Some of you and even the Viper said that portuguese and other civs were in a good spot and were competitive however in hidden cup many civs were never picked or never considered at all :
Not considered at all : Burmese, teutons and turks.
Rarely considered : Portuguese (1 only in Islands),
In all the tournament there are some civs that we dind’t see even once :
Portuguese, teutons and byzantines (not sure for them) were not seen even once during the qualifiers.
Please CA you have to find a way to change this !
As i Said Portuguese were meant to be a water focused CIV and they should at least dominate at seas but other picks are always better than them because the situations were they could be relevant aren’t present at all.
it’s the same for a little amount of civs which should deserve love and some kind of reworks to make them competitive in specific sitatuations !
Please i ask you to try to improve or rework some aspects of those civs :I
I didn’t watch this particular moment but listened to him yesterday and he even says the reason some civs werent looked at was simply the map choices and if the maps were a little different some of the other civs would have been pulled up.
so while theres feedback to always be game just because civs didn’t pop up in hidden up doesn’t mean they are vastly underpowered. for instance the Portuguese get better in team games.
Indeed, the portuguese could really get something of a buff on water. Their +10% Hp on ships seems week, an option could be to increase it to +15%. Also note that currently italians are too overpowered on water, so dont compare portuguese to them but rather to malay or japanese. Btw italain docks discount bonus could use a nerf (I would decrease it to -30%). I also think that decreasing the viking imperial age discount to 15% could also be implemented together with this so after the italian nerf it won’t be full viking meta in 95% of the water games.
Teutons will never be good until they don’t get some raiding potential, giving them access the light cavalry is hugely needed.
Burmese are very weak vs archers, nor their UU nor their infantry bonus helps vs them, and they lack two armor upgrades on skirmishers. Only option is elephants but that costs so much its just not worth investing into vs 20 crossbows or 50 arbalests. One fix could be improving the pathfinding.
Magyars could also get a buff but I’m not sure what maybe increase their light cavalry discount to 20%, but I feel like that won’t be enough.
I also agree with @DIABLOxHITMAN, neither turks neither portuguese should get an eco buff or a buff that makes them better on land because they’re already one of the top arena civs.
Giving them second armor could be an option but I think its much more complicated than that. It would make arambai too strong borderline op, and skirmishers with missing the last armor upgrade will still be bad. I think they need a complete rework, let me introduce it:
First of all their imperial age UT (named manipur cavalry maybe???) is very trash, definitely needs to be removed. It can be basicly taken out of the game with researching masonry and architecture, decreasing that +6 bonus to +2 or something like that. To compensate with that, give them siege ram (also makes them a bit better vs archers), and give the elite arambai a bonus damage versus buildings (for example +3). Give them a new unique technology which makes them a lot better against archers (for example infantry gets +2 pierce armor, or cavarly gets a bonus damage versus archers or skirmishers have +3 pierce armor, or something like this). If this technology is too late in imperial and castle age crossbows still dominate the burmese faction then just switch it with Howdah.
I might make a thread about the burmese answering why they are bad and rarely used after I figure out what that UT should be. If they improve the pathing a little bit, so that chinese mayans and britions won’t be that much of a meta civ so I can see how strong (or weak) burmese are in a non-archer meta I can adjust the values the make them perfectly balanced. But I really wish there were more activity from the devs because no update since 1 month and this makes people less motivated to start such discussions like that.
With good pathing, burmese aren’t bad. It’s just elephants and infantry are not meta, but I really like them. You get 2nd best battle elephants with 50%off faith, or great infantry… Or both! Arambais are okey, I guess, but I preffer those options
I don’t think manipur cavalry has to be removed. Sure, it’s not a great UT but imo it’s okay at least and it fills a niche for Burmese which don’t get siege ram. If I remeber correctly masonry+architecture reduces bonus damage from +6 to +3 so it’s still useable. From the civ concept it seems to me that battle elephants somehow are designed to be an archer counter with that extra pierce armor, however those units come very late and we all know how vulnerable elephant play usually is. On top of that +1/+1 armor for elephants seems a bit weak to me. Maybe put it back to +1/+2 as it was before the nerf.
