It also has to be proved superior by battle.
We are theory crafting and there are just way too many unknowns.
I personally experimented and found it lackluster compared to Slavs, that means
either, or both
Therefore, I am asking if only me find the bonus not as good as it is written, and I am really looking for some eye opener showing how good the bonus is.
But romans donât need the archery range, so you have to spend on an entire building to keep up, but by that time romans can get skirms to support their maaâŠ
Malays are great , but they canât pull the same offensive with maa (of course they have other options and they donât need to go all-in)⊠you still get 2dmg with malays vs 1dmg of the roman, I think is fair that roman have to pay to get basically twice the resistence vs archers⊠sry, twice the MALAY resistance vs archers
MAA without archer dies to quick wall.
You mention that it takes vills to repair walls, but meanwhile enemy archer (with +1 attack) are in a safe spot busy shooting your MAA, while your MAA cannot even reach archer, or vills, or anything.
If you can get through, japanese MAAs can definitely do better at destroying things and killing vills.
(You just cannot assume enemy wont have +1 while your MAA attack walls. It is unrealistic)
In my opinion, the strength of Romans and their eco is the primary question implied by the thread. How Roman eco compares to the Slav bonus is a single reference point that feeds into the larger question of how good Romans are, and how good their eco bonus is. OP mentioned getting worse Castle times with Romans than with Slavs, if Iâm reading that correctly (under what I assume were comparable builds). Deciding whether Roman or Slav eco is theoretically better under certain circumstances doesnât solve the problem of optimal BOs/defining the meta for Romans, which will ultimately be needed to decide how strong they are. Then again, thereâs always the possibility that something is bugged, although I donât think this is likely (and at least in AGE everything appears to be in order).
Getting flashback of âGurjaras is weak and Shirvamsha needs a buffâ one day after DOI release. I donât know whether Romans are release Gurjaras level OP or release Bengalis level UP, all I know it is too early to jump into conclusion.
It is definitely an early conclusion and I wont be surprised if I am wrong at all.
Would be great if someone else find success on Romans
You know, with 43 civs, it is just inevitable. I always felt like Persians became bad for this same reason. Lithuanians and Berbers are just better. Similarly Sicilians lack an identity as they are just a slower Teuton unless you play Arbalester. But then, why are you playing Sicilians?
You still need 7. Generic civ needs 8.
And all but Romans are Archer civs on practice as âInfantryâ civ donât exist in reality. 11
Thatâs the spirit.
Itâs never complete until someone links to a MikeEmpires video of Elite Centurions vs. Turkish Skirmishers (Equal Resources) and decides that Romans are in the magical tier above S.
But seriously, Romans have already been out for a little while, and the only changes made in bringing them into ranked were to water play, so it shouldnât even be possible to be as wrong about them as people were about the DOI civs. They strike me as nowhere near the two extremes mentioned (no critical units missing, like Bengalis, no major early eco bump or clearly OP UUs like Gurjaras). Again, kind of suggestive of Dravidians in terms of buffed off-meta units, but with a usable stable and less of a front-loaded eco. The Centurion/Legionary combo looks very strong (and IMO can make them pretty strong in closed map lategame where lots of people are predicting theyâll âfall offâ hard), but its multi-ingredient composition/expense mean that itâll be far from OP in open maps.
Anyway, I could be out to lunch, but Romans seem about like an average cav and strong naval civ with some potential for a decent M@A rush. Maybe the infantry/scorp thing will be a terror at lower elos, IDK.
German and Slavs try but they all fail
I actuallly find Roman eco quite smooth.
I thought a bit how to use it best. And itâs actually wuite similar in effect to Franks or Burmese where you donât have to make one of the early eco upgrades.
So I just skip Horsecollar adn instead add more farms earlier. This allows for quite fast Castle age timings with lower military investment in feudal.
Also if you really push it you can make a 18 pop scrush quite comfortably, which synergizes quite well with the lower eco investment mentioned above.
What would possibly be cool if Romans had 10 % faster building instead of 5 % then you could start with building 3 houses instead of 2 similar to spanish.
