In the Age of Empires III community, a disturbing trend has emerged where veteran players and YouTube influencers seem to operate like lobbyists in US congress, wielding undue influence over developers to fulfill personal agendas at the expense of balance.
These players with direct developer contacts, continuously push for unnecessary nerfs to attacking civilizations like Ethiopia - and I can only assume have influenced nerfs for Lakota, and Haudenosaunee, among others- while curiously never advocating for balance adjustments to civs like the Ottomans, America, and the English. This selective favoritism has made the game increasingly unbalanced and frustrating for players who enjoy non-European civs. As of late they have even been pushing for removing invisiablity to Mayansā¦
However the English GMT build (Lion Heartās invention and go to), for example, remains grossly overpowered, giving players an enormous early advantage. Additionally the whole community including myself keep asking for Ottoman nerfs but the silence from the Devs is deafening. The Saphi should also have their AOE damage revoked but thats a secondary issue. Lastly, the U.S. civ enjoys unchecked eco power and absurdly strong FF and FI builds
But civs like Ethiopia, however, have suffered numerous and seemingly baseless nerfs, particularly due to influencers like Lion Heart, who lobbied for adjustments to Ethiopian strengths, leaving it one of the weakest civs in the current meta. These unjustified nerfs to attacking civs combined with needless buffs to Ottomans, U.S.A, and the existence of broken builds like the British GMT are making me walk away from this game.
Ethiopian batch production of monks was needlessly nerfed
Ethiopiaās extreme vulnerability in the early game despite it being a ārush civā is counter intuitive to the civs desgin
Reliance on slow, expensive units that depend on slow gathering wood resources needs fixing or price decreases
Itās clear Ethiopia, among other āattackingā civs , have been unfairly penalized, while powerful civs like the English, Ottomans, and the U.S. remain untouched. This biased approach to balance is weakening the diversity of the game and risks alienating players who donāt want to just mindlessly do the same build (GMT for example) or play defensive civs every game
Yes I do. Here is the video where Lion Heart advocates for removing batch monks on the church and a month later its removed.
There are other examples as well. And I canāt speak for all influencers but I watch lion heart daily and have seen how much he influences devs and the meta in game. He is not always right but he is the loudest (like a lobbyist in congress) and so the devs follow in turn. But he never advocates for nerfing his favorite civs or the GMT build which I believe is OP.
this is either cope or psychosis
if lion held the reigns, ports would be dead. brits would have 0 vill cards. every civ would cap at 25
Devs nerfed many things outside of basically any streamer, like 3x haude TD rush.
Lions content is popular because, people like the type of content he showcases. Ofc things he likes or dislikes are likely to in step with what majority people like. Who was one of the first players to embrace revolts? What does every survey, despite the pushback from so many prominent streamers, say that most people think about revolts?
Besides, if we wanna try and smear a streamer for Ethopia nerf it would be Juilian who has been spot on calling alot of AR civ builds before they kick off. I guess his insight is also problematic?
Like dont get me wrong, he is a platform. but anyone whos kept a pulse knows the devs consult players but ultimately make their own goals. You think anyone advocated for Dekkan and Horn?
When i see proof of some nefarious plot ill speak to it.
Someone throwing blame at people actually making content for people while you, actually curious who are you?, accuse someone with out proof only makes you seem the low. Let me know when you have something besides petty accusations
Please donāt go after our few remaining YouTubers / streamers. We donāt have that many to begin with and we need all the help we can get to help promote this game and make the devs realize its worth the support, and get more people invested in it so it continues to grow. Is it annoying when your favorite civ get nerfed, you bet, but please donāt scare our few remaining streamers away because they consider our community toxic.
I wish these YouTubers had the influence you speak of, can you imagine the Quality of Life improvements we would have by this point.
Personally Iām grateful for streamers like Lion Heart for continuing to make great content even after all these years.
Tbh lion heart does have some favourite civs and so does everyone. Like lion heart loves revolting but revolting is nerfed. Revnak keeps saying germany is op then germany is nerfed. So i dont really think the devs are following lion heart alone, they listened to all big streamers. You know also majority of streamers are european and they played vanilla ero civs so they are used to euro civs being the standard, and think the game should be euro centric and anything new , fancy or non european are considered OP by them. So the devs nerf non euro civs and buff euro civs constantly for the past few years
Iāll call out BS where ever I see it. I donāt care if youāre a youtuber or just a random guy. I only care about balance. If you push for something thatās not legitimate because you dislike playing against it Iāll call it out. I donāt care what civ it is, whether its my main civ or yours. Balance is balance.
You showed a man having an opinion, and then suddenly 2 weeks later it happens. Must be him right?
Not anyone else had that idea. Not once right during pup about how they used to overpop (well over limit) was stopping batch training discussed. Hell not even aussie thought they were too easy to replace. Oh and people have known abuns are op but how to fix hasnt been a contentious issues with many many people from treaty to teams for their eco, 1v1 focus was on their healing. But yeah, a patch which steamdb went dormant has this idea and we all know, correlation is always proof.
Look, ethopia got it rough this patch. Blaming one man who cant even name 10 cards when the top players, not just streamers, based off what you presented is at beast a coincidence is just poor form. No meaningful conversation can be had when youve already jumped through hoops mentally no one can see.
Also, whilst AoE3 YouTubers havenāt actually done anything heinous Iād rather support them. LHās content is entertaining and is popular - itās a good visual indicator to the powers that be to not completely throw AoE3 into the trash.
We know this patch is disappointing,but I think American is not imba
now.They nerf Russian-American company and Virginia general assemblyāāthe most powerful card for American,and they also nerf veteran carbine cavalry.I donāt know why you think American is imba.
Iād say itās too early to make any reasonable conclusions on civ balance from the win rates. If a civ previously somewhat inflated someones elo due to it having op strats, then post nerf theyāre going to drop in elo if they continue to use the exact same strat without adapting.
Man what are you even talking about. This isnāt proof at all. You presented a single video and said that is what led to Ethiopia nerfs. Finding correlation does not mean causation. You havenāt shown HOW this video influenced the balance decisions or even if it did at all. You would need to show interior developer conversations that cite them making changes based on Lionheart videos. This is honestly pointless drama on your part.