In partcular what seems weird is that Burmese have a lot of counters vs cavalry: arambai are super nice againnst knights in either low or high numbers, you’ll have probably the second best monks after aztecs and their halbediers are also very strong. So I guess it’s okay for them to struggle vs archers a bit but not that much.
I think it would be nice for arambai to be affected by parthian tactis (which Burmese already have but cannot use at all) giving them 2 more PA in imperial age so that they arent op in castle age.
That no one picks them anymore seems also be due to the recent meta shift away from aggressive men at arms that would be the optimal opening for Burmese.
Look at this. This is all the civs picked from all the players. If you don’t count civs picked 5 or less times only 14 civs were used. And Chinese have a win rate of 93% with 14 out of 15
I really don’t think rebalancing half the civs because there was a tournament with biased maps is a good idea. Just the fact that NAC3 had a lot more diversity (we even got to see pre-buff Khmer and Vietnamese win!) show that balance is better than that.
If you really want the arambai to get more pierce armor then why don’t just give them the two archer armor upgrades they are missing? This would solve the archer problem since their skirmishers would be useful. Anyways I disagree because I think arambais are fine right now, their UU isn’t what makes them weak.
If you count in the civs that are good on maps that weren’t in the map pool (for example turks in arena) then your result would be much more realistic for showing how much the civs are balanced in this game. Aswell I think that even the civs that were picked less than 5 times can be really good, since if a civ was picked 3 times it means that there were 3 cases when it was the best option out of 35 civs. The game is definitely much more balanced than you’re saying it is.
Both were buffed when DE gave a wood discount to Korean units. And since both the War Wagon and Turtle ship are so expansive it’s really significant for them. Turtle ships only ever received buffs https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Turtle_Ship
The problem with turtle ships is that they are weak versus massed galleons, and nearly civ uses mass galleons in imperial age because its the best option available. The slow movement speed and the small range of them makes them easy to kill with hit and run tactics. If I’m not mistaken, turtle ships with galleons however can be pretty effective versus massed galleons, because the hit and run tactic there wont be as effective and in a battle with no macro turtle ships can just take the damage while galleons can finish off the enemy navy. The only problem with this is that why would you spend so much resources on turtle ships if most of your ships are galleons? It’s just not worthy. And when it comes to galleons vs galleons fights, there are many more civs that are just better in that than Koreans (since korean early water game is also pretty weak due to missing demolition ships). This is the reason in a nutshell why Koreans are very rarely picked on water while they should be a water civ. Altough in my opinion this could easily be fixed, just give a small increase to panokseon’s effect (from 15% to 20%, so turtle ships won’t be as weak to hit and run tactics as now), and lower the upgrade cost of turtle ships to elite by a big amount.
Thank you for these replies. A friend who always played Koreans in AoE2:HD was thinking the Turtle Ships got nerfed in DE, since he used to pretty easily rule the waters in HD once he got Turtle Ships. But since you say they actually got buffed (better), it makes me think that the AI we play against is just countering a lot better in DE than they did in HD. Plus, maybe several other civs’ ships got buffed more, relative to the Koreans. I have a feeling it’s just better AI, though, which would be a good thing, imo.
Since they are a unique unit to that civ, though, devs are hopefully careful in keeping their benefit intact; and not making them too weak vs. massed galleons, etc.
As a late boomer, he was able to eventually rule the seas and demolish land bridge troops with Turtle Ships in HD while he was in Castle and the enemy was in Imperial, as I recall. (We played Highland map a lot, for example.) I just get the impression this isn’t as easy with DE. Could be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on one’s perspective
I personally would love that because they have been one of my fav civs for quite some time but I fear that it’ll make arambai too strong. Before the nerfs to arambai Burmese were frequently picked on arabia and once you got the arambai/mangonel composition up running it was very difficult to counter them. So, giving them the two armor upgrades (which they didnt even have before being nerfed) could make them borderline op while giving them parthian tactics should be fine imo. But maybe second armor upgrade would be fine also for giving them more room for archer/skirm play in castle age. On open maps they usually open man at arms what leads more often than not to an archer play in feudal and early-mid castle age so that certainly would be useful.
Apart from that I totally agree that arambai isnt what makes them weak and there needs to be some degree of redesign to make them feel less awkward to play with.
:
