Current balance discussion

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

Aztec:

Timing push of the Aztec with 11 Mayan allies is very strong, the Mayan allies in the past were pikemen with more tank but less damage and in general no one used them, but a long time ago they changed them to musketeers who are actually useful because they also do significant damage, now who maintain high health, have good dps if they stay still since they hit at 1.5/s

and the shipment can be repeated, I don’t understand this, this rush is now being done much more than before, no one seems to have realized how OP it is, I don’t know if it is also because they have improved the jaguar that they use as a big button, and so on. They get 11 Mayan allies + a lot of otomi + 4 big button jaguar. This push for civilizations that do boom or naked ff is really very solid.

The jaguar as a unit is too OP, they should nerf it or put a creation limit on it like the Lakota tashunke has.

On the other hand, the Arrow Knight should remove the heavy infantry tag, give him 5% base siege armor or 10%

Eagle Runner be more independent of the card that increases his range,

It should have 13 base range instead of 12

get + 3 instead of +4 range with the tlaloc support card

Mexico:

Nerf “Salteador” Need an explanation?? It is a matter of simply comparing the statistics and price of the Gurkha and the Salteador.

No civilization should have a strong skirmisher at age 2, especially the Mexican one who is faster. this was ruined with the previous patch

Spain:

+5% health to war dog at age 2
(-) 5% health to the war dog at age 3

Too bad against units at age 2.

Ottoman:

Reverse the cost of the Obus, this unit look for other solutions in Team, it does not have to be punished in 1v1

###an:

The new team card is very bad, it gives 10% life to artillery, in general you don’t want your artillery to have more life, the best cards that increase damage or range, The Ottoman used to have 15% damage at age 2, why is Japanese 10% of life that is worse at age 3? I don’t see the point, this card should be 15% life

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For artillery duels heath is arguably much more important then damage

like remember the italian royal guard upgrade that gives an extra 10% HP to their culvs and that was and still is probably considerd a bit too strong

This basically gives that to your entire team so its a pretty good card all things considered

edit: so this is like a niche interaction but with an italian, port or Otto ally, then with their respective unique HP techs and shipment, their culvs will tank an extra culv shot with the 10% HP in age 4, meaning the opposing team will need 3 culvs to counter 2 culvs, so its pretty big

edit edit: and a potential very disgusting combo is if you have otto & japan and potentially india. If the otto gets advanced arsenal or india sends the team 5% combat card, combined with the japan 10% HP and otto 15% HP means that great bombards requires 4 age 4 culv shot to kill, which is pretty insane

Also mortars are harder to kill using culvs, with the japan team card all mortars take an extra hit from culvs in age 4

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Change the siege damage to ranged damage and I’d accept -15 coin cost for Abus Gunners. It’d fix things nicely in team and remove some broken interactions between things. Abus Gunners in age 5 out range Cassadors while also ignoring their armor.

Obviously you’d remove the Abus’ penalty against Artillery as that would become redundant since they’d no longer ignore artillery armor.

I’d have Abus range go 18 in age 2, 20 vet, and 22 with imperial. If they do ranged damage they’ll need 20 range in age 3.

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5

Jaguar had been said to be weak before it got the promotion ability, and now has been said to be too strong.
So why not just let its promotion have to be enabled by a currently useless card like Ritual Gladiators?
Ritual Gladiators is really a strange card in my view. It ships up to only 12 Jaguars and the 12 Jaguars even require 24 Jaguars to die first, when there is another age III card that ships 14 Jaguars without a cost or a prerequisite.

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7

I don’t know who was the fool who said that the jaguar was Bad, maybe when they nerfed the invisible mode in general he lost a bit of his purpose in ambushing the cannons. Even before the promotion he was still good, because he has stats good ones, the problem that the promotion also came with increased life and speed, It is much better than its Zapotec counterpart. .

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the fools would basicaly be everyone, jags were considered bad to situational before the changes.

Note that they were also changed before this with a cost reduction that also reduced their hp so they were a lot squishier then they were before but their cost was so high before that they weren’t used.

The one change that might be very impactful , even more than the promotion is the change to 5 speed, which means they can actually chase down ranged infantry now.

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Abus gunner is a unique unit that is a artillery-skirmisher synthesis, it must deal siege damage otherwise there is no point in costing 2 population. If it’s going to do ranged damage, it should be an regular skirmisher that costs 1 population.

