11 what have I started
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Not their. They would get it for free. Only their team mates.
Only for allies.
Crazy how the highest win rate is 52%
Still.
I’ve stated that unlocking Condos with UT is unhelpful and confusing.
Agree. Should remove the university discount in that case. That way your Koreans can get the change you wanted.
Fair enough. I’m not on board with Italians need a buff anyway.
Italians, with the cheap age ups and cheap monastery might be better than the bohemians when they had this bonus thought.
For sure it’s a buff for the close maps, but it would also help a lot on open maps, as it be much easier to get a monastery and grab the relics, or even get double monasteries and use monks to defend or heal your units.
Even if you did an archer rush, you could use the bonus to perform a monk+siege push. On a civ with a flexible tech tree as the Italians it could be a nice bonus.
If you still believe that the discount it’s not enough, you can give them another effect, like:
- Monasteries cost -100 wood, and every technology researched spawn a monk.
Disagree. Free gold mining is better imho.
I don’t think they should get a monk identity all on a sudden. Though it is definitely historically accurate.
Without the cheaper fishing ships, Italians would be practically generic in Feudal water fights. Even with the fishing ship discount, it’s often only applied to a few fishing ships, as fishing ship production stops in Feudal Age (more important to build warships, or you lose the fishing ships quickly). So while it does save a little wood, it isn’t a lot of wood saved (and really ends up being a dark age bonus, saving 11 wood/fishing ship). It is better if you have a safe pond (then you can get a lot more savings by fish-booming, but still not a large saving). Also is a very nice bonus on Nomad (where you tend to build a dock immediately).
I don’t think Italian water gameplay needs any changes: it’s strong, but I think a few civs are stronger than them on water (but not by much).
I assume that the monk spawn is supposed to be intended specifically for monastery techs? Personally, I think that the cheaper monasteries alone would be enough of a buff.
Slik Road: I like the current effect of the tech for team games. And while it only affects the researching Italians player, it can be turned into a pseudo-team bonus if the Italians player slings gold to allies (after building extra trade carts). I do think that it might be nice to have it also give a small gold trickle when the Italians player has a market (ex: 60 gold/minute if they have a market, but not per market), which would give it a use case for 1v1, but the benefit would be minimal for team games. Another option is having Silk Roads reduce the gold cost of condos a small amount (but that doesn’t fit thematically)
In any case, I think the only change that I’d make for Italians is giving silk roads an effect for 1v1, and that mainly because I’d like UTs to always have a use case.
True. The 75 food discount for Feudal Age is not enough to fight against current top tier water civs.
Burmese.
Maybe Silk Road can have an additional effect that helps in 1v1. Personally I think it is too late tbh as their W/R actually rises in the late game.
This is all maps.
And this is Arabia only.
The power of the fishing ship discount is not how much wood is saved, but how early it allows the fishing ship to show up. The main source of the Dravidian advantage on the water is that they can get their first fishing ship earlier than others, without having to wait for the villagers to gather 25 more wood. Likewise, they have a water advantage when their military ships can appear and be upgraded earlier than others.
I don’t think they are in urgent need of being nerfed too, but these discussions are based on the starting point of buffing land and if necessary nerfing water.
Monks aren’t particularly expensive and gold is quite accessible at that stage. The big bottleneck is castle age.
Anyway the difference is minimal…
I mean, it’s historically accurate, and it’s a flexible bonus, that help you in almost all strategies, pairing well with their flexible tech tree.
Also, it’s mainly an eco bonus, because you save a bit of wood and it allows you to reliably get the relics advantage.
Yeah, but if it’s not enough, that would be an interesting bonus in my opinion.
Silk road should be renamed Maritime Republics, and effects should be:
- Trade units are 30% cheaper for you, and 10% cheaper for your allies. Now fishing ships also generate 10% gold from fish, and 5% from fish traps.
While it is accurate for the Italians, that reason would make it even more accurate for the Romans.
Just saying.
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Maybe allow monks trained at university. The first University is from monastery? This makes sense for Italians and faster to produce monks when you still go for fast ballistics.
I have made this suggestion before. I’ll do once again.
Age advancing are 15% cheaper. → Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age advancing are 15%/20%/25% cheaper on food.
Gold is never an issue when aging up. Trading 30 gold for 40 food in Feudal Age will have a noticeable improvement. 100 food for 120 gold will also be a advantage.
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The only issue is this might be better than the Byzantine discount.
Italian discount is already better than Byz. On contrast, byz is less vulnerable to early raids
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Right now, Italians can (hypothetically) Fast Castle by skipping loom and selling 100 stone (or any 100 res really) at the market - no gold mining required. Only really an option on closed maps (open maps you want loom, water maps you generally need gold for war ships - but in team games it may still be worthwhile since you can have an ally handle the early feudal water fights), but losing the 30 gold saved in that case would be more significant than the extra 40 food saved. With imperial age, you’re losing on the absolute resource value saved (and the context is more varied with imperial age - a farming economy is usually established before you click up to imp, so while gold is quicker to mine, food may also be a readily available resource by that point). The proposed change might be helpful for a fast imp strategy, but otherwise the proposed change (for imp) can often be imitated by buying 100 food at the market.
current values: 425f; 680f/170g; 850f/680g
proposed values:425f; 640f/200g; 750f/800g
Some time ago I would have liked to “fix” italians by splitting them in 3 civs.
One focussing on Cavalry (+ gunpowder) (possibly milan), one on archery (+ counter units, trade) (possibly venice) and one focussing on monks/research (possibly papal states).
But with Sicilians and Romans in the game this just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Arm I would like to see a tweak to their bonusses. I would rather have a flat -150 f cost to their age-ups and to compensate that on water maps reduce their dock discount OR the fishing ship discount.
And the GC should in my opinion have the same “utility stats” as the archer line. Means when you use them they behave exactly the same. So it becomes basically an xbow/arb with different bonus damage. Which I would then protentially reduce by 1-2 points as compensation. Also revert the latest reduction in training time. I don’t think GC should be a “mass to win” unit in certain matchups.
With these two tweaks italians would be way more suitable for various maps/settings without being too strong on water maps.
I really like the general concept of Italians, it just ist atm they feel really left behind on land maps and/or when they come to their GC mass they sometimes feel then oppressive in the lategame against cavalry and especially Cav Archer civs.
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But basically foot archers need mass to be effective.
If Elite Gen Xbow has same range as arbalests, I would suggest 1 min range for them to make it less oppressive against cav as they are no longer outranged by skirm and arbalests.
They will have extraordinary fast and stronger scout rush then.
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Yes but against Cavalry you need the spearman line as portective shield. A mass of Genbows doesn’t need that.
Nah, just slighty reduce the bonus damage is enough. minimum range feels very constructed. Also this would again mean they don’t have the same utility stats… so I don’t see any argument that would support that “tweak”.
Same scout rush as Lithuanians used to. But without the dark age options, as it only comes into play once you actually clicked up to feudal. But then Lithuanians have faster moving skirms and spears whilst Italians would only have the one-time effect of having either a 1 vill after uptime or 50 F more to play with.
I feel this is very comparable on land maps. And Lit currently have a 50 % early game winrate on Arabia 1200 +.
And btw in both cases the Bonus actually leads naturally more towards Archer openings. Maybe we just don’t see this in the current Cav meta, but in general the thumb rule is: Food bonus: Archers, Wood Bonus: Scouts.
The reason for that is that a Food bonus allows you to delay Farm placement for a stronger early unit production (get to a good mass faster) and a wood bonus allows you to add Farms more quickly to set up for a faster uptime to Castle age - and get out your Knights quicker.