In a team game, the only thing they [cumans] can contribute is pretty much Paladin, and the Siege Onager, although there’s often better civs for supplying either of those things (or just generally, civs with better options are highly likely).
The Celts have much better Siege units than the Cumans, it’s not even a close call. The Celts wouldn’t be much worse than now if they lost Paladin alltogether. It’s almost never the right call to make them with that civ anyway.
Teutons also have palas and SO
The civ is 56%+ winrate at 1650+ in 40+ minute games and that’s including their currently nerfed options.
I’m advocating for improving their earlygame dramatically and cutting that back. If you honestly believe that’ll ruin this civ in Imp, I believe you to be extremely wrong, and I’m just going to stop arguing with you at that. I’ve got 40 posts with you before and I don’t need that again.
Honestly forgot about them. Yeah, Teutons OP though 
Cumans are the only civ to get FU Palas and SO, but that’s a technicality (you’d trade husbandry for conversion resistance, esp for kt’s in castle age, and the armor when it goes late)
Yep, they can actually contribute something at the moment. I’m guessing this is why the pallisade TB got a nerf.
Sure, agreeing to disagree is always a good call 
Improving the civ’s early game would need a redesign of the civ, some of their current bonuses would need to be stripped and replaced, and the tech tree reworked anyway, doubt it’s gonna happen.
They don’t get bbc and siege engineers. They have problems to push and are vulnerable themselves to being pushed.
Only thing they can hold against it is steppe husbandry.
You believe that lacking siege engineers means that a Siege Ram + Hussar + Kipchak push doesn’t work? Or Halb + Kipchak + Ram?
Followup question: Have you played the Malians once? The Cumans have a very similar siege tree to the Malians and they actually get Halb and Siege Ram while Malians lack both. I’ve never had any real problem pushing with Malians so I guess I don’t understand how you come to any conclusion along the lines of Cumans having trouble with pushes.
Further, what are you pushing the Cumans with? Better siege, I guess? Archers work until Onagers (plural an important distinction) come out. Siege engineers is helpful but not a dealbreaker against most archer civs once you’re talking about an actual push. All the onagers need to do is snipe trebs, rams, and keep the archers at bay. They have full halbs to complement that option and deal with archer + cav to snipe siege. As for the “Better siege” option, if you’re complaining about dying to “better siege” you might be every civ in the game.
There are only like 5 civs in the game lacking both siege engineers and bbc. It’s really bad in these lategame sits because you are outranged and/or dominated by the only stalemate breaker for these sits.
Plus you don’t have stone walls, towers or architecture. Your base is can be pushed by almost everything. Having SIege Onager is nice, but it’s also ridiculously expensive to get it. I don’t even know if it’s worth getting that upgrade at all in 1v1.
, Teutons ans Slavs (Boyar almost equal to Paladin); and you may include Bulgarians and Malians maybe
Agree. It would like that cumans and not bulgarians had the discount in siege upgrades, so it were easier to tech in siege ram or siege onager.
Now the only thing they have for siege is having rams earlier. Having mangonels and onager earlier would be OP
What do you think about allowing units to garrison on [siege] onagers (up to 4 units)? Would that make them viable?
I like this. But it’d be a good idea if the 2nd TC gets a vill limit like some buildings in aoe3.
I hope devs implement this idea even if they have to revamp it.
There is one more concept to tweka the cumans, but I don’t know if it will be accepted by the community cause it will make them truly unique.
The concept would be to make cuman TCs only half as good as normal TCs, but also only costing about 50 %:
Cumans start with 2 TCs instead of 1.
Cuman TC:
130 W / 50 S, 120 s building time
1200 HP
Trains Villagers in 50 s instead of 25.
Everything else the same as normal TCs. Note that Cuman TCs are a bit cheaper to repair because they have halve HP but cost slightly less than 50 % of the wood cost.
Cumans can build a third TC in feudal.
This would mean that Cumans can neither douche nor being douched, cause their TCs can’t take out the enemy TCs without repairing, but also cost much less, so it’s not worth to destroy them.
The biggest influence of that change would be, that the players would need to adapt to play with 2 tcs instead of 1. But build orders could actually stay almost the same, as you could initially research loom in one of these tcs or at any point when food is scarce. One difference in the buildorders would be, that cumans have to build 1 house less and start gathering food a bit earlier like chinese and huns.
Some interesting facts about this solution:
Because only Villagers are created slower, all techs and ups are more “effective” for cumans as they cause only have the effective idle time. Especially loom and wheelbarrow can be researched earlier with them.
Initially cumans have a slight disadvantage in dark age cause every vill comes out a bit later.
This is compensated by the higher HP on walls but also the effect that they reach feudal with 2,6 vills more (but also less food).
This would lead to an interesting consideration to either go for the third tc in feudal or go directly up to castle because of that small eco lead cumans already have over some civs. This up would be comparable to the actual malay playstile, but in the other direction: Cumans could delay their up to have an even bigger lead.
