Italians have a open water tech tree, a fishing discount, and an age-up discount.
If vikings’ discounts gets reduced to 10%, and Koreans lose Shipwright, almost all the water-civ navies have a similar post-imp strength. (Since Shipwright gives a 20% wood discount, same as the Korean civ bonus). The UUs are, in principle, balanced against galleons. (Though at the moment Elite longboats might be rather strong compared with Galleons.)
The feudal and castle-age strengths are also important, and there vikings lack firegalleys and the other water-civs don’t have anything in particular over Italians.
This is true in some sense. Italians would remain an ok water civ even if the dock discount is completely REMOVED.
Overall the reason why they are at least top 2 is the dock discount (for instance Japanese have a larger wood sparing in feudal plus more efficient fishing ships). In fact, in hybrid maps, where the dock is not that useful, italians are rarely picked over Japanese.
That bonus is more a curse for Italians imo. If they loose it (or it is heavily nerfed) at least they can get a decent eco bonus and become a playable civ on land…
So, I am definetly not against a nerf, even large, of that bonus…
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I don’t think Korean need to lose this, sure they have the discount right from the start but they have to bear without demo ships in fire galley wars, so they should eventually be rewarded with great naval power for surviving the early game.
Italian work perfectly fine on hybrid tho. Not as good as Japanese, but they are good too (like in HC3 where they were used to beat the Mongols)
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I was wondering if this is too op. I agree that the tech should be changed. What about if the actual mechanism (10 free) is reset after some timer? Like: you can train one for free every x minutes.
They are definitely decent on water. But if the dock discount is nerfed and a land bonus is given, their strength does not change too much on hybrid. What changes is their gameplay on pure water. And, hopefully, the one on land…
Kipchaks are mainly a castle age unit, so giving them in imp to allies won’t be OP. THo it would hella lots of fun, so I’m all for it.
Not sure if the possibility of having 10 free permanently is not fun… still a change to the current one would be very good…
It is difficult to forget about underpowered civs in balance threads… it is similar for Portuguese and turks, and it was so for Vietnamese and Khmer in the past…
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Still not an excuse for having like 5 threads dominated about them
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Onestly, I agree, I’m tired too to repeat the same things over and over, people keep tagging me on the subject since I followed the Italians balance discussion in other threads from the beginning, but I should start ignoring them, I mean no offense to anyone who have tagged me, neither I want be rude, but I have to admit that the discussion is on a death end until there are no signs of potential changes. Especially until we don’t have a new balance change or something new to talk about.
Most of the times the arguments are always the same over and over again, nerf the dock, they have cheaper FS, the condos should be nerfed, the condos should be buffed, they need and eco bonus…
There have been plenty of suggestions on how to help them, so if there is the will to change them they will do it in time, if not it’s pointless…
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Just 10 poor schmoes trickling out of a random castle doesn’t sounds like a good concept.
Yes and no. If there are a lot of people feeling that a civ needs a buff it makes sense; still a better organization of the threads may help ofc. Imo it is difficult to change this thing until the civ is fixed. Also the fact that so many people are asking for the buff increases the possibility of another discussion about them and suggests that the civ really needs to be buffed.
I said plenty of times that imo Turks need a buff, but it seems I am the only one thinking this… So maybe Turks are fine as they are and it is just me.
For Italians especially (a bit also for portos) there are way more people, which suggests that maybe Italians and Portuguese are more urgent.
Typically shared units are less powerful, so not sure. Still enabling the creation of kits for all the team sound cool. Maybe we could discuss a tech doing something like:
- cuman kits + 1 range (if we want to distinguish more the cuman ones; also I do not like UT like silk roads that are useless 1v1)
- allies can train kits with base stats in their castle. Should these kits benefit from civ bonuses? Like extra hp for Turks or more RoF for Mongols?
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I don’t see solid reasons for those changes
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Condos was change through a unique Technology because it might be overpowered in team games, i guess.
For tatars, having both uphill attack bonus and not recieving any damage in hill wouldn’t be the most balance option.
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When I say “Kipchaks are mainly a castle age unit” I imply that their elite version isn’t as strong as the elite version of most UUs, hence they already are “less powerful” once in imp.
Where is the manual?
If you’re playing Mongols and are forced to make kipchaks instead of mangudai you’re just toast anyway. The extra HP from Turks would be nice but wouldn’t synergize that well with the fact you’re supposed to use them to hit and run. I really think this change would just make the game more fun, and it’s no big deal if it doesn’t become a tournament staple or something.
It’s mostly the same 3-5 people repeating and going through the same stuff. And even if they desperately need a buff, it shouldn’t in spread 4 threads, especially considering nothing new or meaningful is discussed
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It makes sense. Still I think that the cuman ones should have something more (in addition to reduced TT). So I would like to see a second effect affecting the cuman ones… I mean, it would be nice that cumans get an “unique UU”
Agree with @CactusSteak2171, by far my favourite list of buffs I’ve seen.
A few things i disagree with in your lists here. Haven’t read everyone else’s comments yet.
But for example this doesn’t help turks where they’re weak and makes them strong where they’re already strong. If turks get castles and spam jans in something like arena melee civs really struggle against them already. While archer civs still rek them. This buff does almost nothing to change that.
Magyar training more than 10 kipchaks would be too much. It’s the same boat as condos. Have to be careful/balanced around which allies get them in what quantities.
Mali 8PA condos anyone? Might not be a bad thing since neither mali nor Italy see much TG at all…
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Or conversely it would allow them to fight above their weight class. A turk kip has +20hp AND 1/1 dmg/range.
Cumans specifically don’t get that “for balance”
A kip is specifically low hp because it can micro like a boss. And generally fairs poorly vs ranged units. A turk one simply wont fair as poorly in as many situations…
A magyar one would be a snipe monster
Magyar would indeed be the civ with the best kipchaks, however I think the fact that the kipchak’s upsides of good microability and cheap cost would be overshadowed in a TG, as you would be rich enough to just mass HCA and ask ur ally to put their palas/camels in front.
You could argue that if the Cuman ally rushes their UT that would allow the Magyar/Turk player to have full strenght elite kipchaks before everyone else reaches their ideal composition, so maybe make the tech more expensive and take longer to research? It’s made to be useless in 1v1 anyway so I don’t think it would matter there.
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In the worst case scenario allied Kipchak power can be adjusted by the training time, which provides a good tool for fixing balance issues.
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