Yes Im aware of it now but Im talking the normal game here cause we’re still arguing about changes to the game everyone else has, not his version. Surely 20-30 heavy scorps is better for that job, also harder to mass and more prone to onager shots since slow movement and takes extra damage.
Wait wait wait where did you see that? I really need to see it to believe it.
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I posted the game a while ago. It was a Team game, and he himself says the Turks Skirms were beating him, as Goths.
I initially wanted to give them 0.9 speed with perfusion, but ultimately since they replace a core role of another unit they should behave in a similar manner. It could still be reduced by 10% if Goths prove to be too mobile. But I doubt it, noone usually complains that infantry is moving too fast, only that it trains too fast. 
For comparison, consider that Mongol’s Drill Rams, Onagers and scorpions move 50% faster. That’s actually almost on par with cavalry speed (0.8 x 1.5 = 1.2, Cavalry has something around 1.25-1.35 depending on the civ).
There would be other options for buffing scorpions for Goths, but I think they’d benefit from speed the most and it fits their lategame mobility theme.
Kind of ridiculous. But this was what I meant in earlier posts some days ago, even Viper couldn’t use his halbs effectively, they just ran into their death with auto waypoint from the barracks in seconds without accomplishing anything because they’re too hard to manage and you have to keep reselecting htem over and over again because a new one spawns every second.
In this case the perfusion upgrade actually works against the player because it just wastes unnecessary resources. Sort of interesting - Goths not only have no eco bonus in Dark, they also have a negative one in Imperial, 11.
But yea, shows how gimmicky the Goths actually are in this game. Still voting for a proper rework.
the upper link is the exact scene.
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Goth Infantry is just plentiful, but not powerful at all, not even in a “strength in number” way.
Goths actually have worse Infantry than some Cavalry or Archer civs.
My worry is that an Infantry and Siege Goths civ, will just be another Slavs.
I did some more playtest with the vanilla AoE 2 Goths, and it’s really the case, their Imperial infantrry isn’t that great, it’s just the perfusion upgrade that allows you to spam ridiculous amounts of them.
This actually is sort of an advantage - Spirit of the Law shows this in his Paladin upgrade video - 3 Champions vs. 1 “Super Champion”. For Goths this is somewhat similar. If you fight similar numbers you will loose against other champions but if you flood more you will likely win.
BUT! at a certain point when the enemy reaches a critical mass of counter units, your goth infantry will simply die before reaching hte enemy. At this point perfusion starts burning resources and leads to disadvantage.
Right now Goths are unique and stand out. But in a negative way. I played some games with basic goths and checked their bonuses once again and came to a new conclusion:
I actually don’t think that Goths are intended to be a purely lategame faction anymore, reasons for that:
If you look at Age of Conquerors:
- got a flat -35% inf discount from Feudal Age
- get +3 damage vs. Buildings starting from Feudal Age
- have full castle age upgrades for their units
- have faster working barracks + “hunting bonus”
- Huskarls got a huge buff in Castle (doubled attack vs. archers + 50% more armour vs. archers)
So actually Goths are intended to either flush or fast castle and use infantry + huskarls for raiding with their cheaper infantry (that has full upgrades in Castle Age aswell + 3 damage to buildings).
It’s just that ranged units and Knights are so dominant that it’s not worth raiding/pushing in Castle Age. So instead their meta is to go fast imp for flooding with inferior units all the time. This is only meant as a lategame boost when their limited tech tree does not cut it anymore.
But right now the opposite is the case: if they raid in Castle Age they get less benefit than booming to Imperial and flood with Perfusion.
About similarities with other civs:
I think Slavs have more incentive to use Scouts for rushing and are more of a very lategame powerhouse because of Druzhina Champions. They also profit from getting full cavalry techs + siege upgrades which are very expensive aswell.
I think are more fitting comparison would be Malians, as they get cheaper barracks and a bonus for m@a (+1/2/3 pierce armour), and also lack a key upgrade for their infantry and archery - blast furnace and bracer. Also they have some drawbacks in their siege department.
