Malta's design infuriate me so much

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

posting this because i got to vent as i contemplate learning the deep modding knowledge to just fix it myself.

I am a very casual player, I play bots, and in that context, Malta just becomes infuriating design wise. It’s a civ that feel like it was completly neutered out of fear of imbalance, and ends up being outdone by so many other civs in what it advertise itself to be made for, at least in the more casual approach.

the sentinel’s building capacities are one of the best representation of the issue. they can build outposts by default, it’s nice i guess, clearly aimed at more advanced shipment strats, but casually, it’s neat but nothing much. BUT WAIT! you can train base units from those with a card! but you will also need another to be able to have enough to train.. blah blah blah… Oh, you have commandeires that allow you to just deploy anywhere.. as long as you still have some available to build, and took that one card tax to use them efficently and not like the novelty they start as

Meanwhile… you need one single card to have the dutch, haudes, lakotas, indian, and ottomans just be able to outdo your forward training trick. one card, and it even let you get artillery on command. ONE CARD. and it’s just ONE of the issues

I could talk about how much of your deck is “mandatory cards” your rosted needs, how pop heavy your damn roster is, how tongue cards feel like jokes considering it’s giving you units your roster already covers (like, seriously, longbows to the one civ with apparently god tier arbs?). There is also the fixed guns costing pop, the hospitallers dying faster than dopps depsite pretending to be sturdier. i could go on for so long with even more typos

in the end the civ just end up ironicly feeling like a worse ottoman, with their “sturdy” musks, special genadiers and skirm, plus their strange affection for big cannons and much more obnoxious field deployment

alright, this typo soup of a rant is over, i know i killed a few grammar obcessed people with it.
i guess that if anyone wants to help me mod them out i’d be glad to see what we could do

3 Likes
2

Could you share your main deck?
I’m no pro by any means, but we could try to improve it up to 1350 ELO

Hahah, yeah me too, I still have those darn mantlets on sight.

1 Like
3

Not sure vs bots, but vs players the civ is definitely kinda unfortunately designed. You pretty much need to spam xbow/pike and hit ‘em with a timing push/rush. There is a Sentinel strategy I’ve used, but it has an aggressive bias as well.

I’ve made easy to implement suggestions for multiplayer before, but ideally I think I would have designed the civ in another way, at least given the benefit of hindsight.

Turtling kinda goes against the core design of AoE3, so I would have made that less so part of the civ, while still leaving it as a secondary characteristic.

Xbows are actually a really fun unit with steel bolts, and I don’t mind the civ having a weakness to cav. A crusader knight on horseback would have been a fun Hussar replacement (maybe modeled after the Mam, high hp and ranged armor, but low attack and kinda pricey), and the civ then could have been built around heavy cavalry and Crossbowmen, with most foreign units being supplemental anti-cavalry (you might only get Pikes and a redesigned Sentinel who leans more heavily towards the “generalist” end of being a Musketeer rather than the “anti-cavalry” end).

Towers could be fire outposts with less range and higher damage, perhaps costing coin (representing stone).

Civ bonuses could be reworked to “all units and buildings heal slowly (for units, faster than the current rate). Buildings gain extra Hitpoints with each age up.”
Thus removing the requirement of more expensive shipments, and actually having buildings heal slower but automatically (and for free), should actually weaken nearly unbreakable positions, while being great in other circumstances. Without the +2% hp thing, Xboxs would need a boost, but that could easily be done in a huge number of ways. Maybe unique Arsenal upgrades that replace the gunpowder upgrades.

1 Like
4

Malta is by far the worst 1v1 civ in the game right now. Way too many nerfs for no reason (one top player was doing ok in 1v1s for literally a month and once the meta was figured out it got crushed).

The civ itself is weak, end of story.

1 Like
5

yeah, rn i’m toying a bit, made the sentinels 1 pop with a .5 aoe by deffault, changed teutonic knight speed debuff by an armor buff and put a 7 limit on fixed guns instead of pop, and it work… alright? you still feel the lacking and it doesn’T solve the issue of being so card dependant sue to the passive, but at least you get a unit that gets to feel properly alright. might actually go ahead eventually and allow sentinels to build walls and other military buildings, instead fo relying on forts. idk, it’s such a nightmare

6

Blockquote I’ve made easy to implement suggestions for multiplayer before, but ideally I think I would have designed the civ in another way, at least given the benefit of hindsight.

yeah, the civ feel like it was going for a different structure, maybe federal state or alliance like the african civs, but prpbably got canned because not enough time or something like that.

7

7 build limit for Fixed Guns without them taking up population would make Malta be insanely strong defensively such a change should never be done.

8

Malta is a defensive civ by design. Just like English on AoE IV, it rewards the defensive play

2 Likes
9

However, statistics from freefoodparty show that Malta is actually in the middle of the pack among the weaker countries, with a win rate similar to that of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, around 48.3%. Italy, Ethiopia and India are significantly weaker than them, around 47%.

