Italy need nerf

i think Italy need nerf, they do not need hunts, no need gold, free building, XP, and good defending, is that balanced?

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Take into account that to get resource flows through the Lombards, initial investment is required, that free buildings demand a high construction time and that your military units need upgrades…

Italy isn’t the worst faction in the game, far from it, but it’s not OP either.

4 Likes

I don’t think italy in general needs nerfing. It’s got quite a poor age 2 and age 3 and whilst there’s a couple new trickle cards they’re in no way comparison to a regular crate card.

I saw a suggestion before from kevin I think to limit the amount of architects by age so you could have 2 in age 1, 3 in age 2, 4 in age 4 etc which I thought is a good way to slow down the strength of the FI without nerfing an otherwise quite mediocre civ.

8 Likes

I suggested something similar, and I agree it’s a good way to balance the architects sistem without removing the uniqueness of the civ.

But I would also add like a new age 1 card that would remove such limit, but cost wood, so a crazy turtle strategy is still viable, but at an higher cost and risk.

The lombards HP could also be staggered through ages, ok it’s easier to destroy them in age 2, and lombards walls are less strong.

I think lombards are ok, they have significantly less hp than a bank for example.

But they are more spammable in age 2, so it’s easier to wall with them.

I would reduce the HP only in age 1 and 2, then they would get back to 2500 HP in age 3.

I guess though don’t dutch get their 5 banks like before 6 minutes, probably before italy have all their lombards. 2500 HP is quite low.

I think you are confused, Italy if you need to hunt and if you need to mine, mainly to make a boom of villagers that is mandatory, also the free construction is well balanced, the architects are expensive in gold and cost two population which slows down the passing of age.

They are a defensive civilization, so that is their flagship strategy, they are supposed to be a turtle civilization, no rush strategy should work with them under normal conditions.

To defeat Italy you have to make an economic boom and produce siege units, in fact mortars and musketeers should do a good job, culverins might also be necessary.

Obviously, the way the game is made, you may have a disadvantage against Italy depending on which civ you’re using.


This is just my opinion and I don’t claim it to be the absolute truth. :slightly_smiling_face:

Note: For me the biggest problem with Italy, both for and against is micromanagement, it is likely that only very skilled players use Italy and get more out of it than I could get out of it, in a few words you most likely faced someone very skilled micro managing their economy.

1 Like

The Italian Fast Industrial must be punished in some way, it is the strategy that is broken atm.
It can be reached quite easily, with good support economy and the shipments of IV from Italy are very broken.

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I think you could punish the FI with Musketeers and Petard.


The Italian exponential economy is good by design, I don’t think the developers can weaken it without ruining civilization.


PD: Esta es de las pocas veces que no estoy de acuerdo con vos. XD

The FI gives a strong powerspike, but Italy can burn through that quite quickly and then they will be just a civ with 1 less factory, a lot of civs can just out-boom them.

2 Likes

All they need is less architects per age to slow down the FI. The civ in general is well balanced it’s only the fi that needs a tweak.

The shipments in age 4 for italy are also perfectly fine, 12 skirms, 2 papal bombards which is worse than 2 heavy cannon, 3 culv when various civs have 4 culv etc. I don’t think there’s any issue with the strength of the shipments just the ease of the FI.

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The nerf and buff that Italy needs is to give it the Bersagliere in 3rd age, like 90% of civs.

Since the cornerstone of the Italian IF is to get the Bersagliere with its lookout upgrade. Limiting the amount of Architects per age I don’t think would result in such an influential change (but it would be nice).

The really important thing, I think is the Bersagliere, giving it in third will help the civ. to not be so bad in previous ages and discourage FI, losing the advantage of getting a 600g 600w + research time upgrade.

The shipments are strong, but at the same time expensive, being balanced. In fact revnak_aoe does not even use them. 21

I don’t really get why the free guard upgrade is a problem for the bersaglieri…

Halbs and skirms get free veteran upgrades when you hit age 3 and it’s fine, I don’t see why I should bother to train a unit that I can’t mass before age 4, and to also have to upgrade them otherwise they aren’t competitive…

By the way, age 3 bersaglieri with 5 speto raid would probably be a buff for Italy, so I don’t know if you want to go down that road…

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I don’t understand how you are comparing a 20% upgrade, versus a 30% upgrade, and that has a cost between 600w and 600g to 1000w and 1000g of resources, for the rest of the civs?

Literally that is the advantage of Italy, is to go up and mug you with a better guerrilla than yours.

Having a cumulative improvement of 50%, if you just play treaty you don’t see the difference.

It’s clearly not that much of a difference though, you can’t mass bersiglieri before reaching 4 so they may shadow tech but you have none of them upon hitting industrial. If shadow tech alone were that strong we’d see a similar pattern with other civs yet we don’t.

African civs get native shadow tech, hausa in particular can send a card in age 2 and train akan musks which have aoe damage out of a normal barracks. These units you can mass straight from the first card of 5 units that you get and they shadow tech in fortress and every age after. The unit is strong and you can mass 50 of them then hit industrial and they’re all guard. Yet we don’t see the same comparison with italy. Even malta which while the civ data is still inconclusive on this patch there’s a trend across all elo levels that it’s overall win rate has dropped yet they get shadow tech hussar/dragoon and if they send the age 3 card also lancers which of all 3 units they can mass in fortress, hit industrial and get all of them immediately guard. So it’s clear that 1 unit shadow teching or even more isn’t enough by itself to make a civ op.

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FI Soldiers with Spain.
The 25 Bourbon allies card (it was nerfed because it sent them to you with the 4th upgrade).
Ottoman Fi with Nizam.
etc.

Italy has the technology of the church church infantry upgrade in age 2°, being this of 4°, revnak always makes it before passing to fourth.

All the stream of professional players that do Italian FI just take out Bersagliere and some halberds to take care of the cav.

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First off, it’s just a standard upgrade, not a royal guard, so it’s 600 wood and food not 1k, there is a difference.

Second, the principle is the same, you hit age 3, unlock new units and start training them without needing to get that 20% upgrade that they need to be actually competitive.

In age 4 you get instead 30% buff and an “free” upgrade that cost more… but it also cost more to get to age 4 and it takes more time. If I would have to also research the upgrade, I would just stick with the units that I have the earlier ages.

Like literally this principle is applicable to every age game, I don’t see people in the aoe2 section complain because in age 3 you get access to knights without needing an upgrade…

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revnak_aoe, on last stream, only macea Bersagliere

Plis @DoctBaghi @OriginalKnot717 tell me how many units do you create from the barracks?

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Spain FI is strong because you need no resources to continually make units safely from in base, I think the spawn time actually got nerfed in the patch though it wasn’t in the notes iirc.

Again bourbon card was strong because it was an instant pop of 25 guard musk, that’s different from just a guard upgrade and you having to train skirms with resources in batches of 5.

Nizam tech got buffed so again that’s strong because of the pop of 20 very strong units that prior to resarching a very expensive tech and sending at least 1 card you couldn’t even train. It’s a powerspike getting all the units at once.

The church tech is like 25% faster training iirc so it’s probably only worth getting because they also get a free vill otherwise just building an additional barracks would increase train time further than the tech does, especially with architects that can quickly build 4 barracks for free, the training time tech is neither here nor there.

The skirms are fast so doing the lame thing of running skirms all round the opponents eco is for sure annoying af but I can do the same with portugal and run around 7.25 speed dragoons with 18 range and kill all your vills.

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