Eagles are great for going all-in castle age, because Gold is easier to obtain than food, even before considering the usually neglected mining technologies. On the other hand, the complete lack of scout cavalry line in late game makes them a big question mark in late game. So I have a simple suggestion: Eagles cost 30F 40G rather than 20F 50G. It nerfs them in Castle Age and boosts them in late game.
If we consider Eagles to be replacement of Knights in Castle Age only, the new cost makes them much close to Knights about the distribution of resources. Knights need 60F 75G. If we were to make some hypothetical cheaper weaker Knights at 40G, the equivalent food cost should be 32F. Eagles sitting at 30F is very close.
The eagle switch in Castle Age is deadly for all 3 civs, but more importantly the change nerfs Aztecs the most.
I’m okay with this change. But there is chance that it will make Mayans late game El Dorado Eagle even stronger which already is pretty strong. I think just increasing their food cost to 25 will be better. In that case Incas may get a small buff.
Eagles are not a great unit in Castle Age for their stats. They are deadly because you can swarm with them, or that is what I have seen the pros do. When the going gets tough, drop 3 barracks, send 20 villagers to gold and spam the field with eagles.
so that makes the meso civs slightly worse in team games, right? but in team games, you can completely play Mayans and Incas as pure archer civs (as they are being played). I am not sure how the Aztecs play even now.
I posted something similar in another thread, so I do support this idea. I think Eagles are more of a Light Cav/Hussar equivalent than Knight, given that they are the Scout unit and counter Siege, Monks, and Skirmishers. Strange how expensive they are in gold, which affects 1v1 post Imp trash wars, while being easy to mass in the early game with the cheap food cost.
This was mentioned in the Red Bull tournament yesterday was well. After the Daut vs Tatoh match Nili mentioned how easy it is to mass Eagles in Castle Age with their low food cost.
Cost is interesting. I think they should be similar to a Scout in total resources (80), but still have a small gold cost (20-40). I guess this means 40-60 food, which would vastly slow down their production in the early game, while making sure they can be produced in the late game. With a bottomed out market and Guilds, the current 50 gold cost is 294 wood or food.
I don’t think they should ever be less than 20 gold because it’s important to ensure their counter unit (Swordsmen) can be produced in equal numbers by the opponent. 30 or 40 is probably best.
this is the primary problem… when you work out they arent simply LC, then you can start to realise that the rest of your logic is flawed
this is ludicrous for the late game, they would be uncounterable due to the number you can mass
this is my vote, hurts their feudal/castle, but doesnt enable spam in late game… try it first… and then can tweak after that…
its hilarious how some people (not you specifically, mainly reddit) only listen if a pro or dev says something, everyone else can say it for a year and it means nothing
I’m aware that eagles are not exactly LC. The largest difference is that LC is easily countered by a trash unit (spears). Trash countering trash is good balance, and since Eagles do not have a trash counter it is very important to keep their gold counter (swordsman) cheaper or equal. This is why I said eagles should never cost less than 20 gold.
You wouldn’t be able to mass them any more than the opponent could mass their counter, especially with the upcoming supplies and swordsman buffs. I’m not saying their gold cost should be immediately dropped to 20, take it from 50 to 40 and see if that’s enough. I’m just bounding the range where they could potentially end up. If they do go to 40 gold, this doesn’t justify much increase in the food cost (30 or 35 food maybe), which means they will still be easy to mass in the early game without much impact to age times. If they were around 30 gold then I could see the food cost being 40 or 50 which would have a larger impact on both early (fewer eagles) and late game (more eagles), but again I think that’s too large of a change to make in one step.
Agree completely, this would be a good first step to see the effects.
I can’t speak to reddit, I don’t spend much time there. I just thought it was nice to hear the issue mentioned in the biggest tournament, less than 1 day after I posted about it on the forums. Maybe it’s been mentioned many times before, I’m not sure. I would call it a minor issue in general, but it seems like most would agree that the abundance of eagles in the early game, and scarcity of them in 1v1 late game trash wars are slightly problematic.
With the upcoming buff on Militia line, I think we can hold this change for a bit. I’m not expecting that Eagle play in castle age will be nerfed super hard just because this buff. But I also want one step at a time like most of us. In fact I think +1 MA for LS and THS a bit overbuff.
