Overall, the Malay remain a quantity over quality civ with their Battle Elephants, but not with their Swordsmen (which are still discounted but do not lack any upgrade). Their UU fills in the same cheap zergling role without costing gold. With these changes, Malay get some power units in the late game, most notably FU Champions (I did not like the trade off), Elite Elephant Archers (which still lack Bloodlines, and are cheaper) and a slightly better siege unit.
The other change I mentioned is that their Fish Traps cost -60% directly, instead of having a double bonus, which I wanted to eliminate. To put into perspective, their Fish Trap efficiency is reduced from 4.5 to 2.5, which is a huge nerf but kicks in early.
This thread might be controversial, but it addresses the super charged elephant rush and late game lack of options of Malay, which are even more limited than those of Vikings except for the Bombard Cannon.
due to low stats they will die quickly and have high turnover, so you need to produce them quickly. With trash 2HS this was easy since one can always build more barracks. building more castles is way harder though
this is a huge buff, not a nerf. fish traps would be cheaper than even teuton farms, while providing more food than a farm with crop rotation and also being virtually impossible to raid with melee units
The issue with Malay’s faster up always was that if you lay “normal” with them you usually just don’t have the res you’d like and usually have with the other civs. You just can’t afford the stuff you clicked u to get.
At higher level we are capable to adapt to this kind of civ bonusses but at lower leve people just don’t.
So I would definitely target that if I was to change malay. Instead of buffing that faster uptime, I would actually lower that but give malay more ressources to work with.
I once made the proposal that malay villagers could work 20 % faster while going up.
In case of Eles, I would rather prefer if Eles in general would see an overhaul. Especially against monks.
My best Idea for that so far was that converted eles first turn “neutral” and need to be converted a second time to joing your faction.
I don’t see the point there. Really. What’s wrong with the current Karambits and Trashmen?
I think that’s totally fine. I see absolutely no reason to change that.
Just going to point out this requires an overhaul on Malay as well as ranged elephant counters. Or a pop cap change like units having pop space be a function of resource cost. Or nerfing elephants but making associated non-malay UTs/civ boni crazy strong. Whichever path is chosen its definitely not an either-or situation. Malay’s elephant discount balance is intricately linked to the base stats/mechanics of battle elephants. Change the latter and youll probably need to change the former. Change the former and you free up design space for the latter.
Because as the game exists the space of upgrades and counters doesnt provide enough flexibility to simultaneously balance the malay spam, normal elephants in castle age, and late game elephants. You simply cannot use upgrades to deviate far enough away from the base stats to get the desired performance in each context.
Right now malay elephants can still be oppressive for some civs and late game elephants are OK if a little strong in team games. Normal elephants are garbage. This cant be solved by any one change, youll need several simultaneous changes. Of course this was predictable 6 years ago when rise of rajas came out which doesnt bode well for the devs ability to fix it.
Not 100% sure what the goal of your mod is and therefor what kind of answers you want.
If this is just for your enjoyment, go on, you can make anything, you can give persian war ele the speed of hussar for all i care.
If this is a balance suggestion, then…hell no.
Malay winrate might scream “buff pls!”, but its not that simple.
The first problem with malay is how difficult they are to play. Pros pick them rather often in tournaments and do well with them, but average players, even 1650+ rated, struggle with their unique resources management.
The second problem is maps. Their overall low winrate is mostly due to arabia: They suck on arabia and arabia is the most played map. They seem fairly well balanced for maps like 4lakes, but this does not translate to a higher overall winrate due to how few 4lakes games are in the database.
So if we are to buff malay, we risk that a) they become very strong in pro play and b) they become very strong on certain maps, while potentially still sucking in the average 1v1 on arabia.
This is exactly where your proposed changes are problematic. You want a huge buff to their fishtraps. You want a huge lategame buff to the karambit, giving them a unit that just overruns everything once gold runs out. And you want to give them arguably the most cost-efficient champions in the game, meaning civs like goth will struggle a lot.
Those changes will buff them in certain situations (game stages, maps, civ MUs) to the point of absurdity. Imagine a 1v1 on BF with a pretty closed map gen, and your opponent as malay has 2 ponds. If you cant sneak a vill, you might as well just GG.
However, those changes do next to nothing for them where they actually struggle - early pressure on open maps, and beeing hard to play.
They are basically the same but don’t cost gold, what is your exact question? If anything I made them more viable in late game.
Huh? You do realise currently they cost 66 wood and provide 2115 food. With my change, they cost 40 wood but provide the regular 715 food. The W/F efficiency is even stronger at present.
If anything both your questions support my idea instead of questioning them.
Making Karambits the light cav replacement. They are moderately fast, have low attack for that purpose. Considering their 2 in 1 gimmick, they have a total of 80 HP. Making their Swordsmen the light cav replacement and their karambits the swordsmen replacement doesn’t work imo.