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Before, but I’m not talking about before the change that they made practically the rework of the Aztecs, if we could call that a rework, I agree that they were not very ideal to do their job well, until that change was made they were already viable, Since although they became more accessible, their weaker statistics were adjusted to changes in fewer resources which is not bad, perhaps the damage was lowered a lot but remember that in exchange they received more movement speed, so it was more than fine for me taste, from there the unit was very good, I think what bothered the Aztec players the most was the stealth mode which also made them move much slower than they were even before and be detected, now in stealth they are a little faster, but in any case they have statistics that are too strong. Although the Zapotec is cheaper, so it must be worse, but the difference is already much better, which makes the big difference with the Zapotec, it is not the damage, nor the life or the bonus that is almost similar, but the speed, promotion, invisibility, I have literally seen players who only win by taking Jaguar, I even once saw how Juliank alone with Jaguar beat the British from Revnak, it is That is not normal, that the unit apart from having almost no counter, because you can say that the skirmisher, although it counters the unit, becomes invisible and is very fast, so reaching the skirmisher in melee is easy, no. It is a pikeman or rodelero, it has low base damage or little life, it is a unit that also beats the skirmisher in melee without much problem. So why has this unit not been balanced yet???, Regarding the Japanese card, You’d better be right since the same thing happened with Portugal, which previously had that same card as a team, but in any case it can be conditioned to be 15% only for Japan and 10% for the allies as it is with many infantry cards. like France or Holland has it, it would even be better to take out the life card that Japan has on the incendiary arrows and in exchange it would be better to use that card as it will be more useful for equipment.

11

Its the weakness that aztec always have, cannons.

and as a matter of design they were always intended to kill skirms if they actually managed to make contact, its why their base damage is so high, most heavy infantry with high base damage or splash is designed as such.

If we want to rebalance it we can just increase it to pop and maybe readjust the stats. The problem with the unit is that if they dont make contact they will just die but with critical mass and the fact that they effectively heal when they kill units it makes their mass harder to kill and therefore allow them to make contact. If we reduce their ability to mass it should be fine.

an extra 5% is probably fine for japan only

But like the point of an additional card is that you can stack them, and you know the other card is a TEAM card that you can send to benefit your ally also. You dont need to send it in a 1v 1 game

It also again helps things like your mortars, which after the HP card and professional gunners combined with your other HP buffs will tank 3 culv shots which also means japan siege position is hard to take down.

12

Japanese card was unneeded. Shogun spamming 10 morutarus with higher HPs next to your base is not a good idea.

Japanese units dont need more buffs, and has been like that since TAD.

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Lol, since when had the Japanese mortar been a problem? As far as I know, Japan has always been controversial because of its units, which is why it generated a lot of discussion topics, both the ashigaru, Daimio, shrines, Yabusame mainly. But the problematic mortar??? ?? It seems that you are looking for excuses, Japan needed some improvement in equipment since it did not have any military that was worth it without or was it going to be the artillery, it could be something else, I think that the artillery is much worse if it were another infantry or cavalry troop, like that which was the best option in my opinion and I would be OP if it were otherwise

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No tiene sentido tu argumento, porque si fuera un 15% de vida en equipo que esta incluido, sigue siendo destruido de 2 golpes de la culebrina el mortero Europeo aguanta 3 golpes de culebrina con + 15% de vida

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Then give it ranged damage and a 1.25 vs light infantry. At least then it’ll behave as a skirm should.

Right now they soft-counter most skirms and randomly hard counter Cassadors.

The siege damage also makes them do better than they have any right to vs heavy cav.

16

You are missing a few things

Japan has guaranteed access to the professional gunners tech from the golden pavilion, so they would get an extra 10% on top of that

And then there are 2 aura effects from the shogun and the pavilion, which stack multiplicatively

Also no accounting that the shogun can train these things

to simulate this, here is the morutaru in the editor with an extra 15% from port the card

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This thing has 400+ HP, it will tank 3 age 4 culverin shot. 400 HP is the threshold

if its 10%, it stays under the threshold

edit edit: now if it had a only flaming arrow 5% then probably its fine, though that is awkward on a team card

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Okey ahi esta la mejora del pabellon dorado que es un 10% mas de vida con eso aplicado llega a 337,5 , Ahora explicame como llegaste a 409 de vida si el Shogun Tokugawa suma 23 de vida base por lo cual, si tengo 337,5 de vida base le sumo 23 seria 360,5, Bro no puedo caer en eso porque es muy exagerado 409 de vida

