And balance requires that evenly skilled players be able to prevent this from happening with regularity. Unfortunately the loan aspect of the tech allows good players to overwhelm equally skilled players with regularity. E.g. Viper can achieve it with regularity because of the selection bias of when he decides to use the tech.
Your arguments only hold true in a small number of cases. Mostly the pure boom right into flemish revolution strategy. They don’t hold under the mixed strategy of “Play standard then pop flemish revolution when I can close out the game with it”. How are you supposed to expend enough resources to mitigate flemish revolution while not losing against standard play? It’s possible on arena or black forest maybe, or as a cavalry archer civ but that’s about it. Certainly not on Arabia or even more open maps.
Fundamentally a fixed cost can only balance the tech in very specific use cases which was the point of my post. You can’t get away from the loan dynamic that occurs due to the mismatch between the value of flemish militia and villagers. Imagine if you could upgrade hussars to cavalier but were forced to pay back 75g per hussar. No one is going to care that they have 0 gold income the rest of the game because they could build all the siege they need before hand, then pop the tech and overrun the opponent.
I think they did those changes because DoTD civs; it seems there was some common things or bonuse between the new 2 civs and the old ones bonuses so they buffed some of them (Turks especially and Slavs) to make it fair comparing to what we will see in DoTD.
It also could be the other way.
They propably have tested the civs together this changes at once.
Elite boyar armor buff makes sense and makes the pole UU more appealing.
Ornlu in their channel has posted that developers want to buff burmese but they need need more changes and testing so they arent receiving buffs this patch.
I suppose we will have a postDLC minipatch adressing bugs and implementing some delayed balance changes, like it happenes with the post LotW patch.
Oh so there is a chance to nerf the mesos and their eagles and buff Saracens (Mameluke and Madrasah at least). I am really surprised how the devs didn’t nerf the Burgundians eco bonus.
Too bad that Burgundians eco is more than enough to afford a crapload of siege weapons.
Well intended stuff can be bad.
That was before Burgundians had Viking eco tho. That’s yet one more problem of the tech: if the civ has a bad eco the tech is mostly crap, if the civ has a good eco it suddenly becomes god tier.
This. Especially since with the cheap paladin upgrade, you can first attack with paladins to make them go for cav counters or stronger cav, then you click the golden button and all of a sudden you get an army of what is basically a Viking champ, that will just steamroll the units that counter paladins.
Turks already have so much gunpwoder bonuses they are at no risk of being outclass in that regard by Bohemians, and I think the boyar buff happened to make them more than a glorified Teuton paladin from a castle.
We are talking of the unit that didn’t need a buff in the first place, but did anyway cuz people kept thinking they had a worse frame delay in AoC despite evidence of the contrary. Btw even after this nerf they are still buffed compared to AoC. not that only a tiny part of the player base can actually use the difference anyway
I’m excited about coop campaing, I will probably give a try as soon as possible.
About balance changes, I find them quite disappointing.
CA nerf is pretty minor (there’s an error in the video, pre-buff CA had 1.3 attack animation), yet I don’t think CA needed a nerf.
HC buff needs testing, I am not sure it will actually help that much.
FR nerf looks a desperate attempt of making the tech more balanced without reworking it. Sadly, I’m quite confident to say it won’t work at all. Cost increase is not that relevant and removal of bonus damage vs building doesn’t help either since it’s meta to make few BBC or trebs alongside with FR.
I don’t get War elephants change either. It makes the unit probably even more unviable for 1v1 due to higher gold cost. It maybe helps in closed maps TGs with trades going on, where I don’t think war elephants need buff to be honest.
Elite Boyars change looks a bit of a nothing change aswell. It’s still an expensive unit for 1v1s which is hard to afford in mid-late imp (where the buff should come into play). In TG maybe can situationally help, even though in arabia Eboyars should still perform worse than paladins and in close maps I think slavs have better compositions available.
Turks artillery feels underpriced post-change. I’m ok with replacing the stone cost, but I think gold cost should be raised a bit. It’s a very powerful tech after all.
On the other hand, no changes or buff to the few weak of generic civs that should get one in my opinion (Burmese, Sicilians that still need an identity, Incas that should still get a compensation for the loss of their rush, maybe even Spanish need something in my opinion)
Tbh I’m surprised by the reactions to the boyar change, I would have expected people to at least want to try it out, the thing’s stats are now absolutely insane, but people still say they won’t try it out. Ever since DE they got +2/+1 armour, how can an unit be buffed this much without getting people interested?
Because it’s never been a bad unit, but being a very gold intensive unit which non-elite version is not much better than knights, it’s not a unit you can frequently justify to transition into.
It’s a situational unit and it will be a situational unit after the buff, if they want to push the viability (at least in 1v1s) I think a buff to non-elite, a slight discount or a buff to the HP would have been better.
Current civ alterations that Iwish to see in these DLC updates:
Current civ alterations.
Vikings.
Have Vikings lose free hand cart but instead have their longboats be able to attack as well as transport units (loses transport ships) and gift them cheap trash units.
African ,Mezzo,
African and mezzo civs should only have canoe navies. Able to fire arrows ,fast ,agile and only using 0.5 pop space but they don’t have access to Gally line ,nor fire ships, nor cannon. Gallons. All canoes can carry/transport 3-5 units.
Byzantines.
Change civ unique tech 1 to : Justinian Reforms - Sword line +1 Melee armour.
Enables the technology of Varangian Guard in Imperial age.
In Imperial age , Byzanitne army gain access to a special unit in the Barracks called the Varangian Guard. - Expensive , slow moving but difficult to convert with a limited build amount.
(Highly loyal guards of the Emperor)
Unique tech 2 remains Logistica.
Lose Hand cannoneer.
Trash becomes more expensive but Civ gets free wheel burrow and free hand cart.
and that’s the problem. yes in campaigns it would work well, but in multiplayer, what the game is actually balanced around, slow moving infantry is awful.
Exactly, if it doesn’t work in MP…then MP gamers should just not use them… just like the siege tower that I love using but has almost no validity in MP.
