This is where the Arsonist upgrade shipment is more reflective of Mysorean war rocketry. It’s strange Indians have both.
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Yes. Though it was kinda nice to have a spotlight for them. Pikemen were used by the british quite extensively during the 15th to 17th century. There was nothing unique about them. Though in maps with Low amount of coin mines and more trees their use becomes more noticeable.
Thin Red line though slows them down so much they cant chase a good Cav micro player.
Pikemen irl were the backbone of armies. But games always tend to depict them as niche counter cavalry units not good at anything else.
The purpose of the card is to fill the design hole of British being unable to upgrade pikemen (like the Papal Guard politician), but pikemen are still pretty weak universally even with the upgrades. Even the RG pike civs would not mass them in the late game.
thing is by what the third age represent (ca 1700-1780) pikemen where obsolete or close to it. pikemen were the main thing in the early 1500s but as guns became better and better, and esp. with the introduction of the ring bayonet the pikemen just became pointless.
the problem was that combined with longbows you just get a mass of age 4 pikes in age 3 that ate buildings , yeomen longbows can even focus down artillery in a pinch so you wont be able to stop it with cannons even if you wanted to
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Maybe the “pikeman” you get in the game is not the pike and shot kind of pikeman, but some untrained irregular in 18th century that does not have anything better than a pike.
not every unit needs to be a massed unit in age 5.
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realistically speaking you dont wanna spend wood on a throw away unit in imperial age.
pikemens main role is really being a cheap siege option in the super early game, and only anti cav if you got no better options like musketeers.
The winrate data is abundantly clear. Ottomans are selected almost 10% of the time and have a win rate above average, at 52%.
I highly recommend looking at the civ grid data the Sunbros have put together. It shows the phenomenon pretty clearly. You can even view win rates by length of match. (for some reason my link is being censored. There’s a link in this thread: Sunbros CIV GRID and hidden data graphs - Age of Empires III: DE / III - Discussion - Age of Empires Forum)
While yes, my evidence is anecdotal, jump on the ladder in the mid-Elo range and let me know if you see Otto players do anything other than the turtle FI. A vast majority of all Otto games I and my friends have played in the last year in the ~1200 ELO range have been against this turtle FI strat. It’s actively killing our desire to play against randoms.
As far as buffs vs nerfs:
Buffs:
-2 extra LOS on all artillery except culvs which get 0.5
–This is a huge buff. This grants a huge increase in vision for units with the longest LOS in game. The culv bonus might seem small, but it now almost guarantees Otto culvs get the first shot in culv wars, which is literally the most important thing with culv micro. And culv micro wins games
-Guard humbaraci are 10 res cheaper
–This unit is already considered very good and easily fielded. The change is minor but completely unneeded for an already near-OP unique unit.
-Age 2 politician the Iman is 100 food cheaper, now 800 food
–As far as I know this politician isn’t used frequently. Any impacts are unknown
-New unique Spy unit that benefits from promotions, improving hp and attack speed (not listed in PUP notes)
–This is way too good. Ottos didn’t need a new spy, particularly one that’s better than other Euro spies. The attack speed promotion is especially concerning
-4 humbaraci card is now 5
–Not a huge change, but again, unnecessary
-Azaps do 8 dmg up from 6, with multipliers of 3 instead of 4.
–Azaps are already good units, just not meta. Their dmg against cav is 24 regardless, but now do 33% more base damage against all other units. We’re at a point where the player base will realize how strong Azaps are and will start using them heavily.
Nerfs
-15% TC build speed reduction to Yoruks
–This is completely meaningless. With 8 yoruks currently, a TC builds in 50 seconds. This “nerf” increases that to a whipping 57.5. Wow, 7.5 whole seconds. That’s what, 1/4th of a free settler (train time is 30s with all mosque techs). Otto players need to send just one extra vil to build it in the same time or have an almost imperceptible delay in their boom
-Millet system costs 75w up from 50w.
