Then take the range bonus away. That way its 9 max on castle with Bodkin and 10 if you really go for Yeoman and then 13 in Imp. That way you can make them distinct from Arbs. Heck give them Thumb Ring with the crux that it CANNOT work on Lbows
I wouldnât take away ALL the range bonus. Britons could instead just get a flat +1.
That would be enough to maintain the specific range advantage of Britons and encourage to go for the Longbows when you can.
This change would allow to give Britons some other Bonusses, like the mentioned Knights +2 Attack. I also have thought of giving them "âWalls and Gates receive 30-40 % less Bonus damageâ which would be a usefeul Bonus to re-establich their historic identity of âSitting behind walls, slowly building up Eco and Armyâ.
I think this could be indeed a path that could bring back Britons former identity without just overbuffing them again. AND make the Longbows more attractive at the same time. A double win for me.
Tht remaining +1 could be given from Yeoman and then they could have a new bonus to round the civ out. Suddenly with endgame arbs only getting +1 range Thumb Ring doesnât seem so thumb wrong as long as lvows are deliberately excluded
I would like leaving it on Castle age or with the Xbow upgrade.
The reason is that this Range is crucial for the tradidional Britons play as it allows to sit comfortably behind walls when you keep an eye on your army all the time.
If we remove that, this playstyle would be completely lost. For me this is what I still remember as the Britons speciality and even if itâs currently not viable anymore, the only civ I want to have that speciality and be associated with that is Britons. And if we remove the range bonus from britons itâs obvious it would be given to another archer civ at some pointâŠ
Im okay with that because it still wouldnt hurt the longbow ability to be unique. I can see why you want it but Yeoman would gotta go if its a flat +1 all game
I like replacing the Crossbow with Longbow. The new UU at Castles could be a foot soldier wielding a bill.
In this way, the range bonus would inevitably become part of the Longbowâs stats and disappear, since the only unit affected is the Longbow, making it unnecessary to keep separated.
I hope the Longbowâs base range would be 6 (III) â 7 (IV), and that Yeoman would instead grant +2 range to Longbows and towers. Towers with longer range would better echo this civâs identity.
As for Eupseong, I hope it could be changed to grant Korean towers +2 or even +3 attack. The literal meaning of âEupseongâ is a city fortress, so giving towers higher attack to bring them closer to castles would make a lot of sense.
As for the Svan Tower, the Georgians should directly have the Svan Tower (building) as a unique upgrade that replaces Keep, while the Svan Tower (building) would deal pass-through damage. Then they would receive a new UT.
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I think they can another 10% faster production time stacked with thier faster working archery range?
Britons have FU barracks units (including champions which counter eagles and huskarls) and a usable stable (not great, but they do have all blacksmith techs). Their keeps should also be quite good (though they lack bonuses outside of a UT, so a bit expensive to get into). And faster shepherds is good for any early-game strategy, so while their team bonus helps archer gameplay, they arenât really pushed into it.
Opponents can dodge, but they canât fire back until theyâre closer (at which point the drawback you mention no longer exists). And dodging still takes micro (and player attention is not unlimited). Big advantage of range is that they outrange some of their counters, allowing them to do things like destroy mangonels without giving them a chance to fire back. One result of this is that Briton arbs are far less vulnerable to siege units (other than rams) than the arbs of other archer civs. Skirms are still a bit of an issue, though the extra range does help there as well (and Britons can use their own skirms as a mid-line).
Longbows are a bit better than the xbow-line, so if you can get the castles for longbows, itâs better to go longbows. However, getting the castles up isnât always reasonable, and if you already have a large archer mass, itâs better to upgrade your already existing units.
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Yeah itâs more like âwhy going for longbows when the archer line does it alreadyâ here.
Thatâs why I think reducing the Range Bonus for Britons to +1 flat (from castle age/xbow) would be an interesting approach - paired with a buff in another department. Ideally something that can be used against forward Siege pushes.
Oh and btw. I think Longbows should get a Bonus against ships.
