It’s not strictly the same though.
They have less starting resources, which is quite clear, and stated in civ description.
Mayans have also slower gathering rate right? Or was just farming rate, don’t remember, it’s the most “obscure” drawback of the three though.
Do we need more imbalanced bonuses to balance with subtle nerfs though? I personally don’t think so, but that’s just me.
2nd cuman TC is comparable to flemish revolution.
It forces very technical gameplay of the opponent.
It either works and the opponent stays no chance
Or it fails and you are dead.
Nothing more to say, this kind of strategic dominative play “forcing the game to go one direction” just is terrible for rts. Rts means that both players have to some degree a strategic choice. This means in reverse all strats where one player can force the opponent to one single strategy are questioning the whole rts classification of the game.
The same was also true for the incan trush and devs made the right decision to remove it from the game. The same needs to happen with the cuman 2nd TC and flemish revolution.
Only psychos like to “set the rules” for the game. RTS enthusiasts love the different strategic approaches from BOTH players to play out against each other.
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I disagree with that assessment. There are a lot of possible all-in plays that usually ‘either work and the opponent stays no chance or it fails and you are dead’: Huang Rush, Monk Siege Rush, Fast Imp etc. I wouldn’t count the Cuman 2nd TC among them. I have played Cumans regularly on Arena and quite often, opponents either push me and delay me such that we get an even game, or if their civ is suited for that, they try to outboom me and we get an even game that way.
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First of all, these are made-up strategies by players, game doesn’t say you must always go these strategies. However, game gives 2nd TC as main eco bonus of Cumans. Additionally, It isn’t end of the game if these strategies become fail but Cumans strategy is “if you survive, you win the game due to superior villager number. Therefore, opponent has no chance other than kill Cumans early. Burgundians 50% eco bonus also problematic for same reason. It forces opponent to attack and kill Burgundians early. If you can’t Burgundians early, Burgundians kill you in early Imperial Age”.
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That is simply incorrect. Cumans are NOT the best ‘boom into Imp army’ civ. On closed maps, they actually do not have very strong options to go for in the Imperial Age and it is not like their boom is the strongest boom in the game, either.
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Isn’t it same for Goths?
Same can be said for Feudal Eagles. In fact they didn’t have this for 13 years out of 22 years of this game.
I initially didn’t like Feudal TC at all. But with time I realized this is not as bad as I thought. I think it is still a bad design but there is no way we can remove the civ identity right now.
Goths is defined by pros as problematic civ for this reason. However, you can beat Goths in late game as well. Goth late game spam is strong but it isn’t invincible. Teutons, Japanese, Aztecs Champions fight very well against Goth infantry spam. Even Indians with their non-FU Champion + Cav Archer fight very well against Goths in late game. I would remove Dark Age militia discount and I would give infantries 35% cheaper in Feudal Age to Goths. Loom is also removed. Farms around TC is 50% cheaper is their new eco bonus.
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Nah fr is bad bc it has an instant effect. Cuman 2nd tc is just a form of boom that hits earlier than other civs booms.
That’s not true imo. You have several options to play against that. You can go fc and push with pike siege to punish greed. You can go fc and have 3 tc boom. Any civ with eco bonus will have more vils than cumans by this while the cuman player will have more res and go aggressive to punish other players boom or try 2 tc fast imp. Also you can apply moderate feudal pressure with archers and get better eco efficiency. And premill drush can work too. There is a lot of strats that can work here and it depends mostly on both players execution.
There is a lot of strats that have less possible answers than cuman boom. But even in this case it’s fine imo as players have to find the best response to what your opponents do.
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It’s a noob-basher strat and needs to go, that’s all to say about it.
It’s not about the individual it’s about the game and noob-basher strats discourage newer players from playing the game.
It would be ok if the strat was only viable at high level of play, but as it is also in low elo it’s a problem.
