My list of desired balance changes

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Changed after April 12th

General

  • Onager shot (tree cutting) can no longer be heard in the fog of war
  • Heavy Cavalry Archer accuracy buffed to 65% (+15%) (helps civs that have Heavy Cav Archer without Thumb Ring, like Khmer/Goths/Burmese…)
  • Winged Hussar loses the +4 vs gunpowder
  • Champion upgrade costs -50 food, -50 gold

Bulgarians

  • Elite Konnik reload time improved from 2.4 to 2.2

Burmese

  • Arambai cost -5 wood

  • Civ Bonus: Elephants +3 attack vs Standard Buildings together with the +1/+1 armor

Franks

  • Cavalry +15% HP (or even 10%) in Feudal, goes back to +20% HP in Castle Age (results in frank scouts having +5 or 7 hp in feudal instead of +9 hp)

Gurjaras

  • Shrivamsha dodge mechanic should only work on pierce damage
  • Shrivamsha & Elite Shrivamsha move speed 1.55 (down from 1.6)
  • Chakram & Elite Chakram move speed 1.1 (down from 1.15)

Hindustanis

  • Team bonus vs buildings starts in Feudal Age
  • Ghulam & Elite Ghulam pass through damage nerfed from 50% to 33%

Huns

  • Elite Tarkan Reload Time improved from 2.1 to 2.0
  • On Nomad maps the -100 wood penalty reduced to -50 (to be able to place Dock)

Japanese

  • Samurai receive 1 less damage from unique units (like the new shotel warrior mechanic)

Lithuanians

  • Leitis cost +5 food & gold

Magyars

  • Villagers (and infantry) one shot wolves

Mayans

  • 15% longer lasting resources no longer affects Farms

Mongols

  • Steppe Lancers +HP nerfed to 20%, light cavalry hp stays at +30%

Persians

  • Town Center work speed buffed to 15/20/25 (dock remains 10/15/20)
  • Kamandaran changed to make cavalry archers cost 50% less gold (trashbows removed)

Poles

  • Obuch cost +5 food
  • Lose Siege Engineers
  • Szlachta Privileges nerf from -60% to -50%

Portuguese

  • Gold discount nerf to 15% (only if civ remains problematic after April ‘23 patch)

Saracen

  • Add old civ bonus: Cavalry Archer +4 vs buildings

Tatars

  • Maybe some Silk Armor change? or some more minor nerf to Keshik?

Teutons

  • Conversion resistance team bonus swapped with monk healing range bonus
  • Nerf bonus armor to melee units (either make it only infantry or only cavalry, or have it be only +1)
1 Like
2

But the Winged Hussars… they did so good against the Turks historically.

3

Not in the middle ages :stuck_out_tongue:

4

We can instead have that they start with normal resources, but Feudal Age costs +100 wood for them. This setting makes them uniform across game mods.

1 Like
5

Most changes seems good. I would make elite woads even cheaper tough.

Also no buffs for sicilians? Buffs to burmese? Burmese are fine now they are not as bad as someone claims they are even considerer very good by some pros

6

Why should tatars lose halbs?
If its because they have Fu camels, so do chinese and persians and they have even better halbs.

2 Likes
7

No need

Bulgarians don’t need buff nor their UU.

No. Just reduce Armbai cost by 15W or 10.

Just let them back their dark age infantry speed and give bloodlines

Not enough. Castles discount bonus should be removed completely also.

Only this

Their camels and gunpowder need nerfs.

Buff for Huns? In which world you live? Huns need nerfs.

Good but not enough. They should be more expensive and also their relics bonus still needs a tweak especially in castle age.

No difference

Ok and also for hunt

Why?

This TC bonus will be broken. For your Kamndaran suggestion it is useless. Better to remove both Persians UTs and give them something new and better.

Agreed

Agreed

Bad. Better creating faster time like CA Train 10% faster or 15% also Mameluke should be cheaper it still so expensive.

No

Agreed

8

@TrustyCarp27706

For magyars it would be a nice flavor change and would buff their militia/man at arms to not take random damage from wolves when moving to attack the enemy base.

Mongols steppe lancer HP change i believe should happen because their steppes are so much better compared to the other ones. i would even maybe consider giving the base steppe lancer +5 hp while reducing mongol ones, so that the hp is more closer to each other between the 3 steppe lancer civs.

For Persians don’t think the TC bonus will be broken because it just starts too late anyway (not starting in dark age is huge), and will still be worse than malay or bengali villager bonuses.

Kamandaran xbows are super situational units and only work vs full mono halb play when gold runs out. I’d say the one I suggested would have at least more viable situations than the trashbow, and would make CA more of an option for the civ which lacks Bracer for them. Because technically there would be a gameplan to switch into cav archers in late castle age after a good boom, into cav archers that only cost 30 gold. Kind of like a cav archer version of Szlachta Cavaliers.

9

General

Onager shot (tree cutting) can no longer be heard in the fog of war
Heavy Cavalry Archer accuracy buffed to 65% (+15%) (helps civilizations that have Heavy Cavalry Archer without Thumb Ring, like Khmer/Goths/Burmese…)
Winged Hussar loses the +4 vs gunpowder
Champion upgrade costs -50 food, -50 gold

Onager shots, sure. Heavy cavalry archer thing, sure

Why winged hussar change? Seems random.

