Usually when one side gets the bloodlines, the other side either follows up or accelerates into the castle age. However when the bonus doesn’t take effect until the castle age, it means the opponent can use 65HP scouts to attack you if it’s willing to, whereas you can only use 45HP scouts before hitting the castle age. This would be a huge disadvantage.
Of course, you could still use scouts to assist allies’ archers, but staying in the feudal age would not help the Franks at all. Although the bloodlines is not often researched before clicking castle age advance, but a civ without bloodlines is often not even worth going feudal scouts.
Yeah, it’s small enough that I don’t think either improving or removing it will affect the toughness of the feudal scouts of Franks.
Already in a relatively decent and fair way at least.
Feudal scouts of both sides are 45HP fairly. And in the castle age, the opponent’s knights have the as same 120 HP as Franks after getting the bloodlines.
Oh! I misunderstood. Btw does anybody think Mongols should lose bloodlines?
A one vill or 2 vill lead is small. But thats what ends up determining resource lead. Quickly pushing scouts as franks is what makes them OP during both Feudal and castle age.
I didn’t mean the food bonuses aren’t important. I mean they are still not as influential as the 9 HP.
Even if without these food bonuses, 9 HP would still make the feudal scouts of Franks the best feudal scouts in the game. They will still be able to take much more hits, so the key of their power is still the HP bonus, as I stated before.
Yup! I agree with the premise of powerful scouts. But there could be a chance for other civs to be a counter since franks lack bloodlines. The berry bonus makes sure Franks have numbers too in scout war. And not to mention the berry bonus is huge on certain maps where franks are like a civ win.
More than double the play rate for Franks compared to those two. And that’s before the Hindustani eco major nerf and Gurjara Shrivamsha rider cost nerf. A few months down the line those civs won’t even be preferred as much as Magyars or Huns.
Why not start at 15% and bump it back up to 20% if they actually loss serious ground. Assuming 5 stone miners, that’s still a castle a whole minute earlier than other civs, or 1 TC worth of stone discount.
Replying to @UpmostRook9474 I believe free forging on Magyars scouts are the best scouts in the game as they can kill vils in one fewer hits, whereas Frankish scouts are still going to be chased off by the same investment in spearmen.
the +9 HP in feudal for Scouts is in my opinion the most problematic since it allows them to fight so much better vs all the common opening units (scouts, militias, man at arms, archers…). and also if they research cavalry armor they can even tank 1 more hit from spearmen.
Could be lowered to 10 or 15% HP in feudal (with 15% it would be either +7 or +6 hp, and with 10% would be +5 hp) and goes back to 20% in castle age?
As a general response to using win rates to support claims to nerf: it is difficult to know where to draw the line. I would look at tournaments more than anything. Here for instance, Franks get an insane win rate, but are only number 6.
Moreover, what is an ‘acceptable’ win rate to escape being nerfed, and just being accepted as a strong civilisation? I would say that a strong civilisation accross only one type of maps (here open maps) should be acceptable if 2k+ Elo win rate is below 55%, which is the case here. This is of course only a thumb rule, and again, tournaments, etc. are more important.
The high play rate can come from the good results, but also simply from being quite ‘historical’ and straightforward to play. It is also a self-reinforcing factor: the more people play a civ, the better they know how to play it. But that does not mean that the civ in itself is (necessarily) stronger.
Now, buffing a lot of other civilisations mechanically make civs which aren’t buffed a little weaker.
Now all of this being said, one of the following buffs would be fine: reducing the cavalry HP bonus before Castle Age, nerfing the berry bonus, nerfing the Chivalry research time. I am still not sold that any is necessary, and hitting the berry bonus may be the most effective for Arabia at mid Elo (low Elo games depend more on late game). I also think Bearded Axe could get a minor buff to make Throwing Axemen a tad more appealing, but only if there is a corresponding or more powerful nerf elsewhere.
As others have said, the upcoming buff to pikes and halbs is already a nerf to Franks. Let’s review their revised win rate a few months after the patch. Even their current 53% win rate really isn’t that excessive IMO. I think the infantry buff will be more than enough to knock a few percent off their win rate.
If you go back to patches before the DLC, like from Dotd release to DOI release here, or here, from a few months after Lotw release to Dotd release, a lot of civs move around but Franks and Mayans still remain quite up.
Even in the patches you’ve marked, they’re “only 6” because Gurjaras and in most of those patches, Hindustanis existed. But those civs got nerfed heavily, and in fact all the civs except for Chinese, Mayans, Franks, have received impactful nerfs so far.
