I dont think franks need a big nerf (or a small one). They only feel very oppresive when you are playing and archer civ without a good economic bonus. So archer players needs to aknowledge this and play accordingly.
(This is at least my case: i can hold franks with vietnamese but i am incapable to do so with the new koreans, even when koreans and vietnamese feel similar to play in other matches…).
So someone playing Franks handed you your butt I guess 
Well there are two sullotions. One. Learn how to counter them, there are plenty of options. Two. Play them your self. Who knows maybe you will win 
Frank Castles >>>> BBT (except for the range LoL).
Civilizations having Camels or Elephants do not have Paladins (big exception: Persians. Small exception: Byz).
nerf goth into what? they are already one of the worst 1 v 1 civs
Maybe for the best 1% of the player base. For everyone else goth are top 5. Check statistics if you don’t believe it. Goth bad legend has been far too long lingering in aoe community.
Goths are positively dreadful if you harrass them, which is not even hard.
There has to be a civilization that is number one and if anything it has to be Franks. In 1999, people loved AoE: II because it was based in the Medieval period, they bought it for Knights and Archers and a plethora of other stuff and the Franks are a great example of all those things, and it’s nice 21 years later people can still pick it up and have tons of fun. They are the quintessential Age of Empires 2 civilization and they should keep it as is.
No, not everyone does that, and it is not objectively a good thing. It can be a good thing, but depending on your game design it can also be a very bad thing.
The top level is always the vast minority. If most people think something is OP it probably should be nerfed, even if the players at the highest level dont think so.
Because if the majority of players struggle heavily against something, then it takes away the fun from the game for the majority of players. If something is easy to win with, but useless if countered properly it might not be objectively op, but still destroy the game, if the way you counter the strat/civ is significantly more difficult than playing that strat/civ.
Adding to that: An underpowered civ/strat does not hurt people dramatically. An overpowered one does. Even if it is just over powered at a lower level, it will still hurt the majority of players.
How about they just get nerfed for multiplayer? I’d hate it if one of my favorite civilizations got nerfed, and seeing as I always play single-player I would never want it to change.
To me it sounds like balancing a shooter game for people who don’t know how to aim. Since this thread is about Franks, let’s discuss castle drops shall we? You could argue that Franks are too good in noob games because it’s so much easier to rush a castle drop. But then why stop the hunt for mean castle droppers there and not nerf Incas and Spanish too? Same goes for other situations like Goth late-game or Briton archers. The point is, you would end up eroding many civs because at low levels coming up with something across several games to create a winning strategy will always be easier than reacting to the weird stuff others at throwing your way. If you want the game to be improved for noobs, ask for better matchmaking (and to fix quickplay, I swear this thing is a complete lottery).
shooter games are balanced for people who don’t know how to aim.
If there’s a gun that’s too good at low levels, it gets fixed. Even if it’s not a particularly gun good for ‘experts’. Noobs matter.
That’s why CS:GO has a kind of gun specifically designed to be OP in noob games then?
Right, I just had a brief look at CS:GO gun design.
It looks like the guns have been designed that way to make noob guns more fun, without effecting expert games?
Apparently these noob guns aren’t “too good” in the sense that they cause problems, and it’s not a loss to the game that some guns are completely irrelevant to some players.
My main point still stands, even by your own admission. Some guns have been specifically designed for noob games, ergo the devs have made sure to balance the game for noobs.
Now with Goths and Celts were nerfed, Franks now have way higher win rate compared to other Civs in average Elo.
For the people saying in elite and pro play they aren’t OP and predictable good for you, but for the rest of us plebs who are the 90% of the player base it’s not fair end of story.
As If it wasn’t enough they are by far the most played civ. I don’t remember another online video game where people think having a class with the highest pick rate and winrate to be balanced.
I’m starting to think that this inertia from a lot of people in this forum to see what’s going on is because a lot of you seem to main Franks since it’s so easy and “fun” to play.
I don’t care if it’s because it’s noob friendly, It doesn’t mean it has to be the strongest and It’s possible to just nerf in ways that just affect the lower elos without affecting pro play.
