Minor Balance Suggestions for Several Civs

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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British:

  • Increase manor build time speed by 3 seconds, reduce XP gained from building manor houses from 27 to 22.

Lakota:

  • Reduce potency of attack dance and siege dance by 5%. increase cost of Tribal Marketplace to 30w.

Inca:

  • Increase Kancha House cost by 5 wood, decrease base food gather rate of Kancha from 0.6 to 0.5.

Ottomans:

  • Bring Abus RoF to 3, reduce base attack to 36, and decrease base settler spawn rate by 1 second (meaning, let them spawn 1 second faster).

Aztecs:

  • Reduce potency of Explorer HP/Revive dance as well as building HP dance by 5%. Reduce Eagle Runner Knight base HP from 180 to 175.

Dutch:

  • Reduce build XP from bank from 140 to 120, and kill XP from 280 to 260.

Mexico:

  • Decrease Cuatrero base HP from 225 to 215; increase cooldown of lasso snare attack from 30s to 45s.

USA:

  • Increase cost of Gatling Gun from 100w 250c to 100w 275c, decrease base HP of Cowboys from 225 to 215.

Japan:

  • Ashigaru move speed reduced from 4.5 to 4.25, decrease shrine income by 2%.

India:

  • Increase time it takes for dock wagon to build a dock to 40s.
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I don’t really think the health is the issue with cowboys. I think it is more that the range of their charged attack combined with their 7.25 speed allows them to pick what fights they take in age 2 since they outrange most age 2 units. I think reducing the range from 18 to 14 could be good. idk

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Brits is fine, I don’t know why everyone is clamoring for nerfs here and there when they haven’t received any changed in over a decade. If we have to have a nerf, then I guess +5 wood or the build time by +3 seconds as you suggested, but not compounded with another nerf.

Lakota honestly needs a rework at this point, but attack dance and siege dance shouldn’t be nerfed. They don’t really use their Community Plaza until lategame anyway (unless you’re doing some FI Tokala Soldier cheese). I’d rather remove Siege dance and give them real siege options, but until then, I think they’re fine.

Kancha house nerf, sure. Inca’s a bit lame anyway, but we did get some substantial nerfs this patch. I might buff Queen’s Festival while we’re at it, since it’s absolute garbage now.

For Otto, just get rid of siege damage on non-artillery units. It’s such a busted mechanic that we need like 10 different multipliers/penalties to keep it somewhat balanced, and we run into edge cases not covered, like China’s flamethrowers. If you want to keep them unique, give them 1 aoe so they can counter clusters of infantry or something.

Azzy can’t do the explorer bug anymore, so I’m not sure this is needed, Town Dance nerfed by 5% isn’t also meaningful, especially since Azzy can’t buff walls with it anymore on DE.

Dutch is fine, just nerf their starting crates if needs be.

Sweden just needs a rework at this point. It’s a dumpsterfire of a civ, and as long as Torps and Caroleans are crutches for the civ design, we’ll be in this perpetual mess where they’re either OP or crap. My suggestion (though a bit ahistorical) is to turn Caroleans into skirms and make Torps normal houses. You can give them an eco bonus somewhere else (I have 2 villager units, a miner and the regular vill). Either way, Sweden needs to have actual unit compositions beyond musk + artillery or AFK Torp spamming. As it is, there’s no reason to use their best in class melee units or other unique aspects of the civ.

Mexico. I’m not sure why the devs gave charged cooldown abilities to all of the base game’s Outlaws. It’s not necessary and just dumps us with more micromanagement and game knowledge that doesn’t add much. Just get rid of the abilities and maybe adjust their stats a bit so they’re useful without gimmicks.

Gatlings are fine. They’re really underwhelming against buildings and artillery. If you must nerf them, then have Coffee Mill guns reduce the range of Gatlings by -2 or -4 so that there is some counterbalance to infinite ROF cannons.

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A wise man on the Inca thread suggested kanchas produce 1 llama when built instead of resource trickling. I think that’s the best adjustment that could be made, they’d still have extra food income but it would be more macro intensive.

That’s a good suggestion, it would make them like long range flame throwers on steroids

Yeah something is whack with their design as they rarely use units other than caros and artillery… then again a lot of civs only spam two units like ruyter skirm for Dutch. Maybe giving them access to guard & imperial xbows and boost torp wood gather rate or something? Could include a card that boosts xbow range by +2 but makes them cost coin or something to offset.

Mind if I ask what civ you play?
Myself and others find lakota incredibly oppressive to play against, it’s a constant uphill battle where they force you on the back foot every game, if you don’t have 3 hunts in base with 3 layers of walls and unction (Spain main here) you get utterly stomped… feels like I’m playing versus the kool-aid man or Nemesis from Resident Evil…
They definitely need a nerf or adjustment of some sort, I think a good start would be to: (1 or more of these)
-slow the time it takes to switch between dance ceremonies by +3 seconds

  • reduce all lakota cavalry’s base siege attack by 10% ----reducing the bow rider’s attack from 20 → 18(or less) They fire twice as fast as other units so they do 40 damage every 3 secs. That is an insane amount of DPS for an age 2 unit that then scales incredibly well, even with a reduction it would still be very strong and have maybe the highest dps of any unit available in age 2…
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This is a good start but they should also have -50 food removed from their starting crates.

