Yes they should have had +1/+1 from the get go because some civs already have this effect like Burmese with +1/1 for elephant, Hindustani with +1/1 for gun power units, Bengalis with +3/3 for monk
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Fair point. But I disagree with Italians not being optimized. They are not a new civ. If that was case, at least one pro would figure out how to optimize them in last 10 years (almost). Italians is limited to water/hybrid maps ever since. And used to be an occasional choice in closed maps before DOTD.
That could be sizable buff. I would buff the effect rather than change it to civ bonus. like giving 1 or 2 more melee armor for archer (or even one more PA on top of that) than current effects.
Purpose is nerfing their bombard cannon slightly. They are now also strong in early game and their should be some limitation in late game. Organ gun is already not often used in imp and not affect that much.
Portuguese are not conisdered good civ before the berry bonus even they have gold cost discount. Unit discount is good only if it is significant margin such as Mayans or Goths.
Saracens bonus doesnât help them fighting other army at all. It just help them forcing fight against opponents greedy with defending archer by wall. Also their bonus is nerfed and flat +2, which is very little in imp. Saracens have more wide techtree than Italians but their eco donât support teching expensive upgrades.
Then we have to buff every civ because there are always some civs overshadowed by other civ. I would rather nerf top civs. Portugese berry bonus can be nerfed and they should be fine.
I honestly think they should replace the berry bonus with something more thematic for Ports. Portuguese should be a civ that has a hard early game, but a good mid and a great late game. The problem in the Past is that both their mid and early game was terrible on land maps. The berry bonus overly improved their early game for no reason.
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It was that way because portuguese couldnât compete with other civ on arabia at that point so was given for such reason (also in response of the removal of the former TB).
But that also made cheesy strats for arena with Organ Guns (that are broken on castle age) into 1 TC fast Imp with 3-5 feitorias (some TTL games featured such kind of games) and that is just silly because the Portuguese player doesnât get a drawback once Feitorias are here, just get that resource trickle and go to gold units, while opponent need 2 or 3 TCs to have such advantage, I will say, keep the berry bonus as is but nerf Organ Guns in castle age (wayyy less attack but the extra projectiles do more damage than ever, so they do poorly in low numbers but scale better when you mass them) and rework Feitoria (deleyte pop space and put a limit of just 2, also instead of all res trickle just like AOE 3 factories only toggle one res you want) so Feitorias are more strategic for other maps.
Well until DE regular GC was garbage because of itâs reload speed which threw out any possibility of doing potentially interesting mixed compositions in castle age. So realistically theyâve had 3 years because the castle age GC being viable changes a lot of options. And it took some of them quite a while to memorize the new GC had a 2s reload because they played games and commented on the long reload post-DE as if it still existed.
And Iâm not just talking about pros Iâm talking about everyone. Pros may have optimized them recently idk, but those things take a while to trickle down. Sometimes good strategies never really trickle down appreciably because itâs unique enough that getting good at it is just annoying for the average random civ player.
Consider this example: How many say 1.5k+ Elo players would consider themselves âmaxed outâ at using Mangudai? Independent of how good they think the unit is, how many could honestly say their knowledge, skill, and execution of Mangudai related strategies are basically âmaxed outâ for their skill level (i.e. the only way to get better at using mangudai is to just be better in general)? I think quite a sizeable percentage of players, including most top tier players, would consider themselves near this level. Now replace Mangudai with Genoese Crossbowman. My guess is not many would answer in the affirmative.
Point is Italians can be played very differently in a manner which is strong, even if not optimal after all is said and done. Theyâre not just a weaker Portuguese. Theyâre weaker but play differently.
Every single bonus etc Portuguese possess is silly.
Berries generate wood: better berry bonus than franks producing 33% faster ress from foragers. Also extra wood in dark age and early feudal age is really strong.
Feitorias: Just bad design nonsense
Gold discount: Way to general to be good in some situations or too good in others
Ship HP: Useless on land making it needed first place portuguese need so much new stuff
Organ guns: Deal 2 damage to all units and stag well
Carracks: Useless on land and overlaps with ship HP
Arcebus: Isnt even that strong except you on arena
All techs researched faster: Strongest tb out thereâŠ
Portuguese were balanced before over all maps, but being good on water and arena was their focus, not arabia. Now they good on arabia and broken on all other maps.
They went from no eco bonus (which they didnt neef cause of military discount) to an eco bonus bettsr than vietnamese or comparable. Imagine we gave goths such a bonus and see them become silly as well
I agree that Italians feel like a weaker Portuguese, I donât know whether or nor they need a buff because of it or what kind of buff they would need.
Many civs feel like weaker version of another civ to me.
I think a strugle of Italians is against cav civs, as FU hussars + FU cavaliers, as good as they are, are not backed up by a strong enough eco on full land maps to fight against cav civs. The GC xbow feels like the only UU that is both âimportantâ (necessary to properly counter cavalry) for the civ and âhard to useâ. The other âimportant unitsâ have enough speed to run away from hard counters (Mangudais, Conqs) or are easy to produce (Huskarls).
Portuguese feel like Italians + halberdiers + siege engineers + much better UU for Nomad/Arena maps (way harder to counter) - Hussar + Heresy + better eco on pure land maps.
They are not at all the same. Port has a strong lategame navy, italians have a generic one but with nice power spikes; port has above generic gunpowder including a gunpoweder uu and a strong discount, italians are below generic. Italians can struggle vs hussar because they lack halb, port dont have that problem. Port uu is strong from the get go, italian uu is strong as part of a compositon, and only after beeing massed and upgraded.
Italians have powerspikes (cheaper age up, cheaper techs, condos), port win the long game (discount per unit, feitoria).
