Changes for Next Big Patch request

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Behind the scenes and Scenario Editor changes:

  1. To make it easier for devs, custom civs creators and custom techs creators, please implement the Folwark bonus as a percentage (10 for 10%, which is the current value, 20 for 20%). Currently it is implemented as the exact food amount and is updated everytime a tech is researched. While being cumbersome for Poles themselves (specially with a Chinese ally), it is a pain for other civs like Sicilians, Mayans, etc (not to mention it currently doesnt work for non-Polish civs for any upgrades). Values less than 0 are rounded upto 0 and values greater than 100 are rounded down to 100.

  2. Creation of a Raiding Ability attribute: The Raiding ability of the Keshik - for every unit (default 0). The raiding ability should work for all those units against which the Keshik ability works (I feel Monasteries, TCs and Castles should be included too). The value of this ability will be the amount of gold generated in 100 hits, that is, a value of 50 means the unit will generate 0.5 gold every time it attacks a unit, TC, Castle or Monastery. Please note that by default only Keshik and Elite Keshik have this attribute set to 50. This is specifically for custom campaigns, where I can see units like Steppe Lancers and Berserks being used for raiding.

  3. Modifying resource 218 to be more friendly: I have no idea how the resource 218 works currently. Implement it as number of TCs allowed. All civs have this set to 0 by default. The technology Dark Age adds 1 (so that 1 TC is allowed in Dark Age). The idea behind the tech adding 1, rather than having 1 by default, is that some community maps can have more than 1 TC in Dark Age. Next, Cumans add 1 in Feudal Age (for their bonus). Next, Castle Age adds 10000 to it.

Balance Changes:

  1. Burmese: Howdah reverted back to +1/+1. Battle Elephants have +1p armor as a civ bonus - to make them more naturally resistant to archers, while keeping them the same for Post Imperial situations

2A. Teutons: Lose “Garrisioned Infantry fires arrows” from Crenallations
2B. Sicilians: Gain “Garrisioned Infantry fires arrows” as a civ bonus - for the Serjeant - Donjon rush, since in normal cases villagers add arrows, which wont be present always for Sicilians

3A. Sicilians bonus damage resistance wording made clearer: “Infantry, Archers and Cavalry resist…” - this is because these are the only units affected
3B. Bonus damage resistance decreased to 33% - to make their Cavalry play less strong
3C. First Crusade: removes the Serjeant spawn mechanic.
3D: First Crusade: Infantry and (foot or all) Archers have their bonus damage resistance increased to 50%

  1. Sicilians: Farms provide +50F per age starting in Dark Age - it is an unconditional eco bonus, which I think is better despite being weaker (it is weaker only when Crop Rotation is researched, which is rarely researched anyways)

  2. Ethiopians (team bonus): All buildings (except walls and gates) +2 LoS. Walls and Gates +1 LoS. - Ethiopians are not usually a tower rushing civ, so their team bonus is quite underused. I feel the defensive nature of the bonus should really be visible (literally).

  3. Indians (team bonus): affects only melee Camel units - the effect is too strong on Camel Archers

Identity Crisis of Burmese:
Burmese have a Monk and Elephant identity - neither of these units are mainstream on Arabia. Monks are popular on Arena style maps and Elephants on Black Forest type maps. If you look at the Burmese, they have a solid economy bonus, a decent siege workshop and great infantry, so giving them another great post imp unit will be too strong. The buff I am aiming for is Cavalry Archer play from mid game to the time Elephants should be viable. The Cavalry Archer play can also be used as a precursor to Arambai play. The following 2 changes are being proposed by me to encourage Cav Archer play:
→ Cavalry Archers 100% accurate (civ bonus - to make low number of CA viable)
→ Thumb Ring added to tech tree (doesnt affect Arambai)
Burmese CA will be slightly stronger than Polish CA (+1p armor and +4 attack vs Spearmen to be precise), which in itself is not a great comparison, but it will give them something to play with in the mid game. If anything, Burmese CA will be a great addition to the Elephant Army covering each other’s weakness - monks and halbs of Elephants covered by CA and weak defensive stats of CA covered by tanky Burmese Elephants.

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How about we dont nerf civs that don’t need nerfs, no matter how small the nerf is? (Looking at teutons)

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Strongly disagree. Better leave the Sicilians like they are now.

One change i’d like to see for the Burmese is to make Parthian tactics affect Arambai. Makes no sense that it doesn’t, and they’re a pretty bad unit now compared to what they were.

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Since arambai are inaccurate but effective, I would like to give Burmese a bonus for all cavalry archers to make them the only civ without thumb ring that use cav archers.

