There has been a week since the new DLC released. I appreciate all of the new concepts that have been brought into the game, and I am glad to see devs are really taking effort and learning from the Knights and Cross DLC. However, there are still a couple of things that is out of synergy, I just want to draw attention and share my proposal for improving
Starting with Sengouku, the major issue goes with Hojo clan, Samuri bow needs a rework. We already have HoL MAA who has 16 damage digger by nature and 15s cool down, where samuri bow needs upgrade, locked behind level-2 Hojo and have significantly lower damage. What even worse is, we have Donso who does even higher damage that samuri bow, it is just so awkward that samuri bow is never played. So here are two options, either we make samuri bow a secondary weapon like desert raider but with a rof of 2.12 or even 2.52, significantly longer than normal archers, or we add a charge mechanism that allows samuri to hold 3 or 5 arrows and restore one arrow every 8s or so.
Also, level-3 Hojo unlocks the “ultimate”upgrade for melee infanty, but it is just 2 ranged armor, English armor clad is cheaper, available directly on age 3, and grants melee armor as well. Comparing with other clan, lavying melee infanty has the lowest value since you can always afford them in the late game, free mounted samuri or Tanegashima Ashigaru turns to be more valuable, so level-3 Hojo should have the most powerful tech among the three clan to make it a worthy choice. Probably 3 ranged armor will be good enough I guess
Another issue with Sengouku is Tanegashima Ashigaru, as a replacement of crossbow, their major drawback is they are not benefitted from blacksmith upgrade, which means their damage decrease as the opponents getting their ranged armor upgrade, and they are not benefitted from burning arrow, which makes them deal even less damage than regular crossbow in age 4. I would suggest having them gain +2 attack for each level of Oda clan, or give them a tech like janissary guns in age 4 to fulfill the same rule of burning arrow, or just buffing their damage by 2 in castel and 4 in imperial. Also there is a bug with Sengouku monk that they are casting Budda convertion, the temporal Kurutai one, please fix it.
Now let’s look into the Golden Horde, this civ suffers from a lot of issues. First of all, their villager is produced in pair with a slightly decreased production speed of 37s, however, this means you lose the resource equals to 17s working rate of a single villager every time you produce a pair, which means, they actually have a more expensive villager. Their villager cost should be reduced to 90 to offset the delay on virtually the first villager comes out in a pair. Second, their opening villager is decreased by one, which is offset by the Ovoo, however, if we treat the Ovoo as the sixth villager in the opening, it means Golden horde is open with only 75 wood effectively. If we stay in this way that open with 5 villager, then we should add at least 75 more wood to them to be in same opening resource of other civs. This will not encourage dark age agression actually because Gold Horde units takes double production time, delaying their hitting time mark, which is the next point I would like to address that the age up time for Golden Horde is too long. As their unit production mechanism already prevent they from early aggression, even they age up at 4:15 mark or so, they cannot be as aggressive as knight civs, and currently their age up timing makes them super hard to defend in the early game. If we have their age up faster, then we can increase the trainin time on Khan to maintain a same hitting time mark of Khan while brings the early game of Golden Horde to a normal level. Lastly, reinforcement should be more expensive as free unit from every squad is just so strong, I feel it should cost 1200 stone and remove level-3 eco upgrade to make it balance. Also, please nerf their aoe horse archer.
Macedonin dynasty is a civ I feels generally OK, probably because I didn’t play much with it. The only issue I can see at the moment is their tech cost so much that in the late or even middle game they are almost impossible to do transition. Tughlaq Dynasty has major balancing issue with healer elephant, just nerf its status, and I guess we need to review if worker elephant can catch sheep is balanced
That is all for my feedback, I hope this would be helpful for the development of the game, and all of these are just my personal thought and I’m open mind to any different opinions