How to nerf Khitans?

Then, I prefer to give them to research one age earlier with 50% discount. I would expect a nerf on their eco.

The point is to delay their scout powerspike and compensate its castle age.

How about none train faster? Perhaps it’s enough with double effect from attack upgrades and faster food income (even if they nerf the Pastures they’re still likely to be strong). Why do we have to stack so many bonuses together?

Khitans:

  • Pastures instead of farms
  • Attack upgrades are doubled
  • Heavy CA available in Castle Age

No need for anything more.

Keep in mind that the double attack affects a lot of units: MAA/Longswords, Light Cav, Steppe Lancers and Camels. All of these units are top tier in Feudal and Castle Age. Add in the ability to make Heavy CA at a 50% discount in Castle Age and their midgame is already extremely powerful. There is zero reason to give them faster producing units as well.

2 Likes

Obviously it didn’t happen for Gurjaras and might not happen for Khitans either and its not a question of whether they have to be nerfed rather what should be nerfed. Its always hard to judge that for civ with asymmetric eco buildings or military units.

Wu is perfect. And maybe if that war chariot is fixed, Shu as well. Its hard to achieve that level of balance with every civ. Especially when a civ is designed to be quite weak in imperial age there’s going to be some issues with balancing that out during earlier stages.

Not OP but very good at winning the current meta civs on some commonly played map. Ideally it should be weaker and lose more often to less popular civs. This way those unpopular civs counter the new civ, new civ counters the previous meta civs and previous meta civs counter the previous unpopular civs and it becomes a tougher choice to pick a civ.
Unfortunately since the meta civs are too strong and the unpopular civs are too weak, such new civs end up being OP. Like how would you come up with an Arabia civ that can hit castle age faster than Mongols and Chinese but die to Dravidians and Sicilians. My hope is eventually they’ll reduce the gap between the strongest and average civ on every map and then it becomes easier to introduce new civs that can disrupt the meta without being OP.

Right. Japanese were double picked more often than Wu in Warlords and were extremely successful. Yet this person suggests Wu to be nerfed. Glad you support a collective nerf to the old meta civs.

Personally I’d prefer if they did have production bonus on a couple of units and lost the drop-off on herdables, got a build time nerf on pastures. But if their herdable and pasture bonus are left as they are, sure there’s no necessity for any faster production bonus.

This just compensates for the lack of bloodlines. More fragile, more expensive upgrades needed but higher dps units.

What do you mean more expensive? They get double the effect for free.

The discount for heavy CA is important if you want to actually have heavy CA in castle age. Without it, the tech is 900f/500g - not far from the cost of imperial age. With it, it’s 450f/250g (still somewhat pricey, but affordable). The discount could be reduced, but it is essential if you want early HCA to actually be a useful bonus.

Yes of course they should keep their discount.

Like if you want to play CA, you can’t do bloodlines. -20hp CA are weaker and you need heavy CA upgrade to compete which costs 450f, 250g, a lot more than bloodlines. Now you have -10 hp but faster tt, base accuracy and +1 attack. Likewise 1 extra attack on light cav or lancers is a lot inferior to -20 hp. To compensate for that you need to do Iron casting which is also about 150 more resources. So pay more to get more or stay with weaker military sort of situation.

You get +2 attack vs a generic civ that has researched both attack upgrades. But most civs don’t research these as the benefit isn’t that great for the cost (you usually just go for armor instead). So in most cases, your cav will have +4 against your opponent. That’s probably better than Bloodlines in most cases.

I’d much rather have Heavy CA compared to regular CA with Bloodlines. It’s a back line unit and not supposed to take damage.

True about iron casting for generic civs but they’d get forging though. So its like +3 attack which is still probably better in a lot of situations which is why I said more resources spent for having better units. Like if you don’t get iron casting you’ll have just +1 attack but -20 hp which is a lot worse.

True, that’s much more powerful but again you pay more for it.
I believe the intended design was to give a substantial eco advantage in the early game to be able to afford the expensive upgrades and later shrink the eco benefit to let the advantage grow from military. So if that early eco part is adjusted well, this design won’t be overpowered.

Strong eco should pair with predictability (i.e. narrow tech tree) like vikings/franks. But Khitans is not that predictable.