Their swordsmen could do that better and even overrun buildings for that matter. I specifically removed the melee armor and attack vs buildings of the Karambits for that matter.
Okay yeah, I didn’t see that coming. So let’s just reduce the gold cost by 5 and call it a deal!? The Portuguese ones cost -4 already and naturally though.
So basically the same thing but stronger (I nerfed the stats) but with extra steps!?
2 Karambit have 18 attack vs trash units. Thats what a Lith pala with 3 relics does, if we purely look at damage output (altough with 5% lower rof). The trahs-2HS you want them to replace deals 13 damage, which might seem close, until you realize the unit is much slower, has lower hp, and costs more than 1.5 times as much. And that unit is considered strong in lategame already…
The thing that holds karambit back is not that they cant take down buildings fast enough (use rams for that), but how bad they die to archers and power units in general - because armor counts double vs them. However, in a trashwar they would be the undisputed kings.
I actually really like it when civs have a skill gap ( like Malays, Persians, Chinese) and you cannot use their maximum potential just by doing the exact same BO as everyone else.
I get why many people dont want to plau “hard to master” civs, but I still don’t get why people complain so much about Malays having to train 2 more villagers before advancing to feudal age. And even if they forget to, they can just delay their ranges by 50 seconds while produing 2 more villagers (not the full potential of the civ unless you all in rush, but more than fine).
I agree with this. Actually Karambits got buffed by +1 damage one or two years ago.
I am not favorable to “big” civ changes like in this thread, but I we go this direction, the unit needs to be properly balanced differently for sure.
I think this thread has some good ideas that go in a good direction but also some bad ones. Going through quickly:
elephants are 10% cheaper in Castle age → this is not enough. Elephants are already never used and Malay are the 1 exception. I would say their Elephants don’t feel oppressive to go against, as they lack for example 2nd armor so, for example, Xbow is a good counter to them still (in addition to the usual Monks/Pikes etc.) Overall I don’t see the reason to nerf a perfectly fine/fun unit from Malay.
Karambits cost 40f → paired with their fast creation time, you would need 80/90 farmers to support constant production. At the same time, should you reach such amount of farmers, Karambits would become nearly unstoppable. Overall I think Karambits are fine right now. I wouldn’t change them.
Elephants are in a good spot now and I don’t think their gold cost is what holds back Malay. Even in Imp, the valuable resource to spam Elephants is food, along with how expensive the Elite upgrade is.
As for Swordsmen, I don’t see people spamming Champions, even for 10f, but maybe I’m wrong here. Just Champion, on top of losing to a lot of units like Hussar (granted you can mix Halberdier here), is weak to getting kited by Arbalest, is weak to Castles, rly it has a lot of weaknesses even at 10g.
But I like the idea of Fish Traps and possibly of Champions costing 10g, it’s something to try out.
yeah, but they stop being viable in castle age. in castle and early imperial age gathering gold is easier than gathering food, so this makes them less viable until you are fully boomed.
it’s not about W/F ratio, but about how fast you can transition your economy to food. Look at 4 Lakes/Cross: When the fish runs out loads of players don’t transfer villagers to fish traps. Not because fish traps aren’t worth it, but because it costs 100 wood per trap and they simply can’t afford that. Lowering the initial cost already makes malay fishtraps really good.
Think of it this way: how long does it take to pay off the initial investment?
A vil in dark age: costs 50food, gathering from a boar takes 116 seconds to make up his own cost
A fishing ship: costs 100 wood, gathering from deep fish it takes 204 seconds to make up its own cost (assume wood and food are worth the same)
A farm costs 60 wood, it takes 136 seconds to recover the cost
A standard fish trap costs 100 wood, 286 seconds
you proposed malay fish trap, would cost 33 wood, so it only takes 95 seconds
The W/F efficiency only becomes a concern in the long run (ie 10 game minute into the future when it’s time to reseed), what’s more important is short term return of investment. To emphasize this: many player skip horseplow
I don’t know why people haven’t noticed it yet, but I have added Elephant archers and armored Elephants. That is why I said elephants are cheaper, not battle elephants.
I get it, and that was my thought process in my mind. I don’t think they would be OP considering Fish Traps are very easily sniped by ranged units, as well as Malay do not have a navy bonus despite being a naval civ.
A buff for infantry gameplay but a huge nerf for BE.
BE base cost is 110 f and 70 g, if we imagine that gold conversion to food is like 25 or 33%. we get a normal BE with only one armor upgrade and cost near around 130 f. Plus X res to buy that new imp UT.
It’s better to go full trash 2HS at this rate.
Not bad ideas. I find it odd that they are still classified as a naval civ. Harbors are a waste of a good unique tech unless they’ve got some hidden bonus I don’t know about. Garrison them with fishing ships like Gurjaras or heal nearby units like the new Stronghold.