Italian Buff on land

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
21

Maybe I wasn’t very clear earlier.
Buffing pavise has the same late-game effect as +1 PA, and is more elegant. I don’t like the aesthetics of getting +1 PA from a civ bonus and a separate +1 PA from a unique tech.

22

Ok, let me try to explain myself. If you get +1 PA as civ bonus instead of the UT providing +1/1, you will get a better feudal/mid castle age.

The problem with this civ is that it is terrible in the early stages. So my feeling is that Italians need either free archer armors or +1PA as civ bonus, to become decent in feudal/castle age.

So free archer armors is way more important than +1/2 pavise, despite usles in the late game.

In other words, it is important that the land buff starts to act in feudal. This is done by both free archer armors and +1PA.

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23

My problem with free archer armor is that that alone doesn’t really do much…it’s just somewhat of a minor eco bonus, it doesn’t make their army comp any less generic. Especially given that armor is the least important upgrade for archers.

I feel like something like faster moving archer could be more interesting. Something like all foot archers/skirms/hc move 5/10/15% faster in feudal/caste/imp age. It’s also much easier to fine tune the values if this is too much or too little.

24

That is another option, even if it would be perfect for Mayans…

25

giving my 2 cents, i didn’t dive too much on balance and things, so please take it into account.

  • shorter TT on GCs, reducing it by 3 seconds should be good enough.

  • Pavise : +0/+2 armor, more archer resilient but keep the natural melee weakness

  • remove Silk Road (Imp UT), replace it with Swiss Mercenaries : +2 attack for the Condo, and an additionnal +3 against Eagle Warriors. Remove Champion upgrade as a tradeoff.

26

you know there’s a number of techs that have multiple effects right? britons have 2, tatars,byz,vikings(technically),chinese,huns all have 1

if anything giving multiple effects allows you to customise the power of the units it affects, like possilby the GC could be too powerful if you simply buffed the vanilla TT , where if you give it a minor buff on TT and a bit more with the UT, it prevents the unit from being too OP from the get go but still viable after teching (like the cata although there its too expensive)

who of almost all the races most certainly do not need a buff

could possibly break the game, since archers are already top of the power curve due to terrible pathing and stacking but definitely agree free armour tech is boring, so something else is needed to spice up the italians…

but a unique italian buff to condos could do that… it will give them a viable unique infantry option on top of any buffs to the GC

could even combine the tech, like the tatar one… give both effects (silk road and condo buff) both are situational

27

+1 MA makes sense for GC…

My proposal was similar: as additional effect, pavise cuts the TT of archers (like 40%). Un this way you fix both the fact that TT of GCs is too much, plus the fact that Pavise is too weak.

28

I agree that you can have both effects.

Still condos are extremely week and expensive compared to champions, so I would say that it simply needs better stats or an attack bonus vs siege to give it a role…

Overall I would say that the priorities are:

  • an early game buff (free archer armors may work)
  • TT of GC fix

For the second point my idea was to use pavise so that:

  • arbalests are affected, which makes sense for an archer civ
  • pavise has a reason to be so expensive
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29

exactly…clearly an option would be to remove from mayans the cheap archers (after tuning the cost of plums) to give them this bonus, but I do not like modification of old civs. You may give the cheap archer bonus to another weak civ, italians are a candidate. This may work but it is a change too big imo…

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30

Since the AF extension, Pavise works on Xbow/Arb as well. Also, 300F 150G is quite cheap compared to other armor related UT.

Giving a TT buff on Pavise wouldn’t be possible without increasing its cost (as a comparaison, Royal Heirs costs 300F 300G, but isn’t even mandatory given the already fast TT of Shotels). It would also strain further the ability of Italian players to mass GC, as they would have to choose between a long TT or delaying the creation of GC in order to pay and research the tech.

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31

could possibly break the game, since archers are already top of the power curve due to terrible pathing and stacking but definitely agree free armour tech is boring, so something else is needed to spice up the italians…

yeah, but it is much easier to scale compared to armor, for example you could lower it to 3 or 4 % per age. Still, it’s hard to talk about definitive balance until the devs finally get the pathfinding fixed…

I think having pavise decrease the TT is not very intuitive and also kinda clunky. We should just reduce the base TT and leave it at that.

Regarding condos instead…it’s hard to find a balance. It’s a bit like the steppe lancer, their role is so much of a niche that we have a hard time agreeing on how we should change them. Imo condos need their stats to be rebalanced. Perhaps less HP (like 70 hp), but add 1 pierce armor and 2 damage. They would be slightly stronger than a 2handed swordman, but weaker than a champion. Problem is that condos is a unit shared with allies, and you risk making other civs too strong like this…i really question whether condos should be a shared unit tbh

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32

I think you overestimate the importance of melee armor for archers. Even if Pavise was +2/+1 you would barely notice the difference.

I really think silk road should a team bonus, not a UT. Tone it down to 33% and leave it as a free italian team bonus. Still not even close to being as good as the spanish trade bonus anyway. Then we can add a new UT.

2 Likes
33

Yeah definitely true.

Yeah as mentioned above it’s already like this in game. Applies even to skirms another reason why gotta be careful if you buff pavise you buff 3 unit lines…

I agree with others here, archer armour doesn’t help them much and generally you only take it if you have the res, unlike the attack bonus.

34

In which cases does it help? Against halberdierd in melee? Against hussars? Or against archers without upgrades?

35

Ofc you can implement both: free archer armors and +1 PA! Are you sure it is not too mush?

ofc buffing directly the TT of GC is stronger than locking it behind pavise.

So, you guys prefer:

  • free archer armors and archers +1 PA (extra PA from castle age imo)
  • reduced TT of GC
    Right?

It makes sense to me… maybe I was too conservative

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36

Don’t forget about the Uselessotteiro

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37

I think whatever bonus is given to italians, it needs to start acting in feudal. Castle age is too late.

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38

Still free archer armors starts in castle age. If you give +1 PA in feudal 0lus free archer armors, italian archer would have +2 PA in the beginning of feudal age. It is quite strong imo.

However it is true that Italians are so weak that even that feudal buff wouldn’t make them too powerful

39

I would be cautious toward possible buffs to the Condottiero, unless it become italian-only.

Condottiero may have lower attack than champion, and no bonus against eagle warrior, but it still have higher hp for the same base armor, as well as being faster. Making it too viable would lead to possible abuse by top-tier infatry civ (japs, slavs, aztecs, to name a few) as their bonuses affect Condo too.

40

I honestly don’t think we can make condos strong enough for italians without making it OP for allied infantry civs. I would rather have the team bonus changed to a toned silk road and have a buffed condo be an italian-only unit.

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