Is Portuguese just stronger italians now? can we buff them a little as well?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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so portuguese and italians always were kinda similar in being a archer-gunpowder oriented civs with great water play and good cav, they both have wide tech tree, and similar way of be played and they used to have the same “good on water meh on everywhere else” theme

as for now, portuguese feels like just plain better italians. i do not think portuguese are OP by any means, if not maybe for some cheesy arena tactics that can be fixed in the next patch, but in general they have been improved in a massive way by just a few simple change, and i would like something similar to italian, since they are so similar.

consider portuguese have FU cav just like italians, missing hussar but having 20% gold cheaper knights, they have cheaper archer from the get go, so they already are a better archer civs than italians, and cheaper champs as well if needed. they have strong organ guns, and they have the same cheaper BBC than italians but with siege engeeneer…also feitorias, flexible eco bonus,faster techs, and all other goodies that make them simply plain better both on water and on land atm

Onlu also described pretty well the italians state atm and i think there is room for a buff.

some ideas by coping the last portuguese update would be move a bonus to a team bonus, like the 50% trade cart discount, maybe lowering it and making it affect all teams and then freeing place for a new imperial age UT that maybe makes condos available to all team and also make them a bit stronger for italians or in general as they are kinda meh

they could also have -100 wood on monastery to reflect their religious theme (the papal state)

or a feudal buff for archers (armor or speed are the only thing remaining looking at other bonuses for archer civs)

they could get SE tech
elitè geno shuld be changed completely since atm is wasted res, either making it much cheaper or give them a nice boost

not all of those thing at the same time obviously, but egenrally speaking, something can be done to them to make them more competitive and more interesting EVEN at the expens of a nerf on water if needed

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-100 W Monasteries is what made Bohemians incredibly broken on closed maps, and for a civ with cheaper Age Up and University tech would be, and that isn’t even a buff for the map where are weak (open ones).

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The Italians can go Fast Imperial, use Condottiero and cheap Fast Fire Ship upgrade, and are relatively heavy on archers and navies.

The Portuguese are much more heavy on gunpowder (even though they may have stronger bonuses for the archers than the Italians), with using strong UU in the Castle Age and Feitoria on closed maps and Islands.

For me, there are still differences.

We can just make Silk Road become a team effect. But whether it is UT or bonus, it is useless for 1v1.
I have suggested renaming Silk Road “Merchant Republics” and making it have the effect of not only giving 50% off trade units for each player in the team, but also giving each player in the team a Merchant. The Merchant would be able to generate 1 gold every 4 seconds, so the player should protect it like protecting the King.

Putting Condottiero behind UT feels like a bad design. This completely loses its advantage of being a decent infantry that can be used once hitting the Imperial Age.

No problem as long as it could be balanced.

Buffing archers themselves will still benefit the late game too.

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well archers are still slightly better for Italians, due to Pavise and also their Gunpowder is cheaper. Italians also get Squires.

I agree the overlaps are numerous but so it goes with archer civs often, you have an overlap with Byzantines, Italians, Vikings also.

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Well yes linda similar does not mean same, but they still were similar in many things and were also rated similar in most Maps before the portugese buff.

Yes buff to Archer would still result in a buff in the late game, but a buff like +1 MA would be almost irrelevant in late game while being decent in feudal Age for example

Also is not like Italians late game is the best in the game. Portugese for example are better in that regard with organ guns, cheaper BBC with SE, cheaper FU cav and arbs, halbs, and feitorias. Of course Italians are not bad there, but they are not even S tier level or something

Yeah i agree on condos but making a Imperial UT that gives a merchant feels like bad idea as well since It would start to pay off very late and would mean that it’s basically a one time tech since It can be killed.

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It’s not just the overlaps, is the fact that they overlaps AND portugese are simply better or equal at everything.

Even for Archers italians bonuses kicks in late castle Age (pavise and cheaper ballistic), while portugese get cheaper archers which is simply more effective as It kick in earlier and is a flexible bonus in saves res.

And portugese get cheaper gunpowder as well, just in the Gold part, which happens to be the part that matters in Imperial Age when guns starts to matter

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So far it is enough to be pretty better than the current one and the one locking Condottiero.
Probably You can allow the Merchant generate more gold to make it better in 1v1, but that has to consider the team game. There would be 4 Merchants in a team.

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Italians are only similar to Portuguese if you don’t optimize around what makes them strong: Genoese xbow compositions. Sure the elite genoese xbow could use a small buff but that’s not really a big dealbreaker in terms of optimizing Italians play prior to mid-imp.

Honestly I think the problem is players grossly overestimate the cost of a castle. I mean between the tower-like area denial and 20 pop space the net cost of a castle is closer to 500 resources vs the 750 of mining camp + stone mining. Which is still a lot but given the fact that Genoese don’t require farms and how much stronger they are than xbow vs cavalry it’s very manageable and definitely a competitive trade-off vs cavalry or cavalry archers.

Not to mention Condottiero are very nice units to have on Arena.

One of the problems with the massive number of civs is that optimizing play for civs like Italians takes way more effort than it’s worth for many players. If you’re a random civ player that get’s Italians once a month you’re not going to try and optimize around Genoese xbow + skirm or genoese xbow + xbow or whatever. You’re going to play straight archers or something similar to what a bunch of other civs do. But this has little to do with the civ design and more to do with optimizing total wins over a random civ distribution. A well-executed but not-optimal strategy is still often better than a poorly executed optimal strategy.

