the enemy to invest accordingly.
If you think Burmese power crept Aztecs, feel free to think like what you said.
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They’re one of two civs to lack it; that’s still pretty dang special, imo. Special enough to be extremely cautious about changing it if there’s ANY other option.
Celts are fine; they’re currently sitting at a ~53% winrate at 1900+.
This WOULD overlap with them a bit, but it would never be as strong, since you’re lacking the last archer armor upgrade. And you wouldn’t get to the full 14% speed bonus until the imperial age. Oh, they’d need to lose Squires, of course; 25% speed would be broken.
Where it would really help is in the feudal age. Right now, MAA are dead against archers, because they can’t get away. With this, they’d move at 0.945, making it much easier to evade enemy archers, allowing them to buy time they need to make it past their early-castle weakness.
Being able to constantly harass your enemy with infantry means they have to keep closer to home to protect themselves. That means you have more time to get Kreposts up, which counters the archers. Get two kreposts up and you’ve got full coverage against attack and you can progress on to your lategame comp in relative safety.
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I dont thonk its that complicated, just buff their blacksmith discount
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Hera suggested make their TC stone discount to 75%.
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Yes, they do. Devs have already done it, but we should avoid adding to it.
Due to Hoang rush which gets too predictable the more higher in elo you go. That is why they are not played in tournaments.
So, still slower than archers at 0.96 speed. While Bulgarians are getting 5 blacksmith techs to make MAA still slower than archers, the enemy just gets fletching and goes to Castle. No one uses all 5 blacksmith techs in feudal, so this is too expensive for too small reward.
I think there is a simple yet elegant way to buff the Bulgarians in castle age: free ballistics.
That will make an archer play actually a bit viable in early-mid. It will also buff their cav archers.
It can even result in a bit stronger skirms earlier on, to protect your militia-line if you are going infantry against an archer civ.
Not sure when free ballistics should be available though - either directly upon reaching castle age or only after building a university.
Alternatively, maybe make the university available in Feudal age (with only a limited number of castle age techs in it, of course, otherwise it will be too OP).
Not too historically accurate, though.
The Hoang Rush certainly plays a role, but if you look at their winrate curve, you can see they’re really quite decent throughout the game.
If any civ is going to use as many blacksmith techs as possible, it’d be the Bulgarians. Rather than thinking of it as a 1% bonus, it could more adequately be thought of as a roughly 20% bonus per tech level, since each additional percentage point would result in being closer and closer to archers.
The difference between 0.06 and 0.01 speed difference is actually quite profound, since the one allows for effortless micro, while the other means even stopping for a moment to fire almost guarantees taking damage.
I feel like buffing their TC discount would have a relatively minor impact, all things considered. Not nothing, for sure, but I don’t think it would have the sort of impact people are really looking for.
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Fair enough. Still, the majority of others do not.
Your idea is not in the direction I like because I dont see Bulgarians as “a civ suppoaed to transit archers into scorpions” like a scouts into knights (as it goes to far awaty from the Blacksmith usage designbI see in them), but the idea has merit.
This sounds like a ridiculous overstatement. I am not a BF player, but if monks turbo hard counter onagers, Celt wouldnt be that popular.
Slavs would also struggle vs bbc+monk civs it it were that easy.
If giving Faith to Bulgarians improve considerably their BF strengh, this may be a way to go.
Do you mean nerfing the team bonus ? Their TB ia super cool but kind of useless compared to most TB. In my proposal I buffed it from 80% to 200% and do not think it would become a strong bonus…
I agree that buffing the discount is a good way to go designwise.
Well, I would trust Hera over anyone on this forum to buff Bulgarians at 1900+ elo only. As your graph shows, Bulgarians has very good win rates below 1900 Elo.
Players justify Bulgarians buff by saying pros dont play them (or with the “not interesting civ” thing, that is wrong when regarding the average 2% play rate).
If Hera says Bulgarians would get stronger at early castle age thanks to 4 TCs boom after (wood discounted) tower, then I believe this may be the case for pros. Pros usually do not go muvh on stone while aging up to castle age, unless they tower fought. And even then Bulgarians already have an advantage (less stone per TC & Kreposts follow up option).
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