My ideas to balance the game

What other late game units do Cumans have, kipchak? Siege onagers without siege engineers? They need paladin and it is historically accurate for having heavy cavalry

Having it apply to villagers doesn’t help at all and longboats would be busted with that. 850 food and 450 gold is not expensive at all considering Vikings economy. It’s less gold compared to druzhina or Garland wars. Leave it alone

Yes, they’re a high risk high reward units, siege monk pushes are brutal with skilled players, monks should never have conversion stance considering how much rng is involved in the conversion time

I don’t think anyone is complaining britons are weak, making them better vs rams is reducing their ram weakness in black forest

It is a trade off, Kipchaks get zero frame delay to compensate that lack of bracer and their generic cav archers are created fast.

Hussars don’t make sense on 90% of civs that get them, its a raiding unit and Khmer are fairly cavalry focused to have hussars

Why would a camel be good against an Elephant, there’s no height advantage here either as with horses. Turks get decent monks and Jannies in groups destroy elephants

2 Likes

It is a case of Gameplay over Realism.
Monks and Jans may be decent counters, but they also are very resource intensive, and very passive too.

The Camels is a better choice.

I didn’t read the whole thread, only this post, but I definitely disagree here. Ballista elephants are really, really strong. Of course, like 1 scorpion, it is very weak alone. But when massed up, they’re nearly unstoppable, borderline op. If you disagree, I suggest trying them in a 4v4 arena or black forest game, where you have time to mass them up in real game situations. Only counter is siege onager basicly.

2 Likes

I do because turks for example have no elephant counters (spearman and mangonel do not count). However the camel bonus could be a very modest one, unlike the pikeman bonus which is roughly double against elephants.

E: and I don’t think that the counter should completely fall on a micro intensive unit like a monk.

1 Like

rams and bombard cannons do great too so its not all powerful especially since siege rules black forest

The thing I find odd about what a couple people are saying regarding this “synergy” between loom and the hunting “bonus” is that the hunting “bonus” was already used to lure boars earlier or with fewer villagers, almost as if it were a loom substitute. Don’t get me wrong, I think free loom is a decent Dark eco bonus, but if anything, it just makes the hunting bonus more obsolete by overlapping with the very small area in which it was already useful. While I can live with free loom, I would have preferred that they actually make the hunting bonus decent. IIRC the most famous ever use of this bonus was when TaToh used it in a team tournament to hunt boars with a small # of villagers on an outlying area of the map (but you can achieve the same effect by just walling in a vill or 2).

This is one of those things that sounds good on paper, but is either nearly useless (i.e. boars) or OP (maps like valley with lots of extra hunt). I never liked this idea as a standalone Dark Age eco bonus before the latest patch, and it completely nullifies the other slightly decent aspect of the current bonus (extra carry)

Regarding the current general state of Goths, I somewhat dislike the current angle, as it emphasizes extensive Dark Age militia use not unlike the Feb patch, but if you don’t get a game-winning advantage there, Goths are weaker from mid-Feudal until Imp than they’ve ever been.

No way, Cumans need paladin to be decent in lategame. Not to mention their civ bonus of fast cavalry would be lame if it only resulted in their getting slightly above average cavaliers.

6 Likes

after some thought on this, increasing the gold bonus might be a bad idea. Their late game hand canonneers and BBCs are already the best in the game imo, no point in buffing that further. The gold discount will affect late game more than early where they’re weak

For the Turks, Why not just give them Economic upgrades no cost food (Opposite of the Vietnamese)?

I don’t get why you want nerf Lithuanian Paladin, they’re fantastic with all 4 relics and feels unique to me. Also don’t get why removing Cuman Paladins, I really like them and gvies some distinctive.

Portuguese gold discount affecting all techs sounds fine.

Khmer have already +1 range on Scorpions as team bonus

A thing that could make the Elephant Archers more useful would be trained at the Archery Range by Sultans.

1 Like

Regarding the whole Leitis=trash unit/OP/whatever: not only there is still the fact they come out of a castle that should be taken into account, but imagine you do what SotL said and market abuse to get them late game. What does it mean? First, you’re getting a unit that can’t be spammed out of your hundreds of stables like Hussars would. But on top of that, you spent all your gold on Leitis and you can’t afford siege weapons! It means the enemy will be easily able to guard their own castles with halbs and basically become unpushable. And you can’ just “throw a ram once in a while” since as Lithuanian you have the worst siege weapons ever, so you need as much of them as you can. So I’m afraid that vid was quite misguided on SotL’s part.

3 Likes

You could use your Faster and more Arrow Resistant Skirmishers to kill the Halbs, and then move in with the Leitis.

I think people dismiss Lithuanian Trash a lot. They get Hussars, Super Skirms, and Fast Halbs that only lack 1 Melee Armour.

The win rates we have for them so far, are also quite high. Lithuanians is really a civ that lacks nothing in Imperial Age, and they do get BBC, so the Siege is not even that bad.

I think the global balance between civs is just fine. Some need a small tweak, because they perform too well or too bad. I see a very long list of suggested changes. I dont really think we need that many changes to the game. If you change too much at once, the balance will completely change and i dont think that is something we want.