They can use those units but will be missing out on their main bonus which is extra range archers that are also produced fast. Some of those units like knights wont scale well into the imperial age since they lack bloodlines. So unlike Chinese or Portugese, you canât play them as main army instead. Warwolf trebs are terrific in closed maps but in Arabia its both expensive to get it early on and hard to focus fire against canons every time.
More than 25 civs got buffed, skirms got buffed, a bunch of civs got bonuses for skirmishers and new anti-archer units were introduced. Think there should be some general balance changes to grant cavalry units +2 or +3 bonus damage vs skirms just like how ranged units get against spear line and spear line gets against cavalry. As a compensation maybe gold infantry units except shock armor ones could take lesser damage from cavalry.
I agree that the Britons really struggle with flexibility once their archers get hard-countered. I would love to see the Britons gain access to Billmen as a unique unit (either available from the Barracks starting in Castle Age or from the Castle if youâd like to see Arbalesters replaced by Longbowmen). This would be historically fitting and could give the civilization more strategic options and a stronger identity, especially as a complementary infantry choice when archers are no longer effective.
Cavalry units already are such a hard counter to skirms - a few scouts can clean up dozens of skirms in my experience.
If the skirm player just sends them alone and doesnât micro sure. Otherwise when theyâre moving, with a mix of spears, all the scouts bumping on each other makes it quite hard. And this isnât like whether they can kill but how soon they can kill the skirms. This would have also been unnecessary if skirms didnât get the extra attack they got vs spears in late 2023.
elite skirms got +1 and it was necessary because the trash triangle was heavily against them
ofc we see way less trash wars these days, yet this was an essential change - and it DIDNâT lower the winrate of Britons. If you look in the stats this was before the ranged meta started and only after that Britons had their latest high.
The trash triangle was against them in late imperial age and thatâs intentional by design. Early game - ranged units, Mid game - cavalry units, Late game - infantry, siege and pop efficient units. Even if that needed balancing, it should have been introduced as an archery range technology in the imperial age which provides an additional +2 for elite skirms against spear line. Changing it in the feudal age was completely necessary and the main reason why most of the competitive games involve skirms and foot archer civs with strong default bonus have become less popular.
totally agree, like Ethiopians have shotel to counter skirmishers, Hindustanis have gulam to counter archer, even Mayans, their plumbed archer have +1/2 attack against infrantry which sometimes saves them. Now only a few civs donât have plan b, like britons, and sometimes leads to most one sided match up
what?
Britons donât really need a plan B. They get warwolf trebs, they are amazing against Skirms.
Also worht noting here. Britons already HAVE a plan B. They just donât need it.
They have themselves some of the best Skirms in the game. Interesting that nobody noticed that yet here. Because probably in most games you donât even need that plan B as Britons plan A is good enough to deal with skirms.
The only real âweaknessesâ Britons have is that they are a bit slow going and Siege Rams. Also ofc there are a few unique things they can struggle with, but every civ has that.
This is a bulge. You are going over a lot of different stuff and sometimes connect it wrong even. We could talk about Skirmishers in a different thread. But as I said, Skirmishers ARENâT the main issue for Britons. Not even Byzantines get an exceptional high winrate against Britons and they have several tools/bbonusses that make it awkward for the Britons, not only Skirms.
Skirms are a different issue which is that they are a âsame unit counterâ which naturally leads on maps and metas that favor ranged units and matchups of ranged vs ranged units to bottleneck in Skirms. And ofc this should be addressed, but not because of Britons. Britons can deal with Skirms.
if you face elite eagle or huskarl, you die
With Full tech champs? I dont think theyre gonna die to them. In fact Mayan player might even expect a champ/eskirm play for his eagle/plumes respectively
And goths? If youâre forcing hand cannons you might be doing something right
I donât mind giving Britons billman. However, I donât think that devs will make such a big change on a classic civ like Britons. Even Chinese fire lancer was added because of Jurchens and Khitans DLC.
And we probably wonât have another Western Europe DLC.
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