If every map and settings have a few civs extremely strong, only those civs get picked for those settings all the time. That makes the game stale. Balance changes have always tried to address this. Water bonuses were adjusted for Vikings, Italians. Nomad bonuses were addressed and are still being addressed heavily in the upcoming patch to prevent Spanish, Malians, Persians from being broken. Organ guns, Artillery, Houfnice, Flemish nerfs were all done with the same intent for closed maps. So its definitely not acceptable for a civ to be too strong in some settings.
Most played civ in Kotd3 tied with Lithuanians, 4th most in Kotd4, Third most played civ in the first 5 redbull wololo combined with a 7-1 win-loss in RBW 5 notably, Top-5 played civ in The grand melee, Top-5 played civ RBW Legacy, 6th most played in RMS Cup 2. The only settings where they’re not so popular is NAC and Hidden Cup because their map pools are predominantly hybrid based.
Insane preference towards the civ at topmost level, busted pick/win rates at mid elos for a decade and yet remain largely unchanged. All the other civs got a nerf, change. Even the evergreen mayans are going to be impacted by eagle cost nerf. What was changed for Franks? NOTHING.
Before 2021, Aztecs had a 10+% playrate and were by far the most played civ at higher elos, the second was like 6% (also Franks). After the nerfs they got in 2020, dropped to something like 7th or 8th even though they are still ‘straightforward’. The first 6 months of 2020, Khmer had an insane play rate, even though they weren’t a ‘historical’ civ. OG Cumans had like 20+% play rate and the 2 tc boom into steppe lancers was not a familiar build.
More people play a civ ONLY because its ridiculously powerful. Legacy Huns, OG Burmese, OG Cumans, OG Gurjaras, pre-DE Slavs, all have followed the rule. If a civ is strong, players win more often, win even after making mistakes and feel comfortable playing with it. So yes it definitely means its stronger.
This is true, if the buffs were generically very strong. Imo, the only civ that got a generically strong buff is Malians (if its actually 15% faster gold collection) and the only civ that got a strong buff specific to matchup against Franks is Ethiopians. All the other changes are minor and potentially going to push civs from the bottom of the table to somewhere in the middle. Its going to affect the current average and mediocre civs like Vietnamese which didn’t get any change or civs like Byzantines which got some unimpactful changes.
Berry bonus is the only effective nerf amongst this. Chivalry is probably not even researched in majority of 1v1. Its mostly a TG upgrade. The cavalry HP bonus before castle age should be removed completely if its the only nerf happening.
Early game economic bonuses are straightforward and applicable to all Elos. Portugese is the best indicator of this - almost never picked in tournaments until that buff and now suddenly they’re one of the most played. If anything its going to impact the gameplay much more at higher elos than mid elos.
Its not just the extra hp but rather free horse collar + faster berries + extra hp. That’s three bonuses in under 10 mins. Someone else in the thread mentioned how Magyar scouts are actually better and that’s true. But Magyars don’t get a dark age bonus to keep them slower than other civs.
Reducing hp bonus in feudal to 10% or 15% might numerically seem like a nerf but it won’t have any impact. The Franks will still have faster up time, win scout vs scout battles effectively. Either the hp bonus should switch again to being applicable only for Knights or they should lose the berry bonus. And the castle discount must definitely be reduced to something like -10% in castle age and -20% in imperial age.
No its not. Franks have 54, 55 and 58% winrates against civs like Ethiopians, Japanese and Dravidians which get free or cheap pike upgrades or stronger pikes. Bonuses on Camels is a nerf to Franks not pikes.
If they’re like 53% in one patch, 50% in another, 48% in another and so on fine. But 53% is their lower bound. They get to as much as 56% in some patches. And what about the TG ladder? They have like 2x play rate compared to any other cavalry civ.
Dear @Pulikesi25, I understand what you say, but disagree.
All right, I said you were correct on that, but I don’t understaqnd why you would focus on patches more than a year old. It feels a bit like cherry picking.
Yeah, again I agree with the general stance. I just disagree that Franks are ‘too strong’. Just ‘strong’ on open maps.
All right, so here I see two issues at least: first it is difficult to draw statistics from little numbers, although we are forced to. I do not see a contradiction that a strong civ on open maps settings would be picked a lot. There has to be stronger civs for some settings. Otherwise, should we stop when every civ is at 50% win rate on Arabia?
Moreover, it is not true nothing changed for Franks. It depends how far in the past you want to be looking, but since 2020, Chivalry and the berry collection bonus were nerfed. Moreover, a quite tricky aspect of the game since the introduction of DE has been pathing: with bad pathing at the beginning, archer civs were disproportionally represented to be better than they would have been with better pathing. Things are better now, but nowhere near perfect. So around the introduction of DE, with new civs, new mechanics, etc. it is normal the devs would have been taking it a bit easier on cavalry civs.
I will add to that I have never seen a pro player say Franks were overpowered since DE came out.