I still don’t get why here are so many people who always “defend” their noob-bahser strats. If you win with them you basically know that you didn’t won because of you being the better player but only because of the opponent don’t knowing about it. It’s like saying “I don’t know if I can beat you, but I don’t even try to compete with you. I don’t even face you directly. If you know where I am you win, otherwise I win.”
Imo that’s chicken. Get a heart and face your opponents eye-to-eye!
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I didn’t say Cumans is great in Imperial Age. 2nd TC gives 7-8 villagers in Castle Age I don’t remember. If you don’t throw the game, 7-8 extra villagers means winning 90% of the time. Which civ can compete with Cumans really in terms of booming? Persians, Britons, Indians, Teutons?
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The closest is actually Poles.
But in 200 pop games the cuman boom is the strongest.
Besides that the cuman player can also just add a lot of military in castle the opponent can’t compete with ;).
Because of that, no other civ can compete with that.
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You can turn any strat into noob basher one. I don’t see what’s specific about cuman 2nd tc.
That’s literally what civ bonuses are like. If you don’t what they do or what units your opponent has you can lose bc of that. If you don’t know about mangudai or genoese and you try to counter with siege or cav you’ll lose bc of that. Simple as that.
No that’s simply wrong. For instance play khmer (strongest pure boom in the game) vs cumans and let both boom. It’s not even close. Khmer click up to castle age roughly when cumans have 2nd tc up. So long term there is a lot of civs with better boom. The advantage you get with cumans is having more res when you arrive to castle age. With that you can go aggressive or fast imp or whatever. But the advantage is only temporary.
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Khmer isn’t the best. First, other civs have actually a better boom that equalizes the faster start if it just goes long enough. Second Khmer don’t make buildings like the market they have to do later anyways. So even if they have a better boom than most civs they actually are behind a lot of them in terms of total economy.
In my boom calculations, khmer are at the 8th place:
What you need to know about khmer is, that they actually collect food not faster than HC villagers and also only slightly faster than wb ones. This makes their actual “boom” weaker than the ones of poles or indians for instance.
Edit: I looked into my results and figured out, that standard khmer farmers are actually collecting slower than wb ones of other civs. They are just slightly “better” because they don’t collect the food, it is immediately available.
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Oh that was your list. I remember that discussion. However there was a lot of stuff I remember disagreeing with. Anyways poles and cumans simply cant match khmer eco if going for uncontested boom bc khmer vil have +10 or so vils even before faster farmer kick in. It’s a feature of using the correct BO. And since here were talking about pure uncontested boom you can always execute your BO. If you talk going fast feudal and some military into boom there are better boom civs than khmer (chinese, vikings for instance) but the straight fc 23+0 into immediate 2 tc drop simply cant be matched by any civ. And the fact that you don’t do market doesn’t matter. You can do it later when you have 30+ vils on wood on your way to imp and that 200 res doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a question of when you spend the res. And clicking to castle with 3 vils on wood and then transition into second lumber camp is just pure efficiency from booming perspective.
Also by now I played quite a lot of poles in booming scenarios, tried out different builds and my conclusion is that while you have fast food income you won’t have a vil advantage over your opponent. You need to make quite a lot farms early on to make the bonus impactful and bc of that you won’t be able to drop tcs fast. So the bonus is actually best used for making lots of military or going faster to imp instead of going for the big boom.
well, I calculated that for most civ the fc into 4 TCs is actually stronger. It’s possible and even likely that for khmer bec the less investment and direct ups it’s better to go 3 TC booming initially. Maybe I should calculate that build for them. But I don’t think it will make such a big of a difference. Cumans also can add 2 addtional tcs basically immediately after hitting castle age. And that’s also important for the khmer boom to understand: It takes a long time for the khmer player to add the 4 th or 5th tc, as this build is extremely tight. So even if khmer can potentialy equalize the vill count at some point against cumans, cumans (with market abuse) collected so much more ressources that they than sustain vill production from more TCs once they are in castle.
