While the Rus is a strong civ, they’re generally considered one-trick ponies; they’re going to fast Castle with Golden Gate and Abbey of the Trinity. The real issue is that their early game is strategically boring: a kremlin is hardly a viable landmark on its own–but compared to the Golden Gate–there’s no reason to choose it. You get railroaded onto one of the most powerful economic landmarks in the game as your first major (strategic) decision, and no other strategy makes as much as sense as too boom into Castle ASAP and not attack until then.
So first of all, we need to make the kremlin worthwhile. My suggestion is that the kremlin itself is kept as-is, but once it’s built all wooden fortresses (current and future) have Castle Turret and Castle Watch emplacements automatically. This would make the kremlin a good choice for those who want to spread out across the map early on, and it would ease some of the pain of wooden fortresses costing 75% more to place than other civs. Note, I am not suggesting that this should unlock arrow slits for all wooden fortresses, that would be terrible.
If this change was implemented on its own, I don’t think that would change anything, however. The Golden Gate is one of the best landmarks in the game: you can rebalance your economy at no penalty, and in fact with a big bonus of additional resources for doing so! Instead of getting punished for a mistake, you are rewarded heavily as you correct. That’s really powerful, and I think any civ would pick that over almost any other landmark.
What’s the best way to fix it? I say cut the number of exchanges generated in half: one every two minutes. Even getting guaranteed even trades would make this landmark very valuable, as everyone has to rebalance their economy at some point. By reducing the number of rigged trades you can make, you give this a healthy nerf: but you don’t neuter it (I don’t think).
Alternatively, cut the favorable trade to 100/125… maybe more. But I don’t really think that would change very much, it would still be an incredibly powerful landmark. It’s more about the ability to rebalance without penalty than the free resources, although those are very nice.
The Barbican has a very similar problem, although between its ability to garrison as many villagers as a TC, it’s 25dmg (8.3dps) emplacement, and equally-lackluster counterpart landmark, the problem seems a little less pronounced. The only ideas I could come up with for a slight buff would be to either make it a drop off point for any and all resources like a ger, or to give it an area of influence under which stone walls are 33% cheaper or something like that.
Russia is perfect this way, golden gate is the best choice ever. No nerfs to it for me. I’d make the kremlin with higher attack power and able to create all russian army so you could pick it as a fortress option to start creating the army in age II, that would rock
I’m a Rus mainer. The intention behind the post wasn’t so much to suggest a nerf, but to try to expand the options available to a Rus player.
Right now, you can either build a Golden Gate when you’re ready to age up to Feudal, or you can make a huge mistake in the early game. That’s boring! It’s no fun at all to be totally unable to justify doing anything besides the one thing over and over and over again.
There’s also an inherent issue amongst early game defensive buildings. They generally become obsolete and irrelevant halfway through Feudal Age… meanwhile economic landmarks like the Golden Gate are extremely valuable all the way through late Imperial. They need something to increase their impact throughout the span of the game.
I thought about it a little more, it probably wouldn’t hurt if kremlins and the Barbican each got an additional emplacement shot at each age up. That is, 2 shots in Castle and 3 shots in Imperial. They’d still pale in comparison to keeps, and you can build as many of those as you want, so it seems reasonable to me.
It’s funny your comment on Kremlin, since for the first couple weeks of the game all the pros went Kremlin. It’s not like abbey of kings that was never viable, kremlin was just important when every game was all in feudal french knight play.
You call it hardly viable. Meanwhile the Barbican of the Sun is a worse Kremlin. I have already provided proof and a direct comparison below:
If you want to buff the Kremlin, then you are introducing additional powercreep into the game. I don’t disagree with it, all civs deserve to have unique and viable Landmarks after all.
But lets not forget the Chinese civ which has the worst Landmarks in the game in direct comparison. If you want to buff the Kremlin, then shouldn’t the Chinese receive a buff to the Barbican aswell? Its already a worse version of the Kremlin and without any economic bonuses.
The only good Landmark is the Clocktower while the rest have almost no effect at all. And the Spirit Way forces you to spend ressources into a Dynasty before it even has any effect.
The biggest issue with Kremlin/golden gate is the fast castle meta. Kremlin is much better when aggresive feudal play is commonplace, but right now it’s just too easy for Rus to go FC horse archers. Nerfs to horse archers or professional scouts would make Kremlin much more viable.
I wasn’t keeping track of the game until just before release, but I don’t doubt that what you say is true. Just the same, I feel like anyone who’s anticipating that the game will go beyond the 9 minute mark would rather opt for the Golden Gate than a kremlin.
