Hey, there are already a lot of topics talking about Italians balance, I’ll link some of them (the ones I started a lest) down here, so you can get a bigger and more comprehensive view about them and what are more most shared proposals.
To summarize though, here why I disagree with some of your ideas:
I too proposed this some time ago, but then condos were buffed (+1 atk and pavise) and now having them in castle age would make them OP, plus I one think that the unit is in a good spot right now.
Further expanding Italians tech tree (which is already flexible) would require to balance it out by removing other units, or nerfing some other bonuses, which isn’t really what Italians need.
The point it’s not that having halbs and champs it’s too much, thee are 2 reasons what Italians don’t have halbs:
- They would basically have the full trash tech tree and all FU, which only spainish have right now, but they (for balance reasons) also lack even xbows.
- The idea is that Italians, instead of using the same counter of everyone else can count cavalry with their GC, changing the game and making it more interesting.
- champs and halbs really field different roles, vs meso civs for example is more important to have the former than the latter, vs goths it’s the same thing, so you basically would excahnge one weakness (partially covered by hussars and GC) with another.
I also play a lot with italians, and I think that you should change you late game composition. For example GC should be used only vscivs heavy on cavalry, while usually arbalests should be the choice.
Also, don’t start by creating condos and archers, it’s a lot heavy on gold as a combo, and hussars are a much better choice, since it cost the only resource that isn’t used for archers.
You can always mix in condos later on, when the enemy trained a lot trash and surprise him, or you could try a fast imp condo rush, and then again transition into hussars and archers.
You can also use the cheaper age ups to try and rush him with archers, knights or scouts, instead of waiting every time the Imperial age.
However here is a summary of several proposals that we came up with for Italians:
- GC training time reduction at least by 4 seconds
- reducing the cost for elite GC or increasing the elite GC range by +1
- foot archers train 25/40% faster
- foot archers get +1 PA as a bonuses (that stack with pavise)
- all archers armors tech are free an researched when aging up
- rebalance the age up/dock discount ratio from 15/50% to 20/40%
- Having fishing ships bonus back to minus 15 wood and/or with +2LoS
- having interchangeable military buildings
I hope I didn’t forget anything…