Feel free to deny my claims but suffice to say you won’t change my mind.
I don’t play shooters but I imagine for noobs the effective (!) difference between a weapon that is easy to aim with and a difficult one is quite large, right? Either way in aoe civ balance makes barely a difference at lower levels. Sure, some civs are a bit easier to play with than others but in the end when you “lose” hundreds or even thousands of resource due to inefficiency who cares about a particular res being gathered like 15% faster?
Damn. You hit the nail, thats how game design should be. Make civs more fun, without power creep.
Ok I’m actually baffled that you managed to find someone who wrote those guns make the game more fun for anyone. They got the charming name of “autonoob” for a good reason. Thinking about it, they probably are for people who always use them I guess.
In the example I mentioned, it was a HUGE mistake honestly, but you are indeed right that in this case this part of the game’s balance is irrelevant for more than average players. About most noob complaints I see around here, it’s more like asking to erode some civs because they are strong in, let’s say, 2h treaty Blackforest games, without caring about how average/good players will enjoy having to bear with these changes. And I would prob be called an elitist if I suggested them to play the civs fit to their game settings, or use siege weapons or smthing (ok in retrospect it would lead to "siege onager OP threads)
In this thread we’re not talking about those extreme cases though. This conversation about balancing for Noobs goes back through @MustySnizl’s post Franks need a nerf - #89 by MustySnizl and I think we’re talking about balancing for the ELO range 400 - 1600 or so, in addition to balancing for the top. No-one is suggesting the balance requirements of pros should be entirely ignored.
Also I dare say half the complaints about some civs being too strong in 2h treaty Blackforrest games were made by me, and it’s by no means true I don’t care about how changes would effect average/good player matches on Arabia. Most of my games are 1v1s on standard maps with standard settings, at slightly-above-average ELO.
The suggestions that I’ve seen that most blatantly don’t care about some group of people and/or match settings are the people who don’t card about 2h treaty Blackforrest and people who don’t care about Noobs. The worst examples of these are suggested pure buffs to WE. And a couple of posters like Equaliser, LordOfEvil and The healing fortress guy, but none of those appear to care particularly about pop-efficient units.
It’s the same as telling water Enthusiasts to “Just play with Italians”. I hope you can understand why that doesn’t make you sound like a nice person?
BTW, If there were 10-20 viable civs in those settings I think it would be perfectly valid advice.
To be entirely honest I have no idea what 400 ELO games look like. Usually when people talk about their ELO the lowest range I remember seeing is 700-800.
It sometimes does feel like lower level people aren’t very happy whether someone says stuff like “at pro level” in the discussion. Maybe because the idea of trickling balance make them feel put aside or something?
For the first point I suppose it’s because treaty does feel like it’s a niche game mode, like diplo or custom scenarios.
Regarding how noobs should be included in the balance, when I see people going Khmer fast imp into 3 ballista elephants into losing or going for pikes +xbow as Franks, I honestly can’t see how a civ or unit can be OP in their hands, unless in some extreme cases like the omegalul castle dropping bonus they are planning for Sicilian
Regardless, the nerfs that I did mention in my posts (ie. Chivalry more expensive and/or moved to Imp) would be the most helpful to noobs by delaying the Frank late game, while worse foragers or worse scout rush probs wouldn’t change much for them since it’s mostly early game stuff that is easily taken care of
Time for me to look dumb I guess
So as I understand things, civs that are good in black forest are elephant civs, siege onagers + siege engineer civs and Britons, so it looks like there is quite some possibilities to choose from.
My experience was that a player with eg Teutons (SO + SE) would be pretty insignificant compared with Persians (EWE). It’s been a little while since I played those games though, partly because of multiplayer issues (which are even worse in large team games) and partly because I’ve gotten too good for NOOB games and got tired of lobby games. So I could be wrong.
It sounds like you agree there should be at least 10-20 viable civs even at the low ELOs, at least in the most popular settings?
In that case it seems you agree that “Balancing for Noobs matters”.