Definitely easier, but not really exciting. Think of Slavs and Saracens. Those were cool changes, even if the Slav one isn’t necessarily super powerful in 1v1. It’s certainly unique.
Also doesn’t really justify building a castle to train UU unless you’re specifically facing cavalry head on. Because are GC even worth it as defensive units lying around the base? Like you could do with halbs
I don’t like super niche UU. And would prefer it if all of them were made more viable even if not particularly stronger
This is good, but the problem is that it does not help in feudal. Maybe it should affect the archer blacksmith techs, but this interacts with water too much
This is a joke. You can make it whatever you like, +MA, +PA, +range, cheaper, reducing TT… the current cost is a real joke… in any case it is not a buff for early stages
This is fine, but again, the urgent buff is in feudal/early castle
Was thinking with the way people are more forced into playing different Maps aside from Arabia, could also lean into making Italians simply better in the late game, meaning any closed maps or even TGs immediately see a buff to Italians.
Looking at the new civs at their bonuses to water play, makes it seem there will either be more hybrid maps or simply less of a focus to be maximised purely for Arabia
The same applies to the extremely polarising bohemians which are arguably slow in Arabia and maximised for closed maps
That being said. What if they did the following:
buffed pavise (again) so it gives condos some bonus, maybe something like +6 Vs archers, I’ll do the math later, either way to make condos more viable for Italians specifically and gives them more identity apart from generic archer civs
Buff GC (like above) with base +1PA, -1 archer armour class so they’re much more difficult to fight with pure archer balls, but cav civs can use skirms more easily
Give Italians siege engineers
They suddenly become a much stronger late game civ.
So even if their early game is not the best, their identity of rapidly aging is now much more rewarding even if it isn’t made easier
Italians are already a stellar civ on water/hybrid maps and a decent civ on land maps where they have more than FU Arbalest + Skirms, BBC, full Stable with FU Hussar and Cavalier and cheaper age advancing. This last bonus, especially, is fairly significant, comparable to something like Lithuanians and amounts to 75f saved in Dark Age and some 120f 60g in Castle Age. The Castle Age discount in particular is very noticeable and allows Italians to do a nasty Crossbow timing that doesn’t need further buffs.
I wonder at what point in time People will stop trying to use broad tech trees as a justification of a civs power
In the same way people have learnt that double gold comps are completely viable and it’s almost common knowledge that food is the most important Res until imperial, I wonder when it will be common knowledge that a wide tech tree means literally nothing
How many times do we need to point out that the top civs specifically do not have wide tech trees or have massive exploitable weaknesses
Aztecs and Mayans have no gunpowder or hussars
Vikings have one of the most narrow trees in the game
Chinese are almost deleted simply by onagers +SE
None of this means anything, because their ecos are so over powering
While civs like spanish have one of the widest tech trees in the game and are literally only propped up by conqs
only after late castle. up to that point, they are generic, if not even behind other civs. for example, both japanese and aztects are better archer civs up to late castle age with plain better eco for that play and better bonuses like faster training time. some civs, like saracens, are not even classified as an archer civ but have plain better archers than italians, with a unique bonus right from the beginning and all upgrades and guess what! they also get FU hussar and BBC WITH SIEGE ENGENEERS, that italians lack
and actually, a lot of civs are better archer civs than italians up to late castle age and even then, it’s not like pavise is making your archers crazy strong…
so my first point was to give them something to actually be an archer civ a bit earlier than late castle and without paying a big amount of resources in getting a castle and a UT. obviously they do not need anything huge, that’s why 33% discount or the +1MA sounded fair to me
that would require a split like the indian received since dialects for italy are a big thing and there are literally dozens, which have the dignity of a language almost
Saracens are superior in every stage of the game in basically everything except for cavaliers. There is a time window where they cannot mass knights and Italians can. And water ofc
However Saracens is just a civ superion in basically everything. As almost all the other civs are in arabia…
that’s why i’m suggesting mainly a land buff for their archers with the discount which may not be terribly impactful but at least is something and is probably more conservative buff, not broken for sure as far as archer bonuses goes, just a 33% discount without parthian tactics and HCA
I understand. But the real problem is that the effect is too limited in feudal, while for instance it affects TR which is a mid-late castle tech, where Italians are not struggling.