If you’ve got just 200 excess food after that thing has been up for five minutes, you can turn that 200 food into 450 wood with just the tickets that have built up since you bought it. That’s insane utility, and you’re giving that up if you build a kremlin. And a kremlin is exactly the same as a wooden fortress with all the emplacements installed except with more health. That is, you can build the equivalent of a kremlin multiple times at any point in any game… minus some health.
There is a personal term that I made up long time ago: The Mainer Player Syndrome.
For those who have the Mainer Player Syndrome, their civilization will never be good enough, although most of us agree that it needs a nerf with data in hand, they will not recognize that they are winning with a very powerful civilization. That happens in many RTS.
There are 3 options why one player builds a Landmark much more than another:
Because one of the Landmarks is OP (or leads to an almost OP strategy) and, even if the other is not bad, they will prefer to use the first Landmark. Rus case.
Because there is only one viable Landmark, since the other is useless (because it is a bug or because it is not applicable to any viable strategy). Delhi case in second or third age.
Because one Landmark is quite powerful and the other is quite useless. HRE case in fourth age.
A wooden fortress with all the implacements costs 425 resources. It can be built in 50 seconds by one villager, and it takes a total of 90 seconds to finish researching all the implacements, for a total 140 seconds with a villager being occupied for only 50.
A kremlin costs 600 resources and takes 190 seconds to build with one villager.
Outside of this, the only difference between the two is a few extra seconds before the battering ram knocks it down. I’m not philosophizing here, what I’m talking about is quantifiable.
I’ve made my case, I’ve presented my data and given my examples. The only responses I’ve been given are different ways of saying that I’m biased in some ephemeral way. Unfortunately, there’s not really a way to respond to that accusation, and it just shuts the discussion down.
So uh… no u?
If you want, I can answer you with data, I simply commented that many players (even me in his time) have had this “Syndrome”.
All civilizations (with some exceptions) have to spend the same resources and the same time to age up, so you have to evaluate the gross value of the Landmark and if it is really useful in a game.
You said it, Kremlin is a defensive Landmark that costs 425 resources.
Then we have the Golden Gate that acts as a market (in part) and every minute you gain 50 resources (the equivalent of 1.2 villagers collecting any one resource).
Golden Gate: 150 (market) + 120 = 270 resources (a villager costs 50 food, but it is an economic unit that has more potential value than the resources it costs, so I give it more value).
Kremlin: 425 resources.
Another Landmark that comes to mind may be English, which is the Council Hall: 150 x 2 archery = 300 resources.
It is logical that the offensive / military and economic Landmarks have a lower value than a defensive one because the defensive one works in a specific area and is not always in use.
I give up. I explained in the original post how the extra resources provided by the Golden Gate are not what makes it so powerful.
A Council Hall is not directly comparable to 2 archery ranges for one relatively small, but meaningful reason: it doesn’t train 2 longbowmen at once, it trains longbowmen at twice the speed. The difference is that you field that extra longbowman much faster if they’re produced from the Council Hall. So the Council Hall is marginally better.
Make no mistake, I’m not claiming that this makes the Council Hall an OP landmark, and in fact, I agree that it’s almost the same as kremlins: a regular building that you can build whenever with more HP and big price tag.
Most of the landmarks in this game are completely unique in their capabilities, and shape how the civs are played. When any landmark is just a regular building, it takes away from that, and I find it disappointing. I find it disappointing for the Rus, and I find it VERY disappointing for the Chinese… probably the only civ that doesn’t have some version of this is Abbasids.
I’m not arguing for a buff, I’m arguing for a more fun game. That’s why I explained that the Golden Gate needed a nerf in order for the choice between an entirely unique and interesting game mechanic and a regular building that is more expensive to be an interesting one. And my frustration with that is compounded by the fact that it’s the one age you’ll pretty much always acheive in every game.
I want more interesting choices in my strategy game. I’m sorry if I got in the way of everyone lobbying for a buff to their favorite civ, or a nerfs for their rivals.
At no time have I commented (nor do I think so) that the Golden Gate is very strong and has to be nerfed. It is a solid and flexible Landmark, but what I see that makes Rus strong is more the extra gold for each fallen animal and that it is easy to do the upgrade of professional scouts (it would probably also be his thing that the archer rider cost a little more or cost gold). The Landmark is an addition to the other but I do not consider it OP.