But the khmer fc build has ofc also many other advantages besides being good for booming. Especially against Cumans you actually might prefer using it for forwarding.
Disagree heavily. I also don’t even know where this perception of khmer having the best boom is coming from. Only by reaching castle age faster doesn’t make your boom unbeatable. And we also don’t see it used in boomy maps. Besides Khmer having also a really strong lategame to boom into. We actually see Khmer used way more often on Maps were tech advantages are crucial.
So I don’t really see this argument holding. Cumans on the other side are chosen on the closed maps besides they have a terrible lategame right because of their insane mid-game eco powerspike.
hm, i question that. The great benefit of the folwark bonus is that you actualy don’t need as many farms to make your tcs producing at all time. Ofc it needs some practice as we aren’t used to that mechanic, but Poles can have way more TCs working with less farms, that’s their bonus. And whenever they are short of food they can get it way easier than any other civ, so they can get away with being greedy and adding new TCs before having the farms to supply it. So basically the other way around than you describe it. Poles can add the TCs first, then add the farms to support the production.
Well thing is you can’t really calculate these. The only actual way to get the stats is to actually pull off builds and then compare them. Reason is that the civs are so different in their bonuses so there is no common baseline. One baseline might be the best for civ A but supoptimal for civ B.
And actually straight 4 tc boom isn’t the most efficient way even with sicilians and bulgarians. It’s simply not possible to put 3 tcs down after fc and also get eco upgrades. I mean technically it is but then you can’t create vils from all. The most efficient 4 tc boom is to start 3 tc with putting 3rd one on stone. Once you have good amount of farmers you can make 4th.
Sure that can work too. Just used khmer boom as an example for a boom that is better than cumans.
Yes but importantly the time that your opponent has 3 tc while you’re on 2 is larger than you have 2 while opponent has 1. So you will be behind in vil numbers if you play vs a civ with good eco. And by the time you arrive in castle to make more tcs your opponent can add more as well. I’m not sure what the vil numbers are if you play with generic civ though if they go like 25+2 or so and go for straight boom.
Well besides 5 tc being quite rare its really more efficient to not buy stone for 4 th but build tc there or even mining camp. On arena you’d use the gold for monks ofc but let’s assume we play boom simulator. Here it’d probably best to either transfer off gold after 200 collected or buy food to get heavy plow asap for instance.
The reasons are fastest fc time by a large margin plus super fast farmers. Additionally the trickle effect helps a lot in not having idle time first minutes in castle age.
Khmer actually used to be a top civ on closed maps before they got bbc removed. It’s still a solid arena civ (and hideout it’s still super strong) but the reason we don’t see it as often on arena precisely is the fact that they don’t have the best late game units. Hussar raids aren’t as important on closed maps and everything they do dies to halb SO in late game. If your opponent has bbc it gets even worse. Basically the same reason why chinese isn’t a good arena civ. Khmer at least have some deathbally units though and can go faster to imp.
They aren’t the most popular civ here anymore bc but because they will have the ressource advantage in early castle age. Most of the time players stay on 2 tc get a castle at home click imp right away make some kipchak to get forward castle and then push with trebs. If you can pull that off it’s really hard to stop. But they don’t have the best late game indeed. Also their trush into second strat is really good. It usually forces opponent into akward eco and make couple of mangos before boom while you can boom happily behind and get safe to imp.
I toyed around quite a lot with the civ on arena lately and my impression is that if you make less farms than usual the effect isn’t that large. Also usually you need to put second folkward down before 2nd tc and that delays your boom quite a bit. Don’t get me wrong it’s still a good boom but I find them much better with making lots of military and booming moderately behind. I didn’t exhaust all the options though. That might be due to the fact that going for imp with pure boom sounds like suicide army wise vs a lot of civs so I usually try to get forward castle with light cav and then fast imp arb or so.
