How would you tone down the Mayans?

[TougherTrack508]

If you’re so confidently wrong about mid elo games, why would one trust your expertise about anything else?

There’s plenty of people who can execute a decent knight spam but don’t have the skills to switch to skirms.

As a side note: 20% discount means 25% more dps and 25% more hp. At least at my level where the softening subtleties don’t matter so much. 25% more dps and hp can definitely win games.

[Pulikesi25]

@DannyOfAD1

compare that to mayan archers with all techs and a discount and eagle warriors with all techs and el dorado maybe they could remove mid game and late game quality no thumb ring squires and bracer to rebalance them

Probably not thumb ring, since it will also affect plumed but squires and blast furnace. Or the other way to do it is nerf them similar to how Hindustanis, Aztecs, Huns were nerfed. A direct reduction in the percentage of their bonuses. Archer discounts starting from castle age at 10% and 20% in imp, resources except food from animals last 15% longer.

@Green4uu

it’s getting tiresome reading 900 elo players suggestions trying to fix the game while not understanding the core issues. First of all, Mayans in Castle age aren’t very scary. They only get 1 combat bonus, cheaper archers, which is comparable to what a civ like Portuguese or Byzantines can get. Their longer lasting resources means that you save a bit of wood on farms but again, nothing compared to what Khmer or Burgundians get.

I agree that removing thumb ring might be a bad change for an archer civ that neither has any direct stat bonuses on their archers but I think its a huge understatement to say that Mayan castle age isn’t scary. Its not scary if you assume the Mayan player will hit castle age at the same time as the other player. They get extra villager and extra free food from hunt and herdables. Its about 300 resource advantage around the time you’re about to click even if you totally ignore the archer discount and palisade wall discount. Except a few top-tiers like Chinese, Franks, Gurjaras, all the other civs get benefits worth 100-200 resources or even lower and indirect. This makes them hit castle age a min or more sooner which along with cheaper crossbows is scary.

@Green4uu

Mayans have the same problem of Gurjaras and Byzantines in that their Imp armies are on the cheap side. If Byzantines and Gurjaras are considered tolerable in Feudal and Castle age, Mayans are considered strong here. So if you want to nerf Mayans, you either need to address the fact that they can make a full Imperial army from some 90-100 vills (most other civs need 120+ to function in Imp), or you need to address the Plumed Archer + 100 HP Eagle combo. But either way, people are largely overreacting, these nerfs are needed at top level (2500+ elo) where pros play, but below that, and below 2k especially, I’ve never seen Mayans win due to their efficient Imperial age, it was almost always, they win in Feudal or with a Castle age Eagle all-in, or lose in Feudal/Castle.

A lot of things you’ve mentioned are true except 2500+ players don’t try to end the game in castle age. Mostly from what I’ve seen in tournaments, they do some crossbows, try to kill some vills or trade with army while booming behind. Castle age is sooner, units are cheap, so they’re almost guaranteed to be faster to imp. This doesn’t imply that their imp isn’t problematic for mid elos. Even for mid elos, they have 50+ win rate for games that have lasted 50+ mins.

@Green4uu

So for the majority of players, Mayans are fine. And for mid- and low-elos in particular, probably Mayans are easier to deal with than say Berbers or Franks Knights timing so I don’t see what the fuss is all about.

Before DOI DLC, at 1700+ (your elo) they were the most played civ, had the highest win rate by far. Age of Statistics
And even at 1200+ elos Mayans were the second most played and 4th highest win rate civ on open maps. A lot of changes in mid elos were probably a consequence of Hindustanis and Gurjaras. But now with those 2 civs nerfed, Mayans could potentially return to their broken state. Hope the eagle cost nerf, gambeson and buffs to certain civs are strong enough to prevent that. But either ways its probably ok to wait for 6 months to see the effect of all the new changes but a nerf to Mayan early game or imperial age won’t be a bad thing either.

Lastly I guess its a matter of perspective. Some people want a few civs to stay as powerful as they are forever and newer civs to hover around in the middle. Personally I like a shuffle of the deck. Legacy Huns got nerfed heavily, Aztecs got theirs, all new strong civs Cumans, Khmer, Burgundians, Poles, Gurjaras and Hindustanis got their nerfs within a few months of being broken as well, and even situationally strong ones like Bohemians got nerfed. Why not these evergreen ones? Maybe once for a change we might not see Mayans in the next TG ladder game, in the top right corner of plots like these or marked in deep colors in S-tier event’s draft rate statistics like NAC 4 civ stats, RMS Cup 2 Statistics, KotD4 stats, Hidden Cup 4 stats

@DannyOfAD1

britons also got a massive direct nerf

Range production is a smaller 1v1 nerf, major nerf for TG. For 1v1, their tc repair cost is now halved, which is a significant buff for an archer civ.

@DannyOfAD1

They had a fear that britons would become overpowered in the conquerors expansion and subsequently nerfed them into the ground for 13 years in my honest opinion

They received no direct nerfs when Conquerors released. Extra range from Yeomen, thumb ring denied as a trade-off. They were not weak in legacy version on paper. Latency issues, insane OP Huns made them look average.

@DannyOfAD1

Then they overlooked balance for mayans koreans and spanish until 1.0c or the forgotten or honestly in mayans case they never did.

Korean siege onagers apart, those civs were quite balanced. There was no 3 p.armor eagle warrior upgrade, no possibility of split micro with the huge lag, some bug that made mayan farmers slower. So they had a weak castle age. This was compensated by very strong early game and early imperial age. They were actually a top-tier civ on old Arena and regicide fortress.

@DannyOfAD1

Remember that aztecs and britons had a 49.3% win rate and italians and vietnamese had a 44.9% win rate overall in the previous patch on comparison mayans at 52.9% rivaling franks huns berbers hindustanis gurjaras slavs and poles as the most broken civ with those civs having a 52.6% to 53.6% win rate.

49% win rate is not the greatest when all civs have same play rate. When about 5 civs have much higher play rate than average, it means Aztecs and Britons are able to even a fairly even amount of times against the frequently picked Franks, Mongols, Mayans, Chinese and Hindustanis. These civs are picked significantly more often than others which means win rate stats are biased by their matchups against these civs. Same goes for higher win rate but lesser played civs.

[DannyOfAD1]

On paper britons would be solid in 1.0c but the new techs and town center nerfs hit them harder in practice