Discussion on balance of new civilizations

Khitans are so weird

They seem competitive but almost every unit they have is worse than generic

I dont really like them, even though with a few tweaks it would be a great civ. The need to include the Tanguts with the Khitams just left a civ that isnt able to fulfill any role that well

It’s really early, though…


I repeat, Wei sucks. Extremely one-dimensional, even more so than the Ethiopians, which is saying something.

oops, i didn’t see that there is already a thread for that. I will just copy in what I wrote for making a new topic, maybe edit it later:

Jerbot just opened the sneak peek on aoestats.io

It seems like the Khitans completely dominate the ladder. Wu and Shu are in the Top10. Jurchens and Wei meanwhile immediately dropped to the bottom. Wei even taking the last Spot.

I didn’t expected Khitans to be that good tbh. The individualle bonusses didn’t looked top tier to me. But I guess it’s the combination of 4 good bonusses which just makes this civ so dominant. The Sheep Bonus helps gets a solid feudal timing, the production bonus helps using that timing, the double attack upgrades make the individual units stronger than the opponent counterparts and lastly the pastures are a strong midgame eco bonus that is also very flexible in utilization.
Heavy CA upgrade in Castle Age in my opinion isn’t a big factor here, but it adds one more strategic aspect to the civ.
Potential solution: Remove the faster production bonus, it’s in my opinion the least ā€œidenticalā€ of them. Whilst having a big impact on the current winrates.

On the other end we have Jurchens and Wei. Jurchens might possibly ok when the Grenadiers received a small buff in Castle Age. I think a lot of people wanted to try them, but they are really not that good in castle age. Thunderclap Bombs on the other end might even need a small nerf then. And Wei… Yeah they have many issues. Starting by having a bad eco bonus. The cavalry HP is also kinda meh, given that they miss the last Armor and Hei Guang isn’t even close to Knight power.
I feel you could add ā€œTC Techā€ to the list of techs that are affected by the eco Bonus Then even researching loom (at the start of the game) would already give a Villager, helping out in the weak early stages of the civ. Then a small Buff to the Hei Guang and increasing the HP Bonus to like 20%/50% would be enough to make the civ competitive.

Wu is also a very special cause, because a lot of the Winrates may come from their Dock bonus.Unfortunately we don’t have these stats right now, but for me it feels the 65 F is ok for everything else, but just a bit too much for the docks. 2 Docks and you’re already better off than Lithuanians which just were nerfed because they were too good on hybrid maps. And I feel like Wu need to get the same treatment. But then they might become a bit weak on Land Maps if that nerf also affects the military buildings bonus…
Wu will probably be complicated to find a solution.

Lastly a word to the Shu. This is really interesting. I saw them merely as a ā€œmid civā€ before people like hera shittet on them. So I just wanted to see the stats. And stats now show they are top tier actually. I’m really curious to see the detailed stats now where and when they shine.

On the other hand Heavy Hei Guang with +4MA can beat generic Paladin. Also Tiger Cavalry is broken like Monaspa on release. And Wei is just as bad as Georgians on release. So if Wei gets buff, Tiger Cav must need a nerf. Or we will see a Georgians 2.0

Agree on this.

Maybe not. You can just nerf the early dock techs.

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I’ve thought about this also I’m not sure. I think this might not have a big impact on hybrid maps, though I have to admit that’s really hard to assess.

What

We were talking about the Shu

Either way I feel like Wei will end up being good once Pros start being more greedy with it

4 extra vills in Feudal is half a Cuman bonus

My bad, I mixed up the two civilizations.

No one can afford 4 Feudal eco techs without discount and get away with it. Unlike Cumans they don’t have a second eco bonus or a 2nd option either.

I feel you. 11

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Realistically it takes about 9 minutes for a Vill to pay back Gold Mining. It’s really not worth getting it jsut to get one more vill.

In theory this would synergize with a double Range Archers play. But They don’t have the Eco to do this witout farming early and they are also scaling bad.

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Cumans need to use more resources than the Wei to get anywhere. Half of the Wei bonus is ā€œfreeā€

And the TC bonus was good for booming before they got cheap buildings

But compared to the Cuman bonus its way less of an investment. You dont need to build the TC nor pay for the TC nor pay for the vills. For knights really just two mining techs, every other tech is useful

The eco bonus isn’t bad. Extra villagers before castle age is strong. But it may take some figuring out. It is a bit of a question of how much you can greed with it. The cavalry hp bonus could be buffed by having it include the effects of bloodlines (which would be an extra 3/6 hp). It’s not much of a buff, but a generic Hei Guang cavalry is on par with a knight after both have bloodlines (extra armor is pretty good, and slightly cheaper cost is also helpful). But I think that they really need a bug fixed for their Xianbei raiders (as well as something to improve the unit generally). And changes to traction trebs (so that they aren’t plain terrible) would also help them.

Khitans: I think what’s making them really strong is their food economy. So a good nerf for them would probably be on the extra food bonus (maybe from 10 to 8%? Might need to be more, but I think it’s better to be conservative, especially with such a far-reaching bonus). That would hurt all the food-heavy units (scouts, militia-line, and steppe lancers), but that would be fine imo. Missing bloodlines hurts them, but they are doing pretty well without it (and I think Ordo cavalry makes up for it somewhat well).

That is true. But it is very small. Even Cumans don’t build 2nd TC in Feudal, they will save at least 150 wood. My point is Wei don’t have such 2nd option.

Wei investment for 4 villagers = 375 food, 275 wood
Cumans investment for 4 villagers = 200 food, 275 wood (ignoring stone cost)

The best way to take advantage of Wei bonus is to just ignore the bonus and pick up the eco tech you need. But I think players are not looking at the bonus like that. And picking up the mining techs which slows their age advancing.

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This is not the only consideration. It reduces the amount of villagers that you need on gold to produce units. For double stable Knights for instance the difference is two villagers less. It doesn’t cost any gold to research.

I really like the approach of grabbing it on the way up to Castle Age if you know you are going to be producing military in early Castle.

Aside from this fact. All I have to say about the new civs is that the Three Kingdoms ā€˜civs’ are not real civs and they don’t belong in ranked.

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