Lately, I hear a lot of complaints about Italy, but almost all of them are focused on this particular unit.
What do you think of this unit? Is it ok or does it need some adjustments?
In my opinion, it is a very good unit, for its price and its bonuses, it has a very high equivalent of villagers and is very efficient.
I think you have to increase the price of training, or limit the amount that you can have in the field or increase the construction times.
I think they should limit the amount of architects you can have at a time by the age you are in right now. I donât play Italy myself but maybe they could limit it to 1 per age to a maximum of 5 in imperial as an example. If they do this they should drop their pop count to 1 and enable them to gather at estates as well so they donât become useless late game to compensate the fact that you canât get too much out of them early game.
ye seems like increase the architect limit/age by 1 is the best option for me and quite healthy, better than nerf hp or cost or smth else
Also building should not give xp when they built by architect, italy seems swim in the xp xD
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Remember if youâre training architects youâre not training settlers, and they take a whole 2 pop.
italy kinda gets around that because they also get vils with every tech, so even if you are traing architect you can still get vils ( albeit more expensive) from getting techs from market or the basilica which are relatively cheap.
edit: also I think its bad to think of archiect as somehow eating into your vils, they are effectively vils generating wood and XP values, also they can just actually gather wood
doing some quick testing, on most buildings( and not accounting for vils having to gather res first and then build) they are equal to a 1 pop vil gathering at 0.83 wood/s and 0.08-0.125 xp/s.
If you get a basillica then the value increases to like 0.95 wood and like 0.14 xp/s
like this is great value
I think they should be just made ungarrisonable, so making more architects is a high risk reward scenario. You can invest in more architects but you also have to invest in protecting them from cav raids.
Yeah, architects need a nerf. I also think Italy need two other nerfs:
Bersagliere should have 4.5 speed so they are a more in-line skirmisher.
Italy needs a nerf on the huge lombards resources shipments. 3k on age4, 2x 1,5 resources on age 3 and 1k on age2 is way too strong specially combined with the lombard XP trickle card.
From what I can tell, the issue with Italy is not about the shadowteched Bersagliere, its speed or the shipments at disposal, but rather the buildingsâ and outpostsâ creep with some BOs through which you can get to Age IV fast and safe.
Behind all that, there is the architectâs mechanics, which probably give them a higher value than the one currently esteemed.
I have been reading some good proposals, like the +1 architect build limit for every Age up, though I think it would slow down too much Italy in AgeII with just 2 architects.
I would consider these changes:
The 200 gold cost is there to punish you more whenever you are losing your architects. In Age II and III, you would come up with respectively +1 and +0 architects compared to the other proposal; in age IV, you would have -1 architects instead.
Does Italy even need 4/5 architects in the first place? Was it an oversight to let Italy build or rebuild for fewer architect seconds outposts/buildings a player has been striving to destroy?
If we consider that the architects donât build with the 3â
t/(n+2) villager formula, but with a t/n one, it would take â67 architect secs to build an outpost with 3 of them (with t=200), compared to the current 37.5 needed with 4 (max builders number for an outpost); If we are in the Basilica bonus range, we are getting exactly 60 sec.
They seem reasonable numbers to me. Besides, If you want to improve architectsâ efficiency after these nerfs, you still got the Freemasons card.
My biggest issue with italy is the XP card for the lombards. other eco houses/buildsing dont generate passive xp while creating other res. with 5 lombards and 2 basilicas italy has an additional 4.5XP/s which is the equivalent of 4.5TPs on XP in base which cant be contested. its just unhealthy for the meta to have in base XP generation like that
Recruiting Architects is like recruiting villagers. I donât know where I read it, but supposedly, the architect is equivalent to 2-3 villagers.
Except they canât gather and they harvest wood at the rate of 1 settler., so no.
I think the calculation that is made is the following. If the architect builds buildings for free, this means that the resources needed for the construction are âharvestedâ by the architect while he builds it.
I based on the fact that if a villager has to build a building, for example a lombard, he must first collect 100c and then 100w, and then build the lombard.
So, the calculation is easy, to find the rate of collection of resources per second of the architect, you must divide the resources that the building costs over the time it takes an architect.
So, for example, a lombard, costs 100 coin and 100 wood (200 res) and takes 100 seconds to build.
200 res/ 100 sec= 2res/sec
This number is compared to 2-3 vills collecting natural resources.
And if we add that near basilicas and HC upgrades, this build rate improves, we can argue that the architect is one of the best AoE3 villagers, even better than the Settler Wagon.
PS: Correct me if Iâm wrong, but I think thatâs the logic.
In base xp generation like all the native civs can do with warrior priests, priestesses etc. They get much more xp as well compared to lombards.
All italy needs is reduce architect limit and increase it in later ages, maybe make them build outposts a bit slower as well.
difference that they need to invest vills seconds into it. Italy xp generation just happens.
Also yes if aztec go xp dance with full warrior priest then they have a ton of shipments but they also have no eco and certainly no classic siege shipments to make use of either
I think this unit provides too much perks - free buildings and the ability to build them faster is too powerful.
My suggestions for this unit:
Additionally, I think some civs could gain access to the Architect with a Home City card - of course, these would be disposable cards. Sample Home City cards for other civs with the Architect:
Line Infantry Mounted Infantry Pandour HajdukMy point wasnât to compare the civs, all civs have strengths and weaknesses and different playstyles but just to point out that safe in base xp generation isnât something new to italians and many civs have alternative ways to get xp other than just 1 church or a tp.
Iâd say they do need to invest to get the xp, the lombards need to be built/shipped, a card needs to be sent just to enable the trickle, other cards need to be sent to deposit resources so you actually get the xp.
thatâs a good way to make architects completely useless to the point that no one would bother to use them any more, lol.
Increasing the cost of the architect or its population does not seem ideal since it was initially misleading because of its poor efficiency. At this rate we end up like Sweden with buff and nerf in each patch.
The best thing would be to limit them by age, and increase their creation limit to 6, similar to the mountain monasteries of ethiopia. and Uffizi move it to fourth (like our lady of the light of Mexico), and remove the xp penalty to italy, this was placed because it generated many shipments with this card.
But the Architect is too OP in my opinion. You need to somehow limit the fact that the Italians can build buildings for free.
Maybe a certain way to do this would be time constraints, e.g. the Architect, after building a free building, has to wait some time to build the next one.