One thing that bothers me about the new TB of the ânewâ Portos is that is a lot better than other faster tech research buildings of other civs like Britons (arch range), Celts (siege workshop), Goths (barrack), Huns (stable), Lithuanians (monastery) and Persians (TC) but is not as fast as the Bohemians (market), Bulgarians (BS) and Malians (university)
25% vs 20% and 25% vs 80%
The first set of buildings can create military units faster than Portos but I think the tech researched on those building should be faster than 25% Portos
While I donât disagree, doesnât mean you can justify not buffing an weaker performing civ. You can replace Mangudai with Ratha/EA in your example, and even replace 1500 elo with 2500 elo and say Rathaâs/EAâs potential are not optimized and hence Bengalis/Dravidians donât need a buff. GC is not a viable unit in most cases and castle price/stone cost is not the only obstacle for that.
Yeah, I agree.
Italians is still an archer+gunpowder and naval civ which is what Portuguese used to be before. After the Portuguese buff, I donât see them that similar. Portuguese is pretty much a jack of all trade civ now. And by being a jack of all trade civ, you will be stronger than most of the civs anyway.
Honestly one can also say Byzantines, probably the king of jack of all trade civ, is just stronger Italians now. But thatâs not a proper comparison imho.
You didnt show they are not the same, just that Portuguese do everything better, except the better mid game eco on maps with water. It would be dishonnest from you to say that gunpowder and late game navy are not italians strength compared to 75% of the other civs.
Besides:
- I am not sure that Italians really have significant power spikes on land maps, in the sense that the boni help them catch up compared to most other civs.
- What civs did you take into account to say that Italians gunpowder is below generic / below average ? Donât you think that the 20% discount makes up for the lack of siege engineers ?
- It is weird to qualify the stacked italian navy as âgenericâ, as most civs are way below that. Portuguese lack FFship and Shipwright. FFships are nice to have and the lack of Shipwright makes you in a bad position if you are unable to put your Feitorias far away from the coast.
I agree with the statement, but not with the conclusion: you basically they are played differently because Portuguese do everything better.
I agree that Portuguese does nearly everything better, but I donât think the resulting playstyle is that important in the converation. I think the point if OP was to say that everytime you pick Italians, you would be better off with portuguese, because either Portuguese give you more options, or Portuguese give you stronger options among the options you would choose as Italians.
So saying that the eco buff made Portuguese different sounds luke agreeing with OP.
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Generic means that you have all the upgrades, but no bonus to help you. And once upgrades are in, thats exactly what the italian navy isâŠ
Yeah pretty much this exactly
They are similar but very little. They have cheaper Age up as well but only for Imperial Age and no eco bonus, o bonus for archers, no FU cavâŠthey are very distinct. While portugese and italians all are gunpowder and naval civs, with FU archers and cavs, and a bonus for archers, and gunpowder.
Just italians feels like Walmart variant of Portugese
Thats a strong statement for someone who just agreed that not many players are experts at using the GC. Have you used it a bunch and/or have you seen a bunch of games where it generated losses? Without those it seems to be an absence of evidence problem which like steppe lancers before presents a problem.
Plus even if its not âviableâ you can get away with any strategy if you let your elo drop low enough. Which raises the question, how far would you expect an Italians picker to drop in elo if they used castle age GC every game against cav or cav archer civs? Dont need to open with it in castle age just use it.
For all the weaknesses of Italians what doesnt need to happen is a repeat of Portuguese because people underestimated how strong the civ can be if played in a specific manner when buffed.
True, but this is confusing, because generic does not mean subpaar. Strictly speaking, the only civs with better than generic navy are Dravidians, Spanish, and Byzantines. I guess we can add Japanese and Bengalis if you do not care about the heavy demolition ship.
For other civs you have to compare their boni add additional UU with what they miss to decide whether they are better than generic or not.
I do agree to some extend. But my conclusion is not identical to OP. As I gave example with Byzantines. Similarly one can say Aztecs is stronger Incas, Chinese is stronger Vietnamese. But these are all incorrect comparison.
Aztecs is stronger than Incas but it isnât stronger Incas. Incas has stronger military (Kamayuk, Slinger) and defense (cheaper Castles, Towers and TCs and better defensive upgrades), while Aztecs has stronger Monks and eco.
Vietnamese has stronger archer and skirmisher, and has very strong Elephants while Chinese has cheaper techs. Vietmanese is played different than Chinese.
Malians resembles Turks a lot. I can say Malians is weaker version of Turks. Bulgarians and Slavs are also very similar. Bulgarians is easier to play and feels slightly stronger. Britons and Ethiopians are also very similar, Britons being stronger.
I agree with that. For me missing Halberdiers is much bigger than missing Hussars (for the italians vs portuguese comparison).
I feel that Aztecs kind of die to Hussars.
Thumb rings id a nice small advantage over Aztecs when playing flank.
For me the biggest difference is BBC. Chinese kind if die to halberdiers+Onagers.
Elephants are a nice small addition for closed maps team games.
For me Byzantines lacking bloodlines make them akward in team game as pocket, and (cheaper) camels do not fully compensate for that due to the weakness to crossbows. And Italians still got a better early to mid game eco, as you dont make many skirms/halberdiers.
I disagree because of Nomad maps, hybrid maps, elite skirms, pikemen, and (siege) onagers. Malians are way stronger on these maps, the better foot trash can always get handy, and lacking onagers is kind of a blunder on dense forest maps.
I kind of agree with this one. Slavs longer term strengths (Druzhina, faster farms, cheaper siege, good monks, boyars) do not quite make up for the lack of early to mid game resources bonus and the lack of a pretty good cav archer.
Well, they are similar, but I wouldnt say Britons are straight up better Ethiopians, as Ethiopians get usable camels, siege onagers, and bbc are easier to use than ww trebs. Idk, you might be correct.