–Again, meaningless. 25 extra wood is nothing. That’s exactly one small wood treasure. On another civ, 25 w on an early tech hurts, since you have to macro for that and vils. But for Otto, you don’t have to macro for vils. So it’s impact is almost non-existent. It means that you can’t drop a mosque and research the tech immediately, but Otto players already don’t do that, the meta is drop a TC; the tech is usually researched in transition to Age 2
-Abus gunner train speed increased by 2s from 42 to 44.
–Again, meaningless. The issue with Abus is not they train too quickly, but how effective a small group of them are. Heck, even if the train speed is a problem, a 4% train speed increase does nothing. If we compare that to crossbow, the most common light infantry that shares the same role as Abus, they train in 27s, Abus in 44s. Abus are worth 2+ crossbow (they do 36 siege, bypassing armor, to 16 ranged damage of crossbows). Meaning that by effective pop, Abus train 18% faster than crossbow with this nerf.
-Abus multiplier decreased against light cav from 2.5 to 2.25
–Finally, a nerf that actually has impact. However, again, the issue with Abus is not their ability to counter ranged cav. It’s from their ability to counter large masses of infantry and win with few numbers while able to kite hand cav due to an instantaneous firing animation. While it’s a good change to make a unit that bypasses armor do less damage to the unit they’re designed to counter to bring it more on-line with the rest of the game, it’s not addressing the issue
-Bashibozuk vill multiplier changed to 0.5
–Desperately needed as no militia unit should be able to threaten vils. Given that all other militia units have a 0.5 multiplier, this is more a bug fix than a nerf.
-Humbaraci artillery multiplier reduced to 2.0 from 2.25
–These guys were too good against artillery. But it’s not going to have an impact. Why? Because normal grens have a 0.5 multiplier against artillery. So they still outperform grens by 4 times. This needs to be nerfed heavily to be in-line with the rest of the grenadier class. This nerf is completely insufficient. They already have 2 more base dmg, 25 more HP, and 2 more range than grens.
-Spahi hidden cost increased to 400 from 280.
–literally not even a nerf. It doesn’t increase the cost of shipments or techs. The only impact will be on the score jump. Kill bounties are increased, so your opponent is no longer getting short changed from killing them.
-Kapikulu corps cost increased to 2500f from 2200f
–The Age 4 church tech that sends 5 Spahi. Realistically, this increase is from 1100f to 1250f since most Otto players include palace intrigue in their decks. 150f extra in Age 4 is completely meaningless, and even the full 300 food extra is unremarkable. Minor nerf with no real impact
As detailed above, the nerfs, when even impactful, do not address the real problems, which is an easy turtle FI backed with free villager production (meaning turtling does not impact your eco), excessively strong artillery foundry units Abus and Humbaraci. And the buffs are unnecessary and grant unfair advantages to Ottoman players, particularly the culverin LOS increase and Humbaraci cost decrease.
The botto FI needs to be heavily de-incentivized by making it slower and easier to punish (FIs are supposed to be extremely risky). Give a meaningful nerf to TC building by making Yoruks unable to build them (settlers building TCs for other civs isn’t an issue). Nerf Abus gunners so that heavy cav can actually kill them. Nerf Humbaraci so they don’t counter artillery, which is supposed to counter them.
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Yes, two minor nerfs to Abus, neither of which impact the issues with the unit
-One minor nerf to Humbaraci, making them only 4 times better against artillery than normal grens
-Two minor Mosque techs nerfs, increasing total res cost by a whopping 175 res in a real game.
-Vil train time was not nerfed, but it should be
-Only TC Build time was nerfed, and only for settlers, and only increasing build time by 7.5 seconds.
You seriously expect me to believe that that’s more impactful than these buffs?:
-New spies that get promotions, meaning better than all other spies
-Cheaper guard Humbaraci (many of which will be made in an FI)
-A huge advantage in culv wars due to extra LOS
-Azaps getting a 33% base damage increase.
Yeah, no. They were buffed.