This is exactly what I have been saying all along!
Goths are a Castle Age civ, that loses a lot of power in Imperial Age. If you are not winning in Castle Ages as Goths, then you will lose in Imperial.
Excellent. (with Mr. Burns voice)
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Yeah but still they don’t perform like that because their Castle Age sucks… Actually I did some more tinkering and came up with the following setup of bonuses:
The bonuses summarized:
- Infantry discount 35% and building attack +3 starting in Feudal
- Blacksmith scale mail and forging line upgrades 50% cheaper
- scorpions get +1 range in castle and +1 in imp (+2 total) and have a 15% faster bolt speed (more accurate at longer range)
- Villagers carry bonus 15 meat + 5 dmg vs. boars
- 10% max population (starting pop cap 15 instead of 5)
tech changes:
- no access to gunpowder units
- added Guard Tower and Arrowslits - minor boost to their Imperial defenses since they their flooding ability is reduced by ~50%
- added Treadmill Crane back - same reason as above, helps rebuilding raided structures in the lategame
Edit: cost changes:
- Anarchy cost changed to 500f/550g (from 400g/250g)
- Elite Huskarl reduced to 900f/650g (from 1200f 650g)
- perfusion cost changed to 400w/500g (from 400w/600g)
I found that with cheaper military buildings it’s to easy to flood the enemy with a dual barracks in feudal Age, esp. combined with the early scale armour upgrade. That’s why I removed it for now in favor of Blacksmith upgrades/heavy infantry theme.
Same with the cost reduction on Trebuchet and Scorpion, after testing I think it’s unnecessary. Trebs are fine and Scorpions issue is not their cost but their reliability, esp. in Castle Age. The range bonus and missile speed makes Scorpions more reliable in fights against smaller numbers. And in imp the missing siege engineer range hurts them, too. Giving them +1 in Imp puts them on par with other factions Scorpions to help Goths vs. champion spam.
One thing I also consider is using Anarchy to give a +1 or+ 2 melee armour to Swordsmen line (and maybe even to pikes aswell). Don’t know about it though.
Tie the Scorpion buff to Anarchy instead, so it has to be bought.
The rest seems nice, but I still would not take away HCs and BBCs from goths. They need all the help they can get in the Imperial Age.
Another bonus that could be pursued, is the reverse Spanish Blacksmith bonus, and have Blacksmith techs cost no Food.
Since Goths are ancestors to the Spanish, it would be a nice theme, and would not be OP aswell, as they do miss 2 upgrades.
Actually I considered this aswell, the reasons why I decided against that is following:
- Scorps are pretty niche in Castle Age and rarely built at all since they can’t dodge mangonels properly (same range, lower hp and cannot damage mangonels back). The additional range forces Mangonels to close in more to give Goths a better chance to attack and destroy them
- Scorps are very weak to mangonels, and those + knights + xbows remove a lot of pushing potential the Goths have until they have Huskarls, so their Castle Age pressure is limited to late Castle Age without a working long range unit that can tackle xbows (and the unit combo I named is very common for the meta civs in castle age).
- since Goths are mainly melee oriented in Castle Age getting Mangonels is not a good idea (too high risk to damage own units against microed xbows)
- if you get Anarchy you have access to Huskarls in your barracks, which rival scorps as counter to ranged units
Actually I think that Trebuchets from Siegeworks with +25% speed, scorps with +2 range, better accuracy and 25% faster speed, +3 melee armour knights with + 5 attack vs. infantry are fine to replace gunpowder units in Imperial once Perfusion kicks in. But ofc requires testing. Late Castle should be alot better, aswell as early Imperial.
And the Trebuchet trait is a very unique thing that no other civs offers - this distinguishes Goths from the other infantry civs.
I also had this in mind when I redid the blacksmith techs, but there’s one problem: Scale mail costs no gold, so essentially give scale mail to goth infantry for free (which is a bonus I also considered for them - scale mail upgrades free(requires blacksmith)), similar to how frank mill upgrades are free. But I picked cheaper line upgrades because the total savings are a lot higher and help Goths in Castle Age more.
