So we were in the phase of buffing weak civs and now the stronger civs are getting nerfs too. Seems great. Without beating much about the bush, let me jump straight!
Franks (nerf) - Remove +20% HP bonus. Give Bloodlines. Chivalry additionally gives +10 HP to Cavalry units except the Scout Line (actually helps with Hero units which is important too).
Spanish (buff) - Bloodlines (and maybe Arson too) do not cost Gold (in theme with the Blacksmith bonus). Decent Knight rush. Good Scout rush. Slightly smoother going for Conquistadors anf Missionaries.
Incas - Andean Sling be the team bonus. Obviously a new Castle Age UT.
Magyars - (Elite) Steppe Lancers added which cost -15% food. Not that Magyars are having terrible military options but just historically. They will be the only Lancer civ without Camels.
Eagle Scout creation speed bonus in Castle Age tied with the Eagle Warrior upgrade instead (like how Crossbowmen are created faster than Archers).
Tatars (nerf) - 2 extra sheep with the TC be replaced by 1 Water Buffalo.
Something extra for the devs (I figured while playing the 4th Prithviraj mission): If you destroy a Tatar TC, even that spawns 2 sheep. Kinda cool!
Krepost - provide only 15 population and garrision space. Maximum projectiles demoted from 21 to 16. Kreposts have +400 HP. They have almost the same HP as Keeps (Chinese Keeps to be precise). Kreposts affected by Kasbah and Hoardings (for full tech tree mode).
Stone wall and gates - have their pierce armor increased to 11. Archers aren’t supposed to good against walls (looking at you Saracens, Mayans and Burmese).
Standard Arambai - back to reload rate of 2. Attck reduced to 15 pierce. Affected by Chemistry, which affects non gunpowder missile units.
Elite Arambai (follow up to previous one) - Attack reduced to 18; affected by Chemistry. No change in Post Imperial.
Just suggestions for the dev team to think -
Saracen - they are supposed to be a camel civ and they are an archer civ having attack bonus against buildings which is crazy. I would rather scrap all their archer bonuses and give them
a. Team bonus - Camel units +4 attack vs buildings.
b. Civilization bonus - Camel units +1p armor.
Indians - At this point, the only thing correct I find is their 2 economy bonus, Sultans and Elephant Archer. The Elephant Archer maybe an out of place unit for design but it surely fits the civ historically. Everything else removed and redesigned. The Cavalry Archers also fit good but not do Hand Cannoneers. Gunpowder was introduced in India in 1526 which is on the outskirts of AoE2 time frame. The Cannon Galleon is nice though.
Archery Range = present - Hand Cannoneer (as mentioned)
They are some nice suggestions. But I think 2 of them a little bit nonsense.
Change Frank bonus to %20 more HP to knights or starting in Castle Age.
These civilizations has bonus damage, bonus damage means at least damage so pierce armour of walls doesn’t effect anything (unless Archer has more than 11 attack). “Archers do more damage to buildings (except walls)” better.
Instead of reducing the attack bonus from arambai to buildings or silly tecs like obsidian or saracens bonus, lets boost walls more, perfect i don’t see anything wrong in that logic.
Once you upgrade eagle scout the training time is highly reduced.
None of the other suggested changes is necessary, specially SL to magyars that would get the lc discount for being a light cavalry unit.
Also arambai doesn’t need chemistry they already throw granades and TNT darts.
All three civs you mention deals BONUS damage to stone walls so increasing pierce armor has no effect. You might consider reducing bonus damage instead (which Mayan just got a nerf on that one).
Unneccesary changes and creating non existent balance problems with the civs, and also nerfing the Tatars when there isn’t any experience of the OP with them for sure (LET THE TATARS ENJOY THEIR NEW REIGN!!!).
honestly water buffalo/cow isn’t the worst nerf i’ve seen people recommend. you still get 225 food from that which is far better then the 150 for a single sheep some people want to give them.
though i do find the people qqing about tatars and turks to be hilarious after 20 years of reign of aztecs mayans mongols etc
this might actually be a bit of a buff.
there light cav get better, there knights are better in late castle and cavalier are better in early imp, the only thing that gets worse is there paladins lose 2 hp.
why? the magyars weren’t from the steppes. they came from the ural mountain area in russia
this i agree with.
why? krepost aren’t overpowered and neither are bulgarians.
bonus damage isn’t affected by armor. so this has no impact.
why? elite arambai aren’t a problem.
earlier you recommend adding the SL to magyars even though historically it doesn’t fit, and here you use history to change Indians. zero logic.
lets give a civ with an insane economy hussars, EBE, and Paladins.
yeah they lack blast furnace but the civ can just spam them out. also giving them EBE does nothing - go look at Burmese and Vietnamese, they don’t even use BE and they are better then generic for them. why would Indians make Battle Elephants? they would literally be the worst battle elephants in the game.
so whats the weakness of this civilization again? They have an insane economy and are able to pump out villagers galore, they lack arbs but have almost fully upgraded HCA, they have Paladins, Hussars, and Champs who do 15 damage (minimum, against eagles they deal 23) to everything they attack at 20 gold cost.
oh lets just make there insane eco even stronger. totally can’t go wrong
The point is you actually need to pay for it. Both Bloodlined and Chivalry to get the HP boost.
