[ Feedback / Suggestion ] Why last patch Teuton's buff doesn't feel like a buff, and ideas how to do so

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

I was happy and excited to finally see some buff for Teutons, but at the end I don’t feel it was meaningful.

In my opinion, Teuton’s design is : being a very slow walking and defensive civilization that hit strong.

But I sincerely feel they don’t feel that point, because :

  • Lack of husbandry makes their paladins not really effective, especially versus archers or sieges.
  • Teutonic Knights despite having amazing stats, is too slow to be a threat. Only the AI would engage an attack against them on a melee combat.
  • Despite having really good buffs for defenses, they would lose against a mobility war, where they would not catch up and just end up being overwhelmed.

Because of that, they have a really hard time against Archers & Siege Civilizations, plus the mobiles ones who can raid from one side to the map, to the complete other side.

Here my point of view why I feel the recent buff are not really meaningful :

The [+1/+0] starting Castle Age :

I think the [+1/+0] armor is pointless by design, because their Teutonic Knights should fit the “strong melee unit”, and doesn’t need to have more “strong melee unit”, with their champions & their halberdier.

This would have been interesting if it was instead [+0/+1], giving them more options against Archers and assaults.

Farm cost from 33% less to 40% less :

It was already super strong bonus, I don’t see why buffing it by an addition of 7%. The goal of this bonus is to “boom” faster, saving wood, and getting a strong income of foods, but at the end it reduces only by 4 woods. It wasn’t necessarily and it has, so far, no meaningful impact.

Ideas in how to buff the Teutons, with one or more of the following options, and that by keeping in mind they don’t need Husbandry, nor Bracer :

  • Increase Teutonic Knight speed to reach its possible threat. Currently at max stats, it reaches 0.77 speed, which is slower than most of archers that are at 0.96. I would buff their speed up to 0.9 with Squires, and would not be “broken”, because they would still be heavily counter by archers and anti infantry. It would just give more options to their already very limited use. Since they “only” have 2(+4) pierce armor, they would still be heavily counter by archers and pierce damage, where most of civilizations can do easily.

  • Giving them access to Light Cavalry. Teutons are one of the worst “Trash Units” (units that doesn’t cost golds) civilizations, since they only got access to the fully upgraded Halberdier. Giving them Light Cavalry would at least give them some cavalry options, especially against siege and archers, despite not having Husbandry.

  • Changing the [+1/+0] to [+0/+1] (or even [+1/+1] ) to specifics units. I like the ideas of making champions because of some specific traits and upgrades, but for me it feels too weak, and as I said before, is not a necessity. They already have the Teutonic Knights that should fit in that role. And giving at least 1 pierce armor would give them options against archers, where they struggle a lot with. For example, I would love something similar to Tower Shield of the Lithuanians, it would be a very great buff for them, giving them more options, despite not having Bracer.

I would conclude that, this is why I think we don’t see Teutons in the pro-play, because of their lack of possibilities, their too specific gameplay which gives easy counter and anticipations, despite having some great ideas. Bring love to Teutons ! :smiley:

EDIT : I really like the suggestion of OliveCereal4714 with his Deus Vult

Instead of having bonus armor, pierce armor, which ends up being similar to Malians, giving them speed under a cost AND conditions (keeping relics) looks great !

I would change a bit like this, so it could be more balanced, while keeping that great idea, otherwise it would be too strong with a 30% bonus on top of Squires : Champions with 1.26 speed, Halberdier with 1.4 speed :

  • Each relic in garnison gives 2.5% movement speed to the Barrack-line, and 5% movement speed to the Teutonic Knight, to a maximum of 4.

It would be a second “relic”/religious oriented civ with the Litthuanians , giving so much in the game design :

  • a unique strategy to play with or against
  • kind of historically accurate, with Teutonic Knights being more zealots than their Barrack-line
  • a possibility or not to research that technology depending of the situation
  • Reaching the maximum possibility which seems fair : 0.7 + 20% (relic bonus) + 10% (squires) = 0.91 movement speed, which is what I suggested already. It would increase their idea of being a defensive civilization
  • Since by most of game you have at least 2 relics guaranteed, it would give 10% to the Teutonic knight, reaching 0.84 speed, and giving 5% to the Barrack-Line, giving 1.035 for the Milice-Line and 1.15 for the Spearman-line.
  • With that basic bonus, Celts would be still by default the fastest civilization, but under certain conditions, Teuton would become with this bonus. They would be what is the Litthuanians compare to the Franks.
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2

