Hotfix Organ Guns are busted

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Yeah sure, just like most non eagle non cavalry unit.

Like every non ram unit, I think. So they rather go around the castle to deal damage

The unit has probably no issue in the usual 1v1 arabia setting.

Well, you neef a better eco Portuguese them for that. And it is not that simple anymore.

Which probably dies to Portuguese cheap monks + atonement/sanctity. If you build a castle, you dont have the argument “I have more resources than them” anymore.

This should be the other way around. No way knight force OG to fight under the knight’s player castle.

I dont see why with all these resources invested you would be earlier to castle.

You could if you stay at home and use the fact that OG are weak to buildings, not if you go full army.

Meso civs should holf their own.

Yeah, but you need to not play a closed map or hope that your opponent has a hole and is only making Organ Guns and not a single Halberdier even after seeing his opponent going full cavalry, which is a clear mistake from his part.

I think the point if the thread was to say that:

  • In castle age, civs without good cav/eagles or really great eco cannot defend against a bunch of 10 OG (+ maybe a couple of pikes/monks) without using castle defenses, which puts you behind in eco
  • In imperial, civs without decent cav die to this bunch of Elite OG + BBCs, and whatever cav you hope to use for raiding, Portugese will do is better as their cav is better than half of the civs.
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malians are busted as well now infact, but they just got their bonus so it’s fine. on the other hand, portuguese already has a solid amount of time to be aknowledge as too strong and survived 2 patches without meaningful nerfs, cause the this very thread proves that organ guns were not nerfed infact.

portuguese are top tier on arena but also on water and are rated S tier or at least very high A tier even on arabia tipe maps, which means they are top tier everywhere. there is also the fact that they outshadow other similar archer/gunpowder/flexible civs, as there is no reason to pick italians over portuguese for example

imho their berry bonus should be lowered to 25 or even 20%, as well as malians gold bonus lowered to 10% or plays with other bonus a bit (like lower wood discount as well)

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Make them more expensive then and call it a day?

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Yes you do. Because they need at least one castle to make OG, probably 2x by mid to late castle age. So your economies should be pretty equal, especially if your civ has an eco bonus, which lots of civs do.

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I think their biggest strength is also their biggest weakness; they’re unable to be effectively microed due to their inability to shoot through enemies, and due to their slow speed. This means you cannot micro effectively against them, which is most players default tactic, which can feel frustrating, but it also means if you throw a few knights at them AND attack them with mangonels, and they wont be able to snipe the mangos since the knights will absorb all their damage.

People will learn how to deal with them, same as they have with other powerhouse units, like war elephants or teutonic knights.

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The benchmark for civ balance has always been 1v1 Arabia, that’s why the top pros civ tier lists are always based on that standard, it’s the most popular map and the best measurement of skill level in the game (The best Arabia players are the best overall players). You can’t balance all civs for all map types, that would be an impossible task. It’s hard enough for the devs to keep the civs balanced just for one map. Some civs are gonna be stronger in the late game or Arena and others will be better in the early to mid game or Arabia. Figuring out your winning condition is part of what makes the game fun.

This isn’t directed at anyone in particular but in general, frankly i’m sick of people wanting to make all the civs bland and vanilla. This patch was great because it finally focused on buffs instead of nerfs. Every strat should have a counter and every player has leaks in their game they can improve. Unless you’re a 2k+ player, civ balance is almost never the problem. If 2k+ players identify problems with civ balance, the devs should listen to them, not us. Let’s just wait and see. Check the win rate stats again in a few months. Portuguese might be busted, but we won’t know until we give it time and look at the stats.

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Please excuse me for getting a bit upset, but more than a few have mentioned this, while I was explicitly talking about a bunch of civs which don’t get good Knights, or don’t get knights at all.

Every civ needs to have a viable counter to the unit. That’s the whole issue here.

Zelley countered every argument of yours, and that’s all you have to say? “Your economies should be pretty equal?” what a nothing statement. Also, you cherry-picked one place where you could make that counter argument. Because you don’t have a response for anything else.

Stop repeating this nonsense. This is wrong, and stupid. I gave counter examples in another thread to you.

Nobody is asking for perfect balance. People need a rough balance.

You assume that it is always possible for low-mid level players. It just might not be.

Wrong again. Franks are a huge problem at lower levels. So are Goths in late game, and Britons. Players at all levels need to feel that the game is fair. How does one person have so many wrong takes?

