Well, considering that a civ is considered balanced in the range between 45% and 55%, being put of just 0.31 for a new released civ it’s not bad.
Also, such data it’s still not much reliable, we need more time for getting both a better quantitative and qualitative data, as we need more games to have representing population, and also we need to get more time to figure out how to play and play against.
They probably are. Since they just got added to ranked, people probably don’t know how to play against them, so that’s why they’re #1. Let things settle down for a month or two, and then we’ll see where they are.
Romans bonus is basically Malians+Teutons until Imperial Age. Of course that can not be free. Hence you need to pay for the armor tech. Comparing with Malay comes down to early blacksmith vs saving early blacksmith imo. Malay needs to pay 100 food for 2 villagers, and Romans need to pay 100 food for scale mail armor. In the end Romans will have better militia/MAA but Malay will have better eco.
Slavs TB helps them to save some wood. I don’t think 5% faster construction speed saves that much.
Anyway, Romans bonus is more flexible. And they are just 5% behind Slavs, unlike other civs who are 10% behind. So Romans can just put 1 extra farm over Slavs and make things equal. While being ahead in other resources.
For example, 20 Slavs farmer = 22 Generic Farmers = 21 Romans Farmers. Considering you’ll have 40-45 total villagers at the moment, Romans will still be ahead by 1 villagers equivalent of eco over Slavs which is more than enough to compensate the extra 60 wood invested in farm. However, including Slavs TB of saving around 100 wood would make the comparison complex.
I like that you can see win rate vs time lengh…
Romans are great thanks to their man at arms, and have a little boost in castle age thanks to their scorpion
And at 1900+ they ran out of steam in Imperial
I am surprised by the high wr on all elos, but seems like they now have a 47% wr on 1900+ tho.
Nonetheless, I think instead of numbers, I would like to hear more about how ppl play & play against it.
At high wr’s, I would expect players to need to figure out how to use their bonuses to their greatest extent before they can become effective, so I would expect it to take a little bit longer for things to settle down.
Especially since this civilization utilizes not one, but two relatively unused effects, in the area effect bonus, and mass scorpions.
Its a very good and flexible bonus. Most civs get some one-time powerspike of extra resources after or before advancing, discounted building or tech, 10-15% faster collection of 1 resource. Whereas this is 5% of everything. Shepherds, foragers, hunters, wood, gold everything. Its about 70-80 resource advantage when you click up to feudal, 200-250 resource advantage while going upto castle age. Quite similar to most of the top tier civs like Franks, the nerfed Malians. Only a few like Chinese, Mayans, Vikings are significantly better than this.
This is just situational. Like every other infantry bonus in the game, treat it as something to be used in the imperial age. Halbs can take an extra hit fighting paladin, heavy camel, hussars. The legionaries are stronger in the presence of a couple of castle units.
It just has a lot of options. You can play them like Franks/Berbers but also like Burgundians/Lithuanians castle drop into uu. In some niche settings you can also go for maa+ skirms+ towers into longswords-scorps.
galley line +1 attack should be super strong. 5% faster wood collection coupled with that should be an amazing bonus for water. Might be an average civ on closed maps
Khmer eco can be better than Romans if you skip barracks otherwise Khmer bonus is like 8% faster farming on the first 10-12 farms that are laid close to tc and mill. The bonus is stronger only after 12 farms.
Roman eco is definitely better than Slavs 100%. Slav bonus starts from feudal age and is only on farms while Romans start before that. Unless its a situation where players have to spam man-at-arms, Slav eco should be much worse than Romans.
This might actually have to do with skipping barracks. And it could also be because of trying to do man-at-arms to use that bonus with Romans which is a very big investment.
If you raise this question - the only civs a 2k+ player like yourself can play on Arabia are Chinese, Mayans, Portugese, Khmer. They have the best bonuses numerically throughout the game to play meta.
I mean lets not continue discussing the bonuses on paper - are there any actual gameplay / strategies that works well with Roman?
To me I prefer at least 10+ civs over Roman if I have to pick for tournament personally.