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Have you seen this game last game of Mitoe vs Optimus, both high level players?
poor mitoe, in age 3 with 48 vills vs 90 playing aggressive with france, optimus with otto in age 4 with 3 tc´s, sea boom, has big eco and nice army lol
Optimus (Otto)= Rank 6 (ELO= 2125)
vs
Mitoe (French)= Rank 61 (ELO= 1890)
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you can never convince an otto player that a buff is a buff, good luck
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I am afraid your prejudice makes you an unfair statement.
Such as;
1-In the pup notes, it says that 4 grenadier card sends 5 grenadiers now and enables them in barracks. You ignore it and whine that ottomans 4 humbaraci card sends 5 now. Lol, who cares? There are a lot better cards to put in your deck and this is not a buff, it is even Technically a nerf because you cant train humbaracis at barracks.
2- humbaracis 10 resources cheaper. Mmm no they r not. Only if you research their RG, and for a year I have never seen an opponent that went beyond the veteran level of humbaracis if they ever used they as a strategy. Also if that bothers you, whine about other RG changes and I will believe your honesty.
3- azap 6 damage to 8. The sole purpose u train them as a ranged anti LC multiplier from 4x to 3x. A buff? You can consider it a one, but in practice it will have a minimum effect. You will never use azaps to kill other types of units except cavalry.
4- spy becomes unique. Thats great, and did you see their cost compared to new cheaper spys? Only small hp promotion bothers you? When did you thay spy killed multiple enemies, be real here.
5-politician change. I don’t consider it as a buff since it includes a nerf. Wood is the king for Ottos and no matter what Quartermaster politician stays at top.
So what I wanted to say here, you guys ignore nerfs which can effect the balance hugely and focus on on small things. 52% win rate is nothing OP and after these nerfs, I wont be surprised to see them at 48-49% win rate
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when you point out ottoman buffs its “prejudice”
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As simple as their way of training vills…
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It ls not what I am saying. What I say here is that the buffs that listed above are not actually buffs because some happens to other civs too and some others include buff and nerf included within the context.
Right, so I guess its not trolling but actual reading issues.
Yes, two minor nerfs to Abus
They now have the 0.9 multiplier vs light cav after the ‘minor’ anti light cav multiplier nerf. The increase all other light inf got to the base multiplier did not reach the abus. We once again have a light inf unit with a negative multiplier to what it should counter. And before you start that siege damage bandwagon - other skirms interact with the ranged resist on light can for an overall 1.2 multiplier after resistances for the most part. And the train time hits abus in age 2, everywhere - whiners like yourself generally screech about bUt My tEaM gAmEs, so that was a added hit to supermacy where they’ve always been hard to mass.
minor nerf to Humbaraci, making them only 4 times better against artillery than normal grens
Do normal grens lose to musks in age 2? No? Humbaraci do. If they counter siege like they were made to then thats because you cant do any age 2 gren pushes with them. But lets keep calling a loss of 12.5% dps vs the unit they counter ‘minor’. Or did you think the rest of us never bother to read unit description like you clearly dont?
-Two minor Mosque techs nerfs, increasing total res cost by a whopping 175 res in a real game.
Ahhhh, so to force your point, your just gonna go ahead and take for granted that an age 3 card slot has already been sent. Lol, okay - so either we have an age 4 tech that gives sipahi for a value of 500 food a piece and 10% melee resistance at a time when everyone should have goons; or we save the res but have to send another card that does nothing else to do that?
-Vil train time was not nerfed, but it should be
Starting from hotfixes before this patch the age 1 vil train time tech got nerfed by 1 sec for the same cost. The teir 2 tech was increased to 6 sec reduced for an increase in cost to 150 w from 125 w and was gated to age 2 - overall double nerf. Now we have another cost increase for a third nerf. This on the baseline of a system that takes 1600 res and age 3 at minimum to manage 80% of what most other civs can do - palace intrigue? So age 3 for 800 res and then I have a bonus that feels like a bonus? Hah. Why do you whiners never ask to remove this anchor of a mechanic - as a change, y’know, from whining about the do or die strats the civ is leashed to beacuse of them. The value of vils is in the time theyre active - this free vil bonus is junk.