The third TC would put the cuman player only about 800 res behind in peak in comparison to the about 1400 res you get behind atm. It would allow cumans to get maybe a 17:xx uptime (also in regular play without market abuse etc.) with the extra feudal TC. They still could be ahead in a comparable amount of vills (cause only one TC is idle while going up), but as their TCs would fall of from that point on in efficiency, the cuman player couldn’t outboom indians anymore. He would have an eco lead, that he would need to make use of.
There is also one more useful application in that cumans could also just use their cheaper TCs to make their eco better protected, as they could build tcs everywhere where they would build mills, lumbers and mining camps, instead. This could compensate for the lack of defences.
Yeah that can actually be done since a different building means a different unit named Villager created, the cost of which can be adjusted like Cuman Mercenaries Kipchaks.
Great. I wonder if the devs are reading this because your idea would fix cumans’ early game.
They might not even be reading the names of the topics in Bugs, leave the 215 replies here in this thread.
oh crap the thread where I posted cringe re-emerged
Anyway this time everyone’s got more time to experience with the civ, and there has been enough controversy around the civ to write an encyclopedia, so things will be different 11
Back when bad AoE2 maths were unchecked 11 The actual value was 400% faster. That’s 5 times as fast! I doubt even Teuton scouts or Korean hussars being spammable that fast would be fine. And having the right to spam units twice as fast is still pretty good.
Regarding the second TC, if it were to be unnerfed, as well as the kipchak, then I would say something 2019 CactusSteak wouldn’t have even imagined: not only plate barding should go, but paladins, camels and maybe even halberdiers all together should go too. Because the Cuman boom would be that much more stronger, and would make the Cuman much more likely to win in castle age with mass knights or floods of kipchaks.
Other problem: even after the nerf the second TC is more attractive than the feudal siege workshop. Or a scout rush with faster running scouts. Or pretty much anything else for that matter. So if it’s unnerfed it then will be even more dominant. Same for the counters: on open maps fast castle and full siege agression is the best counter to Cumans, so if the feudal boom is buffed people won’t ever stop FCing against them. And this would ruin Cuman ram stuff too since feudal units can’t protect rams against knights. As of closed maps just removing plate barding wouldn’t save the opponent from the super boom either.
All these reasons are what lead many people to want the feudal TC gone rather than nerf the Cuman late-game.
As long as the civ is a cavalry civ and that its UU is the kipchak and they get xbows, randoming them in TG would be fine. Can’t be worse than say, being an Ethiopian pocket or a Frank flank.
I’ve the feeling they would win less often in HC
Yes. Right now they are fine. Just meant that if Woe’s nerfs were to be applied, then the civ would be an instant disadvantage in TG
There is absolutely no reasonable argument to calling what I have proposed a nerf.
yes indeed. when I say 100 to 40, what I mean is now hussars are made at 40% of the speed they once were. quick maffs, if the hussar naturally is made at a 100% rate, and Steppe Husbandry increases that by 100%, it’s now a 200% rate. If the rate is increased by 400% it’s a 500% rate. Ergo, from 100% to 40%. The actual numbers aren’t nearly that small, but in reality we’re given 40% of what we used to get. We only get 25% of the bonus, but overall, 40% of the total creation rate.
I’m not sure it’s to that extent, but when the thread was open in the Beta and I made my case for how I’d nerf it, the length of changes I made wasn’t that short. I’m pretty sure I recommended taking Halb away from their siege composition as a start, along with Plate Barding, limiting their TC’s to one in Feudal (beta cumans were so imba), and at some point they also had siege engineers and that was to go as well.
I made it clear, at that point, that’s not where it ended. I recall saying, exact quote those were changes to be made “before I can even begin realistically assessing what else needs to be done.”
on the subject of your assessment of the balance trajectory: I get why they don’t want to embrace the cuman tc and the more restrictive time window, but rework them into a default eco civ with bonuses and then nothing was gained by having them in the game, really. I guess we can focus the early feudal siege but I’m certain they don’t have the eco to make that work in a meaningfully threatening way, so we’d need another list of changes for that trajectory. I’d rather just undo what hasn’t worked thus far rather than doubling down on it.
In 1v1 the civ would work fine, as an all in Castle Age civ, sure. But in Team Games, the civ would essentially be having 1 less player on your team
What about a modified version of the Tatar bonus?
Like: Wild animals provide +20 % food
The TCs could then be modified as followed:
Cumans can build additional TC in Feudal Age
Cuman TCs except the first take 80 % longer to build
Cuman TCs spawn 2 deer when built
Alternatively this bonus could actually be swapped with the tatar’s eco, as I remember tatars were more hunters and cumans more shepherds, besides all steppe civs used both. (Adjusted tatar bonus for cumans: +20 % food from sheep, TC spawns 3 sheep when built) (Adjusted Hunt bonus for Tatars: Wild animals provide +30 % food, TCs spawn 2 Deer when built)
This would give cumans a small eco bonus even if they decide not to build the second TC. The second TC wouldn’t be as punishing because of the extra free food.
But the Cuman Boom would be nerfed cause all extra TCs would be build much slower, not just the feudal one. In castle age the free food can’t compensate the longer building time.