First off I want to say I didn’t want to do this, but the game is filled with issues that simply aren’t being fixed or addressed in any way so I now feel I have to as the more I play the more I get frustrated at them. This list will not be exhaustive and will range from little things (specific units) to bugs, to overarching and continuing problems. I’m not sure what order I’ll go in but I think I’ll start with bugs.
There is quite a list of them but I’ll start with just a few most pressing ones I see. 1. Why are my settlers getting stuck in a mill? I don’t remember this ever happening in Legacy and if it did it certainly wasn’t at this degree. I can’t go a single game where I go heavy on mill/estates where at least one vill gets stuck in the middle not working and not showing idle. In one game I HAD 4, 3 of which were settler wagons. My issue isn’t as much that this issue existed but that it continues to as it has been happening for a long time now. Even mines are terrible, 3 hunts and 1 vill got stuck? Oh well too bad. And villagers getting stuck on pillars? This I do remember happening sometimes on Legacy but this is ridiculous. I don’t want to micro-manage every vill I task to walls. And also when you set out a long stretch I have issues where they will ignore sections. They will finish building and then stand there next to a wall I told them to build. Then we got shift-clicking, which half of the time they’ll just stop after building one thing, and the other half they’ll skip over the first thing you told them to build and head to the second. And Vills randomly entering outposts? Why is that still a thing? The attack move as well is completely bugged and I usually have to do it several times for it to finally work. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve won and lost games due to this. Oh and back on shift-clicking, that apparently isn’t possible to do with units anymore either. I used to be able to tell my goons to shoot one cannon, and then shoot the next but now? Hey let’s shoot this and then start shooting skirm! These issues simply should not continue to happen, especially when many of them used to not, or at least at not such a level.
Readability and inconsistencies of cards. I’m speaking mostly of upgrade cards here. It used to be that cav combat affected cav, hand cav HP affected hand cav HP, Musketeer and Grenadiers attack affected Musketeer and Grenadier units, and gunpowder infantry cards affected gunpowder infantry. But now we have some cav combat affected just your civs units (Germany) some cav combat affecting all cav (most of the others) some hand cav HP affecting all hand cav (Spain) some affecting just your civs (France and Germany) and some infantry HP cards randomly effecting units (revolutionary sharpshooters) that others just aren’t allowed to for…some reason, and not because they’d be OP. It just feels random and not thought out. I understand some of the reasoning for it, they don’t want Germany to get OP black riders with 4 cards in the imperial age. Which I don’t think they’d be OP but if you’re really worried OP things then maybe don’t add a unit (the drummer) that makes all your units super charged. And don’t give a civ mass availability to a unit that can nuke bases in 30 seconds and have super speed, while also giving them an upgrade to make all mercs cheaper. I’d simply rather have the first more consistent scenario with a pretty good (Black riders really aren’t great per pop) ranged cav. Either do that and make all these things consistent or please do what you did with brits and give their cards special names cause right now it’s just confusing. There are also all the inconsistencies between the native unit cards which is frustrating. There are 4 that I remember, The Incan one which lets you choose between 3 native tribes units and technologies, units cost no pop. USA doesn’t let you choose but gives you the Cree’s units and technologies, units cost no pop. Germany lets you pick between 5 royal houses (which was bugged for a long time but is now fixed), units cost pop and you can’t access technologies. France gives you the Bourbon house, technologies available, units do cost pop. The whole thing is just messy.
Adding unneeded cards. First example: whatever the name is of the card that gives samurai mortars. Completely unneeded, does not help them in 1v1, and does not help them in any competitive games but what it does do is make samurai more lamable than they already were (30 spawning in the back of your base) in any casual game. I’m almost at the point of banning Japan in any game I host because it’s an utter cancer. Dutch Mercs is another example. It does not help them in 1v1s (I have only seen it successful once), but now in any 4v4 or ffa you’re gonna have an army of very fast highlanders backed with insta-building Elmetto or royal horsemen wrecking your whole army and base. Maybe allowing you to build them is fine (for a civ that has a super coin gather rate and lots of pop this is already silly) but did you need to make them extra fast and make merc cav instant? No, but they added it anyway and every Dutch player is now laming it and it’s not addressed.
