Can we just take a moment to appreciate how the dev have improved the game over the season.
After coming back to the game, I found it way more fun than before.
Biggest change for me is removing the MANDATORY springald siege war there was starting from castle age. This made the game so boring as springalds were their own counter.
Removing springald being good against siege, and replacing it by anti melee infantry is such a good change. It also prevents HRE or Japanese from playing ONLY melee infantry. It was very hard before to get rid of mass HRE maa + landsknecht, as you needed a mass a crossbow + archer, and then micro like crazy so each ranged unit target the correct unit. While also macroing backward, while they would just A move and run so fast with marching drill. But the new springald are solving this issue, forcing your opponent to go a bit into cavalry or siege as well.
It seems like the different strategies (2 TC, feudal rush, fast castle) are also more balanced than ever. We see all 3 types of strategies being played and most civ are more versatile than they used to be. (With some exceptions).
Some things I’d like to see for future patch:
-Finally fixing the Siege tower so they are actually useful (right now since the gate/wall patch, units can’t even get off of enemy walls, so siege tower are completely useless.
-Fixing water so the entire water isn’t lost in a single battle. Make it less all or nothing. This is in my opinion the main reason why a lot of people don’t like water map. I think the only way to fix this would be to improve defensive ability of docks/fishing ship. Maybe fishing ship can shoot arrow at ship when garrisoned and/or allow more fishing ship to garrison. OR make archer better against ships so you can fight ship in feudal with land units.
-Make the civs a bit more balanced on water maps. Civs start to be quite balanced now on land map (sure there will always be some a bit better, especially at pro level, but it’s still very well balanced), but on water map there are still some very obvious winners.
-Fix maps that are completely broken, or adjust civs so they are not OP on those maps, my only complain right now is Haywire, especially since it was in the ranked pool. All you see on this map is either English or China, those two civ clearly have a HUGE advantage on that map. This really limits the replayability on that map. I feel like English villager’s bow is a bit too good in dark age. Maybe more progressive stat by age, or an upgrade before they can use their bow. Or maybe they need be in network of castle aura to use their bow, something like that. China shouldn’t build a defensive (actually agressive) landmark so fast.