How to fix Malta

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Preface:
I think it’s generally agreed upon that Malta is in a poor spot, both in Treaty and Supremacy. In Supremacy, they have an extremely hard dealing with 2 Falc pushes and have limited options. In treaty, they have a lot of issues, but any buffs for treaty would require careful handling to avoid creating issues in Supremacy.

Rather than a wishlist of requests for new things (which could be used to buff the civ), I’m working with the assumption that the new asset budget will be $0. Everything must be stat modifications, or must recycle currently existing assets. No new mechanics can be added.

Sentinels:

  1. Add the tag that allows Sentinels to benefit from Incendiary Grenades.
  2. Guard Sentinels now adds +2 Musket range and +1 Rocket range.
  3. Imperial Sentinels now adds +3 Rocket and Musket range.

Currently Sentinels are great in age 2, mediocre in age 3, and then have a nice power spike in age 4 after getting +45% stats from Flintlock Rockets. After that they are basically phased out. It’s not bad for units to have their place before going away, but Malta could really use a good Musketeer in the late game. Allowing Sentinels some AoE from IG will help substantially later on, and may open up an interesting Logistician build for early IG into a Sentinel/Fire Thrower composition. Soldados get 0.5 AoE, and I think Sentinels could be given the same.
The increases in range from Guard and Imperial will give them another intangible benefit over Musketeers which will remain much more pop efficient from a Damage/HP standpoint (Imperial Sentinels have roughly 1.2x an Imperial Redcoat’s damage and 1.4x the HP with the Aura and 24 shipments in). This will replace the current intention behind Wall Guns (age 3), which will be repurposed. Sentinels will end up with 15 Range in age 4, and 18 in age 5. Rather than making Sentinels a 2 pop Musketeer similar to the Soldado, they will be a very different take on the concept of a 2 pop Musketeer.

Papal Bull (Age 2)

  1. Crusade tech (available age 2 from the Unique Church tech): Cost is increased to 250f, 250c (from 250w).
  2. Crusade currently allows Sentinels and Hospitallers to get their aura from Enemy buildings. I’d like to see +10% Order Hussars attack and Hitpoints from it as well.

A reference to the powerful Hussars in the first level of the campaign and more importantly a buff to a card that is lacking. It will allow for better synergy with Sentinel/Hussar and Hussar/Hospitaller unit compositions and it will improve Malta’s Hussars which scale poorly (though they will still be on the weaker end of things late game). The cost change will assist with it’s purchase when making Sentinels, Hospitallers or Order Hussars.

Wall Guns (Age 3)

  1. Changed to deliver 1 Culv and an Outpost Wagon. Current effect is removed.

This should allow for FF strategies in which you send a culv to beat a 2 Falc push. The card isn’t great value wise, but that’s intended. We saw how 1 Falc and 1 Culv in age 3 worked for Sweden at release. It needs to not give that kind of momentum. 750 is the right value imo.

Order Artillery (Age 4)

  1. New age 4 card (using the image from Cronstedt Reforms)
  2. Falconets cost 1 less population.
  3. +20% Falconet attack.

This card would help in treaty, but likely wouldn’t see much use in Supremacy games (not really worth the slot). You also don’t get Horse Artillery which are the primary anti-infantry artillery piece used in treaty games. This seems perfectly fair and is basically a combination of Cronstedt Reforms and a weaker version of the French Artillery attack upgrade but only for Falconets. You only have three 1pop units, and you probably can’t use more than 1 in treaty. So this serves as a population saver without impacting 1v1 where Xbow/Pike is already rather pop efficient.

Sicilian Supply (Age 4)

  1. Sicilian Supply now provides a trickle of 2.5w (instead of 2.5 food), and improves Mill and Estate rates by 10% (instead of food by 20%).

The wood trickle will be more useful for Artillery production or for production of wood units, but not as much as a second factory would be. This is probably a good thing since Malta’s bow/pike is extremely efficient in Supremacy. The improvement to coin rates will help with production of coin heavy units (and help with the secondary coin deficit from the lack of a second factory) and combined with the wood trickle should be closer in value to a factory (counting all res as equal, this is a bit better). A factory replacement that works mainly via resource gather rate improvement synergies nicely with a 111 vill pop during a treaty booming period. The improvements to all 3 resources is also a nice tie in to Italy’s Lombard system.

