I see Franks are still top dogs?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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so yeah, every time i see statistics anywhere, no matter the source, Franks are always on top by a huge margin.

maybe thats an indication they should be hit with the nerfbat. i mean, its been like this for years now, and devs just keep pretending they aren’t aware that franks are basically super OP.

you want to keep their insane paladins? fine, nerf their infantry or their economy so they are brought down a notch.

Teutons are also very strong, but nowhere near as high on the statistics as Franks are.

some suggestions to balance them (note; the intention is not to apply ALL of these at once, but maybe a select number of them):

  1. Remove Halberdier Tech
  2. Remove Gold Shaft Mining Tech
  3. Reduce Chivalry Civ bonus 40% > 25%
  4. Reduce Cheaper Castles Civ Bonus 25% > 10% or just remove it entirely.

personally, if i had to choose one of these nerfs it would be number 3 due to the fact that Conscription + Chivalry results in a whopping 73% increased production speed which is crazy considering Franks have the best Paladins in the game.

if this is out of the question, the removal of Gold Shaft Mining tech would be a good secondary option, since it would limit their ability to quickly mass produce Paladins, or at least force the player to invest more villagers into mining gold in order to do so.

EDIT: Alright, so clearly people in general are not in favor of any of these nerf options - the argument being that Franks need an early game nerf where they are stronger as oppose to the late game where imo they shine brightly until the map is depleted of gold (which is the case for any civ that isn’t a trash unit specialist, but apparently Franks are special so that doesn’t matter). so i’ll make another attempt based on this critique.

Note that i disagree with the idea that 15% increased berry gather rate is what makes them strong early game, so i am not putting that on this next list, although there are some other suggestions that i think could work out.

  1. +20% Cav HP civ bonus moved from Feudal Age to Castle Age.
  2. Free Farm upgrades changed; only Heavy Plow and Crop Rotation free, Horse Collar now standard cost - this is based on the critique that the berry bonus is what makes Franks too strong. this would impact their ability to easily transition from herd/forage/huntables to farms.
  3. Remove Cheaper Castle civ bonus (yes, we’re keeping this one on the list).
  4. Remove Arson or Squire - obviously people are flipping tables over my suggestion to remove Halberdier tech, so this is my way of meeting them halfway.
3 Likes
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Berry bonus should be taken away from franks and given to another civ.

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i was actually thinking of adding the removal of that to the list, but its not significant enough of a nerf since after the initial berries and huntables people go into spamming farms, which as Franks, is extremely easy since they get free farm upgrades.

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Talking about 1v1, 2v2+, winrate, pickrate? I know they are on top everywhere, you should state though what you want to discuss about them.

Removing Halberdiers would be insane, they don’t even have anything functionally similar. Chivalry is not important in 1v1. It should be an eco nerf or a nerf to the castles, just a slight one since they are not that opressive, it’s just that an easy to play civ shouldn’t be the best one.

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i wanted to deliberately avoid specific scenarios because there isn’t a scenario where Franks aren’t too strong.
they are in dire need of an overall nerf that affects them in all scenarios, be it 1v1, team games etc.

they’d still have pikes.

lol, yes it is.

so Gold Shaft Mining Removal / No Cheaper Castle Bonus? that’s fine by me. One impacts cav spam, the other prevents them from spamming castles easily which impacts their defensive capabilities and makes it harder to get conscription early.

nope, it has to be a significant nerf, the statistical curve skyrockets from 2nd best civ to top civ (which are franks) which means they are way too strong.

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Franks were ■■■■ before the berry bonus.

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Remove the berry bonus.
No, I don’t care that they were a bad civ before it was introduced.
Yes, I’d rather have a few months without franks in the top 3.

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Revenge nerfing isn’t balancing. It isn’t right to nerf something to the ground.

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Why not? Let’s invert the power creep for a while, and invert the power ladder.

Let’s see malay vs saracens in tourneys for a change.
Nerf mayans, franks, britons, huns etc, buff the other civs, create an interesting dynamic for a while.
It’s how decade old games like LoL and Dota keep their playerbases active, by switching things up, so people have new things to experiment with. Even a new DLC gets stale after 2 months when you do the exact same thing every single game.

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unless it means balancing the game eh?
btw i have never heard the term “revenge nerf” before. do you think im just being salty here? because i’m not being salty. im just tired of Franks being OP. they’ve enjoyed their top spot for years if not decades now, we have the data and to say they aren’t overpowered is just being in denial.

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He was being sarcastic dude. Berry bonus is insignificant. you could remove it without putting it in the patch notes and nobody would notice lol

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Oh I’m fine with buffing some of the bottom civs but I take exception with making other civs useless.

It’s another way of saying over nerfing.
It’s basically what happened ro cumans and tatars when steppe lancers were utterly gutted.

And yet I don’t see you complaining about huns, mayans, aztecs or vikings which have been top dogs for 20 years.

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No. I’m not. Go back and look. Franks were awful before the forgotten was released. One of the worst civs in the game. It’s why they got so many good buffs around that time.

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making it harder for franks players to absolutely dominate the ladder is not “making franks useless”.

if i wanted franks to be useless i would suggest removing Paladin tech entirely, but i didn’t do that, now did i?

Uhhh none of these civs are anywhere near Franks in terms of performance, pickrate and winrate, especially not Vikings.

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No. You just suggested removing the eco bonus that makes the civ actually work.

Go check tournaments and get back to me bud. Stop just looking at 1k elo ladders

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He wasn’t, actually, but I think also players hadn’t figured out the civ back then.
In addition to that, they didn’t have chivalry, throwing axemen were worse, they didn’t have squires and HUGE - the bonus HP only applied to knights, not scouts.

This is why I believe that in the current state of franks we can justifiably take away the forage bonus, in the same way we can take the longer lasting resources bonus from mayans.

So consider this @MatCauthon3 before saying that the berry bonus should stay.

And we do complain about the other civs too, it’s just that I assume it takes time for the devs to figure out how to nerf them while still keeping them unique.

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I did consider that. And the only one that’s actually consequential in most games is the scout health. Which I would happily nerf.

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so you’re unironically telling me that Frank’s turned from a “bottom tier civ” to literally the best civ in the game all because they are now able to berry farm 15% faster? not the fact they got access to halberdiers, +2 Knight Vision team bonus, Chivalry or free farms?

stop trolling.

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They had almost all of those before and were bottom tier. The only two things that happened go drastically turn them around was berries + scouts hp bonus.

I’d nerf the scout bonus.

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you can still produce the best paladins in the game without gold shaft mining, just not at such a rapid pace.
relying on a crutch here, are we?