Hmm I don’t agree too much with that
Because:
It has always been +1 only
No Thumb ring and bad Monks. Also, they are one of 3 civs that are denied Guard towers for anti-mangonel defense. And anyway I don’t think full castle upgrade = castle civ. For instance, it’s the case of Italians, and yet they are a late-game civ. Or Mongols, who have more Castle upgrades than Goths, and yet they are at their weakest in Castle.
There is no way that when working on AoC the devs couldn’t see this bonus is useless. Likely at this time with the changes they introduced it was fine. The AoC civs who actually combine a faster working building and an eco bonus (Aztecs, Britons, Celts, Turks, Huns) aren’t designed as flush/Castle civs that fall off in the late game as far as I know.
I think there are two more logical reasons for that: First they introduced Eagles warrior, who as cavalry substitute are also good against archer. So they could have buffed Huskarl to avoid people going for Meso if they wanted anti-archer infantry. Second (and I’m sure about that one) is that archers were buffed with Thumb ring, Cav archers with Bloodlines/Parthian tactics, and we had new stuff like Yeomen Longbows, Plumes and War Wagons. AoK Huskarls would have never made the cut against those.
Well, this limited tech tree is made so that as soon as you hit Imp almost everything is obsolete. No siege ram, no arb… Only thing you’ve got is totally generic gunpowder… and Perfusion. So to me it’s intended as THE plan of the civ once in Imp. And it’s not that expensive for an Imp UT so you can get it early.
I thought the original bonus was +3, but you’re right. But anyways, wasn’t the bonus increased due to Arson? Goths are lacking this upgrade afterall since DE was released.
Solutions to this are:
- give them Arson back and set damage bonus to +1
- give them scaling bonus like they currently get
- give them +2 in all ages and keep Arson disabled
I personally prefer the damage bonus as I provided it though. +3 allows them to actually raze structures with m@a in a decent time and forces the enemy to react to the flush instead of just building structures for defense.
Misunderstanding - I did not mean that they have access to all Castle Age techs but that their core unit upgrades are all present - arson and supplies are sort of their civ bonuses. This means their infantry in every circumstance is 35% more cost efficient than enemy infantry while not having drawbacks of not having plate armour.
Also I added Treadmill Crane and Guard Tower + Arrow slits to them to protect their vills in Imperial a bit better. (I edited the other post because I forgot to mention these changes).
- Infantry discount 35% and building attack +3 starting in Feudal
- Blacksmith scale mail and forging line upgrades 50% cheaper
- scorpions get +1 range in castle and +1 in imp (+2 total) and have a 15% faster bolt speed (more accurate at longer range)
- Villagers carry bonus 15 meat + 5 dmg vs. boars
- 10% max population (starting pop cap 15 instead of 5)
tech changes:
- no access to gunpowder units
- added Guard Tower and Arrowslits - minor boost to their Imperial defenses since they their flooding ability is reduced by ~50%
- added Treadmill Crane back - same reason as above, helps rebuilding raided structures in the lategame
Edit: cost changes:
- Anarchy cost changed to 500f/550g (from 400g/250g)
- Elite Huskarl reduced to 900f/650g (from 1200f 650g)
- perfusion cost changed to 400w/500g (from 400w/600g)
Except for Turks (which are largely useless in 1v1 on non arena maps), all of these civs were fluidly used as rush civs during the past 20 years, with Aztecs and Huns being top notch in that regard, and remain strong as long as gold is involved. They fall off once gold runs out, but their trash is still decent enough to manage a lategame win. Britons also are a very good archer flush faction but also have a huge power spike in Castle Age as soon as they get crossbows, and remain even stronger in imperial due to excellent booming from cheaper TCs. Even Koreans, which have a +faster stone collection can be used for rushing with towers and have a very good Castle Age + lategame (as long as they have gold).
So I’m not sure where you’re coming from, it’s definately not correct that the civs you mentioned are not suited for rushing.
