Why did the devs have to make them so weak?! And why are the other Atlantean and Egyptian gods doing so well right now?!
I really think that if chaos is nerfed, the Atlanteans can be buffed without heavy consequences (and maybe another small buff for Gaia). As for Ra, I think he just needs better bonuses.
Also, if anyone is wondering what’s wrong with chaos, well, unlike the curse, it targets every unit, making them fight each other temporarily, which means that they wont be attacking the opponent’s army. This easily turns the tide of the game if you’re not careful. The problem? It can be used ANYWHERE on an army, as long as you have LOS (aside from places near Isis monuments and hesperides trees).
lol… You do know Gaia was the first God to get to Rank 1 in the ladder, right?
Play the game more and when you understand each gods strengh and weakness clearly, then you can comment on them more objectively.
Aomstats.io has the proof, and at the time, people were still figuring the game out. It’s been weeks now. At the moment, booming sucks, so Gaia sucks as well. Rushing has been and remains superior in Retold, and that creates issues for some major gods.
Those are the different sites I know about regarding AoMR and the win rates for Gaia isn’t good overall according to any of them and even when changing by ELO Gaia even at higher ranks doesn’t do well.
From what I have seen, most people just don’t know how to play economic gods like Ra, Gaia and Freyr. I see pro players playing Freyr with no economic or armory upgrades before game is over, Ra players not empowering their resources/defensive buildings and Gaia players throwing the game cosplaying budget kronos by going 1 TC completely forgetting about village centers or using lush to heal their units.
Overall, Ra winrate has been going up steadily past few days as people are starting to learn how to play the god. People just need time to learn build orders that are unusual since they are used to rushing age 2 and getting maybe medium upgrade maximum.
Most of Ra struggles have been players who never use barracks units due to how few counters chariots had before Retold, whereas people who actually utilize axemen and spearmen have been quite succesful.
Why does Ra perform so much worse then Isis?
Set performs bad in low ELO and good in high ELO.
Isis doesn’t have many early game bonuses. +5 population can lightly delay houses, but they are free for Egyptians anyway.
Cheaper Obelisks are not that helpful.
-10% upgrade cost is a lot less then Freyr and only really helps later in the game.
Ra actually has some bonuses that help in the early game. You can instantly empower 2 buildings and as soon as you have a monument you can empower basically everything at once, giving you more resources and faster training.
Maybe giving Ra the Pharaoh bonus back would be enough. Making Ra Pharaos a little better at empowering.
Set should be reworked some way too. His performance is too different between different ELOs.
I think his Monument bonus needs to be improved. A 5% discount is not much, and it’s really strange that you get this fancy particle effect for such a small bonus.
Reduce the number of free animals to balance it out.
Set and Ra both have access to Ptah. Buffing this Minor God, or just his Myth uni Wadjet could help making those gods more viable.
He offers upgrades for Barracks units, so exactly what you need in prolonged classical Age fights.
Maybe give Ptah a technology that buffs Wadjets. Maybe make their poison last longer. That would allow for some mirco where you try to poison as many units as possible by switching targets.
I think one of the big issues Egyptians have is that defensive buildings are worse in AoMR compared to AoM(EE). That makes aggressive Classical Age gods a lot better.
If walls and towers had more HP it would indirectly buff Egyptians and nerf Norse, which are overperforming.
The only Norse god that is not doing well is Thor. Freyr is doing ok, but a defence buff would help him anyway.
So maybe Thor should get a siege buff. Maybe his unique technology gives Hersirs Crush Damage instead of just +15% damage. Alternatively bonus damage vs. buildings.
But Crush damage would make sense for a hammer anyway.
I think locus swarm is too weak as Ra but Bolt and Lighting Storm does not target the Son of Osiris anymore, on top of that SoO can be healed when garrissoned.
Maybe the minor gods also play into that?
Isis has the oldest trick of eclipse ancestors combo while Ra can’t do that. Do we have a win rate per “build” (minor god choice) somewhere?
Ra was a solid choice in the original with the roc and locus raids, broken was the siege drop (Siege especially catapults in the roc). I think thats much better now, maybe make the roc’s durability better to actually use him more and more locus more damage.
I’d love to know that too.
I think that is a clearly overlooked aspect.
I think it’s important to balance Minor Gods (and Major Gods indirectly) in a way that both Minor Gods are a valid choice on every Age up and you aren’t basically forced to play a god a certain way to stay competitive.
It’s kinda hard to do that with every god given how they compound- Some bonuses or upgrades can get really broken when compounded. There is a reason, along with flavor that Ra doesn’t have access to Anubis, Nefertyrs, and Thoth.
To answer your Ra question, having played Ra and Isis extensively, I believe it is down to these three major reasons.
First terrible scouting, you bring up that cheaper obelisks are not that helpful, but for ra to have any real bonuses early game you really want that priest working his empowerment. Now you can leave your pharoh monument empoweremnt to free up your priest, but at that point you give up 30% of your pharoh bonus for having a worse Isis scout, whose scouting is already weak
Worthless archaic god power, with most games ending before 10 mins Ra’s god power has no use, since if you build farms early you are already losing even if you go up through Ptah for cheaper farms it is just not viable compared to the sheer abundance of hunt on your low hunt maps. Isis god power on the other hand is very useful even if you use it early, giving you a smoother transition into heroic or second TC or just extra gold which I find the current issue with egyptians to be. Which is their gold reliance, making them very easy to gold starve.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly no Nephtys, there is really no end towards how much not having Nephtys hurts Ra’s competitiveness. With it you lose ancestors the only viable heroic age god power, you lose scorpion man, a strong myth unit that is actually fast so it can actually be used for raiding and it only takes wood so not further taxing your all important gold ressource, beyond the initial gold investment into monuments.
