My boldest balance suggestion yet?

So I was thinking about how my beloved Burmese still seems to suck in Open maps, mainly because they keep dying hard to xbows in mid to late Caste and Early imperial. And I’m still trying to find a solution for them.
So I was thinking what could be given to them that will help them with this issue, in this period of the game, and doesn’t buff them in other ways: And Suddenly, I thought about something crazy:

Is Free Ballistics OP for Burmese?

Yes, I know it’s a huge power spike in early castle age, and will be completely broken for any civ with decent xbows/skirms in castle age. But the thing is Burmese doesn’t have either. Once you reach Castle age, your Archers / Skirms are viable for how much more time ? 3 min? 5 min?

Once your opponent have both Castle age upgrades for their archers, yours are useless. Same with the skirms.
Ballistics is a virtually useless tech for burmese (yeah, it improves arambai a little, but just a little, and it’s not Arabai are what they once were, a force to be reckon. Nowadays they’re an okey Castle unit), so there’s no point in building an university, and then researching Ballistic for a civ that can’t play ranged units after early castle age.

Also free ballistics could give Burmese a buff for water/hybrid maps (free wood upgrades + free ballistic could make them an okaish water civ). In addition, It will help them with their M@A + towers strategy (only when reaching castle age, but still another small buff).

Of course, Xbow could be removed from burmese tech tree as a balance nerf. Either that or block free ballistic until the university is built

Last, but not least, I honestly believe that free Ballistic will be just plain OP for any civ with FU xbows, or with good stable and decent skrims in castle age (which it means, virtually every civ)

Anyway, feel free to share your thoughs

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Would also certainly tie in with the arambai being a unit that doesn’t generally need upgrades. So actually fits their identity. And if anything makes their CA slightly more appealing even if they can’t hit the broadside of a barn

Would be interesting trying it at least.

And isn’t ballistics the more important of the upgrades when fighting archers due to micro dodging?

people still thinking Burmese are any worse against archers than a generic civ simply due to lacking second archer armor

First off, shows the state of crossbows. Second, just make elite skirm cheaper as a global buff to the unit, and swap the ages of the Burmese UTs.

And that’s it.

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I think this is the best approach with them. A few changes to the Arambai and then they are actually competetive

Give free Ballistics to a new civ, not to Burmese.

Skirms had to be nerfed with the releqse of the DE because the pros thought they were tpo strong. I dont think this is the way to fix the archer meta, but ok, we can give it a chance

UTs are rarely helping a civ be competitive before imp. I doubt this would fix anything

As I have already explained, due to the server architecture in DE all ranged units got disproportionately indirectly buffed. By nerfing skirms, that effectively double buffed crossbows. And then we got the tiny woodlines too, and now it’s an archerfest every game.

I kinda support that, however in water it can be a little too brutal, I remind you they have free Lumber upgrades. I dont see a way to balance this one, same goes for some sneaky CA play, the abuse potential is just too big within the right micro.

I’d rather give Arambai free Ballistics effect integrated with the unit. An unique trait.

And/Or

Free Elite Skirmishers
(yet, again, removing access to Crossbows)

the more i think of those changes the more i like it tbh

This buff means virtually nothing. Crossbows do not need to be removed for such a buff.

You cannot have Free Ballistics AND Crossbows.

The powerspike is absurdly strong. You must moderate this bonus somehow.

Anyway this thread’s idea isn’t that great.

The could be much more interesting ways to buff Burmese against archers. Like spearman line taking no bonus damage from archer units.

Why would you make Spear-line units to begin with? More than anything you buff their Post-Imp.
They need to survive the Castle Age and Early-Imp.

I like this thread’s idea to be honest, however, considering Burmese Battle Elephants are designed to deal with Archers originally, the solution must involve this unit. The global poor viability of BE is the core problem of these SEA civs.

Spearman are one of the key units to fight scouts and knights. So in certain situations they are indeed made.

Perhaps my buff for the was too insignificant. Maybe if they had a huge pierce armour bonus to the point they only received one damage in the early game. Or skirmishers received a massive damage bonus to arches like + 4. So they can have at least glass cannon units.

Why do so many insist in giving them an skirm bonus to balance the civ out? At that point we might as well just give them the second archer armour

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Extra bonus damage for Skirms doesnt help that much, the over-kill potential is too big anyways in these kind of situations, attack speed however… But that’s already taken.

I agree with you regarding this one.

Again, it’s all about their underutilized (so called anti-archer) Battle Elephants.