Regarding boars: I stated in earlier posts that the boar bonus is not THAT bad - it gives 20% more meat from deer due to carrying bonus and helps with early boar luring prior to the 2 mins mark. With the +10 starting pop you can lure a boar with your 6th villager and finish the 2nd boar at the time you’d normally lure the first one and hten proceed to hunt deer. Which gives you a slight advantage over other civs. It’s not as significant as the Maya or Franks bonus, but still it’s something.
Ofc they buffed Huskarls to perform better against Archers due to the various bonuses and new civs that were available with AoC. But they also made Huskarls a barracks unit to make it more viable as raiding/counter unit, along with reducing its trainingspeed by ~40% from 26 to 16s. This clearly intends that goths should use their barracks in Castle Age to produce raiding troops. But it’s inefficient since this accomplishes nothing significant and slows their Imperial Age time down. On top goth infantry is weak against the meta units - crossbow, mangonel, knights. So, additionally to requiring a castle they have a very high risk with little reward to use their strengths in Castle Age, which is bad and leads to them being passive and boom.
Since you have nothing else of course it’s the go-to strategy. Xbows don’t scale, their siege doesn’t scale and their defenses don’t scale either. And ofc their whole Castle Age is largely useless.
So all they have is quick infantry production in Imp. Which can be good, but often is not even an advantage. They loose against other champions, with some civs having much better champions with just as high or even higher efficiency due to supplies (i.e. slavs, japanes, vikings, bulgarians, malians), and their halberdiers are proven to even loose to turkish trash units under circumstances. And on top of this it burns resources quickly with limited effect often since the amount of infantry isn’t manageable properly unless you micromanage them extensively.
Lol, forget those Infantry civs. Portuguese Champions have Supplies AND a Gold discount, which makes them beat Goth Champions, even without Squires.
Platemail Armour is CRUCIAL for Imperial Age Infantry. Without it, Mass Infantry is a disavantage on the field, not a bonus.
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Only since 31 march. And they messed up the thing since now their total bonus damage is the same in Feudal and Imp… but worse in Castle.
Well, I feel like it would be Saracen Siege archer all over again. Except it would be an unit that can be massed in Dark age.
I guess it’s case by case? Some civs are like that too (Cuman/Huns Cav archers) others aren’t (Berbers Camels) Cav archers were deemed to strong to be both FU and cheaper or faster (both movespeed and creation speed), while Camel aren’t so strong, which explains why having both a discount and HP regeneration on them is fine. The question now is to decide in which category Goths and their infantry are.
The loss of Treadmill crane was a DM balance change, so dunno about that. AS of Guard tower, it’s cool vs Mangonels, but let’s be real, you don’t use them anymore to defend in Imp. As far as I know generic FU keeps are rarely made and Berbers/Frank ones (roughly the same as the one u propose) are never seen.
Sure, they are more suited at flushing. But they also are above average in all stages of the game. So I don’t think they are specifcally “flush+Castle” only civs.
Help for boar luring is irrelevant, and it could even mean you end up killing the boar before it’s below your TC! And the deer point is meh, who pushes deers for a drush (btw Turks were better than Goths for this strat before February)
I’m pretty much sure there would barely be any difference with what Huns can currently do.
Well, any unit that would benefit from that would be buffed (ok it didn’t work on AoC Tarkans tho 11) So it could be any reason?
They are still very cheap. Units that actually burns your ressources are Cav archers with old Steppe Husbandry for instance, because things can quickly go out of hand with 5 times the production speed. And infantry is the unit type that requires the least micro… So spamming your 3 infantry types vs someone who try to produce champs, cav and archers at once would give you the edge since their troops will struggle even more without micro.
In the end it’s just me having questions upon reading all this. As of whether the proposed changes themselves are better than just tweaking the current numbers, I think the discussion got so far that only real goth fans would have a relevant opinion, since it would be more about whether you prefer this new gameplay over the classic one.