I think I also just touched on another issue: Adding random units that can nuke bases. People hated the Opri, so lets add units that are more annoying than that! A super musk that can get super speedy and almost insta-spawns from a super powerful explorer while nuking your town (Mexico) why not? A super musk that can get super speedy and nuke your town while also killing most units (Germany) why not? A super hand infantry that has super speed and can nuke your town while also spawning from a cavalry with super high hp (Japan) why not make it even stronger? A super gren that’s really fast that can nuke your town and also just won’t die while killing all infantry and cannons (ottomans) why not? Very fast artillery that can nuke your town and most units (Portugeuse grapshot Organs) why not? There are probably others that don’t pop into my head right now but you get the gist. It’s pointless and lame. It takes actual war out of many games and replaces it with whatever the heck this is.
Constant changes to fix mistakes. Another problem I (and many others) see is an unwillingness to undo changes and instead, make more changes to fix that change, and changes to fix that one, and changes to fix that one, etc. Take the culverin fiasco: give culvs an unnecessary multi vs siege units>uh oh galleons are a siege unit and a boat and now take way to much damage>make an entirely new unit tag so that galleons no longer take all that extra damage and also give that tag to other random ships who will now take less damage from culvs “because”>the monitor is still also classified siege unit and ship so it still takes the extra high damage. The easiest and best thing to do would have just been to not add the multi–the only OP siege units were the Humb and the Huaraca–but instead, we get this long list of unneeded and confusing changes. The addition of the Haciendas to Spain is another example: add OP card>nerf all musk to make OP card less OP>still have to nerf OP card and remove what was special about it>still OP so nerf the other thing that was special about it>no longer OP card but add cost to it anyway>nothing left really special about it now but also all other musk are weaker (I know it added some boom potential but marvelous year is enough for that). Another example: the Aztecs were a top 1v1 civ cause of how strong their rush was–the Devs said, and this is paraphrasing but accurate “We want Aztecs to be weaker earlier on but have more flexibility age 3”. So what did they do? Not really make the rush much weaker but instead nerf ERK and Arrow Kight a bunch. “Lets buff JPKS” Great now we have an OP JPK rush as well as the normal one, thanks.
Mercs feel very weird now, some are way too similar (Senner horsemen and Mams, Fusiliers and Askari) some civs randomly buff certain ones (Ethiopian Cannoneers), and some don’t fit what they should be (Giant Grens should be a 3 pop version of the Soldado, Swiss Pikemen for some reason don’t have range), and others are useless and don’t properly counter what they should (Pandours, in fact all “counter skirm” skrim are pretty useless).
Now the Misc. things. Objectively terrible revolts (Romania) while others are OP (Chile), Mexico being able to do everything better than everyone else late-game while stealing a bunch of USA’s “Unique” cards, Malta’s entire unique roster being almost if not completely useless, Ottomans being way to easily good in 1v1s, USA INF 30 Zuoves being a thing for some reason, Italy barely getting to use it’s unique units (papal units) and many other things which I’m sure people can think of which you could add below.
There is one more overarching issue I see–there isn’t much trust between us the players, and the developers of the game. Ball after ball has been dropped, from the terribly done announcement of the new DLC, to promised “better communication” that has never arrived. We simply have no idea what is happening and that’s really not great for a gaming community–we have enough issues as is with all the drama. I don’t know of anyone that’s seen any devs on any platforms in quite a while. Yes yes, they have NDAs so it’s really the company’s fault and not theirs so let’s blame them–the whole system is bad. And what’s sad is because of all of this I really don’t know whether I can trust this new DLC coming, for all I know and can guess it’ll come out and be OP or awful and won’t get changed for 6 months.
Oh well, there’s my long post, have fun.
