Looking at the cards of Swedish civilization and German civilization, the difference is how big Swedes are better with mercenaries, considering that mercenary boarding passes unlock units in the hall, and all infantry upgrade cards affect mercenaries, as well as two exclusive improvements to the church (jaeger HP and increased infantry speed, plus when you get older with the arsenal, this arsenal is advanced and not the standard arsenal like the others, and an age up option unlocks jaeger and black riders in the hall, although German civilization is described as having advantages with mercenaries, I don’t like that idea but I accept it.
The issue is the German Mercenary Contract card from Sweden. Do the Swedes have access to the German mercenaries in the barracks and stables and the German civilization itself does not? Is that a joke?
The minimum I expect is a balance: either the two civilizations have access to this technology, or neither does.
Yeah Germans no longer are the merc civ and it doesn’t make sense the Swedes can train German mercs but the Germans can’t. I hope the developers do something about this.
Germans still have the merc improvement card in age 3 and thus they have the best mercs in age 3. They are not nerfed in any way. Swedes is a completely new and different civ, that provides longevity of mercs well into industrial and even imperial age.
he’s not talking about balance. He’s talking about design.
As swedes you can train German mercenaries, but as Germans you can not.
That’s bad desing.
Please test each mercenary individually and you will see that you are wrong.
Swedes can guarantee that several different mercenaries are trained in the Saloon, the general upgrade cards affect mercenaries, and their arsenal already comes with the advanced arsenal.
As Germany is only random what you will get in the Saloon and if you get bad units, then the 3-year mercenary upgrade card will only be used for shipments you make, which is just one of each type and then you will not be able to repeat .
Although for some German grocers the statistics are better at 3 years of age, ensuring that you can train the units you need (through the politician and the mercenary boarding passes) is better because you can build a strategy on top of that.
Swedes seem to have no skirmishers, but in fact they have the best of the game.
-Wallenstein contracts no longer affect 2000 gold cards, this is a nerf, although in the 2007 version it is also useless.
Jaeger’s cost has increased to 200.
-Cards containing Jaeger have been reduced to Jaeger.
I created this topic not to discuss who has the best mercenaries, that I already know are the Swedes.
Bad design, as I already said, the Swedes have advantages with the German mercenaries (training in the barracks and stables) which the Germans themselves do not have. Regardless of balance this is ugly.
From your original post it would seem that you have a problem with Swedes getting a merc card that has “German” in the title. But consider that the design of this game is exactly that each civ is unique and has access to unique cards, units, technologies. And only then, afterwards, balance is made by adjusting the numbers and stats. If you wanted true balance you would have to make every civilization exactly the same, or only play mirrors. A game like that is not AOE3 and is certainly not something I would want to play.
On the point of me being wrong, I don’t see how? A Swedish Jaeger has the same stats as a German one. In age 3 Germany has the ability to make them stronger than Sweden with the use of the merc improvement card. And btw the price was increased due to interciv balance because Jaegers seemed to overperform compared to skirmishers. It’s not even relevant because a German Jaeger costs the same as Swedish one so I don’t understand this argument.
Honestly I would even say that German mercs are now stronger than they were before. Why I say this? Just look at how Hackapells were changed! They are useful units now giving Germany another strong age 3 mercenary shipment.
I understand the argument about ugly design even if I don’t fully agree with it. Personally I think that this is exactly the goal of AOE3 design - to have 16 unique civs. It’s a matter of taste whether you call it ugly or not.
This conclusion is for Jaeger, but other mercenaries have different results, even at age 3.
These are matters of balance.
My question is for design. Swedes have more advantages with German mercenaries (Jaeger, Black Riders and Landsqueneckt), than the German civilization itself. This is bad design and there’s no excuse, it’s just bad.
I hope to fix it in the next update patch, since I believe I have little time until the release, but if it was already fixed it would be an optimal surprise.
I am very pleased that the development teams are proving not to be afraid to add news and new content to the game, invigorating it.
wouldnt make any sense since prussia is known for its standing army and not its mercenaries. Also the units itself arent from the area of prussia (landknecht & black riders = catholic states; Jaegers = Hesse).
So it would be an equally ugly design
Yeah i guess. Still I don’t see why Germany must have this card. Germany has a better infantry diversity available than the Swedes, so I don’t think they are somehow owed any new units from rax/stable.
Sioux was renamed Lakota, but that did not change the fact that they remained the same people. The same would apply to your idea.
I also don’t see why I shouldn’t have it. What would need to be done is to reduce age card 3 from 20% to 15%.
In this case, the Swedes shouldn’t have it either, so it would avoid the bad design, of Swedes having advantages over German mercenaries and German civilization itself not having.
Swedish mercenary boarding passes already unlock many mercenaries in the saloon, and they also have an age up policy that does this. This politician, other civilizations also have access and the German civilization does not.
You are right because cannons are not infantry, because at age 2 Carolineans are better than Doppelsoldner, but Germany has Crosbowman and Swedes have cannons, at age 3 Germany has skirmishes and Swedes have the special characteristics of Carolineas, that is, very different compositions, just as France has more infantry options than Germany.
For Swedes, it seems to me that the intention is to have a balanced composition with cannons at age 2 and the special features of Carolineans at age 3 onwards.
I don’t want to seem like I want to disagree with what you say, but I can’t convince myself that the design of the German mercenaries’ letter is fine.
I feel like you want to balance Germany because of Swedes. But considering that EP already achieved satisfactory balance with the initial 14 civs, I think it would be wiser to work on Swedes and Inca instead. If you think they are too strong, then they should be nerfed. Caroleans do pose some balance conundrums, I can agree with that.