Yes, that’s what I said. I never said Franks were not strong, just that being strong and straightforward gives a strength across all Elo range, and a higher popularity. I will even go as far as to say I kind of think there is no overpowered Arabia civilisation right now. So who will people play if that’s true? The stronger civs.
Let’s have a thought experiment and imagine I am correct not about the Franks, but about the meta on Arabia: at higher Elos, let us assume no civilisation is OP. There is still going to be a number 1 win rate, right? And a most popular civ, which may be the same. So people will play it more, especially if it is easy to play (for mid and low Elo). Does that mean it should be nerfed?
Again, I disagree. Bengalis, Dravidians, Incas are also significant winners alongside Malians. As for Gambeson infantry civs, Slavs, Spanish, Ethiopians and Malay, time will tell. But the meta will change, and infantry being stronger should a priori not benefit Franks. I don’t really expect them to suddenly fall off the meta to be honest, but this should temper some of the most one-dimensional matchups.
Yes I agree. By the way, I do think the Portuguese berry bonus is too strong considering the civ in general. So at least we can agree on this: IF the Franks had to be nerfed, it should be by reducing or removing their berry collection bonus, but this:
is way too much.
Again, the play rate is not a good metric to suggest a nerf in my opinion. I would go as far as to say a higher play rate means the civ is more ‘figured out’ and thus has less in its current build to offer to those who would dedicate time learning about it specifically. As for the win rate, we should consider the past year, and not more, especially given all the changes that have occurred over just a year. And this past year they were fine.
My point is the civ hasn’t aged. Its not like they’ve been around 54% winrate just in the current meta after the xbow nerf, new civs etc. They’ve been like super strong ever since HD. So I’m not picking those patches to show that Franks were a top civ just on those patches but the fact that they have had super high win rates across all patches. New civs Burgundians, Sicilians, Franks are top 5, Bohemians, Poles, Franks are top 5, Walls nerfed and longswords buffed Franks are still the top 5. Irrespective of changes the civ continues to stand there and that’s because of its strength and impact of its bonuses. And in the recent updates, all its counter civs which had stronger bonuses have been nerfed. Why not Franks?
Firstly, open maps cover the majority of games played by the community, tournaments, and also has the most strategic variety. Water isn’t in a state where there’s a lot of map and strategic variety to have as much importance as land. There’s 1 building, 3 navy units and like 5 good and maybe another 5 usable water civs while the rest can’t compete with those. This state is reflected in the amount of games played on water maps at all levels. Its less than 2% overall and less than 1% in 1v1.
Second, its not about good but how good it is. Spanish, Malians and Persians were almost exclusive for Nomad, Italians and Portugese before 2022 were almost exclusive to water maps. But the civs got adjustments to their water/nomad power and their land bonuses got buffed. So very strong under one but unusable under other settings is a bad state of game.
This is just true for dozens of civs and units that both go through nerfs and buffs. There’s only a few civs and units/mechanics that all pros would agree are too strong. Like no one ever complained about Slavs being too strong but they got nerfed during DE. Pros didn’t complain about Battle Elephants either and they got huge nerfs. Many times when a new change or new civ comes in, its also not obvious even for the pros regarding how good they are. The overuse of Bengalis by GL players or Hera’s tierlists immediately around a patch are some examples. And even though they don’t “say” it, they pick Franks in most of their tournament sets.
Again it depends on the difference between the first few and the rest in terms of play rate and win rate. Lets imagine top 5 civs have 2.7-3.0% pick rates, 50-53% win rates and 10-15 civs have 2.4%-2.7% pick rates at most elo levels. That’s a state where there’s no statistical bias towards any civ. When you have civs that are 3x standard deviation away (like 3+%) from the average pick rate when everyone played random (2.38%), it means some civs are outliers. Likewise for civs with less than 1.7% player rate. As you said, right now the game balance changes have achieved this to a great extent except for a few - some of them like Dravidians, Bengalis, Gurjaras, Aztecs, Mayans are getting their changes accordingly in this upcoming patch except Franks.
The civs like Bengalis, Dravidians, Incas are of course significant winners but not to the point where they’re an even matchup against Franks. Incas, Malay are going to become like a top-20 civ and Dravidians, Bengalis would probably end up being something like bottom-15 instead of bottom-5. But those aren’t changes that’s going to effect their matchups against Franks. And infantry being stronger won’t actually be bad for Franks. They have their uu which does melee damage and they also get that new tech which adds p.armor to maa. They have good food eco to support their own longswords as well.
The hp and castle part is in under the situation where berry bonus isn’t removed. If berry bonus is removed, that’s a sufficient nerf.
