It’s not OP in any way. Rattan archers are not by far a game breaking unit.
It would only counter gunpowder and siege. And suck at basically everything else. Get countered by most infantry and cavalry units. A bit less weak to archers though, due to movement speed.
I think you don’t realize how bad italians are on land. They are only good on pure water maps now, nobody even picks them for hybrid maps…
Tbh I don’t understand why guys you have problems with pavise. It’s a small tech unlike most other UTs but cheap and overall buffs their archers fairly well which makes it useful.
That sounds like a totally fair balance change for me!
Rattans are a different story. The reason why that’s op is it’s power in early feudal and early castle age. It basically removes your opponents options to go for archers in the first place. Think of as having something like rattan archers from your archery range if you want. Italians might instantly become the best 1v1 arabia civ if you did that.
A bit? Condos would have 6 PA and since they move fast and have decent hp they would also counter archers.
I do, I even play them quite frequently. They are pretty bad on open maps, that much is true (although they are okay on arena). Still no reason to give them game-breaking units.
My take on the list I’d prefer:
-Free archer armors
-Reduced training time of the GC by 3 or 4 seconds
-Condos getting a bonus versus siege
-Increased age up discount to 20% but that MUST be done after huge water nerf
And they have an extremely low 9 base damage, which makes them balanced. Would still not even close to being as good as something like berserkers, which also cost a lot less gold.
Yeah what I’m mostly worried about regarding a pavise buff is that it could backfire because it affects GC aswell. Moreover +2 pierce armor for arbalests already decreases enemy arbalests’ damage output by 33%, instead of just 16,6% (current effect). 33% is a really huge number. That means you need 1,5 times as much troops to have equal fire power. I honestly don’t understand why people are calling it fine, in my opinion it would be borderline op. Increasing the melee armor perhaps is another option which would be fine for arbalests, but again, GC could become too strong. I still think I wouldn’t touch pavise. Even though italian archers wouldn’t be as strong as other archers civs’ archers with the current effect, they could still use the free archer armor for their advanatage to snowball, and they also have their open techtree.
It should be noted that GC have 4 base range so they’ll be at range disadvantage against other not-chukonu foot archers and Eskirms, so I wouldn’t worry about the armor being OP, at least on GCs
Here:
My proposal (the most conservative one) simply says, in addition to free archer armors that everyone is fine with, to fix Pavise to fix the Italians problems. In fact, my pavise proposal (+1/1 and -40% TT, extended to condos) implies:
All with just a small modification of the UT. Cleary an option modifying pavise as +1/2 plus the reduction of GC TT is much stronger, but still balanced imo, considering how weak Italians are…
Regarding a +1/2 pavise, the problem is not the GC imo. Since you would use it vs cavalry. Moreover it would be still extremely inefficient vs skyrms (even rattans and ckns are not efficient vs skyrms).
The question would be for the arbalest. Still I would pick arbalests from Britons, Ethiopians, and Mayans over the Italians +1/2 armor. Fine if other non-archer civs lose an archer war vs an archer civ. Also pavise kicks in in late castle age (before of that Italians would have just free archer armors to boost the archers).
Overall, +1/2 pavise plus GC TT reduction is stronger, than +1/1 with -40%TT. I am more conservative, but the first option is much better that now and for sure Italians would became at most an average civ.
Nice to notice that everyone takes for granted free archer armors.
Something like this:
I understand this, but you must also notice that those UTs are way more expensive. Although I’m not against making pavise similar to those UTs in the perspective you mentioned (so it is better than the vietnamese bonus rather than the same but much cheaper than an avarage UT), I don’t feel yet convinced by any of the pavise buffs, but this is the closest:
.
Not sure how a GC with the same pierce armor as the rattan archer would feel. Even though it has -1 range, it could make them an all killing archer. I might be wrong.
Welll, they would basicly be a slightly worse version than the rattan archer but could be created in archery ranges. Those could basicly murder ethiopian and mayan and briton arbalests.
Well if it gets increased to 20%, I’d bring it down to 30%, that’s the minimum.
20% 30% is totally killing. Btw, it is possible to compute a right balance by choosing how many techs they can research once aged up. With 25% age up and 35% dock tech is basically more than one less free dock tech, which is the current Italian power to compete with vikings. Also the age up discount should be different along the ages to have it balanced…
Thb, I cannot see a way to nerf Vikings to ensure that they do not destroy Italians with 20% age up and 30% dock techs… But water balance need a more complex reasoning
excluding the extension to condos, this is basically an alternative version of buffing GC TT. Currently pavise is too expensive for what it does, so the TT boost may fix both issues (pavise + GC TT)
Rattans have 6+4=10 pierce, GCs would have 0+4+2=6
And -1 attack, in addition to be slower…
Overall +1/2 pavise doesn’t change too much. Basically, in addition to free archer armors and reduced GC TT, you will give italians a small extra advantage… it may work…
40% TT is way overkill. That brings down the TT to 11,4 seconds, that’s even lower than CKN. Doing so with the other buff to armor wouldn’t be balanced without increasing the cost of the technology to ungodly levels.
40% is a number similar to the effect of the frank UT.
Regarding the GC TT:
In my original proposal there was not +2PA. Just +1/1 and less TT.
Clearly if you implement a +1/2 (I am fine with this even of it is not my proposal):
The idea of free archer armors is just a civ bonus (here I am sure it is almost necessary), unrelated to pavise
I think just naturally reducing it is better, pavise is named after a shield
I would leave pavise to just affect archer armor. Too much melee armor could be bad for genoese too, they still need to be countered by something after all.
The franck UT costs 400F and 400G. Pavise costs 300F and 150G. To make Pavise as you suggest, it would increase the cost to at least 600F and 600G, considering the cost of the franck UT and the blacksmith upgrade.