Ideas for Bulgarians

I mean they have free long sword upgrade, 50 stone TC, Stirrups to make their Knights supreme over the others, a UU that literally can make pikes flee and a cheaper castle which is the Krepost, and still you think Bulgarians are weak in castle age?
I say this as a player that uses Bulgarians several times as favorite civ to pick, and even I’mnot a pro even.

yes i have played a lot of Bulgarians in team game on land maps. if you choose knights as your main army, your knights are always less than other civs, since they have stronger eco bonuses in castle age. If you choose CA as your main army i would say that’s not a good idea. If you choose a pike+siege push you literally don’t use any of your eco bonus. If you choose m@a+tower rush into krepost that maybe stronger, but still not enough bonus comparing with Teutons, Burmese or Japanese which can also play a m@a+tower rush into castles.
Bulgarians are strong enough in early and late game, but very weak in early to middle castle age.

bulgarians aren’t a knight only civ though. and frankly not everyone gets super ecos. lean on your defenses and outlast the opponent. thats one of the reasons you get cheap kreposts which are mini castles.

oh i’m sorry. do you not build town centers as bulgarians?

most civs have weak points in their gameplay.
even mayans and franks do.

and konnik, have a 2.4 reload time, is too weak without stirrup, Castle to upgrade that tech is too expensive for early castle age.

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it’s almost like they are intended to be a late game civ. use your knights until you can get stirrupts konniks going.

Actually bulgarians are decent in the early stages.
Top maa
Easy tower
Krepost are very goodnin early castle age
Excellent UU
Very solid infantry
Decent CA/Skirms
Top late game siege

Imo the UU is solid even without that upgrade, despite a lower dps with respect to knights

Overall they are fine, not top tier but fine. Also, a civ with such a powerful late imp is not supposed to have a relevant eco bonus.

This is a reason why, for instance, buffing Koreans is less important than buffing other weak civs (Italians, Portuguese, Turks)

I have never understood this kind of argument. Bulgarians and Mongols are very different in many ways, so I don’t think it would destroy their identity, if stirrups would affect cavalry archers.
E. g. the unique tech of the Franks improves the stable working speed, just as the team bonus of Huns does. Nonetheless Franks and Huns have their very own identity. It also might be difficult to have 35 civs without some of them having similar boni.

I have bigger concerns about balance, if Bulgarians also had strong ranged units in addition to their great cavalry and infantry. In my opinion, every civilization should have at least some weaknesses 11

Is it really necessary to buff Bulgarians? Aren’t they about mid tier on most maps?

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I have a good idea:

My proposal for Bulgarian:

Hunting does not need to storage food like Eco bonus for Khmer just for hunting. :slight_smile:

Krepost raise cost to 400S

Elite Konnik attack speed raise to 2.0

Not a fan of that either, but frankly at the time franks definitely needed a buff, being a one trick pony and all and it works. Id have rather they got something else.

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Well I don’t see any problems with the Civ but rather with the state of the game. If they fix pathfinding for cavalry Bulgarians will get passively buffed.

Bulgarians are very good at several different strategies. They are just not an archer Civ. And archer Civs are currently meta…

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I like this one. It may not have much impact, but it feels unique, and it builds on the uniqueness of Bulgarians. It would make kreposts feel even more integrated into de Bulgarian civ.

Would make sense. I agree with the others balance would be very tricky. Maybe if you’d remove other archer techs in exchange. Bulgarians don’t get crossbow anyway. But losing bracer would hurt the kreposts, losing chemistry would hurt kreposts & siege, losing archer armour would hurt the skirmishers. Only Parthian tactics could be removed without repercussion.
I wouldn’t be worried about Bulgarians feeling like a Mongols clone :stuck_out_tongue:

Seems like the only difference between Mongol and Bulgarian CA is that 25% faster firing Mongels currently have. Bulgarian CA ought to be worse than Mongol ones, because Mongels rely on CA whereas Bulgarians do not.

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I do not feel the need of buffing Bulgarians tbh.

But, if you want to, what if the tech, instead of reducing CA reload time, acted on CA frame delay? It would be different from the mongol bonus.