@coffeeco01

18

the golden pavilion and the shogun doesnt add according to base health, it adds according to current health

so it goes like this

225 x(1+0.1+0.15+0.25) = 337.5 which is where you are

and then its two aura, each 10% hp so the math is

337.5 x1.1 x1.1 = 408.375

the game can truncate numbers in weird ways so it turns into 409

You can go into the game and do the same thing

2 Likes
19

Tienes razon el tokugawa suma acorde a la salud actual y no a la vida base, de todas formas no logre llegar a esas estadisticas porque no pude sumar el 15% de equipo, asi que solo lo sumo teoricamente aun asi no logro esa estadisticas asi que me imagino que depende del orden de envio si es que es asi, de todas formas me gustaria verlo en una partida contra la IA para saber si es que es asi y no por error del editor de escenario

20

Honestly, Balance isnt the worst its ever been and i like the effforts to slowly bring the game back from “nr10 1 handed gameplay of uberpops z move” but there is ofc lots of long standing issues that are very complicated. I dont think it will be easy to “fix issues” that are very delicate like: how to make inca not the most obnoxious civ to play with yet also not kill the civ? How to buff malta without making it inca with cannons? How to tone down consistent powercreeped DE shipments without making it as stale as the older RE balanced but often boring shipments? How to remove the multitude of simply lame ottoman mechanics without killing its flavor once more?

Id probably for 2024, have the balance team comb through several civs with extensive focus per a civ and try to smooth out the really bad and way overperforming issues. Like my beloved ports; they are finally viable more often than not but very often locked to 10/10 play. I still feel like you can tone down feitoria scaling, ordenanca a pinch, and organs but also give us some age2 play a la a boosted spice trade card or make carracks give us special caravels for long age2’s for example. Thats the goal i would aim for, less uber spikes for a bit more flexibility

Inca should probably loose some inital power on their spears (seriously, no one likes playing into team inca due to these turds) but maybe make their age4 bolas card not a joke? kancha boom imho reamins a tad bity too easy to pull off as well but wasnt so bad when cannons didnt disapear vs huaraca. bolas remain crud as do maces. civ probably needs a focus to make it less rough or 1 dimensional in some areas. im still mad the landlocked empire (albeit the rafts in game were irl used to trade up and down the coaast and were amazing feats of construction used by native SAs) has the best boats in the entire game but thats just me

Italy needs better mid game light infanty, is ok if they tone down imperial pavs or something but seriously the civ needs light infantry in age3 they dont have caroleans. you tired of base sitting italy? give them the ability to not just die to skirm goon in age3

Otto is just so beyond the bounds of what an RTS civ should have i dont even know anymore, just make them give half elo on a win or something I give up since clearly the powers that be think azaps are fine as is. or abus. or deli. or minutemen that are skirms but dont have weakness to cav. uber cav archers, etc.

Aztecs should not get 2x merc shipments of mayan but also arrow knights shouldnt be heavy unless you give them something to fight skirms, give them a .8 vs skirms if you must but that just makes them die but then not to most lancer types now its a really weird change imho

rest of civs are probably minor like maybe germany doesnt need the super BR since they been buffed, or giant grens again bein op in nr i hear (for 3rd time) and malta doesnt need the 2%xp penalty and india could use -1xp buff etc. those are just my thoughts after playing these holidays.

P.S- stop giving dutch musketeers. The akan card is dumb. Put a build limit on them or make their guard cost usual or make them not buffed by dutch cards. Whats the point of blueguard being balanced and a good idea only to give them the most annoying musk in the game en masse for cheap?

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21

Japón, debido a su “débil” economía compensa con unidades más fuertes. No sé dónde ves que sean flojas. Ashigaru con mucho ataque y velocidad, Samurai y su asedio, Yumis con su alcance y daño base, Yabusame con un 8x contra artillería etc etc.

Los morutarus ya logran más alcance con una carta y pueden entrenarse de 10 en 10 desde una unidad móvil (a caballo). No necesitaban el x2 contra muros ni necesitan los HP de la nueva carta.

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JPK are not bad, but Aztec eco is.

Unless you let your opponent boom during half an hour Aztec won’t be able to mass enough of them to be a problem, as they are pretty expensive and die easy in small numbers.