At this point, I would just prefer if they brought Goths back to the February patch, and just gave them a Blacksmith upgrade discount, or Plate Barding Armour.
Alright.
Did you really just compare archer units with melee units?
m@a scale much worse than archers, and are countered much easier because they have to stand next to the building and cannot focus snipe villagers.
The Saracen bonus was considered too strong because you could break through early defenses and counter units that were trying to repair. For Goths you need m@a and archers with fletching or towers. Both things that do not scale particularily well.
Siege damage to archers makes them too versatile that early in the match. That’s why the bonus was tuned down.
How is that even related to the goth civ? Cumans, Berbers, Huns, Mongols play out radically different from Goths and employ units that are very strong by themselves and are not as easily countered by a mangonel + some xbows.
I’s not about whether other civs have a bonus on their infantry or not. It’s about Goths having access to ring mail armour + iron casting + squires + their free arson + better version of supplies + Huskarls. So their infantry force is supposed to be the main focus of their game plan from Castle Age onwards.
All their bonuses benefit infantry. So they’re best off using infantry, or at least should be.
Other civs may have the same upgrades available as Goths, but they have bonuses in other areas and focus on different units.
So of cource they’ll more likely use other units instead. But Goths have no other options. Except for meta knight + xbow + mangonel, but other civs can do that much more effective.
In general Infantry by themselves is considered weak in Castle Age, and so Goths game plan of using infantry raid groups is not useful. And Imp flooding instead is significantly more effective.
Opposed to most civs Goths have no walls, so the towers are there to have at least an option to get a couple of towers to help with vill garrison space in case of raids. I said myself it’s not that big of a deal but it still can help. And Yasama Keeps proved to be quite useful for Japanese. Why not Guard Towers with Architecture for Goths.
Treadmill crane issues in DM should largely be fixed by not having +206% speed barracks anymore.
So? afaik I didn’t suggest to remove Imperial Age. I stated that their power should be shifted TOWARDS Castle Age, give them a unique construction bonus for Trebuchets and give them better scorpions to support their champions in Imperial better than now.
It’s not irrelevant. Scouts are better off scouting instead of pushing deer most of the time. Goths can have the majority of their hunt in base at the 8th minute mark, earlier than other civs can militia rush them. So it’s actually an advantage they share with Aztecs.
Again - so? Huns used to be THE go-to civ for a very long time, so if Goths have an advantage that is on par with them for a couple of minutes into the game I’m more than fine with that.
There are historical and gameplay related reasons for that. I have written them down here multiple times, just read them.
Sending halbs, champs and huskarls to their death via waypoints is pretty inefficient either. See the viper game. He did that and his halbs were countered by a couple of Turkish Skirmishers.
Same with other factions that have discounts/bonuses on champions. Beat up goths aswell. I haven’t lost a single game as Jap vs. Goths yet for example.
Yes it’s noticable you have questions, mostly because you seem to have trouble understand some of the points that were stated here. I’d advise you read the posts starting with this one again.
One way to buff Goths is that the Goth and only the goth player get an extra boar spawning near the tc like the normal 2 boars. This buff would provide an early food bonus and would support the identity of goths with they existing hunting bonus. Likewise the opponent can try to lame the goth player so the bonus can be nullified in some cases.
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Yea makes sense that Goths magically summon wild animals around their base.Why not go even further and give them Odin’s “the great hunt” power that doubles all huntables in the area?
And while we’re at it we can also make Mongols to always have deer nearby with an upgrade named “call the Bambi” to support their identity of mongols with they existing hunting bonus.
And Franks start with wild horses additional to the scout to identify with their role of horseman.
Sry for the sarcasm, but that makes zero sense. One thing is that Goths do not exclusively identify through their boar bonus, just like Franks don’t identify with their berry collection bonus. The other thing is that spawning a free sheep/llama/cow or whatever at the start of the game is something entirely different from spawning wild animals somewhere in the open.
Incas have extra Llama, did they also conjure the great Llama God?
An extra Boar would be a great boon, specially towards fast Feudal and fast Castle strategies.