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

they could give Italian +1 melee armor per age for foot archer (Starting in castle age) and give them elite upgrade for condotierro.

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yea ports winrates looks very high now.
filtering all eolo, 0-1500 or 1500-3000 all gives very similiar results. always in the top 5 when checking all maps
best arena civ.
great water civ
49% average arabia civ

we see it in tournamets all the time too picked now since flexible on all kinds of maps.

as a ports main player, i can see the argument for nerfs.

but one should also note that hindustani and franks are still overally even better in the statistics. and they havent received nerfs. no civ is rly above 55% winrate thought hindustani are close.

anyway interesting time to play portugese

Still below Turks and Poles.
That site also shows Bengalis and Bohemians around 59% WR for 1600-300 ELO (the range where people uses civ bonuses at its max) but the pickrate is much more balanced compared to the rest.

I was filtering for all elo. I don’t share your opinion that pickrate is a relevant stat for balance. I see it more as a if the civ is fun to play multiplied with winrate (strong civs are popular). Maybe I misunderstood you

There usually is a correlation between playrate and winrate. And I don’t (only) mean good civs are poular but (also) the other way around: The more a civ is played the higher the winrate. Because the chance that civ is picked here is higher as opposed to randomed into. And people having plans in mind leads to better performance on average. That especially counts for stuff like portuguese on arena as it diverges from meta play a bit.

Good point, but hard to tell how big of an effect. We would need to have data for ransomed matches and data for picked civs. Then we could estimate the effect by comparing winrates of the two data sets

Or just make Pavise civ bonus and Pavise replaced by another bonus infantry +1/+1 armor. Name of the new tech can be “White armour”.

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well infact the genoese less range is fine for me, the problem of genoxbows is the elite upgrade which is too small, and the fact they are only good against cav, but are the only good counter italians have to cav. If they had better monks (Like discounted monasteries) or halberdiers, it would be better but now you are forced into a counter unit that is produced in a castle. so its’ not a very good situation, cause a good cav civ could push you out of stone before you can get a castle up. but genos also are bad against anithing else, so you are not pushed to actually get them against anithing non-cav.

they should have some other niche to make them a core unit, like rattan archer have great PA, i would like genos to have great MA, to really be great vs cav and good vs infantry even wih the less range. like 2 MA for castle age and up to 4 MA for elitè upgrade, enforcing the concept of them being strong against melee but weak against range

this is not a “nerf portuguese” thread tough. i loved the portugese change, cause it showed a good water civ is still allowed to be good on other maps. i think some bonus might be toned down a little, like TB could be 20% faster and not 25%, and berry bonus could be 20-25% and not 33%.

overall, it was a great change that single handedly launched a civ from “boring/lame, only good on water” to a complete and fun civ. something that other civ could use as well, like italians

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Usually Italian gameplans include xbow and you have to micro it a lot. Monks require a lot of micro as well and can be a bit messy in late game. Even Aztecs has the best monks, they can be somewhat weak to heavy cavalry.

GC is quite oppressive to cavalry in team games. It is OK that GC got killed if they get surrounded by cav. Currently most of the cavalry civs get solid siege but few of them (Lithuanians, Huns) can be quite lame to deal with GC. I think those cavalry civ can stand a chance even facing GC by giving GC negative archer armor. If Elite GC get +1 range, this should be even bigger. But I hope to give halbs to Italians at the same time giving negative archer armor.

i don’t think any civ has a problem dealing with GC…i mean, as long as you have ES with bracer, or onager upgrade, you are gucci, and lithuanians not only have FU skirms but also 10% faster ones.

well yes but conisdering italians also have FU cav they could use buffed monks to actually use their flexibility better and go for cav when the opponent expects archers. and the usual couple of monk to counter cav push is not that hard to micro. but yeah, better monks would not be a game changer but considering how the monk buff for bengalis helped them a bit in getting to the late game, -100 monastery for italians would maybe have a similar impact, while not being as oppresive as it was for bohemians as other have sayd

still think adding halberdiers would be much easier tough, but italians would still have other problems. mainly 1) completely generic archer line until late castle age when pavise kicks in, and pavise not being an amazing tech to begin with
2) bad elitè upgrade for GC
3) lack of key upgrades that similar wide-tech civs have like halberds and Siege Engeneer
4) somewhat weak condos that are better for other civs than italians
probably the list can go on

Italians by no means too similar to Portuguese. Quite different that Italians game plan often evolve around two unique units (GC, Condos) and Portuguese more use different kinds of unit.
Italians need to be buffed because they have to “keep up” Portuguese makes no sense.

