How to make that balanced? Here’s some ideas. Trash knights to some degree are my ideas.
They don’t get cavalier, but otherwise they can upgrade their knights fully. They get cavalier but are missing blast furnace, bloodlines, plate barding armor, husbandy. They get Paladins but are missing bloodlines, blast furnace, and plate barding armor, husbandy.
Nerf even more? Make cavalier or paladins them miss chain barding armor?
Everything you’ve listed would be a massive overnerf (I mean, depends on the rest of their tech tree, of course). First, they don’t have any other military bonuses, second, they don’t have powerful eco bonuses (basically you get wood upgrades several minutes earlier, everything else is hardly relevant). What this means is that other knight civs will be able to outproduce you and win a fight due to larger numbers and thus have units standing vs you redeeming some of the cost back. For example, berbers can produce 7 knights against 6 burgundian knights. If they fight each other, Berbers will have several units remaining with collective hp equal to 2 knights (~270 resource worth of remaining army), whereas burgandians will receive 220 gold back. So it’s not OP in castle age at all, no need to remove bloodlines and other crucial techs.
I agree. It might just b better to specialize the civ on Knights alone, and keep everything else below average, specially Trash units, as they already will have the Vineyards Ut to get some of their Food into Gold.
I don’t see it.
This bonus only takes effect when you loose knights. Having a numbers advantage is a pretty important thing in this game. Therefore this is more of a come back mechanic or little boost when you have very even trades. I don’t think it is as powerful as it seems at first…
It’s the Burgundian bonus that has the least chance to be OP. The bonus doesn’t help you mass more knights, since it’s not an actual discount, and saving gold won’t matter that much in castle age. Until they get their paladins they basically have worse cav than Berbers. And once they do they will probs get outmuscled by any bonused paladins because you don’t win games by losing more slowly.
Think just missing Bloodlines and Paladin makes the bonus pretty balanced. Like Berbers get knights 15% cheaper upfront = 20 resources, this bonus is 0.5*75 = 37.5 resources but they have to die first. For the bonus to matter that much, it would have to be quite a long game and then not having paladin would become a problem.
According to the screen shots they will have palas. And that’s a good thing because otherwise if they only had Briton cavalier I would never touch this civ even with a 10 meters stick (not that the current UTs make me wanna use a shorter one 11)
This bonus does nothing for early Castle Age, but becomes very strong after that. So it is weaker than a discount, meaning it should be okay to have higher numbers than the Berber discount. Especially because it affects only one ressource. Gold is the more important one for Knights and the more important one for lategame. So I would estimate that something like 33% would be a good number, where it’s strong, but still not broken. 50% seems way too much for fully upgraded Knights in Castle Age or fully upgraded Paladin in Imperial Age.
So if they don’t want to reduce the 50% I think the civ needs to lack bloodlines (to keep Castle Age Knights in check) and the last armor upgrade, considering they seem to get Paladin. In lategame you usually already lost quite some Knights, so it’s not as important anymore if it’s a discount or getting your gold back after the kill. Also there has never before been any kind of discount on Paladins, so starting with 50% of the gold cost seems insane. They need some serious drawback and lacking the last armor upgrade would be that (in addition to lacking bloodlines, which is not as important for Paladins though). Lacking Blast Furnace would not be enough I think, as 16 damage is still very good. Having 5 instead of 7 pierce armor makes a huge difference though.
I just hope they don’t have that bonus and fully upgraded Paladins (or just lacking something like Blast Furnace), as that would be so obviously op, you don’t even need to test it.
That was my initial thought as well but I guess you also could get your castle age eco upgrades upon reaching feudal (requires a bit of defense at some point though) and then go all-in knights spam from 3 stables in castle.
It’s pointless to theorize without knowing the rest of their tech tree. If they have very limited imp tech tree, than 50% gold refund on paladins seems reasonable as it’s their only real option at this stage. In Castle age they are by no means op when compared to berbers or franks. In imp they will struggle against halbs or camels anyways. However, if they have decent infantry and FU skirmishers, then yes, this bonus is op, for they can produce their gold unit longer than any other civ and also counter any counter unit.
I hope they don’t give em plate barding armors, paladins without PB armors is only slightly better than FU cavaliers but with an extremely high extra upgrade cost.
Well their second bonus doesn’t sound even that strong because you would usually get your eco upgrades when you can afford them and have enough vills to make them worth. I suppose it would allow people to get wood upgrades during age up (but then it’s a worse Celt bonus) or maybe even horse collar earlier (still pretty minor) but otherwise if you’re going to try and get hand cart in feudal or something and turtle for an extended feudal then you’re playing worse Cuman. Not that if the civ ends up being UP it would bother me, after all better this than having a pay to win civ.