It’s great to have a balance patch that nerfs the economic bonuses of some of the currently popular and frequently picked new civilizations for balance purposes but why pretend like the legacy civs are completely balanced, are an even matchup against most of the other civilizations and ignore them?
If the balance changes are S and A tier tournament based, Chinese are the most picked and successful civ across all RM tournaments and Aztecs/Mayans overall when you include RBW. Turks were the highest priority for Arena/Fortified clearing. TG flank - Britons/Mayans. TG pocket - Franks. If the balance changes are based on winrates above a certain elo, Franks are much higher than Poles, Burgundians in most settings.
With 42 civs in the game, if a dozen of the 18 civs released in 1999 are the ones that are super strong and most commonly picked ones in each format, why have the remaining “average” civs that are significantly inferior to those in all the settings?
The “What’s on the horizon” seems to indicate a patch with massive balance changes. I sincerely hope there are some substantial and impactful changes to the legacy civs reducing their power in their respective settings.
Like Chinese losing bloodlines, plate barding armor. Flat tech discount of 20% becoming their castle age UT. Mayans getting their 15% longer lasting resources changed to 10% longer lasting food from animals, el dorado increasing eagle hp by 40% instead of 40 absolute hp. Franks losing one or more of their eco or military bonuses or atleast getting them toned down – like castles cost -10% in castle age and -15% in imp, knights +20% hp instead of cavalry. Turks getting nerfs to their castle drop janissary play, losing redemption or block printing, extra hp on gunpowder becoming their castle age UT while CA hp bonus becoming a civ bonus to support open maps. Spanish getting some nerfs to Nomad but some other buffs to their generic RM play etc.
And some impactful changes to the infantry unit lines which will make barrack units and all the mid-tier infantry based civilizations more usable (not like -5 food or +5 hp to infantry unique units but actually useful changes. )
I don’t like this. I want legacy civs to be relevant and a few to be top tier. I support the opposite if this take. I mean no offense op, I just disagree.
Sure, no problem. But why though? Some of those civs have been nerfed and its ok to leave them as they are today but those other civs are not just relevant but have been some of the strongest for decades. From WCG to BCC in 2000s to Kotd-1,2, NAC 1,2 in WK to all DE S and A tier events,the Chinese, the Mayans, Franks, Britons have been there. A few more very strong civilizations that were popular in legacy AOC like Huns, Aztecs, Vikings, Mongols got a direct nerf to their bonuses. A few strong ones in WK which were a part of the earlier editions of Kotd and NAC like Slavs, Burmese, Malians also got heavily nerfed.
I’m not suggesting any change that would make those civs completely unusable but rather tone down their power similar to the Aztec nerfs -7% on their military production and -2 carry capacity (about -6% farming efficiency). Aztecs are still popular and powerful but not unstoppable. Why not have the other legacy civs at that level instead of being a superpower.
All the minor changes they got like an increase in cost of Chivalry for Franks or Warwolf for Britons neither impacted their popularity in tournaments nor in the ranked ladder amongst mid level players. As far as TG is concerned, you simply cannot skip Franks and Britons in any open map. They’re picked 3x more often compared to any other civ in the game. How is this even fair? Wouldn’t it be so much more fun if you could switch to any cavalry or archer civ instead of being forced to pick Britons/Franks?
teutons over buf to meele armor could be tuned down. britons free range in castle age could be removed.
persian war elefants could cost 1.5 population.
so what am I supposed to play as Britons in Castle age? Vanilla archers that produce a bit faster and have no Thumb Ring? Or Knights without Bloodlines? I hope you are Kapp’ing, because at that point I can just play Khmer, perfect Arbalest civ according to you, no Thumb Ring, no extra range.
if you dont want the free +1 range removed than rework the castle age unite tech that also gives +1 range. turn it into something that benefits britons infantry so they have a second leg outside of being jsut an archer civ.
for example “Indentures” (based on fighting-the-hundred-years-war-war-indentures
Decrease Men at Arms Food Cost by 20 increase Gold cost by 5.
After supplies you get 60-15-20=25 Food, 20+5 = 25 Gold
Good tech in team games with trade in lategame
Good tech in castle age were food is more limmiting and gold availbe
arguably bad tech in imperial age in 1v1.
therefor a sitational tech.
or something else, but +2 bonus range in castle age is lame
In 3+ years that I play this game consistently, I have never seen Yeomen researched in Castle age. Its cost is so high that Britons might as well have 2 Imperial Age UTs.
Even in Imp, it’s not a must-have in 1v1 Arabia. I can see it being annoying on maps like BF, perhaps Arena (where Britons were once top tier), but not much else.
