I am familiar with the bolas being an effective weapon against the Spanish cavalry. And If that is the case then maybe it wouldn’t be bad if this [Bolas Warrior] or [Bolas Thrower] unit had multipliers against cavalry as long as it is implemented well, including the ability to slow down enemy units as mentioned by you.
What about giving them a bonus likes “5 Gold for each military unità killed by infantry or converted by a monk”?
And also a cost reduction for Atlatl could another less impactful but nice change
Personnally I would prefer a military buff than economic buff. Aztecs are fine with eco and gold is not a problem for them.
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Like bringing back up the military production bonus?
Or something like a small bonus to Eagle Speed movement?
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absurdly strong considering that one of their main damage dealer in fights is eagle warriors
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Unfortunately you can’t consider the stats from that elo bracket for game balance purposes. 1k is the starting elo for someone new to the game and there are a lot of skills and game knowledge yet to be acquired at that level. Its just a matter of learning curve
If you have to balance based on stats that level plenty of good and strong civs might appear weak and a lot of very weak and infantry based civs might appear strong.
1600+ is definitely more than a few percent but that’s the minimal point where stats are a bit relevant and useful. Even 1600+ stats is probably not the best as it will be more cavalry biased.
Unfortunately no. Majority of games at that level might be decided by random outcomes like a dead boar villager, idle tc, unforced bad fights, running units into tc. The probability of such poor play decreases with increasing elo.
And you can’t make balance changes based off that. Civ balance is for competitive gaming, assuming civs are played to their fullest potential and the stats from the highest skilled players is the closest we can get. Thats 1900+ stats and tournament draft priority.
Someday when starting elo resets to 200 and 1k are playing almost ideally, competing in big tournaments and pulling upsets, 900-1200 stats could become relevant for balance purposes. Not as of now.
I’m not opposed to giving a minor buff to Aztecs but wouldn’t base it on 900-1200 stats. Probably eco bonus increasing to +4 carry capacity from castle age while limiting or reducing the hp bonus on monks could be justifiable. I’d still prefer a buff through militia line or more usable jaguars though instead of a direct buff to Aztecs.
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Alternative idea. What if “Start with +50 gold” → Get +150 gold upon age up.
This will encourage monk+eagle play which is their strength. Will it be too OP?
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Destroying balance at high ELO is roughly the same as destroying the balance at low ELO. 2k players still deserve to play the game, not to be punished by their high skills.
If it is too weak, make it more accessible (like Chinese treatment) instead of buffing them straight please.
Aztecs W/R actually went up by 0.5% in this patch at 1200+ elo Arabia. So introduction of Devotion didn’t hurt them as much as we thought. I’ll admit the sample size is not that big yet.
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950 Elo, that’s the majority of players. Whether you like it or not. That’s why there are dozens of discussions asking for Elo to start lower, as on chess.com, to better reflect reality (400 - 500).
The game must be balanced, taking into account the average win rate, with an ideal target of 50%.
Civilizations with a win rate of 53% should be balanced, as should those with a win rate of 47%.
The “play rate” factor should also be taken into account, but this is more complicated as weaker civilizations are sometimes played more than stronger ones.
It’s 1% (AOE Stats).
I don’t see the point in debating the figures. These are very simple statistics that leave very little room for interpretation. I leave you to consult these links so that you understand that you’re wrong.
https://ratings.aoe2.se/
No, the balance of the game has been worked out for everyone without unbalancing the competitive aspect. Everyone who buys the game and supports the community, without which the pros have no reason to exist (and they know it).
It’s a difficult exercise, and that’s why I said it would take years. The devs are doing a good job, and despite the large number of civilizations today, there are fewer imbalances than before.
Me too
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I appreciate your confidence but I think you misread the team random map stats instead of 1v1. 1v1 random map 1600+ is 95%ile
Devs are doing a good job because of not balancing wrt lower elo stats. Goths was one of the most popular and successful lower elo civ a couple of years ago. By your theory, they should have been nerfed. But they actually got buffed because they were abysmal at 1600+.
The community support is great, but lower elo stats isn’t the best way to measure relative civ strengths. This isn’t something that I’m mentioning wrt Aztecs but in general. Lets take this case, Mayans and Portuguese are bottom 10 winrates at 1000-1200 elo. But those are some of the strongest civs in the game. You can’t recommend buffs based on stats at that elo.
Agree with all of these except that this should be done at the highest level and with several months of data. I think at some point in 2021 and early 2022, there was only 1 big patch every 6 months. The civ performance at highest elos should be studied over such long periods of time on different maps to come up with appropriate buffs or nerfs.
Otherwise there’s going to be a lot of oscillatory changes like it happened with Hindustanis, Incas, Poles, Cumans.
Exactly. Its not that I don’t like most of the players being in that range. Because starting at 1k elo is a mistake, that elo bracket is filled with anomalous data.
More buff to militia line means Jaguar being less viable.
I think JW cost too much for being a specialist unit as well as a bit over priced for using as a general purpose infantry. If you have gold Eagle is strictly better as it can run away from all the infantries that JW would counter. And if you don’t have gold militia line is almost always better.
They are more appealing in Imperial Age as in Castle Age LS is not a viable unit for the most part. So I think elite version could get some buff.
That’s the same problem as several infantry unique units. Those units should either benefit from supplies and gambesons or be significantly stronger to justify their purpose.
Yes my mistake, 1% is 1900 Elo, not 1600.
But let’s be honnest the debate si not about how Aztecs perform at different Elo. It’s how they perform in general and they are bad. At all Elo they are kinda bad. For example Chinese is a difficult civilisation that is bad for noobs and excellent for pros. Aztecs is always bad except for high Elo where they are just fine (not good not bad).
The only option for Aztecs is to finish the game at Feudal age. So in plus of being bad, they are not fun anymore (which explain low play rate).
They have nothing against heavy cavalry (no Hallebardiers), their gold units die vs trash units hussards in late game, theire UU is bad. Their +4 attk eagles are not as good as Mayans eagles which (Mayans are supposed to be an archers civ).
They have good skirms but skirms are kind useless vs HC + BBC. They have good siege but siege onagers are very situational.
Agree that’s Aztecs, as an infantry civ should get a buff to all their infantry units making them a real infantry civ with more options.
I think the devs have mentioned before that they aim for winrates between 45% and 55%. so a civ with 43% winrate is not (usually) the target of balance changes. (There are of course exceptions eg if a civ has very different winrates at high and low elo, or on different maps, or is affected by bigger changes (eg adding devotion))
a 3% difference in win rate, means you win/lose 1 extra game in ~33 games. lots of people have more drops than that
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Yes. But JW can indirectly get buffed if opponents actually make more militia line units than now.
I think they have enough infantry option. Only JW needs more thing to be be appealing.
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Even when they were at their peak this civ had never a good winrate among the beginners.
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unless its strictly a much better unit worth the castle addition and 25 extra resources, it won’t be an indirect buff. If militia line is buffed, Aztecs are better off doing their own champions. Jaguar warrior has to have much better stats to justify that cost or should have a lower cost to clearly be the better option in a lot of situations.
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A looooooooooooooooong thread from reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/193a9rt/jaguar_warrior_vs_aztec_champion/
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The guy worked hard on his Excel table but I think he ovestimates Jaguar Warriors. Telling they do better than champions against hand canonners and that they are very good against hussars isn’t relevant.
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