-Only TC Build time was nerfed, and only for settlers, and only increasing build time by 7.5 seconds.
On a civ that already lost the age 3 covered wagon in patches prior and has a yet another unique change to work around by wasting deck slots on even more crate shipments. All this bs, for the mighty advantage of 5 vils on hunts. Another ‘minor’ thing.
-A huge advantage in culv wars due to extra LOS
-Azaps getting a 33% base damage increase.
-New spies that get promotions, meaning better than all other spies
These are the buffs I was talking about, yea. What the word for them? Ah! “minor”. You dont win/lose a culv war over 2 LOS - ever, at all. But good on you to be a thorough hypeman. Azaps get more ranged damage (very important) and then the multipliers were scaled back down for it. Are they the best pike availaible to euro civs - yes. Does that say alot when compared to american, or asian civs - no. New, more expensive spies that get more hp when they kill something - are definately not the best spies when ports have constables. That little fact didnt stop you tho, from pretending it was the end of the world.
-Cheaper guard Humbaraci (many of which will be made in an FI)
And that one doesnt even merit a minor buff categorization, cuz ALL the RG techs got buffed. I expect that your hyper focus on Otto prolly distracted you
Yeah, no. They were buffed.
Lets hope the devs go ahead and ‘buff’ all civs to lose age 3 covered wagons and gain the free vil mechanic.
you can never convince an otto player that a buff is a buff, good luck
Aztecs got buffed with jaguar warriors and that is perfectly valid reason to nerf ERK’s and AK’s since that was never their role anyway.
1 Like
Quite a nice update, especially with the new skins.
Some questionable changes in terms of balance though, african civs getting nerfed again when nobody even plays them.
Lot’s of nerfs to the maltese which were a fun civ for awhile until the whiners started and with the proposed changes I think I’ll play brits/germany again from now on. Maltese don’t even have an above average win rate.
Making the pavisier viable with guard and imp upgrades was nice but they’ve sort of ruined that by nerfing all of it’s upgrade cards and base stats. All they needed was the change to hp with roman tactics, leave the other cards alone. Nerfing all the lombard cards is also questionable when what should have happened is a change to the lombard to give more ROI so they’re viable without the cards.
Hopefully they revert some of these changes before the patch goes live.
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This slowmode is really annoying. My previous comment submitted before I was done and I can’t edit it to fix it, so I’ve had to split it
4.) You are misrepresenting what I said. I clearly stated the faster attack speed is what is concerning, not the HP. The argument that it’s not an issue because you have to kill units is faulty, as spies have stealth. I have been playing on the PUP with these changes with friends and we have observed that these spies, if used correctly, can get on top of a mass of mercenaries and devastate them far faster than normal spies due to the attack speed rapidly increasing.
5.) I literally say I don’t know if the change to the Imam is impactful. Saying that even though it’s better no one uses that politician and therefore any improvement isn’t actually an improvement just doesn’t line up.
The end result in this PUP is an overall slight buff to ottomans. With the civ already heavily over performing, and with the real broken behaviors untouched, there is no justification to assert that the civ will perform worse, and all evidence points to the contrary.
As it’s clear that you are uninterested in any real discourse and instead are attempting to insult my intelligence, I will provide some counterpoints to your arguments and no longer engage, having made my points clearly, backed with numbers and data, for all to see, as it’s not worth my time to continue debating this.
Attempting to distort the math by pre-emptively providing fake numbers will not prevent me from making my point. Excluding cards, using base Age 2 units for simplicity, using numbers pulled from in game in the PUP, against dragoons, with ranged armor of 20%. Abus will do a base siege damage of 36, with a light cav multiplier of 2.25 do 81 dmg per shot. Crossbow, with a base ranged damage of 16, with a light cav mulitiplier of 2.5 do 32 dmg per shot. Ergo, Abus kill dragoons as effectively as 2.5 crossbows. They are still an effective counter, likely too effective.
