The problem is clearly the pastures, nothing else.
They’re 10% faster and 20% cheaper. That’s like Slavs and Teutons at once, not even mentioning the fact they’re basically unraidable.
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The problem is clearly the pastures, nothing else.
I completely agree. The first nerf should target the pastures, making them noticeably less efficient. I’ve seen viable strategies where Khitans straight-up sling food to another player (like a Pole producing cheaper knights). Their food economy is just too insane to leave untouched.
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First of all , pastures aren’t 10% faster throughout the game. They’ve diminishing returns with upgrades. Practically non-existent after handcart. And very little after both generic and Khitans get wheelbarrow, sort of the same effect as Khmer.
Second, unlike Khmer the civ lacks bloodlines, halberdiers, monk techs like redemption and hand canoneers. Somewhat less important but I don’t think they get siege engineers either. So practically speaking they’re 50% Khmer and 50% Teutons combined.
We see how Teuton farms cost half as much as Pastures and still they’re a mediocre civ due to lacking husbandry and light cav. Suppose if we give Teutons a dark age eco benefit, they could feel quite overpowered. The towers, scout play, maa could also seem really unstoppable. Imo this is more or less the case with Khitans. I’d say the problem is not the pastures because the diminishing returns and weak imperial tech tree justifies it but rather the dark age sheep benefit clubbed with Scout, spear and skirm production. I’d remove the drop-off bonus on herdables, increase the build time of pastures and make the additional animal upgrades more expensive on wood.
So don’t push for something similar to what was done to Poles and destroy another civ.
This has been debunked. They’re actually more than 10% faster and they’re still more efficient than farms even in Imperial Age.
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Debunked by who, where, based on what data? Ornlu’s video, reddit pasture vs farm rate comparison, a couple of other channels like Admiral wololo confirm the diminishing returns.
I think Khitans are dominant at all elos?
If it’s only a high level thing or niche thing (e.g. Bohemians bring me headache in Arena and it’s worse than Khitans), I usually don’t voice up tbh
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/search/?q=Khitans&type=posts&sort=new Like there’s a ton of Khitan complains from everywhere I saw, that’s why I was confident Khitans has become an issue
Like, my claim of Khitans that needs nerf comes from these points:
- My personal experience. It’s very limited (around 3 or 4 games at most), but I got the feeling that I did everything mostly fine and got destroyed for some weirdo reasons
- Watching pro videos and see they struggle against Khitans (you can check the warlords 4 tournament, it’s almost always banned or picked first if there’s open land maps)
- Previously I tried to find ways to deal with Gurjaras OPness but ultimately failed (you can even check my post history, I tried laming, longsowrds, FCs, all weird strategies). I no longer believe that the level of Gurjaras OP-ness is something I can resolve on my own now. (I drew the conclusion that the only way to win Gurjara is to have superior mechanics)
- I clearly don’t enjoy point 3. In fact I basically give up playing against Gurjaras, that means I will just play some random shit like laming into douche, which means you don’t see many more useful stats for Khitans (at least for me) because I have already gave up.
- Also seeing lots of complains about Khitans in different forums
I think the argument is that
- If a civ is too weak (like poor Jurchens), I can avoid that by not playing Jurchens.
- If a civ is too strong, I cannot avoid that because I cannot ban that from my opponent! I have to either mirror or give up
That means overnerfing is better than overbuffing (or letting a civ sitting in OP state), because the former only hurt the new civ enthusiasts (and you get Shu and Wu which is actually decent), but the latter hurt every other civ in aoe2.
Well usually all new civs with strong early game get such complaints. At mid and lower elos archer civs are even more unpopular. Its only natural that the dominance of Khitans is higher there.
It does seem to be an issue as stats grow but my point is if you guys at the top come up with a set of counter civs and show the ideal counter play, that could trickle down to the mid elos. Not saying that’s going to happen for sure but give it a few weeks before striking the nerf hammer.
There’s no doubt its strong and needs some nerf. But how do you decide the right way to nerf it when there isn’t enough data about certain matchups. Maybe pre-mill drush from some infantry civs is a good play against them. Or maybe xbow-market up-fast ballistics. Once we get like 20 games for each matchup then the stats reflect collective performance against all civs. Nerfing too soon could lead to inappropriate changes based on their performance against previous meta civs.
No its awful. The new civ becomes dead and unusable. And after avoiding a new civ, you’d pick what? Mongols? Chinese? some other civ from 1999? New civs need to be good to compete and disrupt the meta picks. Otherwise its like - Oh so you bought this DLC and picked Wei or Jurchens. No worries without spending a dime I’ll pick the good old Franks and beat the shit out of you. Oh you beat me when I’m Franks but lose when I’m Mongols, no worries I’ll start picking Mongols instead. I keep winning with the well knowm meta and there’s no reason for me to buy the new DLC and try the new civs. But, when I lose with all the meta civs that I’m familiar with, the new civ has my attention.
Ideally these civs should shuffle the deck by countering the meta civs instead of one of them getting to the top and being well above the deck.