The problematic with this is, you can’t play farming simulator with 39 civs without getting crazy. Cause you are not perfect and would need absurd amount of time planning optimized builds and then executing a perfect boom also afterwards. Maybe you are right that it can’t be calculated perfectly, but with good enough maths behind I think you can get quite good results.
I know it’s not perfect but at least I tried to make it as good as I can. And as I use the same schematics for all civs and developed them without taking any of the civ bonusses into account my Results also aren’t biased. Ofc I can never be sure if my approach benefits certain types of bonusses more than others, but if it does, it’s not intentional. To compensate for that I added the orange bars as an estimate how build adjustments using the civ bonusses could aproximately improve the boom. The khmer have a quite long yellow bar that can bring them to basically the same level as Poles and Indians. So maybe these civs don’t give each other as much when it comes to optimised builds.
Also there are a lot of civs that have very flexible eco bonusses like mayans or aztecs but can’t shine in a pure booming competition, whilst civs like poles ore indians have bonusses that basically only really shine in booming scenarios. Khmer have a good boom, but their eco is also very flexible in comparison to these booming civs.
Well it is if you stay 2 vills longer in dark age ;). I know it’s not popular and the benefit is also not that big (the optimal amount for added TCs I calculated was actual 2.7, so it’s actually in between 2 and 3. And getting faster to castle is just more flexible. So it’s just natural we usually don’t see that kind of play, if it’s not that much stronger but brings a lot of risks with it.
That depends on the market abuse. That’s also what I see on a lot of Cuman plays, that they stay too long in feudal because they don’t use the market. But that is crucial, ofc if you allow the opponent to stay longer on 3 tcs advantage than you have 2 tc advantage you win basically nothing. But cumans have such a strong eco in feudal that they can justify to lose some efficiency by using the market to buy aging up. If you add like 20+ farms in feudal to click up to castle you lose so much time. And you don’t even need it. 12 farms are enough to sustain 2 tc production and in my attempt with the cumans I actually only added 8 feudal farms (this is a bit tight though).
Totally agree there, and this is actually included in my calculation. Khmer farmers are great, which ofc help in that boom situation. But in a full boom situation other civs actually have stronger bonusses.
Well actually they have. They have a really strong lategame comp, but even arena often just doesn’t give them enough time to pull that off. And as you said, not having bbc hurts heavily on that map.
Totally agree there. As cumans don’t have the best arena lategame anyways, their best timing window is right after hitting castle. This is also when their eco advantage is the biggest. And I think nobody will question that when cumans get away with the 2nd tc they have that timing where no other civ can compete with their eco. As cumans don’t have any bonus to the actual castle age boom they only fall of relatively in the following. So I would always expect a 2nd tc castle all in from cumans on arena. And the best answer to this is probably monk + siege defence and 3 TC boom behind. Even if they drop castles on you they have a limited time window to work with and you can slow down the push enough to set up for your stronger lategame. IMO the 2tc play of cumans in arena is actually less “dangerous” than on open maps as cumans have very limited arena tools. You can get the relics almost uncontested and actually work towards the strengths of your civ while defending. But the stats show that a lot of players seem to have problems with that all-in strat. Which, I must admit, is probably also hard to counter if you don’t practice monk/siege defence.
Opposite to that on open maps it’s actually you that has to pressure the cumans as you can’t allow them that early castle powerspike. Then they just steppe-lancer spam you to death. And that’s what I regard as problematic.
I like all of these, especially #5 (slightly different): “Cuman Mercenaries overhaul: Team can create kiphacks in castles. You receive 10? gold each time allies create kipchack.” I think this is a more historically accurate form of “mercenaries”, and the Cumans need a proper economy boost. (maybe extra TC is just above my skill level lol)
Alternatively I would suggest replacing Steppe Husbandry with a tech called Cuman Tower (a nickname for the historical nomadic Cuman village) It could do something like max population or increase everyone’s movement speed.
Another civ bonus could be houses cost -50%.
Or, Steppe Lancers could generate gold the way Keshiks do (or now Viking infantry).