No clue how people here conclude that Burgundians need a buff - they are fine
Iāll admit, I thought at release Burgundians were stupid broken. After playing them a decent amount on Arabia, my lower than average win totals with them now make me feel differently lol. That said, Iād only introduce a slight change because I still fear that cavalier spam in castle age could get out of hand with too much of an early buff. I think the slight eco tech cost reduction isnāt a terrible idea.
2 Likes
Not suggesting anything, but my current issues with Burgundians:
- Early eco tech paying off too late. The upfront cost too much and the earlier the higher the real cost. I often find using this bonus actually putting me behind in early game
- Late game units have low ceilings and kind of lacked a punch (i.e. Paladin & Elite Coustillierā¦ such low health) at least compared to many other late game options other civs have. Few things are fully upgraded.
- Related to 2. I guess they have strictly stronger gunpower in many situations, but transition into gunpowder feels awkward.
- Overpowered when youāre already winning. Lackluster otherwise.
1 Like
These balance threads should always start with what is wrong (so this can be verified by consensus) and then progress to what would undo that wrong.
One problem with Burgundians is that their āecoā bonus for all intents and purposes only applies to the wood upgrades as even the food upgrades translate to saving wood. And because you have low villager counts earlier in the game researching them early tops out at a bonus equivalent to like 100-200 wood at the beginning of each age if you can research it ASAP. Steps for addressing this:
- Recognize that Burgundians effectively pay to have the Celtās wood bonus w.r.t. early wood upgrades
- Realize wheelbarrow and handcart are far too expensive in TC time and resources to afford early.
- Recognize that the value from seeding an upgraded farm is at most 8-9 wood in terms of present value. It canāt go higher than this mathematically (60/e^(rt) - 60/e^(rkt) where t is the time to exhaust an unupgraded farm). Thus you need an unrealistic number of farms to be able to justify feudal heavy plow or dark-age horse collar.
- Heuristically this amounts to some kind of weird combo between Celts, Vikings, and Franks eco bonuses held back by the lower villager numbers in earlier ages.
Options to fix while keeping early access bonus:
- Uniform reduction: Reduce all upgrade costs by X/X+k/X+2k/X+3k% in dark/feudal/castle/imp. You can math out the maximum value from this. As a best guess Iād start with X=15 and k=5. If nothing else this gives Burgundians the option of some savings if they canāt afford it earlier.
- Make all upgrades research instantly. Fixes the problem with wheelbarrow and handcart somewhat.
- Combine the two by reducing the magnitude of one/both.
- Any other ideas?
Proper eco bonuses can make or break civs on their own. Start with this and iterate from there.
3 Likes
Maybe a +50 food and wood would be a nice bonus to the civ as it will help you get the bonus early without putting you behind
I 100% love your proposal OP. It gets rid of those UT one times effects i and many others have strongly disliked from the beggining. Unfrotunetaly the devs are very fond of these. 
(They must have worked too much on aoe3 de before they started working on the dlcā¦)
i do not think that your changes are a big buff. Anyway, Burgundians should get an additiona civ bonus to be able to afford ealier eco techs:
-eco techs cost -50% food.
Vietnamese already have eco techs dont cost wood and chinese already have a generall tech cost discount, portuguese have faster research, so for burgudians to focus on food cost, i think this adds a bit of uniquness and fits there civ too.
1 Like
Flemish Militia should be train in Imp without the All-in tech or with an elite upgrade cost. That would change a lot though their early game would be still pretty weak.