Most their pro gameplay revolves on feudal Maa agression like this Daut’s game. But the civ is too new, when the dust is settled I think we are gonna see some wierd defenses to this push
Thats normal, I prefer at least 10+ civs over Aztecs, but that does not mean that they are a bad civ
My point is they might not be the best but they’re not terrible. If you’re thinking just from tournament perspective, you can use them on water maps, hybrid maps, maps like fish n fish after some of the best civs are banned. On pure land maps if you prefer playing cavalry-crossbow but Chinese, Malians, Khmer, Portugese are banned you can pick Romans as one of your civs.
maa-towers, maa-skirms, regular scouts/archers into cavalry meta with some scorps, castle drop uu full castle age, xbows with cheaper, lower min range scorps+ballistics and monks
Yea “terrible” is probably a bad word - there are much worse civs that I dont want to touch (Persians I am looking at you).
I would say they are medicore to me - not too bad, not too good, and that differed from my expectations 
I thought Romans were almost like initial-Gurjaras level
Those are valid strategies but I think most of them does not work as I mentioned in the post - the only bonus I know how to use is the 5% bonus.
In fact, I think pike+ram push are the most viable strategy.
Does those farming bonuses really help?
Yes that explains your disappointment. But I think if they did make Romans a bit more powerful everyone will end up complaining they are OP and they would get 4-5 nerfs and end up even worse than where they currently are atm.
The infantry bonuses being a joke is valid for Arabia meta. But you were discussing about tournament picks. There are many maps in tournaments where those strategies can work. Obviously Japanese will be a better civ to do those strategies but what if Japanese are banned. If its a one map tournament like Kotd, you anyways have to pick a lot of mid-tier civs after 6 or 8 bans. Scout/archer into Knight/xbow meta play with Romans are definitely not bad against mid-tier civs.
I thik so far Romans showcase an important Issue with the current infantry design:
With being complete “stat monkster” Infantry can very easily start to dominate at lower levels whilst it is still basically unusable at higher levels in the midgame, cause it doesn’t offer any good utility to damage the opponent eco.
And Romans showcase this very well as they are atm the best civ in low elo but fall down heavily at high elo.
Devs buff ram in Castle age so that infantry can jump in and out from ram to increase infantry movement speed and block arrow, which I think only high elo players are able to pull out this micro. Let’s wait one or two weeks and see some new build like this actually works or not among high elo
Well the data on arabia does not say so…
They are 50% win early game so it’s not unusable in +1900 by any means
They also have many oprtions in mid game, including LS and scorps…
The real question for my is why they fall so hard in longer games… their infantry is no longer special in Imperial, they also face HC and cannons that would oblitarate ther legios and scorpions… but still I feel the fall pretty hard
Yea terrible is not a good word, just not as good as I thought. The correct word probably is medicore.
I have no experience / evidence, but I think Romans would be good (A tier) in hybrid maps (as I mentioned, I dont know how they perform in water maps, hybrid included) and suck (C tier) at other special maps.
I’ve said “Infantry” not “Romans”…
Prob cause people are still testing them out and don’t care so much about long jeopardy?
Also with the low amount of games that goes super long I actually have my doubts if this last winning ration stamp will ever be reliable.
The reason why Romans have a negative winrat is mostly due to the little dip in the midgame not the lategame. And that’s also representing the timespan I spoke about where I know Infantry isn’t viable. Even Romans can’t make it work to reliable success.
And if you don’t believe me, MbL basicallly said the same in his Tier Video where he placed Romans in B Tier.
Nevertheless Romans can still make most early builds basically 1 VIll ahead of most other civs. That’s good enough for a very solid early opening with your unit of choice. Their Feudal Eco is quite strong aswell. Only in the midgame they have the issue that they have basically no Bonus to any of the “Power Units”
That’s also imo the main Reason Romans kinda suck in TGs. You basically have to play them as Pocket, but do you have time to go for Centurions? Hardly. so it’s basically just one of these Knight civs that don’t get a real bonus for it and no Paladin.