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I made a mod a while back to do a lot of this but not through upgrades but through wall guns, which in the game already can boost the range of sentinels to up to 19 musket and 21 rocket

The mod basically changes the wall gun aura to be the same as the normal sentinels aura to be affected by defensive buildings and with 10 of them you get the max boost

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It also makes it so that flint rockets gives the effect of incendiary grenades for sentinels

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I don’t believe aware of your mod (I wasn’t sure if someone had suggested something similar or not, great minds think alike I guess). I think having it as part of the upgrade is slightly better though (mostly because 18 range is locked behind age 5 and is more consistent).

Thanks for the info and credit to you for an earlier evolution of the idea! I might have read the post previously and been inspired.

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I think the idea behind wall guns is that i didnt want it to promote using sentinels offensively (atleast not without creeping defensive buildings)

It is less consistent what range they have this way but I didnt want permanent 18 range siege muskets to be a thing that can just walk into bases that eats buildings (especially since I also gave incendiary grenades effect to is so it has splash at range and extra building bonus)

This way, the playstyle is still relatively defensive to get the max effect but you can push out into the opponent’s base more easily (opponent’s defensive building also counts if the church tech is researched) and then retreat to defenses or suicide them

if you want the base range to be a bit more then we can probably adjust a few things

5

It could be workable to simply lower the anti building range. Mostly the range and AoE are to compensate for the lower attack vs units and hp (like 1.2x and 1.4x of a redcoat respectively). The Rocket range I was referring to was the Battle Bluster charged attack.

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Then it should also be noted that wall guns aura also contains a 10% net boost to atk (similar to the main aura) so the maxed stats is also a bit better

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compared to its other 2 pop counterpart I think its a good trade off since the sentinel will have more range, is cheaper (145 res vs 170 res) and trains much faster (there is also the whole fort building shenaigans which means they build the buildings that build themselves and get boost from it)

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These are great ideas! I only slightly disagree with the wall guns (I’d be fine with the change if it also allowed club training in forts). Love the sentinel and falc cards/changes.

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Certainly an interesting idea. No immediate value either which probably makes it a viable change (one must be extremely careful with any age 3 Culv shipment).

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Do you really think give 20 buffs to Malta make any sense?

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Yes. Some of these should be a bit less of a buff. But Malta is in a terrible spot in treaty, and in 1v1s you have to go xbows. Which are boring imo XD

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I’m curious, what ones specifically your referring to?

12

I wish the Age II card Auberges got a buff by making Order Units also a little stronger like +5% Hit Points and Attack

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Bon bah je vais tester le mod de coffee, ce n’est pâs grave ça doit au moins faire 40 mods chez moi d’actif :rofl:

14

Boring but strong. most civs are doing skirm goons which i think is boring too.

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Most of the buffs are direct towards Sentinels or units that pair well with them (or are basically treaty buffs). Given that the cards needed for Xbow/pike and those needed for Sentinels have little overlap it would be pretty hard to get maximum strength on both (in a Supremacy context). I think the civ will still be largely bifurcated between Xbow/pike/Hussar and Sentinel/Fire thrower/Hussar.

The Sicilian Supply buff might actually be a slight 1v1 nerf for Xbow/pike given that you aren’t gathering much coin and therefore need more vills on food than before.

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I think sentinels probably shouldn’t be effected by grenade upgrade except for their rocket. I’d also probably do a max of 16-17 range. With their speed and 18 range they’d hit skirms a bit too early imo.

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They’re certainly not strong at treaty and they’re fairly weak in 1v1.

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18

I kinda don’t think that would be a major issue (also Malta sucks in treaty so even if it was mildly op it wouldn’t suddenly make the civ op there). It’s only 18 range in age 5 and two pop of Skirms is way more efficient. Sentinels would still suck in that fight due to costing 2 pop while only having (even when factoring in the AoE) maybe 1.5 Musketeers worth of attack and like 1.4 worth of hp.

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19

Big fan of this, and a personal wish of mine, have one of the tech from papal bull be for the fire throwers

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That’s a route I could have gone, ultimately I found the Hussar buff from Crusade more pressing. Papal Bull is currently kinda weak and needed something. I did want to fit whatever upgrade I added into an existing tech, and ultimately I wanted it to be a simple add that wouldn’t take too much Dev time.

Sentinels being boosted by Incendiary Grenades is a kinda nice indirect buff for Fire Throwers. Hussars being boosted by Crusade is kinda nice for them too (as the units used with Fire Throwers will be better able to support them). Sicilian Supply is also a kinda nice late game buff for Fire Throwers, and that was considered.