Champi Rush - Nerf Proposal

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

I’ve seen the problem of the Champi rush and some say it needs some nerf. So, this is my proposal so it doesn’t become a PITA but also is not exagerately nerfed.

  1. Nerf the Champi scout, make them as similar to militia as possible, especially the speed, so it is no longer attractive to make this Champi rush in Dark Age. For example, it may have 40HP (+5), 0.9 speed (-0.2), 0/1 armor (0/-1).
  2. Start with a Champi runner, a nerfed version if anything. This nerf should be only for Dark Age, as Feudal Champi Runners should remain unnerfed (at least regarding this issue).

In that way, the starting scout can still be a good scout, and new soldiers in Dark will be similar to militia.

What do you think?

4 Likes
2

This sounds like a good idea

3

I thought the same. But it would confuse the player as you start with a runner but can train scouts. So my proposal is adding some renaming.

Champi scout → Champi Militia
Champi Runner → Champi Scout

You start with a champi scout (formally champi runner) but in the Dark Age it has only 4 attack, 35 HP instead of 5 attack, 40 HP.

1 Like
4

If I remember correctly, these are the balances currently proposed by pros & co:

  • larger FoV, but slightly slower unit;
  • -1 base attack, but +1 bonus attack against the scout line;
  • in the Dark Age especially, outposts must be built more slowly;
  • longer production time
1 Like
5

Comparison of peak player numbers in January:

January 2020: 21231
January 2021: 38725 (Covid reason)
January 2022: 24730
January 2023: 28320
January 2024: 27934
January 2025: 29319
January 2026: 31163

I don’t believe the game is turning players off any more than before, because this comparison of peak monthly players is repeatable almost every month of the year. Statistics from Steam.

The game demands a lot of time to intellectualize, and having so much new content frustrates veteran players who have invested a lot of time to learn everything. However, whether you start with 30 civs or 100, learning a generic build order remains the same work :slight_smile: It’s only the lifespan that’s improved afterwards :wink:

1 Like
6

Well old fans like me are not gonna give up a game as soon as sth bothers us. But eventually when enough shit hits the game, even we will have enough.

I have troubles getting my friends to play as its already soo much. They didn’t play it like i did from cd version. And when they see so much un-intuitive units. They just don’t wanna play anymore. When DE came out i could say mangudai(siege) and huskarls(pierce) are strange others are logical, now its chaos :smiley: poison , aura, dot, slow.
It coudl be cool if it had meaningfull impact. But its there just for gimmic and to confuse players.

7

Will take you 5+ mins to just find your resources and wall positions, plus it can’t stop any other scout unit from laming boar. Maybe you can do something like new champis produced in the dark age stay at 0.9 speed until feudal age but not sure if its possible to do something like that.

This will be good too.

A nice balanced perspective and its great that you’re trying to address the part of game where they’re problematic without overhyping the unit and proposing something extreme.