If you like an archer specific bonus, I would reccomend a direct buff of the archer line (the famous extra speed for archers, still unused? A large discount on a single res? +1 attack?).
it is a justification tho, vs Italians, you need to be scared of UU, of Arbalest blob (and Arbalest early Imp timing), but also of late game Hussar raid and in principle they can play full Castle Age Knights.
how convenient then for Italians, in Castle Age you can do 2x Gold comp of Crossbow + Knight. Bulgarians, Byzantines, Britons, Ethiopians, Slavs etc. are jelly in the corner.
wide tech tree = advantage
narrow tech tree and bonus for 1 unit = advantage.
It’s up to you to play to your civ’s strengths, you say Aztecs and Mayans is strongest and that might be true on Arabia but you are cherry picking here, forgetting that CHINESE (a wide tech tree civ) is also extremely good on Arabia. Byzantines (a tech tree civ with NO ECO BONUS) was played a ton in recent AoE2 tournaments, as well as Malians and other “wide tech tree civs”.
Anyway Italians don’t need buffs. To Elite Genoese, I agree it’s expensive so it could get something (tho iirc it already had like 1+4 melee armor with Pavise so giving 2+4 seems excessive and would literally be superior to Cavalier armor which is ridiculous). Likely a cost discount to the tech itself.
Condottiero also can likely get a bonus vs Eagles, tho here it could be a problem on Arena, Italians are a good Arena civ and fast Imp Condottiero + BBC is a very common strat.
Absolutely against giving them any form of discount whatsoever, they already have more than enough in terms of discounts and eco bonuses.
Open tech tree as advantage? It depends on the age.
As the game becomes a bit competitive, you see very often an almost single unit composition in castle age since having all the upgrades is impossible to sustain for an eco. An equally skilled player will outnumber you in the majority of the games.
So no, open tech tree is not an advantage there.
In imp it is. In imp you have a stronger eco and you can afford more unit upgrades, while you also relay more on trash. There having access to more unit compositions is a real advantage.
The problem is that before imp Italians cannot use the tech tree because, unlike Chinese, they have a poor eco.
This is extremely expensive and you are already behind in terms of eco. You cannot afford both units upgraded
The problem is that these civ but Byzantines have super economies. And Italians cannot get an economy buff since they would be too strong on water.
Byzantines the best case we may consider. They have a trash bonus allowing them to survive until the later stages, where the open tech tree becomes a real advantage
This is true for water maps only imo, but it is enough to say that the buff should not touch eco. Regarding the discount, the civ has only discount bonuses, so yeah that would be bad.
So, @Green4uu, despite I disagree on some of your points, I think your answer is overall aligned, do not take me wrong. I just think that the civ needs a buff. But I agree that a discount/eco buff would be pretty complicated since messing the water play.
then the +1 MA armor to all archery range unit and geno xbows could do the trick? archers/skirms would tank scouts better in feudal allowing an easier mass-up. i’m worried more attack or extra speed is gonna make them too strong
well it’s always an archer unit that is not supposed to be fought in melee since it literally counters cav and counter infantry by the fact of being archer, so MA should not be a concern, it’s not even remotely as important as for a melee unit like cavalier.
besides, there are already examples of archers with big armors in the game, like the Rattan for the PA, so the Geno would be a MA variant, which would be cool. they would still be susceptible to other archers with 1 less range, skirmisher and onagers
75f saved before Feudal and ~200 resources saved before Castle age = no eco bonus, OK.
Italians can literally hit a very nasty Ballistics Crossbow timing on maps like Arabia on top of their faster aging, 680f as opposed to 800 is a BIG deal and roughly ~1 min earlier uptime and this is without even considering their fishing boats discount, Dock discount etc.
Sending everyone to gold to make 2x gold comp is really hard I reckon. You can do 2 Ranges Crossbows with basically no eco, it’s 8 to gold and like 4 to Wood for constant production. As for Knights, those are more expensive but again Gold is by far the easiest resource to gather, you can send 20 to Gold in early Castle age and afford 2x gold comp with like 2 Ranges 1 Stable with some ~40 Villagers, I don’t see the problem really. With other civs like Ethiopians, you don’t get Bloodlines, with Vikings you don’t get Thumb Ring or Husbandry, with Italians you literally get everything so for example Crossbow is a long-term unit (due to Thumb Ring) while for Vikings it’s not.