If there is a Landmark that allows you to double the speed of an bow unit it is totally equivalent to a 2 * 1. The Council Hall does 2lb in 14 seconds, with 2 archery galleries I make 2lb in 15sec. It is true that it does not make crossbowmen and handcannoner, for that reason perhaps the price would be a bit lower even.
The fun of a game is the variety of different strategies of each civilization and we agree on that. For that you have to nerf or buff depending on the case and if I had to nerf something it would not be The Golden Gate, but rather things related to the bonuses of civilization. The Kremlin was used before abusing this strategy, so the Landmarks are not the problem.
Basically, the first month of the game French/Mongols were considered top tier civs with Rus, and every game was like 16-20 minutes of full army feudal aggression raiding, and kremlin was super important at protecting your eco. Nowadays there’s much less French all-in Feudal and most games people agree to fast castle.
The golden gate is quite strong, but it’s main power right now is allowing you to buy professional scouts and castle age with a super strong early castle aggression. If horse archer spam or pro scouts weren’t as op, golden gate wouldn’t be as strong. (It might still need nerfs nonetheless, but a lot of it’s power is in the timing push of Rus early castle power)
Shouldn’t Chinese landmarks be weaker since they get so many of them and their villagers are designed to build them and other buildings fast to help neutralize the economic blow.
We’re mostly in agreement. If fast Castle wasn’t the end all be all it would be a slightly different story, and the Golden Gate is a part of that meta for sure.
Purely in the context of the decision between the Golden Gate and a kremlin, I think some stuff has to change. I understand that people were using it, but they just don’t anymore and having played with them a lot myself, I can see why. It’s not just that Feudal aggression is more rare–after the changes made to battering rams and horsemen Feudal aggression just became… futile.
It’s genuinely not just that, though. Maybe this is more of an opinion, but I don’t think that a landmark should be basically identical to a building you can build at any time. I think you’ll have a hard time making a decision truly interesting if you have unique game mechanics up against regular buildings as landmark choices.
No? Obviously not. Its not like you get Landmarks for free. Just look at the HRE Landmarks. Aachen Chapel gives all your vills 40% gather rate if you place it correctly in Age 2. Regnitz is the infamous infinite 900 gold/minute. English get 2 Archery Ranges immediately in Age 2, then they get a free Town Center by going Age 3.
Meanwhile Chinese is spending 1800 ressources on an Age 3 Landmark that gives… vision. And scouting info… All of which you can get by building towers for 100 wood and scouts for 60 food. And since you are most likely playing pro scout, you already have atleast 4-6 scouts.
Or how about the Great Wall Gatehouse which does almost nothing at all? Most people just build a small wall segment inside their base to place this boring Landmark. You never have fights where units are attacking from ontop of a wall in Age 4. Walls are easily destroyed by Bombards in Age 4.
The Chinese have access to the imperial official right off the bat.
I’ll take that over a couple of S tier landmarks.
When the inevitable nerfs to firelancer, clocktower, and possibly grenadier come in, then we would be in a position to buff Chinese landmarks, and I think that buffs would be needed at that point, particularly to encourage dynasties, but they aren’t needed right now.
It is the civ bonus the Chinese has, if this weird logic applied to other countries it will be outrageous, like
should french worker works 5% slower? As they can spam 20% faster than others?
should Mongol buildings cost higher wood?, as they dont have to build house
should Abbasid, Delhi and English have unusual high unit’s cost of food as they can gather it faster from the berry and farm.
should russ units cost gold more than others as well?
should the HRE building has lower HP as they can repair quickly?
I dont think so, the civs bonus shouldn’t be used as an excuse to make general things weaker than usual. Nerfing it by tuning down the bonus at leat better imo.
rn 5 from 6 chinese landmarks is so bad, chinese is forced to build them just to get to the dynasty, but buffing them should be careful as well, as the chinese is currently really strong rn.
Gatehouse, like he said, is one of the most useless thing we ever witness, even we garrison units to use the buff, typical buff from the watch tower like english’s network of castle is still considered far better.
Spirit way is also as bad as the Gatehouse, if you dont use the dynasty unit. Even the reduction cost from typical french keep is better (becuz it reduces the cost of most core units)
Imperial academy is also not very useful, only in the first 5-10 mins, once the base expanded, it is also useless.
Barbican of the sun, just a big watch tower with extra HP that can garrison 5 more people, but giving extremely low sight range.
But yeah at least they have landmarks, meanwhile Abbasid is like … wait, you u guys have landmark? xdd