My friends and I have been discussing the Burgundians “Castle Age Cavalier” upgrade, and by testing it myself in some actually 4v4 game play, I think that it is not as good as it might seem. 150 food and 150 gold is cheap, yes…but you might be better off chunking out more knights if you are planning to do a early Castle Age rush with knights.
My theory is that the Cavalier upgrade will ONLY be mainly useful for a Burgundian player, if they fight a prolonged Castle Age war and have pumped out a significant number of knights from Stable production to justify the cost (and time) in researching it. All you really get from the Cavalier tech is additional HP (basically…it is like expensive 2nd Bloodlines tech for all other civs, and the “actual Bloodlines” tech for a Burgundians player, who lacks Bloodlines).
Please note that this is all theory and that I may be wrong based on further experimentation and study by me, and other players.
Cavalier have 12 attack instead of the 10 a knight has. It is not justr bloodlines. Burgundians may justify to add an additional 3rd stable and delay the town centers a bit, just to get the cavalier upgrade and will have the clear edge in knight fights.
But yeah, the problem I have with both these civs is not that they are new, or might be op, but how much it changes what it means to play Age of Empires: Now a Civ can suddenly get gold continuesly even in 1v1? Now Military units can suddenly construct towers in my base? Now I need to be aware of villagers when raiding, because they can suddenly turn into military? What the fuck? that is not Age of Empires II anymore. Thats AoE3 if anything.
The Burgundian Cavalry bonusses are interesting, this other shit is an atrocity.
TBH they went out of their way to prevent this. Maybe people will misuse their eco bonus at the beginning, so they needed cav upgrades at half cost on top of cavalier one age earlier
From my understanding the Burgundians are like an easier variation of the Lithuanians. More attack in Castle Age on your knights, the UU does more damage, so armor doesn’t matter. Also a relic bonus.
What I find interesting is that they can consistently go for the paladin upgrade in 1v1. The +20Hp from bloodlines doesn’t really matter if your opponent can only field cavalier and has no camels, because halbs get countered by the better hand cannons. Let’s see how they unfold
I hate how everyone is like “well, lets see them wreck everyone on the ladder before we do anything about it, its just to early to tell without data!”.
I even agree partially: It IS rough to tell how much a change will impact gameplay, let alone a whole new civ. But the stuff burgundians get seems to be just so insanly OP.
Their UU oneshots Monks, vills, arbs and a group of just 3 can oneshot trebs and heavy camels. The ONLY counter i can imagine is a huge ball of halbs, but even they need to be backed by a mass of siegeram to actually force longer engagments.
Their chavalier upgrade gives you the value of an armor upgrade, two attack upgrades and bloodlines (combined 1160 res!) for just 300 res. They save a total of 935 res when upgrading their cav to “generic” level in castle. For comparison, Franks (a very strong civ!) save 250 on their kts and 400 on farm upgrades. But this comparison sucks: Franks save those res early on, but are pretty generic later into castle. Burgundians are definitly not. So Burgundians are just a way, way better version of one of the strongest civs in the game when it comes to kts rushing.
Again, we dont know yet how it will play out. But why risk breaking the game for weeks by releasing them like this? From a player perspective, an OP civ does so much more harm than one that is slightly below the curve. The decision to release the Burgundians as they are was clearly done from a buisness logic. They dont want a balanced game, they want money.
That’s not true. The cavalier upgrade only brings +20HP and +2 attack, no armor. Because they are lacking bloodlines their fully upgraded castle age cavalier are like lithuanian knights with two relics. Thats not insane, its a slight power spike.
Also don’t forget that Franks get a whole lot of “free” eco bonueses where they don’t have to spend any res. Burgundians still have to invest to get value. They are actually fine, maybe the coustillier needs some tweaking but they are not “bRoKEn”
Upps, thats true. I somehow always think that chavalier get 2/3 armor. Makes the whole thing a bit less one sided. Still, its a lot of value for a very cheap upgrade.
Well, it’s still much better than the Lith bonus since 150f150g and a stable are easy to get, while a monastery + monks + units to protect said monks is much slower and a bigger investment.
That’s true, but it’s not an unbalanced mess. There is enough counter play to knights so it is very much counterable. They are still pretty vulnerable in early game.
exactly. they get a stronger mid game but a weaker late game.
actually the more i look at it, the less busted i think Burgundians are. they are going to have a good castle age for sure, and a good early imp. but yeah.
still strong. still probably need a nerf, but they aren’t completely over the top.
The problem is, the sheer savings from half paladin upgrade means it will take a long time for the Burgundian advantage to disappear, even compared to something as strong as Lith palas (so imagine for civs with generic palas). And IF you don’t win by then, you can click Burgundian vineyards to have infinite gold…
It’s probs not as dumb as OP Cuman but this sets the bar so high it leaves a lot of room for a civ to be OP.
I agree, if you don’t have access to camels the late game will get tough. However the theme with the Burgundians is that all their strenghts are behind a paywall (meaning techs), apart from that, they are generic.