For example, make manipur cavalry affect all cavalry units (including CA). Not a big deal, but good against skirmishers if you decide to raid with a mix of arambai/CA,

Other option would be make all common barrack techs (not supplies) affect all cavalry units. Thus, their cavalry would receive a cheaper husbandry (squires), and arson. Those techs would affect cavalry archers, so it could be interesting for raiding eco buildings. In exchange, burmese should lose husbandry to retain the same speed in cavalry at the end, but a lower price

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It is not a nerf since nobody uses it (I don’t recall using it outside of campaigns). However, when transferred to Sicilians as a civ bonus, it will actually be used.

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Good in theory, terrible in practice. CA without TR would be ineffective in micro, whereas Arbs can basically outrange and outmicro the weak Burmese CA even with an attack disadvantage.

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GREAT! I’ve been suggesting this before, I’m all for it!

Sicilians: Gain “Garrisioned Infantry fires arrows” as a civ bonus

Interesting!

Why would you go out of your mind to nerf Sicilians Knights, while you can just remove Hauberk, which is one of the worst techs in the game, turning Sicilians into a generic boom-into-knight civ.

Identity Crisis of Burmese

You’re absolutely right, this began when they nerfed tower rush, killed Arabia and murdered Arambai, its core identity was its unique unit, just like Spanish. Trushing was a great way for Burmese to utilize their MAA and get themselves a nice forward position and a by-pass ticket for Feudal Age with tons of stone in their pocket. These days Trushing is out of the meta.

Regarding the Elephant aspect of things, I suggested before that all Battle Elephants should have an armor of: 0/3 that becomes 1/3 (elite), instead of 1/2 that becomes 1/3 (elite). There is no reason for this unit to share the same scale system as Paladin.

Let me know what you think. :slight_smile:

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I won’t say BE have 1/2 armor instead of 0/3 because of Knight line. They have so because of War Elephant line, which has the exact same armor stats. Also giving an elephant unit 0 melee armor won’t make sense, rather make it 1/3 to 1/4 (elite), if it is necessary.

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1/3 → 1/4 May be too broken on TG, especially for Khmer/Vietnamese.
1/3 flat for both Elite and normal BE is also a nice option, Elite can have other attributes upgraded.
Blast radius 0.3 to 0.5 (elite) instead of flat 0.4.
Damage 11 to 14(elite) instead of 12 to 14(elite).

And I’d might even consider giving the Elite version a hidden bonus to their Cavalry Armor.

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Wouldnt that just make Malay OP tho?

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Malay are already hopeless vs. Archer/Skirm civs, like Britons, Lithuanians, Ethiopians, Byzantines. Malay have no answer, it’s kinda frustrating to play them in many match ups since BE are out of the equation :\

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I prefer to remove conversion resistance instead as sicilians knight is hard to counter.

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I already suggested to reduce the bonus damage resistance to 33%, maybe you can go down to 25%

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I think 50% is fine, but it should no longer affect cavalry. Then Hauberk can be left, because the Hauberk + Bonus damage reduction combo isn’t balanced.

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Absolutely agree.

Nice catch. It is an indirect way to buff Serjeants which is necessary. Although I prefer Celts “Stronghold” gets this as a secondary effect.

Why not reduce the cost and time of the tech then? It costs 400 stone which is really very expensive. I think changing it to gold will be fair after your nerf.

Instead of reducing the %, I think it is better to reduce the number of units that resist bonus damage. I’ll limit it to only cavalries as I find their archers + skirms and sometimes even pikes as very strong. For compensation, I’ll change the TC and Castle built 100% faster to Walls & Gates (Palisade too), TC and Castle is built 50% faster. I know the quick walling will be annoying but honestly it is not too big compared to Spanish. For First Crusade, Serjeant spawn is replaced by all infantries take no bonus damage so HC, Slinger, Jaguar and Cataphracts will be useless.

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Seethe.

Everything else is fine except expecting Burmese to play on CA. Burmese are supposed to be a Cavalry and Infantry civ, despite what their UU is. Think about them like of Cumans- another Cavalry, Infantry and Siege civ- despite having Kipchaks, their real strengths in the lategame in all other departments.

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Why is it a bad idea to nerf Sicilian bonus damage resistance?

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Because it’s their identity and civ-defining military bonus, it’s like nerfing Franks 20% HP. Or Vikings free WB and HC. Or Briton 11/12 range. Is it strong? Yeah, it’s decent. But even then Sicilians are a below average WR civ without an eco bonus until Castle age, and on top of that, their EB is only relevant if you researched Horse Collar.

And they have some pretty hard transitions similar to Slavs, where their post-post-imp composition is actually halb SO due to lacking pala.

Not the smoothest civ by far and taking 1 more hit from spears in feudal, pikes are rarely used in castle anyway, and what, 1 or 2 hits more from halbs in imp when you already won’t be engaging against a halb mass with cavaliers doesn’t change all that much.

