Well, technically they are good Vs archers, its even written on their description.
The thing is, who would want to waste stone to build these after feudal? And how are they viable if we see them once a year tops? Better to build a castle for mango push. Villagers can repair mangos unharmed while hitting the tower
If you don’t want changes that’s fine, a lot of people don’t. But saying something is viable only because it makes sense in their own head but then no one actually uses them is a bit contradicting.
What nerf did they get in 73855? There were only 4 impactful changes in that patch - The cav archer/parthian tactics change, Hindustani nerf, Gurjara nerf and Poles nerf. Koreans didn’t get any nerf in that patch. The data you’re sharing is abnormally small, isn’t consistent with aoepulse and Bengalis, Bohemians, Saracens, Ethiopians being the only 50+ win rate civs on Arabia seems like you took the wrong map, like Acclivity or something.
As far as the whole picture goes, this is the actual stats from aoepulse for 1200+ elos before the xbow nerf: AoE Pulse
and after AoE Pulse
Win rate dropped from 43% to 41%, but they’ve been the bottom 5 on Arabia forever.
Honestly after this line i dont know anymore if you’re trolling or serious. I hope you realize that this description is absolutly meaningless, it even says that pikes counter kts and we all know thats wrong.
So you want to see Towers? How about you check out KOTD finals, game2? Guard tower defense vs potential raids. Or RBW semifinals, game 3 - korean towers EVERYWHERE as defense, attack, and zone control. Not recent enough? Try JMB finals, game 2 - no guard tower, but feudal towers that stay very very relevant and fought over until the game ends. Or TTL mbl vs BacT, using unupgraded tower to push back enemy monks.
Thats the games I remember from the top of my head, there are countless nomad games with towers (both guard and normal) playing a role. And remember: Thats without your proposed buff. So already now, when most civs have to invest 550 ressources to even get guard tower, they see play. What do you think happens after possibly the biggest buff in the history of aoe?
Me pointing that out does not mean im opposed to any changes. But your proposal must be one of the worst balance proposals ever made in this forum (and that says a lot!) and deserves to be called out for it. What you propose is sledgehammer balancing, and that destroys games.
Give them their +1/+2 Tower Range civilisation bonus back so they don’t have to build a Castle to get better Towers.
Move their Imperial unique tech to Castle and add a new Imperial one.
Imperial unique tech could allow Infantry or Archers to build Towers so you can actually use the on the offence.
Tower auto-upgrade is an already decent tower bonus in its own right.
Changing the range to UT is what I think is aimed at changing their past obsession with Tower Rush, which means we can’t go back.
I’d rather change the wood discount bonus to a flat -10 for all units to more reward them for using archers, or even give them a new bonus.
Sure that this will be OP, especially for a civ that has a net advantage in towers.
This effect can only be given to a civilization with Keeps that do not have all improvements.
Tower Rush is usually in Feudal Age. Giving them +1 Range in Castle Age means they can use Towers in that Age more efficiently without having to build a Castle. A Castle costs the same resources as Towers so you have to choose what to build.
Would that be that powerful if you need to be in Imperial to unlock it?
It’s not like you can do a rush with Towers that late.
Alternative idea:
+1/+2 Attack and Range for Towers in Castle and Imperial
No free Tower upgrades
No Arrowslits
So they and up having +2 range but -1 attack compared to normal fully upgraded Towers.
The ability to build them with Archers would be very helpful but not OP in Imperial Age.
In early Castle Age they have -1 Attack and -480 HP but +1 Range compared to now.
But they can improve the Attack and HP by upgrading to Watch Tower. This does not cost Stone like building a Castle would.
They could also get a discount on Tower Upgrades like removing the Wood cost. Then they still need a University but they would save 250+350 Wood.
On top of that it has minimum range until you research an uni tech.
The devs consider them as “Naval and defensive civ”. They are obviously an archer civ in practice but I never liked devs desperately pushing them toward that direction. Giving them free archer armor was (and still is) one of my most disliked bonus. I wish they got a different turtling bonus instead to reflect their original design where their fortification were built 33% faster.
My idea is replacing the free archer armor with a something similar bonus but doesn’t apply to towers to just revert the change.
Archer armors are free → Walls and gates (Both palisade and stone) are built 100% faster. Maybe Mayans TB can be revised and Koreans may get cheaper wall.
Well… I think every civ should be in practice ar least one of “infantry”, “archers”, “cavalry” or “cavalry archers”. Otherwise it can only rely on gimicky strategy, which feels bad.
If you want to push them toward “defenses”, then sure, you can give them something like walls get built 100% faster.
If you like more weird boni, we could think about a buff of towers when placed next to a completed economic building (including farms maybe), like +25% attack speed damage or costs no wood.
And I think that’s the problem. Other non-archer civ that have FU arbalester or practically archer civ, also have infantry with bonuses. Japanese with faster firing attack, Dravidians with cheaper to upgrade and armor ignoring attack, Vikings with extra HP, even Byzantines with cheaper counter units. (Magyars is an exception which is a Cavalry civ). Koreans saving 5 wood per spearman is just too cheap compared to them.
Honestly I won’t mind if it is +1/+1 even. But Italians already have that.
This is why I want to revert them to “Turtle” civ. (pun intended)
I still endorse the idea of giving crossbow upgrade for free.
Upgrade price increase was mainly to discourage crossbow play by non-archer civs. Koreans are now practically archer civ without eco bonus.
Civs without good eco bonus tend to require potent military bonus to be competitive (e.g. Bulgarians, Magyars, Goths)
I actually disagree. Their worst match ups are against cavalry civ. Better siege won’t help on that. Although there can be an argument that the extra wood can be used for eco which helps in all situations.
Devs totally nerfed tower rush. I won’t mind removing tower rush meta from game. But the bonus could stay for other stone defenses.
yes lets give a civ with cheaper archers, with armor upgrades for free, and free tower upgrades, the ability to generate gold while tower rushing. what could possibly go wrong?
Would actually be kinda nerf for Koreans. They need their stone in the midgame atm to not get completely flattened…
Edit: My take:
Change War Wagons.
remove at least 2 of their pierce armor, remove the anti-building damage.
Instead add some anti-cavalry and anti-camel bonus damage. Not too much, just enough to make the WW kinda “soft-counter”.
Koreans have good skirms, towers, castles, mangonels and BBC to deal with archers. They don’t need an anti-archer UU. They need something to deal with mobile units.
They would still have bad eco and first to get to this. And then the Cavalry civs could add skirms against the WWs.
What I meant is, win distribution with 5200 games of Koreans might not be the same on previous patch and even in this one when number of games increases. So the net win rate per bucket of civs (like Camel civs, gunpowder civs) might change a lot. So 5200 games is a good number in general but if you split it into buckets this way, it might not be.
I agree that they’re a very weak open land map civ and a buff definitely could be helpful but I’m just pointing out “suddenly” become weak because of the xbow nerf. And not just civs with low mobility, practically against almost all the civs except 4 based on your sheet on Arabia and Runestones. So from a balance perspective, the civ should get some eco/military/tower benefit instead of trying to change xbow gameplay in general.