No need to change champion upgrade before April PUP hits. Should take time to re-evaluate

Bulgarians

Elite Konnik reload time improved from 2.4 to 2.2

I think Bulgarians are fine tbh

Celts

Woad Raider cost -5 food
Elite Woad Raider upgrade costs -100 gold

Sure. I’d like to give Celts something like last archer armor to widen their late game army comps a bit.

Huns

Elite Tarkan Reload Time improved from 2.1 to 2.0
On Nomad maps the -100 wood penalty reduced to -50 (to be able to place Dock)

Sure, why not

Japanese

Samurai cost -5 food

Sure. Especially after PUP they are going to look very weak compared to champs

Mayans

15% longer lasting resources no longer affects Farms

Mayans don’t need a buff imo

Poles

Obuch cost +5 food
Lose Siege Engineers
Szlachta Privileges nerf from -60% to -50%

I would just remove S.E. and then let the dust settle

Saracens

Add old civ bonus: Cavalry Archer +4 vs buildings

Hell yes. I’ve been asking for this for over a year. +3 is probably fine though. I’d even just take +2 if the devs are for some reason afraid of the bonus they used to have.
Tatars

Lose Halberdier
Keshik cost +5 food

Are Tartars op? Doesn’t seem like it

Teutons

Conversion resistance team bonus swapped with monk healing range bonus
Armor bonus no longer applies to spear-line and scout-line
Farm bonus nerfed from -40% back to -33%

Conversion resistance change is reasonable. The rest I don’t understand. Are Teuton scouts op somehow? They are very weak.

10

I’m not against this but this would just be a fancy way of calling them.

A lot of times people think this is an impactful nerf but its not. -2 hp is only going to impact scout vs unguarded skirms. The 2 or 4 hp is not going to have any impact as long as they continue to have berry bonus. As long as they keep the berry bonus, they’ll hit feudal faster, get free horse collar and trade effectively with opponent scouts.

They’re getting a cost nerf in the upcoming patch. With eco nerf, Kshatriyas nerf, I feel this would be unnecessary. I guess dodge mechanic only on pierce damage is fine.

This civ and its unique unit are already average. Maybe you missed it completely but they got a heavy nerf just a month ago and now their dark age is almost generic. Not even a top-15 civ anymore. Definitely it doesn’t need a nerf. A +2 attack against buildings for Scouts is quite useful but not OP to have a nerf given they only get a 2 food discount on their villagers in dark age now. Same goes for Ghulam. Its only strength is countering ranged units.

Like why? Its one of the most average civs and maybe +5 food is fine but a 1 p.armor cavalry shouldn’t cost more gold than that.

I don’t know if its intentional to keep them super strong until late imp but this is also a negligible change. Its a 2 min delay in reseeding farms around 25th min. Against a few matchups like Chinese, Portugese, Franks it might matter a little bit ### otherwise this is another unimpactful change.

Why nerf below average and weak civs?

Overall Celts, Japanese, Huns, Burmese, Bulgarians, cav archer and champion upgrade changes are good. Persians, Mongols, Huns, Poles changes are fine, might be effective, but hard to say. But changes proposed to top tier civs like Franks, Mayans are too small and practically an unimpactful change like the Chinese +10%food from farms instead of +45 food change.
On the other hand, Huge nerfs to average civs like Saracens, Lithuanians, Tatars, Hindustanis, and weak civs like Teutons is just extremely bad for balance purposes. Magyars is a zero-change like the Arambai, Caravel upgrade cost changes in the current pup - totally useless.
Gurjaras and Shrivamsha rider usage are getting a heavy nerf in the pup, so I wouldn’t change its stats. If this was proposed as an alternative to the pup changes, then fine.

12

If they had 4 less hp it would impact fighting vills, archers, militia and man at arms quite a lot. Also, currently with 54 hp, if they research +1 armor, they can survive 4 hits from spears. If they had even 1 less hp they wouldn’t.

13

Who says it is a buff? xD

14

those are like late feudal age changes where there’s a mismatch in upgrades. That’s not the strong point of Franks, they aren’t a civ for the niche settings favoring prolonged feudal age play. Its the double eco bonus plus value from scouts in early feudal age. So a nerf for some niche situation won’t change the overall position.

15

you are nitpicking and skipping the first sentence i wrote. It is definitely early feudal impact if the nerf makes them worse against drushes or MAA plays.

16

Who says it is a buff? xD

My understanding is that the Mayan bonus actually makes their farmers work about 5% slower than other civilizations because of the weird way farms work in AOE2.

If you remove the effect from farms, it will probably end up being a buff to Mayans because they can IMP faster and also afford the more expensive Eagles and El Dorado even more easily.

17

Not really. Mayan farmers are just that much worse compared to generic garmers as are generic farmers compared to berber farmers. But you have a better version of the Chinese team bonus instead. So I would say that farms being affected by the bonus is a net positive.

1 Like
18

Dude, you ignored all the other balance change comments except the Franks one.
Anyways I know 4 hp will technically be a couple of extra hits from villagers or archers but my point is its still an insignificant nerf. Magyars have a stronger Scout play but they’re not problematic because there’s no eco bonus. Whereas for Franks because you get 2 eco benefits plus extra hp.Its still going to be better against scout opening from other civs and the change will impact only feudal friendly maps like Atacama or Haboob. If your intention is to nerf Franks for Arabia this will be quite insignificant.