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Brits are fine, no need to change something that works for so long…

Funny… Last two week several posts about Brits while many years before no word about them…

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The power budget of the Lakota is incredibly skewed, which makes them incredibly hard to balance. 90% of their power skews towards early game and cavalry units, which forces their economy to be weak so they can’t scale to the late game while making also nerfing their infantry, so they are forced to utilize nothing but cavalry for most of the game with only a sprinkling of infantry, and purely for utility. They have to be super strong in the early game because they’re utterly worthless at any other aspect of the game.

The Lakota need a full-on rework at this point. One that lets them scale into the late game if they want to, but still lets them flex into earlier build paths if they want to.

2 Likes
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It’s an old complaint recycled. Some people just can’t move past the vil thing. They feel that they have to be getting robbed somehow in the transaction. The house costs more in wood and xtra long build time but when the vil pops out it’s like wtf,I don’t get that w my civ.

Of course they get bonuses the brits don’t get but nothing shows like that vil popping out. It’s out in the open and not hard to understand. This translates directly to outrage.

It’s the game no matter what changes are made somebody is gonna think they got robbed when they lose. Especially when they lost to someone that had magical vils popping out of their houses.

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Of all the civs in the game, the British are honestly one of the best-balanced. They need no changes, people just don’t like that they can do an easy early boom. Other civs can do better early booms, they just require more micro.

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Dutch boom is easier imo. Also banks are virtually unkillable until mortars.

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Bro, they need a much bigger adjustment than that. The early age 1 deathball of eagle scouts and treasure guardians is an issue, the high attack and HP of warrior priests is an issue, the revive dance warchief thing needs to be reduced by at least 10%… just played vs an Aztec main who 100% agrees they are OP AF now. Also the rate at which warriors spawn is way too fast imo… aztec is S+ tier right now. Almost no way to stop if the WP boom.
Fyi, just played vs rank 22 on the ladder who was abusing Aztecs and he 100% agrees they are way too O.P.

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The aztec age 2 army of priest, scout, buffed explorer and guardians has ticked me off more than once.

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Currently, I have kanchas set to producing 2 llamas when built instead of trickling food (I’ve balanced their stats around the old values). I find that it works well, though since military units can’t target dancing llamas, it’s warranted a HP nerf to the Community Plaza. Since otherwise, you can spam Warriors and there’s not much your opponent can do if they don’t have vills to punch down the plaza or decent siege options.

For Sweden, the solution I’ve come up with is to make Caroleans a short-range skirmisher unit. I’m aware that this is not historically accurate, but it fixes a lot of their design problems and forces sweden into having real unit compositions (like pike-skirm-arty or huss-skirm-arty).

I don’t really play vanilla DE anymore, since I’m working on a balance patch of my own, so I can’t comment. But Lakota is very much an aggressive civ. If you rush them early, they will fall apart hard. Nerfing their siege by 10% is okay I guess, but I’m against nerfing BR without some significant compensation, since they might as well be a civ bonus (like 190 HP Uhlan). Again, I think the civ needs a rework rather than some bandaid fixes, much like Japan, Otto, and Germany.

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I seriously don’t get the British hate lately. It’s almost as if people stopped hating Japan and moved onto British instead.

No. Lakota needs these tools to be relevant in the mid and late game.

No. A change for the sake of change.

Agreed with Abus RoF to 3 and base damage reduction, the settler spawn time seems random and unnecessary. Ottomans aren’t exactly top tier right now.

Dutch is fine.

A change for the sake of change.

Gatling Guns aren’t a problem. US is easily beaten by simply spamming hussars or other heavy cavalry right from age2.

The real focus should be on adding some variety to Lakota late game. These kind of small changes just waste everyone’s time.

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For Ottomans, I said to decrease the base spawn rate - meaning, it should take one less second to produce a villager. That’s a very tiny buff, but a buff nonetheless.

And all of your claims of me asking for “changes just for the sake of a change” is not right. Most people agree that certain civs are slightly underpowered righit now, while others are slightly overpowered. Sweden and Ottos are slightly underpowered and something very small will set them in the right direction, while British and Inca are slightly too powerful and need a slight nerf to set them straight.

And Gatling Guns are rarely ever alone, but guess what - even when they are, they’re the most dangerous as they take out cav the most efficiently than any other artillery. Many times when two or three hussar are slung at an equal amount of gatlings them out in the open, the gatlings - a unit cheaper than the falconet - make it out on top.

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Changes like +5 wood to Kanchas or 50hp to torps are just so tiny that you might as well not bother, hence the “changes for the sake of changes”

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And don’t forget Japan, they still need a nerf of some sort.

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Japan just needs base unit stat nerfs across the board. With like 2 exceptions, every unit they have is ridiculously strong for its archetype.
Beyond that, the only other nerf they might need is the removal of the 10 batch training. They can already have mobile barracks, they don’t need to be able to batch 10 unit trains out of it as well.

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Unlike other previous top tier civs, Brits do not have many options other than age 2 manor boom. So if that gets nerfed, it may need some new options.

BTW there are several aspects about Brits like the thin red line or the logistician that are so bad that feel like paying for debuffs, but never get fixed because that one strategy is too powerful. It’s okay if some options are not as good (which is inevitable) but those that are actually detrimental should not exist.

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I guess that if they were to nerf the boom, getting the exiled prince as age3 option would be a good trade off.