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It’s not a nothing statement, because the point Zelley was making was the investment into a castle means you’ll be behind the Portuguese player economically, which is just false because this whole thread is about Organ Guns which need castles to produce, typically more than 1x castle, so if anything you should be ahead of the Portuguese player economically and up to imperial faster if he has invested into 2x castles vs. your one.

Interesting that you make this point despite the contrary evidence of the top 10 players making civ tier lists on the basis of 1v1 Arabia. But ok, maybe your opinion is superior to theirs?

It’s way too early to assume Portuguese are unbalanced. You watched one Ornlu video and got your panties in a twist over it. Decisions should be made with real game stats over a decent length of time across different ELO levels, not just a custom map scenario for demonstration purposes. The video is not useless of course, but we need the real game stats to judge it properly.

So work on it. Learn the tech trees. There is always a win condition, even in the most lop-sided of matchups. “Might not be possible” means it’s a skill issue, not a civ balance problem.

I’m a low level player (highest ELO 1149) and I’ve won 59.2% of my 76 games vs. Britons. Because they’re predictable. They always die to rams / skirm.

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Every single one of my losses, I can re-watch the game and identify why I lost based on what I did wrong. The same can be said for all low to mid level players and even the higher level players can learn from rewatching their losses. And it’s never just because the opponent was Franks or Goths etc. Blame your skill, not your tools. The game is well balanced, every game is winnable, every game has a win condition. Some matchups are tougher than others, that’s it. The real game stats will be the only proof we need if nerfs or buffs are required. The devs are doing a great job, people criticise them way too much.

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BTW to the person who said ports are still op atm.

Aoe stats has fully update and thousand of games now. Portuguese sit at around exactly 50% winrate Overally both 1v1 and teamgames. You can filter for different maps and elos, but generally fro statistically stand poitnt, I rly do not see them as op atm with their weak current organs, despite have a good teambonus and the berry bonus.

They are still strong on Arena, but statistics indicate a much bigger issue with turks on that map (by a large margin)

This might change after the hotfix organ gun buff. maybe a nerf to the wood bonus could be needed or further work on organs.

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If you only play 3v3 games exclusively and never 1v1, your own bias will be coming into play here. Team games are always lop sided. And team game only players tend to make one main unit and then have team mates who make units to cover the weaknesses of that unit. But instead of making a more balanced army yourself, you can use this to your advantage. You said not every civ has good cavalry. But in a 3v3 game, which is the only game type you play, what are the chances that nobody has good cavalry out of 3x players? Possible, yes, but extremely unlikely.

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The video shows 10 organs vs 3 mangos.
10 organs cost 800 W 560 G, 3 mangos cost 480 W 405 G.
To make it fair it would be 10 organs vs 5 mangos which the mangos would win easily.

(i think organs were 80 W 56 G and mangos 160 W 135 G. But it’s only from my brain, so might be slightly wrong with it)

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Not sure I understand what you mean, as I feel you say 2 contradictory things.

I agree you can be “pretty equal if your civ has an eco bonus”, I disagree with the "yes you do (have much more resources than the Portuguese player), as you were repling to my statement “if you dont build a castle as well you may have better eco, but if you also build castle you do not have a better eco anymore (even worse if you make knights)”.

The portuguese do not have to make more castles, it depeds how you react and where he can attack. Usually we make another castle if there is an entry to the opponent base where you can drop a more forward castle, or if you expect your opponent is massing army. Otherwise you make monks, pick up the relics and boom or go Fast Imp. After all, you dont need more OG that fast if you have no angle of attack (due to forests, castles, walls)

No, I said if you build a castle you cannot say you ll be aheah economically, you can still be equal if you have a decent eco. My point was that you cannot match the portugese castles, add knights and redemption monks and still somehow have the eco lead and be the first in imperial and treb down his castle before he can do anything.

Maybe you just threw many possibilities what we can do, but it sounds like you want to do them all at once.

Then you’d be fine with these PUP changes reverted ? I mean, it doesnt change much in the big scheme of things… Especially in Arabia, where we barely see any UU from castles outside of maybe 5 UUs.

I agree that the overall game balance is good, except a few outliers. It is balanced in ranked when players are civ pickers, and pick civs of similar strengths.

But you can expect that a players playing only Turcs and Magyars on Arena with have a very high win rate as turcs and very low as Magyars. As you said, that is the way it is.