In any case the whole idea of +1 range is that you can’t just boom vs Briton Xbow and do Siege defense, you are asking to nerf 1 of the few civs left that is willing to play an aggressive Castle age on Arabia 1v1?
Aztecs are already a terrible civ in random map settings, only strong on arena cause broken monk bonus design, if they nerf them more it would be better to remove the civ and turn them into tlaxcala lol
Chinese aren’t that strong, but they are easy to use and get the extra villagers with all the resources added on DE, try aoc chinese on old map scripts and you would be like 15 secs behind normal civs, chinese used to have one of the worst win rates, franks in the other hand had a positive win rate but FE team decide to over tune franks.
Mayans have been punished so bad, no one asked for obsidian arrows or double spear on their skirm, all they have now is slightly cheap archers, average eagles until late imperial age and slightly lasting resources which compared to poles, vietnamese, malians or portugues resource generation or lasting farms like sicilians the mayan bonus is just too small, stop pretending like if was something broken cause it ain’t anymore, mayans are easy to play in a compact format or tight build order.
But you are right, supposedly this game has support, other e-sports games change and adjust their balance to prevent the over usage of certain civs/factions and units but we are still having brits, mayans, franks and hindustanis as the most used civs and nothing has been done to change that, for example brits are broken cause of the team bonus and mayans cause of the cheap walling and laming options with the eagle all of that can be easily adjusted without ruining the civs but our devs have failed attending the most basic aspects of balancing purposes.
The same thing people play with Koreans, Vikings, Bohemians and all the civs without bloodlines. In a previous thread you mention that Bengalis and Dravidians are totally fine even though they don’t even have knights. Now suddenly the lack of JUST bloodlines is insufficient?
You have faster food from sheep, military advantage in feudal age with faster ranges and cheaper tcs in castle age. Against most civs you’ll still be faster and get a lot of damage done in early castle age with crossbows and a few knights. You can then go imp, get the crazy range bonus, blast damage trebs and +4 armor light cav or halbs.
And “just slightly faster” produced??? Really??? Are you seriously downplaying the power of that bonus?
I think this true only for sub 1000 elos where Goths are the most popular pick and some of these civs aren’t beginner friendly.
Otherwise Aztecs, Franks are top-5 most popular on aggressive settings like Empire wars, Gold or wood control based maps. Chinese, Mayans are just top-tier in RM settings on almost all open land maps. There’s stats from tournaments, ranked ladders from multiple years.
Yes and some of these civs are just so superior and can’t be matched by most of the other civs. Like Vietnamese, Italians, Byzantines are a decent flank civ with each having some advantages compared to other in some situations. But the bonus of civs like Franks, Britons are just too too strong that almost make them mandatory in open map team games.
IDK how is the playerbase soo seriously biased towards old civs and too against new civs, imagine for a moment if Hindus/Bohemians/Gurjaras/Poles were 1999 AoK civs while Britons/Chinese/Mayans/Aztecs were DE civs, all got nerfed suddenly, see the rant towards the first ones but praise to the later ones @Pulikesi25
Do y’all remember Vikinsg when lost Thumb Ring and how the complaints came, despite the civ still have good WR (though they are fading away of tournament play).
exactly. And imagine Franks or Britons released last year, everyone would have cried they’re broken right away. Especially the TG players.
The bias is partly because many of these civs were balanced in legacy AOC. Like Franks had no berry bonus, chivalry or extra hp on Scouts. Aztecs and Mayans had mobility issues in castle age because eagles had 2 p.armor. So people feel, ah its ok, those civs aren’t that great, they die to Huns. But the FE devs broke those civs by adding more bonuses. All their weaknesses got filled and the civs, strategies and units which did well against them, legacy #### ### ## ####### towers into conqs all got nerfed and they become insane. There were nerf complaints against every civ and unit that challenged these, just to keep these civs in the top-10 list forever.
Happened yesterday. Turks has better W/R than Bengalis both in Arena and Arabia. But whenever someone asks for a nerf, people usually reply they need a buff for Arabia which is not wrong. But when I asked buff for Bengalis to compensate the Armored Elephant line nerf, someone immediately replied Bengalis don’t need any buff.
That’s crazy. Who thinks that one of the worst civs doesn’t need a buff? Too much resistance to change. Like 2 yrs ago there was a lot of fuss about Redbull and Microsoft trying to make Empire wars the mainstream format, it should be boycotted, banned and so on. In reality not even 10% of the games are Empire wars, RBW was the only main event based on that format. Whenever something new comes, there’s a lot of people trying to “protect” the existing.