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To add a bit, it’s like the people calling for nerfs to Bohemians, just stop at this point, those civs are balanced and have their place in the meta, and in the game by being niche enough but also useful on many maps. Actually decent players have been complaining about the truly OP stuff in the game like War Wagons, but because there is not enough 1k elo 2 hours a week players complaining about that, nothing gets done about it.

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I apreciate your posts but #1 Aoestats is outdated, #2 Sicilians performed quite well in KOTD 4, #3 even with low WR, Sicilians bonuses lead to just unfun and unbalanced games, one of the KOTD 4 games (TheMax vs Vinchester) Max lost just because of the silly castle drops and first crusade, and the game where Jordan completely charged ACCM army with just Sicilian cavaliers tells you how broken they are vs units that normally should counter cavaliers.

As for Bohemians, now then is when OP bonuses and WR shows the reality:

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Bohemians are currently too OP on arena (alongside Turks and Poles) and BF, the civ bonuses just led to absurdly fast FC and Monk rushes, the Hussite Wagon is incredibly hard to deal, Houfnice is also too powerful, Malians once had all gold mining techs for free and was too OP, so is, if not more, with Bohemians with all mining techs for free, is just overkill and you can’t match the mining rates of bohemians because they are already too ahead in that aspect, there aren’t any bad matchups to Bohemians, also ask to any top player what thinks about the civ (Viper for instance said Houfnice is the most broken unit in the game 11).
Also, no, because once civ performs average on others but is too OP in one alone is just a clear sign of unbalance (Mayans for arabia as example, or Chinese at high level in a large number of maps), Italians were (and still are) OP on water maps, and the dock discount had to be reduced, Khmer are average on 1v1, but had to be nerfed many times because they were outright broken on TGs (and punishing the battle elephant soo hard), so Indians (in fact the fishing bonus was nerfed due to the shorefish maps), then you have Britons and Franks, fine in 1v1 (still hard to deal sometimes) but just too powerful on TGs to the point other strong paladin and archer civs can’t even compete with them.
And then you also have the abused strats with certain UUs, Burmese are quite bad right now on most maps, but still you had the double castle arambai, which was broken on arena esp in TGs, that’s why the unit was nerfed, and I agree with the War Wagon tho, but even right players are also using the very same strat with Organ guns tho, so is matter of time until both are nerfed.

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I don’t think I can agree with that, Sicilians are a very responsive civilization, and have a similar mechanic to how some mechanics in AoE3 work (not just the “popping units out randomly” thing), the enemy catches you out of position, you just slap down an instant defensive castle, they did a big pike transition, you just click the FC button and you have a decent number of basically longswords to deal with that.

It’s a playstyle. I’m tired of losing games to “silly” archers into crossbows into arbalests from Mayans, but it is what it is.

They are good on Arena, I will give them that. But they are in no way uncounterable. They have perhaps the least counters of all civs, but they also are a very slow civilization with very low surprise potential - you will be playing against houfnices and you know it from age 1. They die to Mongols and Magyars for example, also to big siege ram pushes, which a lot of people at the lower level aren’t used to making.

They are strong yeah. And one of like the worst civs on Arabia, alongside Portuguese and Turks. So why don’t we nerf Poles instead that overperform everywhere? We have 39 civs, soon to be more, it’s I think normal to have some outliers here and there- Persians, Spanish, Malians on Nomad, Turks and Bohemians on Arena, Mayans and Franks on Arabia. It’s a part of the game. And of the general civ conceptualization.

It’s literally a ram with a ranged attack instead of a melee one. Get 3 mangonels out and due to their enormous hitbox and lower range than organs you will see how fast they fall. It’s on the same level of “hard to deal with” as WW, Organs, Conqs or Jannies.

We finally have the ultimate answer to all the boring halb SO we see and somehow we complain about that?

Every time he wins with some unit he calls it OP in his YT videos due to that generating excitement among the audience.

It’s good. It’s really good. But I don’t want it changed. Any change and it will be worse than Eth BBC, so why even have it at that point. For an expensive UT on a unit, considering it’s the only like, actually strong unit Bohemians get, it’s performing like it should. Compare it to Mangudai, Magyar CA, Frank Pala.

You can’t make all civs perfectly balanced on all maps with 3 civ bonuses and 1 UU and 2 UTs. It’s just not going to happen. If it was AoE3 where we have all the freedom in the world, sure. Hell, I support uniting like half the civs without giving any thought to historical accuracy just to get a proper 15-20 extremely diverse and well designed civilizations like in AoE3. But this is a different game, a game where we have to do as much as possible with as little as possible, instead of trying to fine tune every little thing.