I think %10 extra speed is very good for 150 food. If it is ok cumans has a bonus worth only 75 food 11.
What? By Imperial their bonus has an extra 5%. It scales, 5% per age, starting in Feudal, not 5% for all ages.
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The Cumans speed bonuse is good, in castle age it makes Cuman Knights quite good vs mounted ranged units as is possible to outrun them, and in Imperial Age Cuman Paladins can even outrun Cav Archers.
Yes but husbandry give %10, cumans has %15 for totaly.
I know, I wonder what it would be like if they actually had husbandry as well. Just way too fast for anything to compute. 
but you understand that they get it for free, so the total bonus is 225 food worth, and on top they have a 5% speed bonus which cant received from any other way than their unique civ-bonus?
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I mean husbandry is so cheap. %5 bonus is good but it cost only 75 food.
Well most upgrades are cheap but powerful, e.g. wood upgrade (100F 50W for insane values!!!), whellbarrow, attack upgrades, in the sense that 150F is not “a few” 11
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So by your logic shouldnt thr cuman bonus br worth 225 food then? Since thry dont havr to pay for husbandry at all?5% is only 75 food true but they also dont pay for thr other 10% either.
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It was the case in the first month of DE. They had a flat 10% from feudal age so it was basically free husbandry and after that it was ferraris for 150f. You can see why it got nerfed.
Cuman stables and ranges cost -75 wood. This is a very good bonus, which adds up to the free buffed husbandry.
I think you underestimate the cost of 150 food early in the Castle age and the time it takes to research from a stable, time that could be used to pump out knights when it matters quite a bit.
Also, the Cuman bonus is huge seeing as it scales with age. They get something better than Husbandry and for free… the speed of their cavalry coupled with being able to make super cheap stables and their feudal economic bonuses means you can punch through with overwhelming mobility quite early in the game.
It’s also of course better than Husbandry in the imperial age, being a 15% boost in speed (rather than only 10%).
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Ngl hes right fr, I don’t get why they changed it to 5-5-5 instead of flat 10 + having husbandry on top.
Celts get a flat 15%.
With the current Cuman winrate and the way the devs have been dealing away with incremental military bonuses: look at Vikings HP, Japanese Attack Rate, Franks HP, etc, I think definitely an argument can be made that they should get the flat 10% + husbandry back.
The Celtic speed bonus is fine because infantry are naturally slow and it allows Champions & Halberdiers to catch up with not just opposing cavalry, but also their own Woad Raiders.
The Cuman speed bonus is strong because cavalry are already fast. If Cumans should get Husbandry, then Celts should get Squires.
I mean, if we are going like that, then I wouldn’t mind the Celt bonus to be 10/20/30% speed, and the Cuman bonus to be 5/15/25% or something, and they don’t get Squires or Husbandry respectively.
But then again, if I was making bonuses, Ethiopians wouldn’t get Thumb Ring and their archers would fire 17/33/50% faster for example, so I don’t know how relevant my opinion is.
On the Celts issue though, they have cute “works” like that- 15% faster woodchopping, but no final wood upgrade- ends up only being 5% faster. 15% faster infantry, but no squires, so it ends up only 5% faster. It’s a part of their underlying design I’m pretty sure.
I guess it just depends on the civ.
I appreciate the Celtic bonus, because I’m biased toward infantry the Cumans don’t really NEED extra speed. I like to imagine their horses being 5% faster than typical Husbandry cavalry as a little boost that helps put the focus on Cumans as a cavalry civilization. I think it not being incremental for Celts gives people a good reason to field MAA beyond the initial rush, while with Cumans and other Scout civs, you can already do that because Scout Cavalry are good. Hopefully that makes sense.
I’m also one of those who really likes the change made to Viking infantry HP, because the boost wasn’t really enough to make them strong in the early ages and it helps line them up with Franks & Viets.
I wouldn’t be necessarily opposed should Cumans’ speed bonus be buffed, but I’d err on the side of caution. Cumans have arguably the best Feudal of all civs, and the 5% speed to Scouts helps anchor that, then they become as fast as a Formula 1 in Imperial.
I think they had the opinioin that +10 % in feudal was too strong, the same for +20 % in castle, so they decidded to make it 5/10/15.
5% in feudal isn’t that bad though actually, cause it allows cumans to run away from all disadvatageuos fights.
I think this art of bonus kinda hard to balance, cause small speed differences matter the most in very high level matches, but almost nothing in low level. I think we shouldn’t bother too much here with that bonus.
Imo the best changes for cumans would be still: Remove 2nd TC. Make hunt last 25-50 % longer. Remove cuman mercenaries, but give them “Field Engenieers”, what replaces ram Gold cost with Wood. Remove Siege Ram. Possibly als a change to steppe husbandry as it now is basically redundand with the cheaper stables.
That’s too much of an overhaul that completely invalidates the Cumans’ identity. I do however support the change to Cuman Mercenaries, because one-off techs like that do not fit with AoE II, and it’s very situational anyway.
Steppe Husbandry is okay and is in fact very strong when the match transitions into trash wars - it’s just that Cumans don’t have enough of a reason to make Cavalry Archers and that Steppe Lancers are in desperate need of a buff.
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But we also see quite often that the cuman 2nd tc is often way too strong in closed maps, especially in closed map TGs when cumans have this insane midgame knight spam that overruns all opponent armies at this time.
On more open maps it isn’t that powerful, but still an extremely volatile strat. The investment and benefit is jus too high for this stage in the game. Damn even Burgundians eco bonus is sometimes already very abnoxious to deal with, besides the investment and benefit is way below the cuman 2nd tc. AOE2 is just not a game like aoe4 that is designed around strong unique bonusses. Instead there is basically the core game and the civs should only add some unique “flavour” to that. The 2nd TC is just too much , especially as it restricts the viable strategic options of the opponent too harshly imo.
Imo aoe2 is a strategy game which means that both players should have a wast variety of strategic options and no single player can force the game through a strategic bottleneck with one decision. Basically saying “we play my game now” - even if it is “balanced” in a sense if you know the tactical details how to deal with it you can beat it most of the time (actually important to note, you can’t beat it every time even at the highest level).
That’s not true anymore. Actually the best way to use your eco advantage as cumans in an open map with the 2nd tc is a steppe lancer spam. It’s basically impossible to stop.
But ofc you need to get away with the greed first.
A thing that Cumans need buffed is just the Kipchak in Imperial, they fall to hard there, reduce the ROF to 2.0 and let them affected by Steppe Husbandry, that’s it.