Hotfix Organ Guns are busted

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Check out Ornlu’s video here: Testing out the NEW New Organ Guns | April PUP Patch #2, 2023 - YouTube

The civ overhaul patch had rendered Organs guns nearly useless, and we saw a lot of arguments about that here, and on reddit. However, the new Organs seem really busted. From the video, you can see that they evaporate both infantry and archers. Archers are especially bad, getting wiped out in one or two shots.

They seem to have some trouble dealing with cavalry, but halbs are expected for defence in that case.

But here’s the problem, Onagers do not counter them. As you can see in the video, onagers get wiped far too quickly for them to be a good counter. The only good counter seems to Siege Onagers, which aren’t available for most civs. Additionally, the Siege Onager upgrade is extremely expensive, AND Portuguese get bombards to deal with those anyway.

It looks like the only viable counter to mass organ guns after the hotpatch is cavalry. I am someone who usually likes playing infantry-archers-siege combo. Organs guns now are unbeatable by archer and infantry civs without siege onagers. Bombard cannons might seem like a solution, but remember that Portugese have cheaper bombards with ballistics. I don’t see how I can handle these as Vikings, Britons, Dravidians, Incas, Mayans, or Malay.

Portugese cannot have a unit that is only countered by Onagers. They have ballistics on their bombard cannons, which means your Onagers will get sniped. This means Organ guns have to be vulnerable to infantry or archers.

Portugese have been a top tier civ since their berry bush bonus, in almost all maps. I think that this hotfix might send them way over the top. So devs, please reconsider this particular hotfix for Organ guns.

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Scouts beat them rather cost effectively. So, it’s not too bad. Italians I think can demolish them potentially. Maybe nerf the damage of them even more?

Nerf hammer the berry bonus wood really hard might work.

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What about giving organ guns & elite organ guns -15 siege weapon armor ? Then the (elite) organ dies in one well placed mangonel (onager) shot.

It is nice to be countered by cavalry, but so many civs have bad cavalry. i think it is fine that OG counter infantry and archers if Onager counter them hard enough.

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As I mentioned in the post, there are lots of civs that do not have great cavalry, or rely on archers/infantry. I have listed many of those in the post.

Onagers are still really weak to organ guns though. I think that this will be a huge problem if you are playing as, say, britons or goths. Still, this might be an acceptable solution if Onagers also get a little more resistance to OGs somehow. Also, portugese need to lose redemption. They have more than enough ways to counter siege already.

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I looked at the video, and it looks absolutely fine.

The organ guns shred low-PA armour units, die to mangonels in Castle age and can’t get through walls (so Arena should be fine again), and they fall of hard in Imp against anyone with full blacksmith upgrades.

Eagles have high PA and should do great against them, though that wasn’t tested in the video. BE have a lot of hp and take no bonus damage, so they should do fine too if they can force an engagement.

Honestly if you looked at that video and concluded mangonels don’t form a viable defense against OG, I don’t get where you’re coming from.

(I don’t really like the way the new OG work, and the way they shred low-PA units is asking for balance problems, but that’s a little of topic.)

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They have bonus damage for infantry, including eagle.

If you watched that video, and read my post, you should understand the problem. I don’t know which of those you didn’t do. So, let me ask here: how are the civs I mentioned above supposed to counter OGs in imperial age?

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EW still have high PA so they’ll function about as well as Skirmishers did in terms of survivability - though yeah, OrnLu should’ve tested that out. I’d also be interested in seeing how CA perform now.

Problem with Incas in addition is that they generally have good Monks, but Monk play gets shut down by Atonement. FI starts into monk pushes is not uncommon on closed maps for Portuguese players, so countering Organs with Monks isn’t really easy either (hopefully the new dispersion means they’re less effective at long range, so Monks will still counter them despite Organ Guns shredding through low PA units).

Probably the least affected out of the mentioned. Britons simply outrange Organ Guns and you can easily outmicro Arquebus, Dravidians have Elephant Archers (which likely do great against Organ Guns, as a bunch of low-damage bullets can be outregen’d), and Malay can just throw Battle Elephants at them, while also having Siege Engineers so that you can actually still fight against Portuguese Bombards with your own. IMO, Arquebus is probably the least important tech for Bombard cannons, as they have 100% accuracy anyway.

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I imagine scorpions would do fairly well against them too. Plus, the fact that they have 0% accuracy means you cannot micro down enemies in the back row. So if you put some skirmishers in the front, they will soak up the vast majority of the damage, allowing archers in the back to do their job.

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This should work, as they have 7 PA in Castle and 8 in Imperial. At the very least, they’re usable in Castle Age where Bombard Cannons don’t exist.

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A lot of comparisons you’ve done are done in a vacuum. Let’s take an in-game scenario and work from there.

This is true, but this also means the archers will need to keep running back forever. The situation is similar to onagers, except OGs are way cheaper. Additionally, portugese will add in skirms as support. What will actually happen in a game is that OGs will get a shot in, wipe half the archers, and that will be that. Or, britons will run away, castle to castle, losing each, till they lose the game.

Let’s add the trash and bombards in. OGs are better with groups than EAs are. If both go for halbs, OGs will wipe the drav halbs first, although drav halbs are stronger than porto halbs. However, determining the results afterwards will require some testing.

Seems like you’ve never tested those before. Porto halbs+OGs will destroy them. Malay Elite Battle Eles are barely better than Dravidian Battle eles, and dravs don’t even get the elite upgrade.

