Korean wood discount still ugly

Do we really have the situation that the Koreans have an ugly exception to their 20% wood discount for siege units, because it was “too strong”, but Dravidians now get 33% wood discount on their siege and it’s “fine”?

Maybe I missed something.

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They don’t have siege engineers or normal rams, the rams do not benefit from the wood discount. They have arguably even worse cavalry. Koreans at least have hussars and knights.

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Korean get wood discount on whole wide range of units. So the devs probably thought lets give a small weakness. Their technology Shinkichon should help all siege imho. Even the Dravidian bonus is a rehash of slav bonus which slavs don’t use. Koreans are due for an update anyway. Lets see what comes up in next patch…

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Not that giving it would make Koreans too powerful or anything but probably the idea would have been to avoid a double bonus to siege. Mangonels have lower minimum range and get extra range in imp with UT, so probably a strong siege unit shouldn’t be cheap as well is their thought process.

Exactly. Siege bonuses for slow and subpar civs is just an additional tool to help them survive. Koreans would still have all the same problems in regular RM while get reasonably more powerful in areas where they’re already strong - michi/bf 4v4 tg. So its better if Koreans get some other good eco bonus instead of a siege discount.

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AoE2 has generally followed the same pattern for units. Either you get cheaper units which are not fully upgraded, or you get better than FU units, but you pay the full price. Usually, cheaper units are not FU. The only exception I can think of, for this, is mayan foot archers. Those are FU, and cheaper. But they are still generic FU archers.

For more examples, goths lack the last armour for cheaper infantry, Berber and poles get cheaper cav, but lack the paladin upgrade, Malay get cheaper elephants, but lack the last two armours. On the flip side, Vietnamese and Ethiopians get better than FU archers, Japanese get better than average infantry, Mongols get better than average cav archers, Dravidians get better than average elephant archers, and Koreans get better than average onagers. But all of them pay the full price for these units.

With this context, it should be simple to see why Koreans don’t get that discount. They get better than FU siege, so they should pay the full price.

With that being said, Koreans do need a buff. I’m not sure what, since Koreans don’t fit my personal play style and I don’t usually play them. Feel free to suggest some here, or make a new thread for that.

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I was initially quite annoyed that Dravidians rather than Koreans got this bonus, but on reflection, I don’t mind since it wouldn’t help Koreans in the areas they need help in. They really need help earlier in the game – preferably something that would help them survive until Castle Age. I think that’s what their wood discount is supposed to do (or one of the things it’s supposed to do) since it gives them cheaper Skirmishers and Spearmen – but I think it doesn’t help much since the savings are small and they still pay the full food cost.

Korean foot archers are cheaper and FU as well, but the discount isn’t as good as the Mayans’ one. Incas have several cheaper fully upgraded units now too, and their Skirmishers are (sort of) better than FU once you get Andean Sling. But yes, generally this is the trend, and I can’t think of any unit that’s cheaper and significantly better than FU.

True, but they hardly use Knights, and their Hussars are so bad that the upgrade ends up overly expensive for what it does.

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I know that trend but Portuguese still have gold discount on their Bombard cannon which is also benefited from UT. So it is not something not allowed in the game.
I understand for that situation if Koreans still get +1 range in castle age mangonel as in AOC but minimum range reduction is very situational and sometimes detrimental for friendly fire.

I honestly think that both Dravidians and Koreans are not suitable to get seige discount. First, it is already bonus for slavs (and Portuguese) and Dravidians already got huge additional wood in early castle age and seige discount on top of that is too much. Also, Koreans need something other than wood discount. I think minimum range reduction should be replaced with something more meaningful advantage for mangonel.

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Minimum range reduction is kind of an iconic part of the Koreans. It also makes your Onagers so much smoother to use (if slightly dangerous). There’s a reason why Koreans are very highly picked in at the very least, BF games, but likely most closed maps.

I think they just have a very strong identity that doesn’t support them well on Arabia maps. Maybe Koreans could have all Stone piles revealed on map, or like Malians gather +15% stone, since part of the turtling means a lot of towers/Castles? 11

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I think you are exactly right. It’s generally better to think how you can buff a civ than to hold on to the idea that they should get the one thing people are obsessed with.

So, I looked at the stats. Link 1, Link 2. It looks like they have pretty low win rates even on closed maps where you can fast castle. Looks like they need a buff on castle/imperial ages as well.

As I said, I don’t know what the fix is, but there is certainly a problem here.

I think that “too much” is defined on win rates and how is actually plays out. For that, we will need to see that actual stats, maybe a month from now. Dravidians did need a buff, and if it were upto me, I’d give them a viable raiding unit instead of a siege discount. But also, there were no civs with wood discount of siege till this point, so I’d say it’s fine in terms of flavour.

I don’t think siege is the issue for koreans. From my very limited understanding, they seem to have an issue with strong cavalry. Something like “defensive structures +3 damage against cavalry” might help them enourmously.

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There is always exception. And I don’t see why Koreans couldn’t be one. I guess we can’t revert Dravidians change to generic anymore. So, let’s hope Koreans get something good.

There were a couple right before the latest patch.

It will be a nerf on early game as they already collect stone +20% faster while a buff on the late game where they are pretty strong. Koreans need exactly the opposite.