-100 wood monastery should not be given to any civ. It lead cancerous monk rush that cannot be countered in many situations.
Bengalis or Aztecs/Burmese bonus are Okay because they benefit monk play in more long term. But wood discount monastery lead cancerous game play which getting castle age ASAP and drop 4 monastery instantly to spam monk and early castle age monk is already strong when there is not much army. Italians already have decent monk play with good monk tech only lacking heresy and faster uptime.

Also Portuguese and many other civs have very generic archer line with only discount which is not amazing. Civ with very good bonus on archer such as Britons, Ethiopians have much narrow tech tree than Italians

Agree with that. It can be improved by buffing elite GC for a little.

Lacking halb hurt sometimes, but Seige Engineer comes really late. Actually, many “wide-tech” civs lacking seige engineer such as Byzantines or Spanish, even Chinese. Burgundians also lack SE for gunpowder civ. I would rather remove Seige engineer for Portuguese for balance purpose, (All other Mediterranean civ don’t access to that. Also it make them consistent for that.)

Condos are really great. They see play in closed map where gunpowder civs are popular. Condos itself counter all Bohemians main imp composition which is actually amazing.

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They have very similar tech tree and both of them can play knight and xbow. In open land maps, they often need to play generic units (knight/xbow) rather than UU/gunpowder. Gameplan can be often similar.

I do think Italians can be buff a bit, ### not because of Portuguese.

Agree. Especially for civ that is fine in closed maps.

Pavise is quite significant in xbow fighting xbow. 20% discount makes double gold composition more long-lasting. I think both of them can be quite amazing.

If pavise is changed to civ bonus (maybe starting from castle age if too oppressive in feudal), it is fine.

I agree Italians lacking SE. But remove SE for Portuguese is a big nerf to Organ guns in imperial.

Yeah finally Chinese but with being good on all maps. Arena, Arabia, Water, Nomad… Take this

Unit discount is probably the single best buff a unit line can ask for, pro’s sayd. Also portugese are not even an Archer civ, but are more of and Archer civ than italians. Just like saracens is a better Archer civ than italians until late castle age, despite being a camel civ and as flexible or more than italians

The Truth is, we should buff italians because is a forgettable civ at the moment and nowhete to be seen aniwhere but water. They are subpar of other civs, and simply not strong enough compared to other flexible civs

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Late game actually most civs have problems dealing with genoese. Skirms don’t work because you put hussars in front and bbc in the back. Genoese hussar bbc is one of the strongest army comp post imp. Ofc that’s an expensive army comp that takes time and it’s hard to defend from raids but if you get there and force fights almost no civ can stop that comp. Especially lithuanians just straight up die to that. The only civs which are good against that are strong archer civs like britons or ethiopians but even they can struggle vs hussars (also here italians probably will just play arb hussar which usually beats arb halb once you get good hussar numbers).

I’ve been playing with and against portuguese a lot even before the recent buff but I don’t think I’ve seen someone researching SE for organ guns in my whole life. Basically same for elite organ guns. You rarely get elite here because the unit strives in low numbers like conqs or spanish. Late game they just die to siege or even mass heavy cav too easily.

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One thing about new Portuguese is with the berry bonus they have a quite fast gameplay which contradicts their design with gunpowder and Feitoria.

Perhaps, Perhaps, remove one of Bloodlines, Husbandry, or Plate Barding Armor for the Portuguese, then give Squires as compensation if needed.

This way, the Portuguese loses the fully upgraded Cavalier, and the Italian with the fully upgraded Cavalier can appear more versatile, which creates more differentiation.

By the way, if we could give Pavise another name instead, maybe the Genoese Crossbowmen could be renamed Pavisier, same as their names in AoE3.

I think cheaper fishing ship bonus holding them back from getting a bigger discount on Dock+University. University discount can be separated from dock discount and buff to 40%. Another idea is giving +1/+1 armor for archer line for free. It will have same result as Vietnamese 20% HP. UT price should be reduced and limited to only Genoese and Condo.