10

Malta and a lot of DE civs and updates have a change in design philosophy that I think will rub people the wrong way.

Its that they dont think there is a thing as a maxed out civ, its much more of a pick your own path and build and it is expected that you make the choice to cut out something in pursuit of something else.

Malta and I think Hausa (and the german changes and how revolts works now) exemplifies this. If you are going down a certain build order path, then trying to fit all the upgrade cards into your deck to do it is fundamentally impossible and you will have to ignore something.

It results in a lot of unique build orders and path but if people try to just play the full malta experience, that fundamentally does not exists

6 Likes
11

Thank you for writing this! 100% agree
Personally i love the “new” design principle, you have so much wonky stuff to tinker with
I made tons of different decks for Malta, Germany, Mexico etc., but only like 2 or 3 for civs like India or Lakota. But i guess those mechanics can only truely shine in team pvp… 1v1 may be too competitive and meta… pve is always the same and doesnt requiere advanced strategies, just survive the initial attack and then outproduce the ai

12

it’s not so much about getting that “full experience” than just having a general fundation, a distinct and “easy” to grasp identity.

Malta for me has not been an “going my own path” issue, it’s the civ feeling like it’s gimmicks are held back, and that i have to work a lot more to do stuff other civs can do more simply. it’s seeing cool ideas made “incomplete” because it would be too strong if not locked behind other getting other stuff. sentinels not being worth 2 pop unless you get all the right cards, commanderies feeling useless unless you spec into them, since they can’t even upgrade themselves to stay relevant defense wise.

it’s not a "full experience issue, it’s just getting an experience to begin with

2 Likes
13

Malta identity is clearly a Pikeman and Crossbowman civilization with strong defensive potential from buildings.

14

you’re missing my point while also involuntarely proving it. i’m asking what’s the special thing that malta has by default. The brits spawn villagers with every houses, the russians mass train, the germans gets free cav, the italians got lombards, papal shipments and architects, the dutch got spyglasses and TC spam, the swedes got funny fish crates and torps, the japanes got the house/factory with shrines, the lakotas got so many horses…

and what does malta has that isn’t locked behind some greater stats of cards? a commanderie that is just a special stable unless you spec into it? a big gun that eat pop but can’t move?

like, i hope you are teasing with that “they are a pike and arb civ”, because that’s a aoe2 “thrilling bonus”, and we’re playing age of empire 3

1 Like
15

Je me permet de corriger cette erreur, c’est le portugal qui est axé sur les TC et les longues vues, concernant les pays-bas ils ont les colons qui coutent de l’or et ont les banques

16

true! for some reasons i keep mixing those up in my head, but that’s am me thing, not them being too similar,
also don’t forget the silly running dude for the dutch

17

If we are going by the list you gave then hero that builds stables and towers? And the german bonus is literally tied to every card they get.

Malta also get HP for every card they send, its more comparable to the german and indian bonus then anything.

Also all of their units heal when idle, which i think the devs forgot about

None of their bonuses are flashy but it does the job most of the time if you can use it insert farmers meme here

5 Likes
18

the thing is, these bonus barely feel like thay do anything. the healing is super slow, which, while free, is also something that takes too long to do much when it matters, their hospital heal super slow, can only be built by vills and not your explo or 2 pop musk, and makes it so you can even have surgeons and field hospitals wihtout the help of a teamate. and the hp increase is oo slow to feel like it does something 2% per shipment isn’t going to make me thrilled, especially since i know that it’s slow growth means my opponent gets time to addapt to it

as for the german and indians, yeah, ONE of their gimmicks rely on cards, but notice something, it’s ANY cards, it’s a tangible addition to your game, and it’s also not their only trick. germs got wagons, alternate hussards, dopps. Indians got an alternative eco, wonders, and most importantly, ELEPHANTS

Malta is just boring and overly safe, there is no bold traits, or at least none that end up feeling bold unless your are a high ranking player. you got worse field hospital, free heal that takes forever and gets nullified by your opponents just attacking often. it’s bonus that sounds cool but feel lame once you see them, and only makes malta look muted

19

Malta was a waste of a valuable civilisation spot. They could have added Austria, Persia, Morocco or something.

2 Likes
20

I mean this will be a matter of taste at this point but 2% per shipment is a pretty big deal, heck it was a big enough deal for their artillery that it had to get nerfed down to 1%

2% per shipments means that by the say 7th shipment, which is easily like 10-12 mins into the game, is equal to an HP card on all of their units. Again not fancy but its honest work. For sentinels especially this scales harder since their aura is based on final stats, so it stacks. Long term, it does mean that maltese units have a 50% HP bonus on them.

And its not like the opponent can actually adapt to this bonus, they cant do anything about it, to me its more like an inevitability that will always come.

Again its definitely not flashy, its definitely more an acquired taste but you can do alot with malta, its more jack of all trades then master of one. I mean you can have french cuirs alongside cassadors and lancers, only mexico can do that

5 Likes