Agreed, I think the +1 armor would have been more interesting if they had a different UU, as it is it just marginalizes an already very niche unit. I’ve said this many times before, but I think that Ironclad should be renamed “Crusade” and keep the siege armor boost, but also increase Teutonic Knight speed by 10-15%. If they did that and nothing more, I’d be pretty happy with Teutons.
I don’t think they need Light Cav or even husbandry; there’s been a proliferation of requests for X civ to get x unit that every other civ gets (Pikes and Eskirms for Turks especially). Their paladins are still strong, better than Celt or Byzantines, and in the case of an already fast unit, while it’s an inconvenience, it’s still quite a serviceable unit, as opposed to the Teutonic Knight, which has such a low base speed that its impressive stats don’t really make up for it.

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While I believe they should get Light Cav, I don’t think they need Husbandry, otherwise they would be “like every other paladins civilizations”. Meanwhile Light Cav gives so much compares to the Scout (+15 HP, +2 attack, -0.05 speed and +4 damage against Monks), they would still be Light Cavalry without Husbandry, which is not something broken, but giving them a stronger option to deal with Archers without golds.

I like the idea of “Crusade”, and giving an increase speed in exchange of some cost and research, giving more speed to the Teutonic Knight :slight_smile: !

4

That armor upgrade they got in the last patch is useless IMO. Would have been better if it was pierce armor too so 1/1 extra. End of the day this is a slow moving civ, so If you’re going to buff them it needs to be something in the mobility department.

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The problem I have with “being slow” is that it gives nothing to their gameplay. They’re slow, and they just straight suffer from that, unlike some other civilizations that are considered “slow” too. By considering buffing what I pointed in the original post, and all the suggestions so far, it would gives more possibilities to their current weaknesses, and that, without Husbandry nor Bracer.

6

I agree. Civs like Portuguese and Koreans are also “slow,” but they have powerful ranged UUs and siege units that can still engage in combat despite their speed (I know Teutons get SO, but there’s nothing special about that particularly as a reason to pick Teutons). It’s pretty tricky to make a civ work that is both slow and not great with ranged units (except the SO).

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7

I’m just copypasting what I wrote in my old post

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8

Welp, they do get Heavy scorpion, Bombard cannon and Hand cannoneer right?

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The identity of the Teutons is tied to their slow movement speed. I don’t think giving them a relic bonus to speed is a good idea, as it directly contradicts that identity.

Teutons already get a bonus towards relics indirectly; with their enhanced monks, they’re more likely to have them there, healing their armies, which makes acquiring relics in the first place more likely. Statistically, Teutons have 50% more relics in a given game than average civs.

What they need is a way to force players to engage them. As-is, they just get run around in circles because nothing they can do can really compel enemies to actually fight them.

If you look at their win/loss statistics, they basically are a perfect match to the general power of civs. They beat the weakest civs, and they lose to the strongest civs. This is the benefit of having a mostly full tech tree, but it’s also indicative of the fact they’re extremely generic. A civ should have things it counters and things that counter it, but because of the commonness of ranged units, Teutons basically just lose or win depending on whether they’ve got more bonuses or not.

In my mind, that’s a strong negative, because it means the civ is boring. Teutons don’t particularly do any one thing well enough to be interesting or extraordinary. You basically play them like a civ with no bonuses at all.

And giving them increased movement speed would definitely make them stronger, but it still wouldn’t give them a particular identity. They need something that preserves their slowness while making it actually a good thing, they don’t need to compromise their identity and thereby become even more generic than ever.

An example of this would be giving them their Crenelations ‘garrisoned infantry fire arrows’ bonus throughout the game as a civ bonus. Teuton towers are such an all-in strategy that attempting to use their increased garrison capacity is almost always a recipe for suicide. By allowing them to use their infantry in earlier ages without an extremely expensive imperial age tech, it would allow them to play differently throughout the game, not just in the late imperial age when that sort of bonus isn’t even relevant anymore.

Then, give Teutonic Knights the ability to build walls and towers. TK’s are, as it currently stands, just too generic to ever exist in a normal game, because despite their offensive power, they don’t offer anything that a Champion+Halbs can’t do just about as well, while also doing other things that the TK cannot do. But if you allow them to function as a highly-armored offensive villager, that makes them a serious and legitimate threat that must be dealt with, not just ignored until the rest of the army has been destroyed and they can be wiped out at your leisure.

Combined, you get an extremely potent fortress civ, able to aggressively use walls and towers to control movement around the battlefield, rather than using high speed units to shift the engagement around the map.

