Germany age3 shipments are inconsistently good

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

When considering the 10% xp penalty bonus of germany and what they recieve as a bonus to it, they are becoming stronger than most of the civs, especially the age3 shipments combined with 3 uhlan becomes more than effective generally, here is resource worth shipments germany recieve in age3,

1.000 food-wood-coin + 3uhlan = 1.450 resources
9 uhlan = 1.350 resources
3 war wagon 3 uhlan = 1.350 resources

What could be done?

  • Decreasing the uhlan bonus germany recieves in age3
  • increasing the xp penalty of germany from 10% to 12%
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2

Yes, the basic concept of Germany is to get extra uhlans out of your shipments

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3

That’s true, but the amount of bonus they get is much higher than what they give, and it specially makes germany overperforming towards other civs in age3. That is creating an undeserved lead for germany.

4

There is a hidden wood cost to those shipments that you do not take into consideration. an age3 shipment is almost cost an entire house (9 pop). When you factor in the fact that wood is the hardest resource to get, you will see it is not as great as it looks.

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5

That’s true, but the thing is that every civ has pop cost for the shipments they send, so that It is hard to draw conclusion based on pop cost in this regard.

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No, they don’t, Germany and (and india to a much lesser extend) is the exception to this. Germany cannot send any age2+ shipment, at all, if they are supply blocked. Worse, a shipment for Germany almost means that you need an extra house if you want to continue villager/unit production at home.

So Germany always has to stay about 30 population slots ahead of the curve, while others can safely be 10-20.

You can look at this way: a Germany shipment grants extra uhlans, but it costs 10% more xp and a house.

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7

The way germany requires much pop is regarding the design it has, generally having one additional wood is enough for this issue.

8

Imagine some kids arguing at school about who’s right, solving a math question the teacher asked. Imagine that it’s been almost 9 months and the teacher still doesn’t show the answer and says who’s right, so the kids keep arguing.
The kids are us players here on the forum, and the teacher is the game’s producers who don’t provide WINRATE statistics to the community. They use the stats to balance (as they have said in some patches), but they don’t share the answer.

Come on kids, discuss! I’ll be right back, I’ll just get the popcorn to watch them.

9

First of all, I can’t believe Kaiser actually commented on this, thought he only was active on the ESOC forums.

Second of all, no you don’t seem to understand that there are some significant drawbacks to Germany, they are a one trick civ, and that one trick aspect of them means that you can counter quite well

They have to play age 3, their late age 2 is really bad, their age 4 isn’t amazing as they don’t have an amazing late game economy or strong late game units

No musk, they need to use ranged cav or hand inf to counter cav, this is very exploitable. Because musk are a general all around unit, Germans are forced into making a diverse composition to keep up

No falc shipments, falcs are probably the best age 3 shipment in the game other than 3 Gatlings. The fact that Germany doesn’t get a falc shipment means that you have to rely on outnumbering your enemy, for most civs your win condition is to protect your falcs with a mass of units, and let your falcs deal the damage, Germans win condition is to hope you can kill your enemies falcs, and to outnumber your opponent.

The argument that 9 uhlans shouldn’t be worth 1350 res is also a bit deceiving, first of all, factoring in the German shipment penalty of 10%, it’s equivalent of a 1215 res shipment, then you must also factor in that this is the main bonus Germans get, factoring that in we have to find another civ bonus to compare it to, let’s take the Brits, they are a relatively standard civ.

With the amount of houses brit can get it’s a safe assumption that brit can have 30% more villagers than most civs, 30% more villagers means 30% more res than a normal civ with no eco bonus.

1215 resources compared to the 2 falc shipment, a shipment Germany doesn’t get. The 1215 res is about 21.5% more than the 2 falc.
The effect of British having 30% more villagers vs the effect of Germans getting shipments that on average are about 20-25% more than a normal civ, factoring in the shipment penalty means that The German bonus is slightly less than the British, by a very small amount

It’s also worth noting that Germans don’t get musks, Germans get skirms, brit don’t get skirms but do get musk, so it cancels out, we could even call it brit favored because musk are available in age 2 while skirms are age 3. The dragoon and the war wagon are a bit of a weird comparison, population wise an average dragoon all upgrades ( French)
Lose to war wagons, cost wise it’s about an even fight that goes either way depending on how efficiently your units choose their targets.
Dopels are not a unit you see most of the time but 1 dop Beats 1 pike.