There is a good reason for the general rule. It is there to maintain the delicate balance between FU units, stronger than FU units, and cheaper units.
So far, there is only one exception, which is Portuguese. That seems to be because their bonus is applied on the most general terms. They have FU bombards and hand cannons which are 20% cheaper in gold, which also get an accuracy boost from their UT.
Technically, Inca skirmisher counts too, but that’s such a minor buff that I don’t think it matters.

Regardless, saying that “there could be an exception, this could be one” is completely pointless in my opinion. Not only do you need to give a justification, it needs to be a very strong one. I have checked this thread, and I couldn’t find a good one. Maybe you could enlighten me.

And Incas Eagle Warrior. I’m excluding Slinger and Kamauyk as their base cost can be changed anytime.

I’m not saying this could be one. I’m saying there is/was no justification on why it couldn’t be done 3 years ago when Koreans didn’t get the bonus. Cheaper SO with +1 range (and -1 minimum range) wouldn’t be stronger than Portuguese Bombard Canon (apparently short form is censored) or Incas Eagle.

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:rofl: :rofl:

Siege workshop units have +25% HP could be a good defensive bonus for Koreans.

I disagree with this because they didn’t have that bonus in The Conquerors – they had Mangonels +1 range instead (and Shinkichon gave an additional +2!). The minimum range reduction became the new team bonus in The Forgotten.

Interesting, I knew they weren’t great on Arena but didn’t expect them to be this bad. I wonder if the DoI War Wagon nerf (-1 Cavalry Archer armour) affected that. I remember people complaining about War Wagons being too strong on Arena…

Interesting suggestion, I don’t think I’ve seen that before. I expect it would help Town Centres much more than towers.

Maybe, it feels too much like Celts to me, but I guess it’s ok to have a bonus and a unique tech that are similar.

And? It’s been 10 years since that team bonus.

I’d say Khmer’s farming bonus is also an iconic part of the civ now, even though the bonus was added later.

Koreans are not too good enough 1v1 closed maps but bottom tier in open map 1v1 games. Their wood discount does not help them too much at early stages and koreans are already good at late game. The main issue about koreans, they are defensive civ but their defence ability is not that good. Their raid ability limited but their army does not gurantee winning thr main battle. For example byzs are so good at defence but they dont have eco bonus, lacking key upgrades, full price for offansive army; limiting their offansive ability and balance the civ. Huns lacking defence but faster working stables, house bonus, discounted ca makes them so good at offance etc. Just like that koreans should do a job good enough to cover their weakness. My offer is give teutons garrison bonus to koreans so they can build some towers for defence. 10 garrison limit will be enough to protect wholr woodline or mine side but 5 garrison limit leaving many vils outside.

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The wood discount is pretty terrible on (non-siege) land units though - you’d hardly miss it if it was gone. It’s basically a naval bonus with a token effect on land.

What I dislike most about this is just the weird way they decided to break the wood bonus up such that it’s always going to be basically useless on land maps. Portos get a global gold discount, Incas get a global food and stone discount, but for some reason they drew the line at siege for the Korean wood discount. Cheaper siege wasn’t going to solve all their problems, but it would have made the land component of the bonus at least somewhat impactful, and would have given their mangonel-line some identity before late Imperial.

Anyway, they’ve gone another way with it, but I think the negligibility of the land aspect ought to be addressed. By scaling it like the Inca bonus - 20/25/30 (remove Shipwright), and/or combining it with another effect. E.G. Non-siege wood units -15/20/25% wood cost and training time (also remove Shipwright). Or just replace it with something else.

I do like this one a lot. Then again, I’m pretty biased, because I also suggested something similar here, although tied to the UT:

It could probably be +2 or 3, but that seems excessive as a free bonus (unless it scales with Age).
I have other ideas, but I’m leaning towards posting them in the other thread. I just wish there was an ongoing official thread for each civ (balance, strats, etc) instead of all these scattershot threads with their repeat discussions, yet that each only represent a piece or two of all the relevant conversation.

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That’s a great suggestion. I almost forgot shipwright exist to balance water games in the late game. Can be even 5% higher if Shipwright is removed.

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Yeah, even 25/30/35 is a possibility and would put them ahead starting in Feudal without being insane in Imp. Saving 9 wood on Arbs in Imp (under the 35% discount) is far from OP given that Mayas save 9 gold and 5 wood already in Castle Age, and more in Imp. If they can do something like this with Incas, who weren’t even bad, I don’t see why not Koreans.

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I guess it depends on your point of view. I played as Koreans with their old team bonus longer than I’ve played with this one. But also…

That’s fair enough, but the Khmer farming bonus was a buff relative to what they had before. I can only see Koreans’ team bonus change as a significant nerf, from something that was useful at least throughout Castle Age in basically ever game (on land maps) to something very situationally useful. I find it hard to consider a nerf “iconic”.

I like both suggestions. I also wonder whether the wood bonus could be extended to towers, although it’s such a small saving it probably wouldn’t be worth it.

I think (maybe I’ve said this before) part of the problem with the wood bonus is that you still pay the full food price for spearmen and skirmishers, so in Feudal Age, when food is the most valuable resource (especially for a civ that really wants to advance to Castle Age), it’s not that useful for defence.

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