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I think it’s a very tricky civilization, I love playing with them, BUT I feel that Paladins were much better than Stirrups Cavalier

  • Stirrups doesn’t affect the Knight-line and Paladins are available
  • Stirrups doesn’t affect Paladins, but affects Cavalier and Knight.
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Yeah was thinking the same. It’s a combination of an eco buff(since you can scatter farms around kreposts instead of mills) and a defense bonus since the kreposts protects the vils from raids.

Half of us build defensive castles/kreposts to fight off raids or to protect our UU production points. So the idea of a castle/krepost near vils is already very common…

35 civs with existing overlap all over the place is impossible to avoid and still have balance and keep the game mechanics roughly the same.

Faster firing CA for Bulgarians really isn’t such a big deal…especially if its hidden in a castle tech… And hardly any mongol trains plain CA anyway. If the issue is fast firing cavalry archers by definition then cumans have overlap with their horde of kipchak arrows i guess?

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oh i agree with you, but i know people who get absolutely livid when you suggest new bonuses that overlap even slightly with existing ones. which is hilarious given all the overlap that already exists. thats why i just gave up on suggesting anything that overlaps even a little bit.

it affects the mangudai as well.

But the game heavily favours eco bonuses (which generally snow ball) and aggression over defense (aka map control) if resource points had more in them then defensive play might have been stronger, but especially maps like gold rush/swamp/pit.

And they’re still not a top their civ. So either we nerf the top tiers or we buff everyone else until they’re similar…

Yeah pathfinding will help, but when will this pipedream happen?

Its laughable how strong some of the eco buffed civs are… Fc is quickly becoming the meta (as argued on so many threads due to walling) Britons can feudal more effectively thanks to eco bonus 1,meaning castle faster, and then can build 2 tc even faster(thanks to eco bonus 2) leading to even more vils leading to an even greater eco difference. While relying on a unit line that hardly affects aging up.

Same applies to vikings except from feudal onwards. Castle sooner, 2tc sooner, with even more effective vils than competing civs.

In comparison we have… Drum roll… Definitely not 2 tc sooner, the stone isnt the limit on 2 tc. That’s their eco bonus. Free sword line upgrades is really not that much of an eco bonus in the current meta.

Their team bonus is also nothing special in comparison to half price stone walls, farms with enough food to make it to fast castle, faster archery ranges, and laughably these bonuses are associated with not only great ecos, but also archer civs(aka have FU arbs) … The more i think about the balance descrepencies in the meta the worse it seems… No wonder the pick rates for these civs are so high…

Im sure my elo is functionally a 100 pts lower when i dont play meta civs.

oh i definitely agree a good eco bonus is hands down the most important thing right now in the game, with few exceptions.

here’s the problem with this - come up with all those unique yet potent eco bonuses.

if pathfinding is improved several civs will need nerfs. yeah pathfinding will make melee better. what do you think will happen to Franks, Goths, and Teuton winrates when that happens?
and those are already top civs as is.

i agree 100%.

still better bonuses then some civs get. being able to afford more TCs with your starting stone is a nice bonus.

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This is true. Currently the game is well balanced in the sense that all the civs are more or less at the same level (or at least they have similar probability of success 1n 1v1 arabia) except 2 groups:

  • Italians, Turks, Portuguese
  • Aztecs, Mayans, Chinese

Bulgarians do not need any urgent buff. If any, I would say that they have a very weak follow up from the maa opening. So I would give them something pushing towards an original maa->scouts, like free or 50% cheaper bloodlines.

Another bonus I would like to see for them is:

  • infantry benefits from cavalry blacksmith armor techs (ofc all infantry blacksmith armors removed from their tech tree)
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Maybe it would be interesting if we could create dismounted Konniks from Castles and Kreposts for a cheaper cost? I don’t think it would bring all that much but would add another dimension to the civilisation.

(Realistically though you’re probably better off making THS)

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I am still not sure whether losing paladins for stirrups cavaliers was good or not for bulgarians, but if it stays like this I think bulgarians should get the last archer armor upgrade, so they have at least FU skirms.

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