Most Balance Suggestion Posts and Videos i see, suggest changes for a seemingly random set of civs, some of which have an almost exactly 50% win rate.
I think its unnecessary to change a civ that’s not generally too strong or too weak.
A common argument for changing civs is, that theyre strong or weak in certain situations, but i think if their win rate is still near 50% that must mean their weaknesses balance out their strenghts and trying to make all civs equally good in all situations is not only a pointless endeavour but it also takes flavour out of those civs and makes them less fun to play.
Example:
If one civ is really strong in early game and weak in late game and one is weak in early and strong in late game, the matchup is now about whether or not the late game civ can outlast the early game civ or if the early game civ can win before the late game civ reaches it’s power spike. That’s an interestig premise for a game and ultimately the fewer different machups there are that play out exactly the same, the more interesting that makes the game in my opinion.
Call it ‘uncompetetive’ if you will, but it’s what makes the game fun.
Anyway, with this out of the way, here are the civs, that i think are perfectly balanced and definitely do NOT need to be changed:
Khmer, Britons, Chinese, Mongols, Persians, Turks, Aztecs, Japanese, Magyars, Celts, Slavs, Vikings, Ethiopians, Mayans, Goths, Teutons, Malians, Indians, Huns, Burgundians, Lithuanians, Berbers Bulgarians.
-Incas are technically balanced, but im still sour about them losing the bonus that gave them their identity. So it’s fine if nothing is done about them, but i would still like to see them get something.
-Franks havent been anything less than the best civ in the game for over a year now, and while theyre far closer to being balanced now than they were back then, i think, a teeny tiny nerf would still not be bad.
Here’s the list of civs, that i think could need a SMALL buff to be well balanced, but even if they didnt got buffed wouldn’t be too unbalanced either:
Sicillians, Koreans, Italians, Portugese, Byziantines, Spanish, Tatars, Vietnamese, Malay
And now here’s the civs, that in my opinion definitely do need a bit of a buff to be fully competetive with the rest:
Saracens, Burmese, Cumans
You can look up civ win rates on
https://aoestats.io or
https://aoecompanion.com/stats
In case you’re wondering, why im suggesting buffing for a number of civs and not nerfing any: I think it’s the better way to go from here, because it nerfs all stronger civs indirectly by giving them just slightly worse matchups against the buffed weaker civs, without taking anything away from the stronger civ and without affecting the matchup of the strong civ against other strong civs.