My comparison of Germany to brit is actually favoring brit because it assumes the amount of res you get from shipments is the exact same as the amount of res you get from villagers, in reality, most of your res come from villagers. Germans get 1 extra villager equivalent in age 1 from the 2 SW shipment, brit can get 1-2 extra villagers in age 1 depending on if you do a tp/ market start, or if you do a double manor start.

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I wouldn’t say Germany has a late game economy problem. Their glaring weakness even in age4 is the lack of muskets and the inability to build a cannon ball because of that.

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Yeah, what I’m trying to say is that the German age 4 doesn’t keep up with top tier late game civs, it’s nothing special their late game units are still probably worse than average

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I’m not sure about current balance on de, but on legacy Germany can have a very strong age 3 timing with their uhlan shipments that can be difficult to negate, while being lackluster at everything else. and so far they seem to be in the same spot currently.

I want to see Germany refocused around making all their bonuses accessible, with 1 bonus uhlan per shipment regardless of age, shipment penalty removed and uhlan base stat/cost increased. in return gain access to 2 falconets and better mercenary shipments such as being able to send them twice, age 2 jaegers, and privateer armadas. I also want them to be able to make 1 pop settler wagons from the town center and mills from age 1 without needing to send a card with an 80 regular villager cap and third factory slot.

shifting germany away from being a 2 trick pony and giving players more leeway in what german specific strategies they can use will keep it feeling fresh and hopefully more fun to play. enhancing merc and eco play while toning down uhlans would go along way towards that goal.

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13

Since legacy, there have already been interesting changes to Germany.

Now Germans get xp 10% slower than normals civs

Also I think uhlan HP changed but i forgot how much

And because of how close resources are to your base compared to legacy, aggressive civs tend to not be able to keep up with booming civs

That’s why the weakest civs are Russia, Aztec, and ottomans
The strongest civs are japan, British, and Sweden, and to a lesser extent Dutch and Inca

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14

both their xp penalty and uhlan hp is the same as vanilla. I believe either tad or ep nerfed uhlan hp, and de brought them back to their vanilla strength, though they do have a villager malus in vanilla.

yes ep made the game much more eco and boom focused when compared to vanilla, and de inherited alot of that. I guess esoc really hated the prolonged age 2-3 meta in vanilla.

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The xp penalty is same as legacy, it hasn’t been changed, and the fact that germany has significant shipments in age3 makes it even stronger against other civs, and their bow+mm timing is strong that it’s hard to punish it. So that it doesn’t actually work that way.

16

Pretty sure the penalty was increased the same update where Inca stopped being OP

Also worth noting that while Germans get better shipments, after factoring in the 10% penalty they are slightly better, you can’t just say your German shipments are worth 450 extra res, because after factoring in the -10% it depends on the shipment, but it’s usually around +200-300 extra res. Then you must ask yourself, is that really better than Spain getting Spanish gold and getting faster shipments?
Is that worth not having 3 Gatlings like UsA?
Is that worth not being able to send shipments twice like japan?

German bonus is strong, but on the grand scheme of things it’s only a bit above average

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17

I’m not sure if it was changed in tad or ep as well, but in vanilla it was 10% as a quick google search proves.

http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=1&tn=36029&st=14#post15

seems like de is reverting alot of changes made to the germans.

also those patch notes say it was corrected to to 10% as intended, which imply that it was always meant to be 10% and that 7% was a bug.

18

The German bonus is strong. Very strong and it gives Germany a certain flexibility to their age2 transition to 3. BUT, Germany isn’t an easy to play civ imo. It requires quite a bit of skill and foreplanning to get the most out of the bonus. Which is why most people rate it as A or B tier and not S

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