1 Like

I may sound like a broken record at this point, but I’ll keep saying that if the pastures get nerfed the civ on the whole will get a huge nerf. Try that first and even if with the pasture nerf they are still overpowered we can analyze more nerfs. I do not want another Gurjaras or Sicilians scenario where a civ gets nerfed to oblivion too quickly and said civ falls out of the meta.

Agree, but I think the main factor for their dominance on hybrid maps is the extra food bonus, as 65 per Dock in Dark Age is way too strong. Maybe you can nerf that to Docks giving 20 or 25 food in Dark Age. As for the Jian Swordsman, just remove their +1 shock infatry armor class bonus so they can effectively be countered by the Swordsman line.

I agree. I think the easiest change would be to remove the 10% herder/shepherd bonus and see where the civ lands - I think it would land somewhere between top and bottom 2, but I don’t think I can accurately predict where. Because as strong as Khitan bonuses are, I don’t think they’re all that out of line of other civ bonuses once you get rid of the strong economy aspect. Although I’d personally prefer to significantly reduce the 10% bonus (maybe to 5%) and then make small adjustments to weaken other bonuses/UTs (things like reducing production speed bonus to 20%, reducing damage reflection a bit and increasing UT cost, increasing cost of pastures to 120 wood, etc).

In any case, I doubt Khitans will be fine with just a single round of adjustments. Their strong economy enhances almost every strategy they may go for, which drowns out or synergizes with the impact of other bonuses. This wouldn’t apply as much to heavy CA (not a food-dependent unit), but most of the units Khitans go for are food-heavy.

Wu don’t really need much change either. A small nerf to Jian swordsmen may be warranted (I think transferring 1 or 2 melee damage into anti-archer damage would work), but a small reduction to the food bonus should also weaken the civ enough.

I can’t get the point on HCAs.
How worth lacking 10HP in exchange for 1 more attack in Castle Age? I mean, their HCAs have no Imperial games, and even now with the broken economy, it seems that few players actually use CAs.

I think I would welcome Castle Age HCAs with Bloodlines if the bonuses and effects for cavalry were adjusted appropriately. For example, as @AbuzzJam4677680 suggested, make not only the HCA upgrade but also the Forging line upgrades available one age earlier and cost -50% instead of doubling the effects of Forging line upgrades. If needed they can even lose the Thumb Ring.

Just one less arrow from Xbow and Arbalester. Main issue is skirmishers as they take 2 damage instead of 1. I changed my mind. I think they are fine. But I don’t like gimmick in general. And after UT, they have 2.

The broken economy is mainly in food, and HCA are the one unit Khitans should like to use that isn’t food-reliant, so they don’t synergize well with Khitan economy. Extra attack is pretty good for a ranged unit, and there are some other (small) benefits (+2 anti-spearmen damage, +1 melee armor, trains faster, and more accuracy if you still haven’t gotten thumb ring).

I suspect that if Khitan economy got fixed that we would see more HCA play from them. But right now it doesn’t synergize with their broken economy. Their HCA should still be good in imperial age (only tech they’re missing is bloodlines, which is helpful, but not as important as bracer/chemistry, and they do get full armor upgrades including parthian tactics). Very few civs have FU HCAs.

The HCA upgrade is so expensive in the Castle Age even with the discount. If the economy gets nerfed, the HCA still can’t synergize it and will be even more hard to access. With the current economy, the HCA has already seemed not that viable as on the paper while the steppe lancer is clearly insane; without the economy, the HCA might be even less viable so the steppe lancer could be still the more practical one.

I’d like to lack rather the Thumb Ring than the Bloodlines. At least it can have a better performance in the Castle Age, so the high cost can be more worthy. For this, the bonus of Forging line must be adjusted.

Better than half of the civs is not a big deal since those “losers” are not in the competition from the beginning. To be a practical HCA civ, the standard is the normal fully upgraded HCA, and the competitors are the civs that often use HCAs as the main. Lacking Bloodlines and no extra advantage, no one would main Khitan HCA in the Imperial unless for surprise. Not unuseful, but not practical to use.

True, but even the Jian Swordsmen is way too strong in early castle age, the fact they don’t need extra upgrades and just one armor upgrade to make archers and defenses worthless, let alone they can regenerate HP as well.

Good piece of evidence, Ozone vs Lewis 11