Fair enough, the longsword buff will definitely give eagles a hard time in feudal and castle age. I think that’s only half of the issue though. Eagles consume too much gold in 1v1 post-imperial, and in trash wars meso only gets 2/3 of the combat triangle (Hussars typically are used to defeat mass skirmishers). That’s been somewhat solved by Aztec (+1 attack and +1 range) and Mayan Skirmishers (2 javelins) being good enough to beat most other civs with brute force. Aztecs also get more 33% gold from relics to create the occasional eagle, and Mayan gold mines last 15% longer. I’m not sure these things are a full solution, but they certainly help compared to the situation of the Incas.
The Incas do not have a good answer to this 2/3 of trash wars problem. Their unique tech removes the minimum range on their skirms, so they do a little better against things like enemy hussars, but this often makes them perform worse against enemy skirmishers. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but with large numbers the natural min range can actually help spread out their damage and reduce overkill (assuming stand ground stance is on). For Incas, any halberdier or cavalry that makes it close to them takes full focus fire (where other civs would have partial focus fire while other units continue to focus the more distant targets). It’s basically like using a ram against mass archers, where they all auto-target the nearest enemy, but it can be any unit drawing fire, while the enemy skirmishers are taking no damage.
Incas also have the worst eagles of the 3 meso civs. There should be some way of keeping eagle production going longer than they are currently able. Shifting some gold cost to food cost would help significantly (and maybe in a slight way synergize with their starting llama and very minimal farming bonus).
which is ok… japanese have FU arbs which will eat them, and burmese +3 advantage is free (a paid for UT should be better than a free civ advantage) but burmese can ultimately use siege (heavy scorps)
but either way TK eat everything, and it doesnt mean they even see much use…
which is fine, the game doesnt have to be 100% balanced around trash wars, especially when we consider the insane power spikes the mesos have until that pooint, if anything mesos should be even weaker, to make up for how strong they are in the earlier game (when you should be winning anyway)
and if anything all the mesos actually have better trash then a number of civs… turks say hi by the way…
Exactly, out of the 3 mesos they lost the least.
i really dont see how…
the problem isnt only how many you can make, but what you can do with them… hussar raids can be countered by leaving a bunch of “free” halbs lying around, if you leave champs lying around (if you even have champs, a number of civs only have 2hs, and others only have LS) they are quite an investment relative to “free” pikes or halbs
while at the same time hussars have significantly lower dps than eagles… aztecs are doing a whopping 17 dmg(22!! to siege, 19 to buildings) el dorado eagles have a whopping 100 hp, and do 13 dmg to cavalry, iirc they cost effectively beat cavaliers… incas(even though they are the weakest) take 1dmg from arbs, not 4, but 1… it takes 60 hits to kill them, compared to 24 for a hussar… that isnt remotely close to being “light cav”
hussars do a paltry 11 dmg to everything mentioned above, if we factor armour that puts the eagle far ahead… in relative dmg…
The Incan Kamayuks hard counter the three trash units, eagles and camels. Most often they also counter Paladins quite well. So in a trash war it is better to sell wood, food to make Kamayuks rather than play the game which you are meant to lose.
Moreover, the Vikings have a D tier cavalry in late game. Vikings pikes are worse than Halberdiers in trash wars (but better vs Cavalry). The Berserker with its healing + Skirmishers are supposed to be used in trash Wars for Vikings.
Are you sure about this? On one hand, Bulgarians pay for their UT but get Swordsmen upgrades free. Burmese pay for their Swordsmen upgrades, but get free attack upgrades. Champions (which Burmese have) get +1 attack, +10 HP (which feels like another +1 armor) which Bulgarians lack. Overall it is a complicated relation, but I will prefer Bulgarians in trash wars.
You’re right about Turks. They become very sad in late game 1v1. The Turks do get some nice gold bonuses though, with an increased gather rate (to grab neutral golds before they’re raided or forced away by castles), and they save a lot of gold with free chemistry, Hussar upgrade, and half price gunpowder upgrades.
Maybe it comes down to Incas more than other meso civs. Aztecs and Mayans do have good enough eco to push for an early win, and better gold bonuses if the game goes long (I’m not actually sure if Aztec early eco is that good these days).
As for Eagles vs cavalry, I have a hard time believing they cost-effectively beat cavaliers. It’s maybe possible since they get +4 bonus damage to cavalry, but I’ll do some testing later today. When compared to Hussars, Elite Eagles are not much better. They have 9 vs 7 base attack, but the Hussar has slightly shorter reload time. Winged Hussars end up having the same attack as Elite Eagles, and the Hussars have much more HP especially with Bloodlines. We’re also comparing a trash unit to one with a high gold cost, the difference should be significant. If we want to look at Aztec Eagles then I think the fair comparison would be Malian Light Cav, and it’s 17 attack for upgraded Eagles vs 14 for the LC.