BUT, they’re still fundamentally slow, with all that implies. The same counters still work, there’s just a host of counter and crossplay available.

10

Honestly the 1+ melee armor was a lazy bonus, compared to the new civ with +5 melee armor for militia, or the extra attack for burmese infantry.

The civ has bad archey line, bad cavalry line, slow infantry line, good siege but without siege ram, their siege is inferior compared to to other siege civs.

Their towers were good in age of kings, Yasama towers are superior in every single aspect, koreans and briton towers aswell.

Their navy is weak, so all they have is good economy and monk line…the civ is a heavy civ, but sadly the scenarios where you can gather all their power together are very unrealistic for both 1x1 and TG.

Something like bracer would make the civ better in many maps, their UU deftly needs a speed boost, because almost everything counters ETK. Even making their paladins tankier vs ranged unit could work, if they want to keep them as slow civ.

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11

I like the idea of them being a heavy infantry civ. Of course, they should be slower that other civs, but NOT THAT SLOWER. I preffer them get a boost of speed for the UU and infantry, rather that havimg another tasteless cav civ. But, again, I agree. Their armor bonus is not enough, specially if you compare them to Bulgarias, Burmese or Malians. Old civs like Japs, celts, vikings and Aztecs are also better at infantry (and better civs as general).
Is incredible, but a god UT can change a civ, and make it specialize in something (slavs being the best example of that)

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12

I agree with everything you said, but I like the idea of having a strong civ despite having access to Bracer.

Franks are top tiers despite lacking Bracer and same for Persians. I would love some buffs that would bring fun (like that idea of relics I’ve put as an EDIT on my main post), and identifying them as a true infantry civilization.

13

Thanks for including my idea and naming me:)

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14

In their defense, their bonus garrison space is relevant for tower rush, while all these civs get their bonuses in Castle (except Korean stone bonus)

15

Teutons are actually quite strong. They fall behind in imperial age though because they lack light cavalry and hussar, which is really important for raiding purposes and to defend against enemy raids. On the other hand, they lack siege ram and that’s a big problem for any infantry civ because they need a strong push in one spot to avoid the enemy to use his mobility.

Teutons need to play defensive until castle age or early imp. They need to use their farm bonus to put themselves ahead and try to finish the game before late imperial age, where most of civs are better.

In my opinion teutons need siege ram and that’s all. If you make them faster they will lost their identity. Teutons should be slow, strong, defensive and infantry oriented.

16

The problem is, just being slow isn’t an identity, it’s just a hindrance. I agree that they should stay slow, but they need more than just that to solidify their identity as a civ.

I mean, what are they, really?

They’re not particularly an infantry civ, because their infantry isn’t all that amazing, especially compared to legitimate infantry civs like the Goths, Japanese, or Slavs, all of which do everything normal infantry do with big bonuses besides, and no real penalties. Teutons only real infantry bonus is Crenelations, which only kicks in in the late imperial age, when it’s not even useful anymore.

They’re not particularly a defensive civ, because their bonuses don’t make them particularly amazing defensively even when they’re available. Garrison bonuses are nowhere near as useful as eco bonuses, after all. And they don’t even get Bracer, so while their castle range is good, their damage is actually below average, and their imperial keeps are just plain bad. And to add insult to injury, crenelations doesn’t even work with bombard towers!

And they’re not really a monk civ, because all they really have is double healing range, which, while nice, isn’t enough to make an identity out of.

So you have a civ with mediocre/bad defensive bonuses, mediocre/bad infantry bonuses, and mediocre monk bonuses.

And the net result? A civ whose most defining trait is being bland. Take away Teutonic Knights and what do you have left? A slow, generic civ with no particular trait that makes them interesting in any way.

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This is why I really want the crenelations arrow bonus to be a civ bonus instead. Being able to swap infantry into archers is a really cool bonus, and would really help to define the civ as both unique and an infantry civ.

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17

I think TK speed is not a problem, the problem is with horrible path finding so they’ll be pondering the meaning of their existance most of the time battles take place. How about:

Reducing their melee dmg a little but give them either of
+1 range ?
trample damage ?

This will make up for their slow speed in melee situations.

They must be weak to archer otherwise they can’t be countered.

You have to expect archers to counter your slow TK, that’s why you’re supposed to mix in Skirms/cavs/scorpion. On the other hand, TK is an excellent meatshield, melee protection for your expensive siege weapons.

18

absolutely great summary and I thank you for it!

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