Yes buffs are better received than nerfs (as the brain processes losses as heavier than gains)… but only buffing causes the problem of power creep over time, needing to always keep buffing to keep up with other buffs. So you do need to nerf visibly OP things to prevent that, otherwise by now we’d maybe have knights at 300 hp.
AOE2 is already very well balanced with most civs falling in the 45-55% victory range so most needed changes would be fairly minor. You probably wouldn’t notice if a coin flip was unbalanced that way. Another way is keeping some civs and units stable as “anchors”, for example the Franks who yes got a small nerf to a bonus recently (decreased the stone reduction for castles in the castle age) but other than that very rarely move despite being consistantly strong (I know, mainly because they are straightforward to use). Likewise the knight, utterly unchanged since the CD version. Having “anchors” that you will only touch as a last resort means you’ll prevent power creep.
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Overall i agree but power creep only becomes a problem if the buffs are too big. Also I’m not suggesting that nerfs are never necessary. E.g. Obsidian Arrows or Monaspa etc.
Which is what we have been seeing in the last year (Malay, Malians, Incas, Persians, Portuguese all got quite big buffs that made them too strong at several maps and situations) and are making some other civs to see little to no action at all and that’s bad.
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We can see the strategy of strong buffs for civs that have been thought as very weak for a long time, to put them back on the radar, then nerfing them as need be. Weaker civs are usually less picked so there is less accurate data to work with.
This is advice that is more relevant to pve stuff, where you can also buff the AI to be stronger after a bit.
In a pvp environment, sometimes nerfs are necessary.
As i said above, nerfs are occasionally necessary, such as Monaspa, Obsidian Arrows or The Button. The only other thing i would nerf off the top of my head is to get rid of HP bonus for Mongol Steppe Lancers and have it only apply to Hussar line. Arguably Mongols didn’t even need Steppe Lancer since they were already a top tier civ before they were added.
I just meant I think that overall the aoe2 community appears to be too nerf-focused when it comes to balance. There have been occasions where nerfs were not necessary, such as incas feudal age villagers. I don’t necessarily disagree with a small nerf on it, but it was nerfed into oblivion, basically destroying the Noboru strat entirely.
Power creep only becomes a problem when the buffs are too big. Devs seem to have a habit of introducing OP things then scaling it back with updates. I would much rather they add bonuses which are either spot on or slightly underpowered and gradually increase the bonus with updates if need be.
So if a dev accidently buff a certain new unit too much then the entire rest of the game’s units has to be buffed accordingly? Just because some might not realize their favorite strategy has indirectly gotten nerfed 
Youtube quick fixes… 20 second video… Yuck.
There’s no depth to this statement.
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“Hey, let’s use the model of disposable games designed solely for e-sport, on a game a quarter of a century old that’s still very alive, what can go wrong ?” 
No, that’s a strawman. If you read the full post and my subsequent replies, I wasn’t saying nerfs are never necessary. Just that the community is overly obsessed with nerfing, when typically the thing they are complaining about is not OP, they just didn’t scout it and didn’t prepare a counter.
The idea of not nerfing meta civs and buffing others has been resisted a lot by the community. Casters and players are posting about power creep when in fact untouched legacy civs still are the most powerful in almost every setting, they discuss nerfs to some of the recently buffed civs even though they remain on-par or less than existing S tier civs.
Anyways this thing of buffing other civs is good but still some civs and units are too overpowered. Like Mongols on maps with extra hunt like Yucatan are almost unbeatable. Gurjaras got their bonus adjusted to have diminishing returns, the same should be applied for Mongols. That way they’ll be only slightly weaker in dark age than now in standard maps but significantly weaker and well balanced on maps with too much hunt.
A lot of people spoke about Monaspa having 17 or 18 damage while those have to be 20+ in numbers, need blacksmith upgrades, the first conquistador produced has 16 base damage without bells and whistles. In my opinion each civ/unit overused under certain settings have to be nerfed wrt such settings. Like Mongol steppe lancers on Arabia, Chinese on open land maps for pro players, Conqs on Nomad etc.
Some of these are straightforward to do, like removing hp bonus on lancers, reducing base damage of non-elite conqs to 13 or 14 and their training time, limiting Monaspa extra attack to +3 for non-elites. Some are not-so-easy to nerf like Incas on Arabia for pro players, Organ guns, bohemians specific to Arena etc.
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Your forum post is just a video. You want me to read it?
And yes I did see your replies. What can I say. Some people lose games, go to the forums and whine some - maybe you shouldn’t even see them as a game design discussion at all 
Usually game balance is abit more complicated then buff X and nerf Y and call it a day (or just buff buff buff like this video suggest) so my point is that this video simply lacks depth and it’s just trying to grab some free points from people’s tendency to whine. Saying a glass is half-full rather then half-empty doesn’t fix anything designwise.
Let’s take a civ like Gurjaras for example, 49% win rate in overall - must be balanced right? Then if you look closer, you see they have 30% win rate vs Incas and 70% win rate against Tatars. Now how do you solve that? Buff Tatars and they’ll destroy other civs. Nerf Gurjaras or Incas and they will suck across the board. There’s no simple answer and this buff buff buff video statement is just ridicolous.
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You don’t. That’s not how you balance. There will always be bad individual match ups. All you can do is make sure every civ has some kind of answer / army comp to counter each type of unit.
Plot Twist - mongols will lose knight instead on the next patch.
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