You don’t understand what that means. 100% accuracy means the projectile will land on the target spot with 100% accuracy. However, your target could have moved by that point. This is why you need to use attack ground with bombards if you are using them against Onagers. On the other hand, Portugese Bombards will predict where the target is going to go, and aim the shot there. This is similar to ballistics.

This might work in castle age (at least till the portugese player makes a few knights, or a mangonel). However, this is useless against Portugese bombards which will decimate them. And we are back to the problem of imperial age.

That is a nice suggestion, and maybe the first one that will work. However, I think it’s too much to ask of low-mid elo players to manage 4 unit types with the required micro (archers, skirms, siege, front line meat shield).

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If your worry was about Imperial age, any unit with at least 6 PA will do? Based on the video, if you get a surround with Cavalier, you absolutely mop them. Paladin, Eagles, and EBE will do even better. FU Hussar will trash them. (Eagles get 1 bonus damage against them, but have more PA than Paladin and deal bonus damage vs siege)

Of course to get a favorable battle you need to use mobility to get a surround. If you let ranged units hit and run endlessly they can win. But if the Portuguese player is going to get any utility out of his death ball at all he has to attack your base and risk a surround.

Camel and archer civs might have problems. But for most civs I can think of answers. I’m not sure what I’d do with Britons, but maybe their range or their trebs would be enough. Malay, Vikings, Mayans and Incas would have to rely on their infantry. (Vikings and Malay with their militia line, Mayans and Incas with eagles.) Dravidians could use Elephant Archers or champions.

I admit I don’t like the bonus damage vs infantry. The devs seem very fond of saying ‘x should counter y’ and then reinforcing that with bonus damage. It would be nicer if they replaced the bonus damage with 1 extra pierce damage and increased the price.

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The only mach up in the video that seemed busted was against castle age knights. That one surprised me.

I agree the previous Poster. Not a big fan of random attack bonuses. This shouldn’t turn into those rts where everything counters something. Aoe has power unit like arbs and paladins without the need.

Anyway i woukd remove the 1 bonus dmg against infstry and skirms or make them cost 5g more to slightly nerf in castle age.
and instead make them affected by Chemistry (+1 dmg in imp, result in video against champs and eskirms are unaffected)

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In either case, if organ guns are OP or not, portuguese are still OP on their own and need nerfs to their eco. Nerf to their berry wood bonus for example

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Portuguese were only OP on Arena when Organ Guns were busted, on other maps are better.
And if you think they are OP then what about Malians now, that have an absurd gold bonus that only gives you an advantage all time, cheaper buildings and also a super wide tech tree with options to play cavalry, infantry, and strong archer play in castle age, there’s currently no weakness to Malians in any age.

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I understand it perfectly because it’s so easy to outmicro Ballistics. It feels like you’re the one looking at fights in a vacuum or in some dumb setting like OrnLu’s video (that was made just for testing!) where nobody micros and decides to just fight in close quarters. Britons have no problem sniping the Organ Guns lmao. Dravidian Eles can tank the hits with 6 PA, Malay BEs will just easily tank the hits as well since they still have 2 base PA.

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that seems pretty reasonable for a slow UU, ballista elephants would likely have a similar result. Slower units need to be more powerful because they are less good at maintaining map control and raiding, UU are also harder to mass than other units, and unlike the original they have some clear counters

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Their weakness is imperial age.

Also, are they really that much stronger? In practice they are only slightly better than pre Bohemian Malians. And you can just nerf them by giving them 10% extra gold

Although tbh buffing their wood discount may have been a better idea

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I know that cavalry civs won’t have a huge problem with organ guns, which is why I was only talking about archer and infantry civs to begin with. But yeah, we broadly agree on most of what you’ve said.

This won’t work, and that’s the problem. If there halb meat shield in front (or champions), organ guns will shred infantry.

You first said that Arquebus doesn’t matter all that much for Bombards because “they have 100% accuracy anyway”. A clearly wrong statement. When I explained why, you are doubling down. You are also doubling down on the malay elephants, despite me having explained why it wouldn’t work. It doesn’t feel like you are reading what I’m writing. So, I am not going to bother replying to you any more.

Except there are hard counters for ballista elephants. 5 ballista elephants will be eaten alive by halbs, infantry, or cavalry. You need 25+ before they form a good death ball. OGs on the other hand are strong even with 5-10 units. But that wasn’t sufficient, and Ballista eles were too strong. So devs changed their armour class to bohemian war wagons to make them more vulnerable to mangonels. Do the same to OGs, then.

One civ is OP doesn’t mean another civ can’t be OP. Malians might be OP, but we need to wait on the stats. On the other hand, Portugese stats are avaliable already, and it says that they are far too strong on far too many maps. Still, I don’t think they are OP at the moment. This organ gun change might tip that though.

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Organ guns weakness is lack of mobility, the fact that they die hard to castles and they also need their own castles as production buildings. Go for a forward castle with knights + monks support and force them to fight under your castle. Then get up to imp and treb down his castles and he won’t be able to keep up with production and you can overwhelm him with numbers. What about meso civs? Just get your monk upgrades and overwhelm with eagles numbers. Even the base stats of a generic monk has +9 range vs. an organ guns +7 range. If your civ has Block Printing it’s even better, with +12 vs +7 range. Since eagles only need 75 resources vs. 136 for organ guns, produce from barracks not castles and have a huge speed and mobility advantage, you should be able to gather a sizeable army and overwhelm him. Also raiding is your friend. With such poor mobility, organ guns are terrible at defending raids.

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Why do you even bother writing a reply when you don’t read what I wrote? Go and read the full post, and then reply, please. I have addressed this already, and can’t be bothered writing this again.

Consider all maps, and team games. Not just 1v1 arabia.

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