I feel some suggestions make sense, others dont. I dont really feel the need to response to all, since the forum is flooded with balance idea from everyone. For me this list of balance changes is just to big to take really seriously. It really seems like you put a lot of time into writing this down, so maybe devs will read it and agree with some parts of it, so you didnt write all for nothing. I appriciate your efforts.

I do like this. Althrough, if you are used to hotkeys i dont really matter.

There will be no new civs they said. I also think the currrent amount of civs is fine. It is not like some kinda civ is missing game play ways. A new civ will most likely just a copy cat from another civ. So it adds nothing to the game.

But then your skirms have to walk under castle fire, and you can just garrison the halbs to keep them safe. And the enemy can use his easily replaceable light cav to kill the skirms. We could go a long way with the “Player 1 can then counter player 2 if…” but eventually the Lithuanian dude will be stuck with this : siege> Leitis to kill buildings.

But Lithuanians have BBC and Trrebs, so they can siege down Castles.

Not if you spent your gold on a Leitis army big enough to match the enemy’s LC spam.

Why would you do that, if you have faster Halbs?

Also, if you have a mass of any Cavalry, attacking into a Castle is always a bad idea. Just go past or around it, and raid.

1 Like

I have slighlty changed my initial post, taking some comments into account.

On the Lithuanian endgame debate: first, you may run out of gold earlier than your opponent, for instance if they secured all the gold mines. Of course, then we can aways that the Lithuanian are that special civ a bit more efficient in these situations, but I think they shouldn’t as they already have very good trash units (which I suggest to make even slightly better). Then, the very late game is not often about taking down castles, at least on open maps. I agree fully with:

And even if you wanted to take down castles, make trebs or bombard cannons, your opponent wil have to come to you, and if you have your superpowerful Leitis combined with your trash, even their gold-intensive units won’t be able to take your siege down. I suppose another way to address (slightly) this issue would be to take Guilds out of their tech tree.

Moreover, if you compare the gold/general ost of the Leitis to other unique units, it is shockingly cheap. It is a lot better than the Tarkan, costing 10 more food and 10 less gold (worse in CA, better in Imp.). It is 25 gold cheaper than a ataphract, and immensly better in general, performing as well against units the cataphract is supposed to handle well for a cavalry unit, like pikemen and camels.

About Elephants and Camels, just to be clear, I meant that right now camels are not a cost efficient counter to elephants. They should not become hardly anti-elephants, but at least a bit better. And about the historical accuracy of that, I looked at it up (a bit), and the only reference I found is the Tamerlane siege of Delhi represented in the Tamerlane campaign, where elephants were scared of the camel smell (which is also supposed to be why they are effecient against cavalry).

About Beserkergang, it is far too expansive for its effect. So either the cost should be reduced, or it should have additional effects (even if very situational, like healing villagers).

About Goths, the bonus of no drop off for hunters I suggested would replace the extra carry capacity, but being better.

I think pushing towards steppe lancers and Kipchaks fits better the identity of Cumans than Paladins. As for the Huns, they are an old civilisation so we are used to them having Paladins, but it might make more sense (unsure there though) to have them use more their light cavalry, cavalry archers, Tarkans and why not steppe lancers than paladins. On a side note, I presume very little is known about Hunnic architecture, but wouldn’t the central Asian architecture be more fitting than the central European?

About Portuguese, adding the cheaper technologies in gold may be the solution, and it would include loom. Another possibility (though unorthodox) is to make it stronger (-20 or 25%) before Castle Age, and then make it -15%.

Hussars are a good trash unit, but my point was that in trash wars (and before) the Khmers could use the light cavalry all right.

Ballista elephants can be strong, but they are extremely situational, and Battle Elephants on the front with scorpions in the back is almost ever going to be better.

Yes, I agree. I don’t want to implement all these changes at once though: sometimes it is more like “do this OR that”, and sometimes I just want to suggest an idea, but then the developpers know better than I do. Also, sometimes it is a matter of global logic, “feeling” of a civ, like with Lithuanians or Byzantines.

Haha thank you!

Personally, I’m not a fun of the Leitis as far as game design is concerned. While I’m not saying that they are necessarily op, their characteristic of ignoring armor feels a bit unfair, imo it would be much better to put enphasis on the Leitis as a very fast cavalry unit with high attack. Regardless, I think it’s a bit too cheap now.

honestly i would love to see you in age of empires 2 definitive edition dev team bro !.. Especially ur ideas of cumans,turks and portuguese is above great i liked it :)) i hope they could hear your call 11

1 Like

Thanks haha!

I am the same, although ignoring armour makes them really special, and is great and resisting their historical neighbours Teutons and Slavs, so I would keep that. I would just make it frailer, keeping the cheaper gold price. By the way, someone should (probably has) do a meme where Teutons learn happily about the new melee armour they receive in the last patch, and then Leitis go “more what?”!

Also as a side note, with a general -5 gold on Steppe Lancers, the bonus I propose for Cumans (-10%/-20% on Steppe Lancers in CA/IA) would make them 63f, 36g in CA and 56f, 32g in Imperial Age. With possibly no paladins, and possibly even no last cavalry defense upgrade, that would be completely reasonable I think.

1 Like

wtf have i just read?