But:

I agree (depending on what you mean by criticising) but we are not being harsh on them. This is a PUP, and we give our feeling and impressions.
After last patch, the OG felt lackluster. You can be happy, sad, or indifferent. Many players complained and the devs listened and try to make a more satisfying version. We are just saying that if feels overwhelming again. Maybe (or hopefully) the devs will add a layer of counterplay to it.

Without Ornlus video I wouldnt have guessed that OG mass is destroying mangonels again… Maybe the devs didnt see it, after all they didnt notice a “bug” where he OG wasnt doing the intended damage, and I am sure they did some testing…

Because Arabia is the reference for open maps, and the favorite map of most aoe2 players. I also find open maps generally more interesting as closed maps because I dont like the idea of “skipping” one age (feudal) that much.

Mostly true, but still you can see that some top players struggle on closed maps or water maps in a way that closed map players do not.

Well… For me it is only half of the truth. Yeah you can always become better at the game and win harder matchups against lower skilled opponents.
But this would be the same if the civs were much more imbalanced, as you would just match up against either way better players or way worse players depending on how good their main civ is (if not random).

This is a very good point !

I always expect mangonels to be trained is small numbers as they are so easy to counter with 1 or 2 cavalry units, whereas OG can still fight off cavalry pretty well…

I still think OG in the PUP are too good against what counter them given how hard they counter everything they counter. I dont know how viable mass mangonel is with my dodgy micro skills

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Why are you always so annoyingly unargumentative? This is not the first thread you’re stubbornly refusing to argue, as if you have a single-minded goal of getting Dravidians and Bengalis buffed to a new S+ tier and getting some civs nerfed to the ground.

No? There are several units in the game that certain civs have no answers to. Portuguese on Open maps will be much weaker and civs like Incas, Mayans, etc will do better against them than on Closed maps, because going for the UU is possible there.

If every civ has a viable counter for the unit, then the unit is useless. Take Cataphracts - being resistant to anti-Cav damage is their identity. What can a civ with poor Archers do against Cataphracts? Heavy Cavalry, when Byzantines have extremely cheap anti-Cavalry to support with?

Play the game outside of your scenario fights, please.

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It doesn’t have to be knights specifically. I don’t think there’s any civilization that completely lacks an answer to pierce damage. Whatever that might be, put that in the front. It doesn’t need to actually kill them, it just needs to soak up the damage while the stuff in the back does the dirty work. Personally, I think it’s kind of cool to have to think tactically like this.

I will grant you that this might be overpowered at certain ELO’s, but that’s the case with most units, so it’s probably okay. Teutonic Knights, for example, are more or less overpowered at lower ELO’s.

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36

Anyone has the code for the PUP with the Organ Gun changes?

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This is entirely irrelevant to the point here. Top 10 players make tier lists for all sorts of things, first of all. That mostly has to do with how popular tier list videos are, in YouTube algorithm.

The metric you should actually look at, is how the devs have balanced civs in the past. Poles were nerfed recently in their stone mining bonus, and folwark production despite them having less than 50% win rate in arabia. Houfnice was nerfed despite that civ being one of the worst in 1v1 arabia games. And here’s the biggest example. Battle elephants are the most nerfed units in the history of the game. I wonder if that’s because of 1v1 arabia games, but something tells me it’s not.

I’m not saying that 1v1 arabia games don’t matter. Maybe like 50% of civ balance changes are centred around 1v1 arabia games. That is a proportion bigger than any other single map. But you’d be wrong if you think that’s the only map that matters.

Let me give you an extreme example. Let’s say they increase the range of longbows by 4, and increase their damage by 2. Would you make the same argument there? Would you say, “let’s just wait for real game stats to judge it”? I don’t think you will. So, how are you going to oppose that change before it’s implemented?

OGs are not a new unit. I know how they work, how they are commonly used. You only need logic and deduction to figure out how this change would affect the game. That won’t give you the full picture, of course. But it will tell you likely cases.

There are multiple issues with this statement. You say that “Might not be possible” means it’s a skill issue. But that simply isn’t true. The civs might actually be unbalanced. There are a lot of civ matchups which hold true at all levels. For example, Vietnamese vs Gurajaras. It doesn’t matter what ELO you are, you are at a huge disadvantage playing as Vietnamese (in Open maps). Or, if you are playing as goths against turks (at least pre-patch) in arena. That’s a brutal matchup regardless of your ELO.