You can see the same thing with:

  • Saracens in that most players don’t learn to abuse the market optimally or mix Mamelukes with Camels
  • Celts in that many players don’t learn to “Hoang”
  • Spanish in that many players don’t learn the missionary pros/cons especially vs cavalry.
  • Etc.

So no Portuguese are not just stronger Italians now. Yes you can buff the elite genoese or do something like transfer the free stone mining from Bohemians to Italians. The phenomenon you’re observing is much more a function of real-life constraints than civ design.

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Giving SE seems a buff to close map/late game where Italians is fine. I would rather prefer to give halbs as buffing GC is hard to balance.

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Condos are actually a good unit if you use them correctly. But yeah that imp UT needs to change for sure.

The second point is kinda true but bohemians was op because of several factors playing togethere here which don’t apply to italians. Besides cheap monasteries mostly gold and stone mining but also strong pikes and castle age chemistry and cheap blacksmith all of which just calls for going very early to castle age to make triple monastery forward castle and market abuse fast imp.

Also on arabia I think Italians are pretty solid vs archer civs but can struggle vs cav civs midgame (although late game it might be the other way around) so having cheap monasteries would be a buff as you can get your boom going faster or make more army when defending vs knights. Not nearly as impactful as the portuguese berry bonus ofc.

Well late game can be hard to judge because it usually depends on civ matchups and compositions. For instance magyars, mongols and turks are among the contenders for best late game civs but italians rekts all of their units hard while vs something like britons or ethiopians italians can struggle if they can’t use mobility advantage with hussar. But generally I prefer italian lategame over portuguese. Organ guns really are only good in one tc pushes and italians have hussar (which is superior to cheaper cavalier imo), a bit better arbs, access to genoese and cheaper bbc.

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I dont get this argumentation. Why should Italians be buffed just because Portuguese got needlessly buffed and made the absolutely strongest civ if measured over all relevant settings. In fact you mentioned that in your view the reason you want Italians buffed is the circumstance that they so similiar that you directly see that one is way worse than the other. But again, that is due to the overbuff of Portuguese. And I also advocate to just make the two civs more different to resolve the issue.

Portuguese are not a research civ to begin with. They should be an exploration civ that wants to unveil every piece of the map and build up trading outposts…

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Genoese are bottlenecked by castles, and are the only good counter to cav the italians have (no halbs, no camels). we see the same situations with other civs, like saraces also have a Wide tech tree, and they have very good mamelukes, but they are to slow to get going, and they also have other cav counters, unlike italians

On one hand, genoese are good, but they also are only good againts cav, they suck againts anithing ranged by having 1 less range. And they are not even worth ti upgrade to elite atm since it’s basically a joke upgrade for the cost

You can’t really mix then well with other ranged units because of their lower range, so even that is not really feasible.

Not saying they are bad, just that they are a one trick pony, and not really a all-around powerful unit like that makes investibg into many castles worth like mamelukes

Also, if you can optimize italians, you can also optimize any other civs, just much easily or with better results, which is why italians never gets picked in tournaments outside water, and lately we saw other civs like portugese or dravidians picked above then while some (portugese) are now even much stronger on land

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Portugese was an example because the two civs have similar focuses. Wide tech trees, water focus, FU archers, FU cav, gunpowder identity, and so on. They were rated similar both in Land and water maps, and now portugese are simply much stronger everywhere. Even when their Bush bonus will be nerfed, they would still be much stronger, because in reality they always has been, but people were sleeping on them

But it’s not only portugese, you can see saracens for example, which also has a wide tech, but features a stronger military, and are arguably a better Archer civs than italians until late castle age, and much better at countering cav despite lacking genoese

Point is italians is a below average civ with very little going for them, and any pros or close to that(from Hera to viper to Ornlu) always rate italians as if they lack something to be playable or solid. They are “meh, decent” but no one wants to play a meh civ in a game where you play to win

There are worse civs? Of course there are. This does not change the fact that atm italians also could use some help

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I dont think Portuguese is that problematic.

But I agree with this point. Outpost bonus fit more its identity.

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Give the wall discount to either Spainish or Italians instead of mayans.

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Think about this statement. If youre using genoese xbow it means youre primarily trying to kill melee units or cavalry archers which also have 1 less range. So why would you care about the range difference?

Theyre also very good when paired with things like skirmishers to stand behind them and snipe poorly upgraded cavalry usually used to harass skirms while the skirms do their thing against archers.

You dont need an army of Genoese if you learn how to mix them which also means you dont need too many castles. Same as mamelukes.

Your comment is much more pattern-matching than problem solving. As heuristics those statements are all good. But in terms of really diving into the nuts and bolts and figuring out how to extract the most from the civ they have their limits.

Yes this is exactly my point. But at the same time you cannot say italians are bad or can only be played a certain way until you do the optimization. Since pros have very high opportunity costs for optimizing the play of one civ due to the nature of tournaments this also means you have to be wary when inferring things from their games.

No professional in any discipline is going to spend time doing what amounts to unpaid research if the best thing they get out of it is a different way to achieve the same results at the same cost.

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It is much easier to mass arbalest so you can easily have massed arbalest but not GC. He wants to mix GC into massed arbalest. But 1 less range makes micro both unit not easy.

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Yes, but then make the two civs more different and nerf Portuguese.

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But 1 less range is all that keeps gc from being basically the same as arb against all units except cav

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Is there a, website where we can see winrates with the current patch updates?

Pls share it with me, I want to see ports performance