It is definitely an early conclusion and I wont be surprised if I am wrong at all.
Would be great if someone else find success on Romans
According to AoEPulse the Romans have 55.31% win rate after 1338 games so far on the 7 maps currently in the 1v1 pool:
Maybe we have to think about what to nerf about the Romans. I would say maybe remove the charge attack from the Knight line.
The way I see it, early roman MAA rush are done by delaying double but axe in feudal, so you have the food and wood saved to ease a bit the timing.
This is a super high risk high reward strategy, as wit the savings from the double bit axe you can more easily afford blacksmith and armor, and follow up with skirms. The idea is that with the 5% bonus applying to lumberjacks too, you arenât that far behind a civ with the first wood tech.
Of course if you donât deal damage with the rush, the enemy will have a way better eco than you, you the safest option is to go FC into knights, which is still an option.
Iâm thinking about trying double barracks all-in MAA into towers. Then transition into Longswords + scorps if they survive Feudal pressure.
I agree tho in general I think this has been improving slowly. Since the devs took their foot off the gas in regards to adding civs, I think theyâve add more time to focus on the older civs.
Iâm actually for my own enjoyment putting together a spreadsheet of civs and whatâs changed with them in 2023, and thereâs a dozen or so civs that I feel have been meaningfully improved (not necessarily buffed, but improved, made more distinctive, better designed, balanced, etc).
Still a long way to go, and Romans are probably in need of a good deal of iterating, but yeah overall Iâm optimistic at this point in time.
Yep. And it is good that civ designers understood that. All naval civs except Berbers (Which is a joke naval civ) and Romans have FU archer line (Vikings not anymore but used to be for a long time and now better than FU). Two civs - Italians and Koreans even have bonus.
The answer is really debatable. But a lot of players think Japanese is best because they can actually overcome one of the biggest weakness of MAA, walls.
I never thought the idea of MAA is to actually engage in battle. They literally have no play in battle in Feudal Age, even against Eagle as Eagle takes too long to train Feudal and your archer/scout are way better. The main role of MAA is to break through walls, kill some villagers if possible, if not harass as much as you can by taking down 1 or 2 drop off buildings. Better attack and number are often better than toughness (HP, armor) in this case. That being said Vikings, Malians, Malay and now Romans, having higher survival rate is also helpful to take more archer shot while you are still hitting a mill/lumbercamp.
Indeed. If Bulgarians had a dark age bonus, they would have the best MAA hands down as well as one of the strongest Arabia civ.
Good thing I have stopped MikeEmpires for a while now. Didnât watch that.
And thatâs #1 overall W/R. And here I thought they would be balanced. 
He seems to be engaging pretty well. It doesnât seem to matter if you can actually make contact if you can make them run away all the way across the map. Sooner or later they need to stop and fight.
I never thought the idea of MAA is to actually engage in battle. They literally have no play in battle in Feudal Age, even against Eagle as Eagle takes too long to train Feudal and your archer/scout are way better.
I think there is more than 1 idea for military units in AoE2. There are 5 military units in feudal age and MAA beat 3 of the others. Archers only beat 2. Scouts only beat 2. Skirmishers only beat 2. And Spearmen only beat 1.
I think this may drop a point or two with more games and familiarity with the civ, and possibly counterpicking of stronger infantry civs. I still think a couple aspects of the civ are overtuned (scorps and centurion aura), but not necessarily OP. So I guess weâre underestimating them a bit, ### IIRC Gurjaras and some other civs had much higher WR on release. But hey, if this pushes an infantry meta more than Gambesons did, Iâm here for it.
This might be because people donât know what to do with them. I can already imagine mid elo cav players freaking out after seeing these strange infantry units in the field.
In any case, Iâd rather just wait for a couple of months to see where the numbers go, unless their win rate crosses 56-58%. Since Romans are brand new, theyâll need a little while for turning anyway.
To be fair, it was not a popular dlc and most ppl donât know their tech tree a get confused when they get rushed with maa with +2