Yes. They do. Stat for stat, almost every single one of the humbaraci’s are better than grens. The only place they do worse is ranged armor of 0.3 to grens 0.5. That means their effective hp against musks is 321 to 400 for grens. Yes, that means they die faster, with 20% less effective HP, but that’s more than made up for by doing over 18 siege dmg at 14 range vs the grenandier’s 16 siege dmg at 12 range (12.5% more damage at 2 extra range). Humbaraci out-range musks, who have 12 range, whereas grens do not. Oh, and humbaraci have 4.5 movement speed, so they can kite musks. Grens have 4 movement speed, so they cannot.
I have played against, played with, and casted games where there were successful humbaraci age 2 pushes. They do the job of grens, but better. And again with the attempt at insulting me.
Functionally, yes, I will assume players have sent palace intrigue. It’s in every standard otto deck. It’s facetious to say that palace intrigue does “nothing else” when it decreases the cost of a 20 nizam fusilier shipment and 3 great bombard shipment, saving another 2000 res at minimum, on top of the now 1250 res reduction for the spahi. 3250 res is tremendous value for an Age 3 card and there’s a reason it’s the meta. Palace Intrigue is balanced as it requires the church card, thus necessitating an Age 2 and Age 3 shipment (total cost of ~1700 res) and a significant reduction in tempo. I don’t know single player who would deem 2500 food for 5 spahi and 10% armor on all heavy cav as a bad trade. The presence of dragoons on the field doesn’t decrease that value, as musks, halbs, and pikes are still on the field. If 2500f is a bad value for this as you maintain, why is 2200f acceptable? The cost is in the same ballpark.
1.) We are discussing the PUP. Any previous nerfs are not the concern. While yes, there has been previous nerfs, it’s clearly not been enough given the civ’s continued dominance
2.) The nerf in this patch is 25 wood. Only 25 wood. That’s the only change to vil production.
3.) Yes, all of the vill techs in the mosque cost 1600 res total (1625 in the PUP). Yes, it’s highly unlikely palace intrigue will be used for those. However, assuming you hit 99 vils, lose none, send 3 vils and 5 vils, plus the 6 starters, for a total of 14 not generated by TCs, the ottoman free villager training provides 8500 res. That is a tremendous bonus alone. And in a real game, you are losing vils and you’re pulling vils away from hunts because of raids. The otto bonus is even stronger then, because you get that dead vil back for free and you generate vils even when your eco is idled. And don’t forget you train vils while aging
4.) The reason that no one requests removing the mechanic is because it’s essential to the Ottoman civ design. Believe it or not, I don’t have an intrinsic issue with the civ or its design. I’ve had fun playing it and playing against it.
I disagreed with the loss of the wagon change when it was made, and still do, as it didn’t solve the problem. As far as the crate shipments go, I do not know what you are referring to, but using lots of res crates in conjunction with Silk Road has been a common strategy since 2005.
Yes. You do. A half second of knowledge that you have that the other doesn’t is a massive bonus.
My exact quotes are:
and
Nowhere in here do I indicate that this is the end of the world. I merely state the facts. I do not know why you indicate that it’s not a concern that the Azaps are better than all other euro pikes, but it is. And perhaps I could have been clearer, but the new spy is better uncarded than all other civs. Sure Ports get a better spy, if you send a card. But base level, no other spy competes.
This is a prime example of a strawman argument, where you attempt to distort my argument to say something I did not. I never stated that the cost decrease, which is shared with all royal guard upgrades, was a problem, and I never mentioned other royal guard upgrades, so you cannot conclude anything concerning my position on any changes other than humbaraci. For posterities sake, and to prevent another attempt to distort my position, I will simply say that I have reservations concerning any and all royal guard upgrades that decrease the cost of a unit, and that the humbaraci is the most concerning of all given its extant strength.
I hope this clearly establishes that my position is well reasoned, researched, and presents my point clearly and convincingly, and I will not reply to any additional comments.
6 Likes
Maybe this is one of the best ideas I ever read here, literally infinite shipments to Lombards fix the economy of Italy in treaty if they implement isn’t necessary the second factory, totally agree with ur proposal.
2 Likes