But there’s an even bigger issue, which is the one of skill floor and ceiling. Civs like Britons and Franks have low skill floor. Anybody can pick them up and do their main thing, and it’ll usually work out. Other civs like chinese, or aztecs might have a high skill floor. This means they are pretty good if you have a lot of skill, but bad if you don’t. There are also units like cav archers which aren’t great if you can’t micro them well. This is to say, there are certain matchups which might be balanced at the highest levels, but aren’t at low, mid, or even high elo.

But you say “Git Gud”. Let’s put into perspective what that means. AoE2 is an extremely complicated game. The vast, vast majority of people are stuck between 500 and 1600 ELO. Also, getting good takes years of practice. Pros train day in and day out. That’s time most people don’t have. So, you are arguing for robbing a good game from most people who play it, in service of the very few who are highly skilled at it.

If that’s what you want, that’s okay I guess. But I don’t think that’s a good argument. The game should be fun, even if I don’t want to dedicate 8 hours a day into “getting good”. So, civ balance is absolutely a problem at mid elos.

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I am refusing to argue because you aren’t engaging with the argument. MALAY ELEPHANTS DON’T WORK. They will get shredded by heavy cavalry, anti-cavalry units like halbs or camels, and even by strong infantry. Engage with that. Either explain how they do work, or explain how malay are supposed to counter portuegese after this buff.

Oh gee, I want to see some low tier civs getting buffs. Maybe I should’ve been advocating for buffing Franks instead.

If you think that I am some kind of champion for a few civs and want them buffed to infinity, you’d be absurdly wrong. If either of those civs (or any civ for that matter) got too strong, I’d argue for nerfing them. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dravidian team bonus might be too strong for full water maps. If the stats after like 3-6 months say that, I’ll make a thread arguing for changing that bonus.

Firstly, that’s not true (unless you are playing some kind of unlimited resources game in michi and your opponent goes for persian war eles or something). Secondly, if that was true, that’d be bad game design. Thirdly, if you don’t see why this would be a bad thing, and we should all be arguing against it, I have huge questions about your knowledge and priorities.

While we are at it, what are these units that certain civs have no answer to? Give me a list please. And let’s stick to standard settings (1v1 games, in any of the common maps).

This is absurd, and wrong on its face. Every civ have a viable counter for Paladins. Are paladins useless? Every civ has a viable counter for pikes, and every civ has a viable counter for hussars. Are these units useless?

So, let’s take civs with poor archers, and poor cav archers. If are playing as mongols, for example, you can just use cav archers to shut down Cataphracts.

From this pool, eliminate civs with strong elephants. If they had enough resources to pool into FU catas, you should’ve had enough to pool into elite battle elephants, with halbs or skirms for support. ELEs are similar to catas in that while they might not beat halbs cost effective, they will beat them pop-effectively. This is especially true for civs with special bonuses. For example, 10 Bengali ELEs will destroy 20 halbs. So, if Byzantines go for Catas+Pikes, your EBEs+skirms will destroy that combo long enough for you to push into their eco.

Now, eliminate civs with strong Hand Cannoneers. They aren’t as good as arbs, and will require halbs as meat shields. But they will absolutely kill the catas. 15 HCs will one-shot a Cata.

Also, eliminate civs which have melee units which can do damage at range. Frank taxmen, and malian gbetos are good examples of this.

And lastly, monks. Yep, good old monks will almost always convert a cata if can micro them. Catas are even weaker than knights against conversion.

So, what’s left now? What are these civs you are talking about which can’t deal with Catas?

Considering that you don’t know how to deal with Catas if you aren’t playing an archer civ, maybe you are the one who needs more knowledge and experience. But then again, you believe that certain civs shouldn’t be able to counter certain units. I don’t know if anything can fix that.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t actually work. Some civs have an infantry as answer to pierce damage, and OGs get bonus damage against that (example, Goths, Hindustanis, Meso civs). Some other civs rely on units that do pierce damage to counter pierce damage (Dravidians, Britons, Koreans, and depending on the upgrades you have, Tartars, and Vietnamese). However, Organs guns have too high of a pierce armour for it to be an actual counter.

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What? This is just plain wrong. Malay Elephants are one of the few civs who can make Elephants work, especially in Castle Age where Organ Guns are at their strongest. And when Portuguese player is going for Organ Guns, you’re not even going to see Heavy Cavalry, Camels, Infantry. At most they’ll have to make Halberdiers. Guess what, now they’re not making Organ Guns!