I was just matching their stats with that of Castle and found them to provide only 82% of their value.
I have heard this a lot so I am clarifying here. The problem is stone walls have 8 pierce armor and stone gates have only 6 pierce armor. My piint wasnt to reduce bonus damagae, it was to reduce regular damage. Even a regular Arbalester does 4 damage, Elite Mangudai do 6, â‚ąCastle Age Arambai do 11 damage. By increasing wall pierce armor and decreasing Arambai attack, we go make this 4 damage.
Light Cavalry becomes crap. Knight rush still pretty strong.
I made Castle Age Arambai affect by Imperial Age Ballistics after reducing their attack so the Elite Arambai should also benefit from the same upgrades. So just reduced the attack by 1 to prevent changes in post imperial.
The Persians have that. + They have fully upgraded Camel Riders.
They were from the Steppes. Play the Honfoglalas scenario or search it on google.
doesn’t matter, you end up with stronger knights, cavalier, and light cav then before.
the only thing that gets weaker is there paladins.
and? should we balance everything that way? the militia line costs less then half of the cost of a knight, should they have half the attack?
Persians have clear weaknesses to offset that though - they have terrible militia, their elephants are INSANELY expensive, and their archery range flat stinks. they also only have 2 bonuses outside of the civ bonus.
they were from the ural mountains in russia. the campaigns play fast and loose with history.
It’s weird that Tatars feel strong and Portuguese and Koreans got decent buffs but stats show that Portuguese and Koreans are still the top 2 bottom win rates in low and high elos and Tatars are like bottom 6-8. Meanwhile Bulgarians are going under the radar and skyrocketed to one of the highest win rates.
Of course WR isn’t everything, for example Chinese have very low WR across most elos and are still considered S tier by most pros
Yes but from what we can tell by the nature of the game over the years is sometimes pro players don’t know what is optimal and follow other players metas. An example is this last KOTD where players picked Britons a lot in the beggining until they realized they were loosing most of the time or how they realized in the end that Lithuanians weren’t as strong as they thought.
This is a very complex game, and sometimes knowing what is strong or weak takes a lot of games and colective expereience.
I’m not stating that I’m right or wrong just saying to avoid following trends blindly just because some pro players said so.
Thats not what i said. That civs are underplayed even though buffed is just because they are now decently good but not insane enough like tatars are so that content creators make videos about them so they become a meme. That content creators have such a big influence on the meta has to be evaluated when taking their opinion into account for balance ideas, since they have a special angle looking towards the game. You should look at civs from a game designer perspective if you are guess what a game designer. Just blindly following players to adjust the game isnt always the way even though it feels comfortable to get rid of responsibilty.
So what? People are going to keep complaining because they lose to paladin spam HP doesn’t help against palissade/house spam anyways
Well if you have chivalry it means you have a castle and then you can just garrison Joan inside. If you refer to custom scenarios then the creator can use triggers to replicate this if they wish.
No min range skirms from feudal age doesn’t sound like something balanced, and slingers already are pretty much better hand cannons available from castle age, so it’s only fair you need some more techs to get their full strenght.
WTF have Tatars to do with water buffalos 11
You don’t explain why you want to tweak them.
ok that’s weird
Both paladins and eles is kinda ridiculous for a civ with such a good boom. Also you’re nerfing their ele archers and HCA for no reason while giving them yet another variation of Aztec/Burmese infantry. I don’t like those ideas.
Actually they don’t have any anti-building damage, it’s just that they do that much damage and they can’t miss buildings. I think a way to correct this would be to use the leitis mechanic’s of dealing a special type of damage, except that instead of giving no “arambai armour” to units you would give them as much of it as their normal pierce armour, and then give a crapload of arambai armour to buildings to ensure it will be very low, and that they would absolutely need manipur cavalry to threaten them.
That’s true, but this is more than just a page of stats
Let’s just look at 1650+ Arabia games right now in 1v1. Guess what civs are belowPortuguese?