Nephtys provides that all important stepping stone between egyptian classical age and egyptian migdol armies. Ancestors Eclipse can win games on its own, Ancestors used offensively it can make up for the past 10 minutes of passivity with the raiding damage it provides, used defensively it can help your forces to cope, until you can get your chariot stack to a sufficent number.
I think Ra suffers from games being just to fast, while you can play defensively you ultimately have no tools to either do damage or help you reliably securing that second gold mine, so once that initial gold mine runs out you just die, a fact hastened if you need to build farms. While there are things you can pull off in classical age there is no point for you to play Ra at that point, since both Isis and Set do it better. You can buff Ptah to help Ra with his early game, but that just means he becomes a worse Set. You can give Ra back his mass empowerment, but I fear that chips away as his identity as the defensive late game god, not to mention making priests empowerment even less relevant.
I would instead propose to give Ra some faster acting payoffs for heroic, I found I had great success in those games where my second TC also served to protect my secon gold mine. So if citadel could help facilitate that more reliably it would be a great start. Similarly if Locust Swarm could deliver even a fraction of the economic damage ancestors and especially ancestors eclipse does it could help Ra to get out of his passivety.
I think what Ra needs are bonuses that allow him to be more proactive. I do not wish to just facilitate Ra sitting on one base and then win because you have a free ressource cheat. Ra either needs something in the Heroic age that can kickstart his migdol production or he needs tools in the classical age that does not commit him to the classical age. Maybe it towers were better you could use them to defend your second goldmine without having to commit to an equal size force in the classical age.
Maybe Rhinozeros skin could also make your priests more sturdy, buffing them as a defensive tool that can also be used economically if your opponent fails to put up the pressure, that together with a stronger Wadjet could help build that Ra defense force that can help him secure that second gold mine.
Ultimately I am not sure myself what the solution could be, though I am very curious to read all your thoughts.
I would also like to caution against trying to make Ra competitive in the current rush/classical meta being the solution to him having a low win rate in this enviroment.
yes it’s hard but it removes a core aspect of the game if there is only one viable choice on Age up. It basically halves the options available for that Major God.
Haven’t thought about that.
Isis and Set both have a scouting bonus while Ra is discouraged from scouting.
That is certainly true.
Farms should probably be better for Egyptians in general. It is kinda strange that their Labourers are worse at farming then any other villager (besides Dwarves).
Norse Gatherers are as good as Greek villagers at farming while being worse at gathering natural resources.
Both very odd choices. That makes transitioning to farms easier for Norse then for Egyptians, on top of the fact that Egyptian farms cost Gold.
Alternatively give him a completely new God Power. So far no God Power was completely replaced but multiple Gods got their Unique Technologies replaced.
The simplest solution would be to give him an Asgardian Fortress like God Power.
This way he could the the Migdol in Classical Age (but with weaker units) which would massively help him defensively and offensively.
Maybe combine it with the Pharaoh or Priest empowering bonus. So you can’t assist the construction of it with Labourers, only with the Pharaoh or Priests.
That might be too similar to Freyr though.
Maybe Sekhmet is too weak. She is focused on Siege but buildings are too weak so a good siege Myth unit is not really that useful.
Her Myth unit life steal technology sounds very powerful on paper. 20% for all myth units, 60% for Scarbs.
Not sure if that also applies to Titans, if yes then it would be incredibly powerful.
Citadel is also clearly to weak but all defences are too weak.
Citadels just give your TC a little more attack and make them very slightly more durable.
The main bonus is the additional 10 Population that can snowball in very long games, but that’s almost never relevant in a 1v1.
The reuse cost is too hight for that though.
Citadels should be more durable and maybe even train villagers faster, that could help making it more useful to expand your economy.
Locust Swarm seems incredibly weak to me. It barely does any damage against farms and villagers.
It would be weak for a Classical Age God power but you have to be Heroic Age to get it.
Maybe it should be a global thing like Fimblue Winter, but that would be really annoying in games with many players like Fumblue winter is.
One idea:
Ra starts with 2 Priests
You need to research a technology for them to be able to empower
This way you have a scouting bonus in the early game that you can turn into a economic bonus.
Maybe move the Migdol discount from Set to Ra. Set just gets discounted Barracks and Ra gets discounted Migdols.
Both would play more into their respective strategies.
Or maybe they can let Priest - empowered monuments empower nearby buildings too
Because when u use your pharaoh in frontline to empower your monument for military buildings, enemy targets your pharaoh first & you completely loose your empowering advantage easily but if priest has permission to do so, you can replace him if enemy eliminates him.
The problem of Ra is that his monument bonus has no synergy with PvP games. They work perfectly nice in campaign and vs AI, but not vs humans. The bonus forces you to stay in one base and make a compact sim city, in order to have empower on as many buildings as possible. That just simply won’t work in PvP, where you absolutely need map control. And Ra has really sucky units for map control until age3. I would probably get rid of this bonus (since it is equal to having several priests empowering - at most it saves 20 pop space), and bring back the previous empower bonus on pharaoh, and maybe give priests and pharaoh some combat bonus as well (maybe +25% hp and damage).
What if farms cost like 5 gold during rain + faster build? This way you could setup your farming during the first few seconds of rain.
The other 2 needs buffs:
Locusts should also blind/ slow / damage enemy military units
Very interesting thoughts all around, do not have the time to answer all of them in detail currently.
But let me be very clear the problem Ra has right now is that is simply to difficult for him to secure that second goldmine. Where as previously you could achieve it by for example applying pressure around the map or on the back of your defensive buildings that is just no longer the case. So all these buff suggestion s are all well and good, but unless Ra gets a way to secure that second gold mine they wont change the core dynamic at play.
