Just to mention:
Incas
Malians
Koreans
(Lithuantians)
All received really bold new bonusses. And even if some of them needed to be nerfed riht away it’s imo the right way to bring civs back into the meta who have somehow lost track due to the powercreep.
Very bold from the Devs. And I like it.
Specifically I’m not a fan of the Korean buff. I think it’s ok that there archers got buffed but to me doesn’t seem to jive well thematically with their defensive identity. I’d rather see their archer bonus brought back down and them given some bonus to their towers that is somehow defensive.
Maybe feudal age murder holes, tower atk bonus vs siege, or maybe a second half range arrow. IDK. They’re basically an archer civ know.
Whilst true the reality is the concept of “defensie civs” is kinda dead rn.
Maybe we could come back to that if there was some type of victory conditon like relic victory that was available from feudal or so. But how the game developed lately I really don’t see the “defensive” identities work anymore. Even if you look at civs like Byzantines. They don’t play defensive. they play very much aggresive these days.
I dont like Incas buff and I dont think they were weak before. Koreans new bonus is fine but I miss the good old tower.
I agree, more often than not, taking initiative and playing aggressively is better than playing defensively. Fast castle to some power unit or to boom can work but you can still get punished by a more aggressive opponent.
At best you get civs like byzantines or Incas that trade efficiently, or teutons who have above average booms.
I think it’s good for the meta that there be a few 5ish civs that can play more defensively and do it viably but how you put that into a bonus and it not turn into some cheese strat like the Persian douche?
Hypothetically, let’s say you give the Koreans some tower bonus. Idk what it is, whatever you want it doesn’t matter. Then say that only applies to some radius around your starting tc, and only in castle age would additional tcs also apply.
Technically your tc could be destroyed while you’re in feudal, and technically you could recreate your tc, and unfortunately for you the radius wouldnt apply to your new tc. In practice however I think if your tc is destroyed while you’re in feudal you’ve probably already lost (at least in 1v1)
I think making it work like that though makes it impossible to be used as a cheese strat, at least before castle age.
Actually now that I think about it, that could apply to every offensive tc bonus. Persian douche for example. Your hp bonus only applies to your first tc until castle age. You destroy your tc and build a new one next to your opponent, that’s a vanilla tc until castle age. Or the teuton aok bonus of +5 range. You destroy your tc and build another it’s vanilla until castle age. It nullifies the cheese strats and if you’re so unfortunate to lose your tc before castle age you’ve probably lost anyways.
Agree it was a good idea, and better to have them over tuned on release and players testing them out fully. And even then, some changes weeen’t as strong as many initially thought (or still think)
But we’ve had other arguably big buffs from back when Turks received the extra PA, or Italians were buffed (not enough, but still big changes) or even the Portuguese wood bonus.
Defensive civs(outside of byz) almost never play as such, regardless of what some of you might like, it’s simply against Devs intent to bring back early tower play, more than likely due to how many people are against it, whether you personally like it or not is irrelevant, you need to consider how others feel about it.
At the same time, that bonus is most definitely a defensive one as well, skirms have the greatest discount out of that bonus (tied into their free armour makes it the obvious choice of which unit that civ is most geared towards)
Are skirms offensive units?
Next up, pike line benefits from this bonus by a fair amount, are pikes offensive units? Archers actually benefit less than pikes do due to overall cost.
Koreans have always had a worse winrate Vs cav civs (you can work out why) and look what the discount happened to affect.
Does Teutons (Long ago), Malay and Dravidians count?
Only Byzantines I guess. Teutons and Incas got out. And Koreans as well.
True. But their aggressive is still defensive to me. Constantly throwing 30 skirmisher, 12 pikeman, 4 camels, 2 monks and 1 mangonel at enemy base to buy time. But not ending the game right there.
You seem to have somehow missed the very next sentence where I explicitly specify the bonus would be defensive.
I further articulate in another post, older than your reply, one possible implementation of such a bonus that would confer no advantage to a tower rush.
I specifically mention “starting” tc and “additional” tcs so you couldn’t delete your tc and do some more complicated persian-douche-esqe strat.
Therefore I think I was unambiguously clear I was not advocating for some return to tower rush meta for Koreans or anyone else.
Simply because a bonus can be used defensively I wouldn’t argue that it is intrinsically a “defensive” bonus. If my civ gets a cobra car in feudal age and I use it to patrol back and forth in front of my base, would you consider that a defensive bonus?
Archers cost 25W and 45G. Korean archers cost -50% W. Mayan Archers are 10% less expensive in Feudal. I’ll be honest I don’t know how the game handles rounding so I’m going to ignore it. It doesn’t really change the point. Korean archers are 12.5 resources cheaper than an average archer and mayan archers are 7 resources cheaper. And considering how wood is necessary for farms, houses, other buildings, and eco techs, and gold in feudal age in the context of an archer civ is to pay for archers and to save up for castle age, saving that wood in feudal seems to be the better bonus.
Admittedly with mayans you’ll probably have the better eco in feudal but still as koreans you have cheaper archers with more armor the moment you click up compared to mayans. That doesn’t seem on-brand. I know ######### is far more important but the korean player still gets the armor for free. Until the mayan player researchers both ########## then armor (if they even prioritize it) the korean player has objectively superior cheaper archers.
For 20ish years we’ve been trying to remove “defensive” bonuses cause players use them unintentionally in offensive ways. AoK Teuton death stars. Koreans faster building fortifications. Persian TC bonus gets a lot of flak for the persian douche strat. But then the devs turn around and grant a “defensive” bonus to the Koreans with the massive caveat that it also gives the side benefit of making Koreans comparable with Mayans in an archer rush?
It is up to the player giving their play style, the map, and matchup whether they want to use that bonus defensively with cheaper skirms, or go with an archer rush. If the bonus was only 20%, I wouldn’t care. If the bonus only applied to skirms and pikes (similar to the byzantine bonus) I wouldn’t care. Even incas do something kinda similar with their food discount. It applies to offensive units as well, but the discount is less, and the incas generally don’t have a powerunit (the closest thing is the kamayuk and they are reasonably good but not like mangudai, camel archers, or something like that). Incas are about countering cost effectively. Similar to Byzantines. Similar to what I think the devs intended with koreans. But they slipped in a huge archer buff into a defensive bonus, repeating past mistakes of sloppily defining a defensive bonus such that it can be used offensively.
I think going back to 20% and giving some defensive tower bonus (somehow defined by TC placement that is not exploitable in diplo and nomad, can’t be deleted and moved etc) would be more flavorful, but I don’t think 50% cheaper wood cost on just skirms and spears would be bad either. I really object that archers specifically are 50% W cheaper. It’s an archer rush bonus with extra defensive utility.
I think by castle age Mayans are undoubtedly better than koreans at archer play, but koreans by castle age have other options so they needn’t try to out-archer an opponent.
They needed something after they nerfed the feudal age tough villagers bonus into towers strategy. Incas were by far the weakest meso civ before the recent buff.
Weakest meso civ was true but Incas was not a weak civ at all. Aztec and Mayans being strong does not mean that Incas need a big buff.
This is why I’m concerned that the devs might screw up the Georgians. Towers are THE thing in Georgia, so if they don’t have a great tower rush, it won’t feel right. My vision for them flies in the face of what the devs want, but that’s because I actually really like tower rushes. I think they’re interesting to watch and interesting to fight against. I’m a minority in that regard.