No ok sorry, maybe I misspoke o you misunderstood, it wasn’t what I meant.
I meant that even if the enemy can’t use cavalry vs GC, they still have skirms, manganels and rams, so it’s not a broken unit, and decreasing their training time from a castle would help them counter better cavalry, but wouldn’t improve GC against anything else.
Yes of course I know, my point is that GC vs cavalry, only, can’t proper counter them, because they will be outnumbered.
It would be interesting to see what happens to the teamgames when you buff GC by decreasing their training time. I personally think they would be like op becouse they just counter too many units at being archers and anti-cav aswell.
What would a khmer do against massed GC? I guess scorpions.
Maybe nobody would pick franks or persians or bulgarians or teutons becouse there will be always one guy that choses italians and goes for massed GC.
But I let that to my imagination and I will just end saying that I don’t agree with improving the GC training time, but maybe we will see it some day and see how it damages or improves the game.
They are the weakest archers vs infantry, they don’t even have an anti-pikes bonus, and basically every other has has at least a +1.
You answer yourself.
Trashbows
With their castle age’ unique tech they can train a knight from a stable in 18s, 4s less than a GC from a castle, after having a way better eco in dark/feudal, tell me how italians should keep up.
Ironclad onagers and rams
Skirms with bracer and a full siege workshops (minus BBC).
If we’ll found that it’s broken they’ll fix it back, if they’ll ever address it.
However, if it’s a way to balance it, they could also increase a bit the cost, maybe 50w 50g (now it’s 45w 45g), I personally don’t think it’s necessary, but I’m not against it either.
11, this is very wrong. They can just rush you before you even go to mine stone!
Btw you can easily counter GC with even arbalests since GC have -1 range. And in teamgames there will always be someone who goes for archers.
I agree that you can rush Italians easily… that is why we were talking to help them on land with a small balance between discounts on dock techs and age up. This would help them also to put the castle up if they want to go GC. However, as someone pointed out, GC is not necessarily the way to go for Italians. If I get to the point of having a castle, I am comfortable with crossbowman/arbalests, since pavise is an ok boost for them. Not very strong UT but ok. The problem is to get there…
What about this?
question for all those of you saying we should buff italians on land so they have a fighting chance.
are we going to buff everything that isn’t Italians, Vikings, etc on water so they have a fighting chance?
Water is less common and predominant in maps than land, unless you are on island, all civs have the same possibility to win, since one can always use the land/generic bonus to boost their eco/military, but the water bonus are useless for land maps.
Exactly, the problem of GC is that they alone can’t counter cavalry, if for a moment we consider only GC from a castle vs knights from stables, the GC will never win. Yes the Italians can field another unit tipe, but so can do the enemy, so in the and you always have to field a unit time more than your enemy, because you have a unit (GC) that alone can’t do it’s job, and that it’s a huge disadvantage.
No, but if I want to counter cavalry, what the point of having a dedicated UU and not using it.
Yes pavise it’s not that powerful UT, that’s why I propose to affect condos too, but yes their arbs are OK and if I’m against other archers or infantry I have no problem to use them.
See here I actually disagree, to me italians are fine, they can survive a rush and sometimes rush themselves too. The cheap age ups isn’t a big bonus, and it’s does almost nothing, but it helps, however even without it italians can still reach castle age without any big problems, the problem is that when this happens, they need something powerful to punch back.
I mean I not strongly against the 20%/40% solution, but I don’t think it’s necessary either if they receive some boost to their UU.
Well, this is a good point. The fact is that when we think of Italians and Vikings, they are very good just on water maps, which is a very specific game setting.
Similarly, mongols are the best civ in the game in maps with a lot of hunting. But we do not need to buff all the other civs in, say, valley map. Or nerf the mongols for that.
I think that very specific map settings (I saw a map with a ton of relics where Aztecs is a must) may clearly favour one specific civ. Like celts in forest nothing… there are a lot of examples.
The point is that if you play the most common maps (like Arabia), it is nice if all the weak civs are at least decent. Mongols may sounds OP in valley, but actually they are well balanced in more standard settings (arabia is the reference typically).
To me Vikings are well balanced, in the sense that, if I get them on standard settings, they are good, of course not top tier, but good.
For instance Portuguese are ok on water and in FFA, but the common feeling is that they miss something in standard Arabia game, which is a reference for aoe2.
50% loom wouldn’t help at all, goths receive it for free, aztec have +50g, it’s not about the gold saved, it’s more about the TC’s working time saved.
Maybe an idea could be that mills, lubercamps and stone mining camps research techs 50% faster, it could be a good bonus, but it won’t suit them really well. To me either you anticipate the feritoria, either you give them a free tech like ballistics that give them a hit early advantage over the enemy, or maybe you let them research chemistry in castle age.
Mmm the idea behind it would be that turks shouldn’t use spers and skirms, so to me it isn’t a good idea boosting onle their feudal age units.
An idea could be giving them a new trash unit, I proposes a bonus that when they researched siege ram, converti their gold cost of ram inti wood/food cost
Also, just to add a bit of prospective on pavise, I’ve just done the math, and it actually give the same effect on Italians’ xbows/arbs than the viets’ bonus, only that viets bonus is free, start in feudal, doesn’t require a castle and affect all archery range’s units (xbows, skirms and CA).
So while yes it’s a nice boost, italians are actually paying for a lot worse upgrade.
Land maps are much more played than water maps, and water maps also have land parts. It is not a big problem if some civs are way weaker than other civs on water, but it is a big problem if a civ is way weaker than an other civ on land. Im not saying they should have nearly the same strength, but in competitive play where civs matter more, both sides should have a proper chance of winning.
Btw I think that there should be atleast 6-7 civs viable on water, not just Italians and vikings. Currently maps like islands are so boring, just because there are only a few civs which are viable. I would like portuguese, malay, byzantines, japanese, saracens, berbers, koreans as strong on water as italians and vikings.
Viets are in general way better than Italians with archers, but it is fine…
The problem is that Italians are slow. Also slow to get their UT which is the only real strength that comes before late game.
Vietnamese are a good comparison. They have better archers and better eco bonus. So Italians are pretty behind a civ like viets that is, I would say, average.
It is fine if Vietnamese remain stronger, but Italians/Burmese/Turks should be a bit closer.
In any case I would pick Viets over Italians in any Arabia game. And I think that, even if Italians get a small help on land like the 20%-40%, they will remain far behind. But I am totally fine with this last issue.
I guess that Japanese and Malay are pretty close. Maybe just a small nerf on specific water bonus of top islands civ would fix this.
Not sure with Koreans/Portuguese, but definitely Berbers, Saracens and Byzantines would need something more to compete on pure water maps. You should buff them.
Water balance is extremely difficult btw.
Well, I mean, yes it’s ok that viets have better archer in general, but that italians have to pay for a similar but worse effect of the viets it fell a bit like a joke, that’s another reason to let pavise affect condos to me, to further diversified the 2 things.
Yes, that’s why I would like for them to keep their slowness, but to have more strength in castle/early imp.
Viets are more toward archer rush, while italians more toward late game powerful archers. Still there are some consistent differences, the first can be called a proper archer civ, the second not so much.
So yes, vikings and italians are the 2 most powerful civs on water maps, yes, but they have some drawback too (viks not fire ships and itas most of their disc kick in after castle age).
But there are other civs viable onn water, before the recent nerf (which I hope they reverse) persians were probably the third best civ on water, but they are good even now with their faste/tankier docs, more wood and fast economy.
Koreans, japs, Malay and saracens all have good bonus, and can win the early water battle or do some nice landings, celts too, to some extent, with their fast lumberjacks.
All other civs are more conventional, or forced to do a landing, a viable strategy, even if a bit obvious one.
Turks: in imperial age, if they have no trading units, they get a free gold trickle (like one relic). This is to buff their late game with no gold (where they are maybe the worst civ), while leaving the team game/gold gameplay untouched.
I think turks need some bonus to deal better with archers specifically. Perhaps extra pierce armor on hussars or gunpowder units so that they can deal a bit better with ranged units.
Italians (land): archer armor techs are free. This is to help their weak land early game by following their identity of archers with armor. Nice if their UT would affect skirms again, to close this idea of armored archers. Importantly, late game and pure water game would be untouched.
I think italians could really use some buff on land. Genoese crossbowman is slow and not that amazing, maybe adding +1 damage to elite would help. Or just reduce the cost a little but maybe. I also would like to see an elite condottiero upgrade, since condos are really useless after very early imp.
Burmese: monasteries and monks are available in feudal age. Clearly some limitations on feudal monks are needed (like less range and/or no relic collection). This puts them towards monks (which is still their identity) even on Arabia, very original playstyle.
Maybe instead some armor bonus just on skirms would help them deal with ranged units, like +1 in castle and +1 in imp.
Agree
If they reduce the training time from castles and you let them mass more easily they could actually be a powerful unit, when massed they can counter cavalry really well, but right now they struggle to get the critical mass they need. As for their cost I think it’s fine, but you need to reduce the TT.
I suggested that pavise (after an bit increased cost) could affect them too, on top of GC and arbs, so they would have 5/5 armor in total, but to compensate that they should loose the champions upgrade.
Cav archers do extra damage vs archers? Useful considering that they have the gold bonus.
Hmm, their cav archers are already very good however. I think giving light cav +1 pierce armor in castle age and hussars +1 in imp (if needed) would be better. Also, at least one of their counters in not gold dependent like that.