I don’t wanna copy a post I made in another topic but I feel this deserves separate attention so I will just link the other post:
In short:
there is no P2W, it’s hard to balance a product perfectly before release without heavy player feedback.
The balancing of the last civs that were released was mostly random. Burgundians were OP, Cumans were very OP, Bulgarians from memory were always roughly balanced from start, Sicilians released in an underpowered state, Poles were slightly too strong, Bohemians are overall fine just too strong on Arena and the new civs seem balanced except maybe Gurjaras who are clearly underpowered… it’s literally random, the devs try their best and I don’t see a pattern of making OP civs under DLC, put your tinfoil hat away.
Possibly Hindustanis are too strong also (but not immensely so), and maybe Dravidians are underpowered also (I personally think they are fine but no mobility + no BBC combo could mean trouble).
Too early to say this. Hera’s 19 pop archers BO with Gurjaras looks great.
Can’t agree. At least they have a knight replacement.
That’s true.
This is probably alos true. They need 2 PA imho.
Isn’t he a league of legends player?
I don’t necessarily think they need buffs, but they are surely too gimmicky
Yeah i thought exactly the same
you can do 19 pop archers with A LOT of civs. Like A LOT. Off the top of my head, Lithuanians, Khmer, Mongols for sure, then probably you can do it as Hindustanis, Franks also to mention a few.
There are also civs that can’t do 19 pop archers, but in my view a strong Feudal isn’t necessarily a big deal if then you have one of the weakest Castle ages I’ve ever seen.
I know Franks are insane in mid elo but they really arent a good civ for that. Theres a ton of civs to be mentioned before them
Most civs can’t sustain 19 pop double archery range. Only a few can.
Many other civs like mongols and khmer usually prefer to play scouts as for scouts the timing advantage is even better and has more impact.
And I think Franks can’t play 19 pop double archery range.
Gurjaras can even 18 pop but I haven’t found the perfect build yet, it just often ends up awkward in feudal with the ressource distribution. The amount is enough, but ending with the right on each ressource is tricky.
Also most likely gurjaras will be drushed or trushed because of this bonus a lot. Just to make it they can’t really use it to its full extend.
I consider Franks lower top tier. Pros still pick them but nobody is as excited for Franks as for, say, Burgundians. Their late game is very lackluster in 1v1s, even with all the Halb BBC, cheap castles etc. you can do.
Regarding Shrivamsha riders, there are two things that people who got access to the preview didn’t realise, but that we can now know courtesy of Age of Empires II Tech Tree
They are the fastest land unit in the game. They have a base speed of 1.6, so it’s 1.76 after husbandry. As a comparison an imperial age Cuman hussar has a speed of 1.725, normal husbandry light cav hussar goes at 1.65.
Their attack value looks underwhelming but they have an attack rate of 1.75, which is pretty fast, it’s between the attack speed of knights and eleite cataphracts)
I feel like that as long as you don’t run it into melee unit (dies to them even faster than light cav/hussars do) it’s definitely usable.
oh, this is unexpected. I might re-evaluate them then. That’s basically another +1 attack with regular attack speed.
Might be the same one, a couple of pros play two games, but he’s also near the top of the aoe2 scene. Hera is one of those players that can’t quite compete for number 1 best player ever, but definitely top 20 or 10. One of those names that makes it into the video descrption because people get hyped when they see it.
active Hera was definitely a top 3 player if not top 2, idk why this type of ****talking toward Hera. Now he might not be in shape but I am very sure he didn’t quit “because he couldn’t compete”.
Hera was one of the very top, and then he went to League because the top of the ladder was too dead for him to find balanced and enjoyable matches.
I don’t like the lack of monastery technology for the Dravidians
My apologies.
Also my 20 characters.
Are they even that insane anymore even at mid elo? I think people are finally figuring out how to counter them more, combined with the fact that people are being encouraged/forced to play more maps than just Arabia.
Like they’re good, but not that insane, and it’s more their ease of play than their actual power
Interesting. When I see this this explains something I have seen. But not all. I actually think the shrivamsha is still buggy.
But the higher atk speed explains why they shred houses with that negaive melee armor so fast. Interesting interaction.
I think we all got tricked by the civ design in concluding it would be an anti-archer unit. It is most likely intended to be a really strong raiding unit, probably the best in the game. The intersting fact about shrivamshas is that they need almost no upgrades to be useful, especially for raiding.
But my catch is still that the civ needs a tweak. As for me it still is obvious it has a weakness to midgame xbows. The shrivamsha isn’t a viable counter as it
A) needs castle age to be produced
B) is very food intensive
C) is only strong if it outmasses the xbows and can surround them
D) is especially weak against pikes
Yes, it’s a strong raiding unit, but the utility against xbows is limited. In imp yeah clearly elite shrivamshas will do amazing (though gurjaras have also extremely expensive hussars that can do the same job) against arbs (and even better against all other type of ranged units), but not in castle age where you want it.
Gurjaras as a versatile cav civ need to have that tool against castle age xbows otherwise they will most likely suck. A versatile civ with a glaring weakness in the gameplan doesn’t work, cause then everybody will just try to exploit that weakness and you never come in the position to make use of the versatility of the civ.
this cannot be understated enough. The amount of time I ran into people camping their Crossbows behind a TC/Castle, or stacking them inside 1 tile-wide gap etc. is very high. For a unit like Shrivamsha that is VERY hard to tech into, it feels bad that you don’t get to delete the archers as you think you should.
Anyway, the civ still has FU Crossbows in Castle age and FU Skirms, the problem is that they lack an offensive unit, can’t really push with full Skirmishers in Castle age…
Let’s say you get a lead in Feudal (which I think with this civ is really easy to get), then in Castle Age you have no true power play other than full Crossbow + Mangonel (boring and if I wanna play like that I should go Ethiopians and get free resources, free Pikeman, faster firerate etc.)