I’d also say Scorpions are probably what end up countering Organ Guns more, and every civ has access to them.

It’s funny then, that you complain about people only regarding 1v1 Arabia, while basing your expectations and impressions of these ‘low tier civs’ solely on 1v1 Arabia. The game is more than 1v1 Arabia, and Dravidians and Bengalis do just fine on Hybrid and Closed maps respectively. Granted, you might not have mentioned Bengalis that much recently, but both have been fine for quite some time now.

Well, according to you, Dravidians have no answer to Knights and Siege. :wink:

Goths have no good answer to Cataphracts, I’d also say Bulgarians don’t (as Byzantines can add cheap anti-Cav). Goths don’t have good answers for Teutons. Why do we have to stick to standard settings, I thought you meant the game was more than just 1v1s!

Khmer didn’t have good answers to Siege + Halb and now especially they don’t, Meso civs have no good answers to Gunpowder, several civs have very few answers to other civs on Arena, the list goes on. The point is, there are civs who just don’t have good answers to a strategy on closed maps. And some civs don’t have good answers to strategies on Open maps. Or Hybrid maps. And that’s fine - as long as each civ has a strength on some common maps. Your civ is weak to Organ Guns? Well gee, maybe play around it. Portuguese Castle Drops are not the only CD UU plays that are strong on Arena that some civs can’t deal with.

FWIW I’d still say Eagles will do just fine, +1 notwhitstanding. Eagles also get +1 damage from Spears and they clean Spears up just fine. Even FU Infantry wasn’t getting mowed down, and Eagles with bonus to Siege and fast movement will clean Organs up.

Both of which get shredded by Cataphracts, by the way! Hand Cannoneers - oh wait, Byzantines have cheap Skirmishers they can deal with your HCs (and Halbs). Damn.

No, the answer is that you simply don’t let the game get to the point where Byzantines have a very strong win condition against you, since you said it yourself - FU Catas need a lot of resources and time. And same goes for Organ Guns. Especially now that they’re extremely weak against Buildings, Organ Guns aren’t going to be busted at all.

You’re stuck on a very short presentation by OrnLu to make valid guesses yourself. Even the conclusion from Mangonels was wrong - they’ll still counter Organ Guns fine. Unless the Portuguese player is massing up OGs hidden away from you and somehow surprises you with that so that you don’t have time to make a few Mangonels to defend with (which is very unlikely), you’re not going to be fighting 15 OGs with just one Mangonel.

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This is why I refused to respond to you earlier. Either you do not read my posts, or you don’t process and understand them.

So, let’s take the example of this line:

What do you think is my counter to this line? Honestly, where did I say that 1v1 Arabia doesn’t matter?

Let’s take another line:

I have already mentioned a counter that goths have, to cataphracts. Maybe consider that before writing this. Or, explain why the counters I implied doesn’t work.

And now, you manipulate your statement. In this response, you state this:

However, I never said anything to the contrary. I agree with that, and that is generally a bad thing. In fact, that is my problem with this OG change in the first place.

Your original statement was:

So, now you have changed your statement. I am refusing to engage till you address the actual statement you made. Not strategies, units.

Again, what do you think my response here is? Just make some meatshield champions (or halbs, or hussars) and put them in front. In doesn’t matter if the meatshield dies, the HCs will take care of the catas. Catas are expensive. As long as you keep your HCs alive, you’ll win. Of course, that’ll take some micro and skill.

See, I need to spell simple things out, repeatedly. HCs counter catas. However, HCs dies to skirms. Okay, now what do you do about that? I’m sure that you can take that logical step yourself. You should make that argument against me if you can’t think of one, or if you don’t think it’ll work. But in either case, you do need to explain that.

For the Organ Gun argument I made, I have reasons for why none of the common answers actually work. I spell it out in my comments, and posts.

We can disagree on the facts themselves, and that’s fine. For example, malay elephants. I was specifically taking about imperial age there, if it was’t clear (I thought the halb unit made that clear). A castle age 1 tc all in might work, except Portuguese have cheaper monks to counter that.

Goths and Bulgarians absolutely have counters for catas. Again, try to deduce that from my previous comment. Look at the tech tree.

Incorrect. If you want to dive into the details, we can. But I’m not going to take all the steps for you for all civs. Pick your civs, strategies, and units.

Once civ being to a unit is bad. But entire classes of civs being weak to a unit is unacceptable.