The Age of Cuman Steppe lancers in November and December 2019, the age of Gurjaras in May-Sept’22 disprove this. Both civs, have different builds completely different from all the others yet had abnormally high play rates simply because they were too strong. The ‘figured out’ theory also fails when you look at the play rate reductions for Aztecs and Huns after their nerfs in early stages of DE.
[quote=“NastyHigh, post:54, topic:227510”]
Franks aren’t OP, you just ##### # ############## [/quote]
The way of defense he talks about works with equally good civs like Chinese, Mayans, Aztecs which end up being their tournament matchups most of the times. With other civs you can’t do it simply because Franks are a lot faster.
I’m a big fan of H era’s gameplay, youtube content and tournament performances but Hera’s judgement svcks many times, even he talks about it in this video
Bengalis A tier, Gurjaras B tier, Koreans A tier sometime back in 2021, lots of times he misjudges changes.
Even recently in the tierlist he made with his aM teammates he put Hindustanis at S tier after their nerfs and just a few days ago after NAC4, he mentioned in his stream that they’re complete shit.
Plenty of times, pros have misjudged and changed their opinion themselves.
Here’s another clip on Viper’s change of opinion about Bengalis after playing and losing with them a bunch of times.
So maybe I svck ### not because of Franks and what “Hera said so” in that video. And that video clipping doesn’t imply that Franks are a balanced civ.
Yep. And guess what? Berbers is also good exclusively in open maps and they are also getting nerf in the upcoming patch. Very minor but laming boars is almost as generic as others now.
This is just ad hominem whataboutism / Tu quoque fallacy to discredit H.era’s points and dismiss them without having to respond to them. i.e. “Oh, he was wrong about something completely unrelated in the past, therefore he’s wrong about this too”. That’s how my ex girlfriend used to argue and it’s not how a proper debate works. If you want people to take your points seriously, you should discuss the points he is making about Franks and nothing else. Let’s not forget that he is the top ranked player. His statements cannot just be dismissed casually like that. He’s not just some random low or mid ELO guy with a random opinion.
And here’s the point I always make when people keep screaming for nerfs (especially when it comes from lower ELOs): If the civ is so OP and so broken with such a high win rate, why don’t you prove it yourself? Pick Franks every game for the next 3 months 1v1 on the ladder and post your results on here. If what you claim is true, you should consistently win 53%+ of games.
You should stop quoting 2800+ elo player’s exact words to insult someone in the forum. Its not me who’s arguing something by cherry picking one pro player’s video but rather with data over several years both ladder and tournaments.
My point about Hera’s video is you cant do whatever he says with any generic civ. Chinese, Mayans, Aztecs, Britons or some other top tier civ can hold out that way. Rest don’t. Several thousand views on that video but players at all elos couldn’t follow it. Franks popularity and winrates stay put months after his video. Hera has picked and won dozens of tournament games with Franks and also lost plenty against them. Even for him or someone his level, it’s not “easy” to do something like that and deal with Franks.
To sum it up take pro player suggestions with a grain of salt. Yes they’re the best and know a ton about the game and still misjudge a lot of things like Viper and GL over picking Bengalis. In the recent pup discussion video Viper didn’t know if Bengalis have knights, a year ago Hera didn’t know old Indians’ camels bonus damage against buildings while reviewing the DOI DLC last year. So they have their own biases which violate overall civ performance.
Lastly I’d appreciate if you didn’t use someone from your personal life as a reference in discussion forums.
How about you do the opposite? Pick some average civ like Vietnamese or Sicilians. Follow the exact steps mentioned in Hera’s video, win most of your games against Franks and post those results to prove that Franks can be handled easily with Hera’s tips.
And no one is screaming for nerfs for a weak civ or civ that’s already been nerfed. Discussion is why not Franks when almost all the other strong ones have gotten a nerf.
[quote=“Horapallas, post:53, topic:227510”]I will add to that I have never seen a pro player say Franks were overpowered since DE came out
[/quote]
“Should it be nerfed ?” : well it s up to the devs, but I would personally nerf it if I were asked for my opinion.
Franks are balanced at top level but clearly overtuned at all other levels. For me, Franks should be nerfed to Goths standards and have its winrate over all ELOs put closer to 50% (while staying above it for most ELOs as they are more of an Arabia civ, like having them go below 50% around 2000 ELO). If a civ is that easy to play and to win with, I want it to be underwhelming at high level.
Why is Goths so bad at high ELO ? Many players say it is because they are oppressive at low ELOs and making them mid tier to top tier at higher ELOs (they arent a water civ, a hybrid civ, or an Arena civ… maybe a little a BF civ? Maybe a Socotra civ ?) like Franks, it would be worse for low ELOs… If this is really the reasoning, i would like to use the same reasoning for Franks.
For me the best civ and the most popular civ shouldnt he the same. If the most popular civ is also the best, I agree on a nerf. My personal opinion.