I dunno about the others, but Ornlu’s video clearly showed the average civ’s farm getting over 26 food per minute, despite the fact that farms generate at most 24 food per minute. His mistake was using pre-generated farms, which have a full food stockpile, so they allow you to collect from them about 10% faster for 8 or so minutes. This would have become evident if he’d done longer cycles, but he only measured for about 5 minutes for his data.
How about give them Blast Furnace but
(1) Forging and Iron Casting have double effects → Iron Casting and Blast Furnace can be researched one age earlier with no discount
Their eco can afford tech from next age.
(2) Trash units are upgraded and trained 25% faster → steppe lancers and cavalry archers are trained 25% faster (no faster upgrade time)
Skirmisher upgrade and training being too fast can help counter xbow powerspike and scout powerspike comes too early.
Ther would need 340 more resources to get the same effect in the Feudal and 500 more in the Castle Age. I’d say this is not easy with even the current economy. Since it seems like most of people want to start with economy nerf, they can replace the bonus with this one but there should be a discount like -50%.
I’d like to nerf their skirmishers too. But again, as long as their economy gets nerfed (and also you nerf the blacksmith bonus), the faster training for scouts doesn’t have to be removed so that could become horse units trained 25% faster (so camels won’t be affected).
I am ok with that as the research time will delay them at least.
Lamellar armor affecting skirmishers is excessive. Their skirmishers do not really need to be above average.
True that Ornulu’s setup seems to be faulty during later stages of the game. Even with the build/reseed time, Imperial age Byzantine farmers can’t collect 26 f/min, he must have made some mistake in measuring rates during his post imp tests. Fortunately a couple of others repeated this experiment. Their raw farming gather rate numbers seem valid based on prior knowledge we have and based off that late game pastures have very minimal advantage over farms. Wish Sotl does a comparison video soon.
This is fine if their eco isn’t nerfed in anyway.
Maybe just scout and lancer line.
The thing is, noone managed to did that for Gurjaras. I personally wont bother, so any new strat wont come from me (and others I know that gave up already)
Like maybe a very niche strat exists, but the possibilities are just too low and the suffering while testing is insufferable
Shu and Wu looks pretty good and would where I expect new civs to be.
If devs have to make OP civ each time a DLC is released I would personally just gave up and switch games.
Wu is, after Khitans, the second civ that deserve nerfs, in Warlords they were the seconds most picked/banned civ, and their WR in the first 20-30 mins is absurd due to how silly OP Jian Swordsmen are.
I keep winning with the well knowm meta and there’s no reason for me to buy the new DLC and try the new civs. But, when I lose with all the meta civs that I’m familiar with, the new civ has my attention.
I disagree with this statement on so many levels.
DLCs have more content than just the new civs multiplayer balance.
Even if a civ is not top dog, you are still getting a new experiance in multiplayer.
New civs should absolutely not be this dominate over existing civs, they should have similar win ratios to prevent power creep and pay to win.
Previous DLC still has to sell as well, even if I accepted the premise that the only reason to buy dlc was because the new factions beat older factions, those older DLCs then lose the desireability if only the newest of civs are allowed to be the best on the ladder.
Old civs still being usable in the meta helps keep the overall player base stronger. Meta chasers can just keep rotating civs if the one they’ve started abusing is too strong. I don’t feel sorry for them abusing blatently broken civs and then having the rug pulled from under them.
I agree the devs shouldn’t over nerf, but I don’t think you “wait for 5 weeks to see if it’s a fluke” when the evidence is already pretty damning. The reality is unless there is an exceptionally strong hard counter pick, the easier choice (and what happens in reality) is more players pick Khitans. Even in the extreme case where these is a hard counter (and I don’t think there even is one currently) how long do you want to leave the meta in a state where its only khitans and their hard counter? Even then it’s not actually solving the problem of a 65% or whatever win rate, you’re just ignoring the problem. The pickrate may stabalize, but every game played against Khitans without the hard counter will still leave a sour taste. Worse, if you wait long enough, the hard counter civ will go down in pick again and khitans will resurface, Meta will circulate, but not in a healthy way.
That stuff turns people off of games way faster than nerfing a known problem civ, which typically the only complaints come from power gamers chasing broken meta.
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Its a top tier water and hybrid map civ and there were like 12 such maps in that event. The different regional and unique unit also make it difficult for opponent to guess their gameplay. As far as ranked ladder goes, people mainly play Arabia or Arena and the civ is completely fine on those maps. If you want to bring balance for hybrid maps you’d have to first recommend strong nerfs to Japanese, Byzantines and a few others which are overpowered on hybrid. Wu isn’t better than Japanese in any way in such hybrid maps.
Jian swordsmen are usable, not OP. Infantry starting from castle age either need good speed and 3 p.armor or higher p.armor to be useful. Otherwise why will anyone waste resources on it. And what’s the point of having yet another useless infantry unit.
I would claim civs like Japanese & Persians are still much stronger than Wu (on hybrid maps), but Wu is definitely on the stronger side on hybrid maps.
If we start going with balances across maps, then yes Japanese (imo) should be nerfed