My Proposed Changes for the upcoming balance patch

Turtle Ships are no doubt overpriced for what they do. They are still unseen and unused even after THREE WHOLE BUFFS after AoC

Buff 1. -10% Wood and Gold cost
Buff 2. Panokseon = +15% speed
Buff 3. -15% Wood cost

The situation with TS makes it clear that a Buff 4 is absolutely necessary to balance this unit. Which is a shame considering also the Korean themes and history.
The necessary Buff 4. could be one of the following

  1. Cost dropped by a further -20W, -20G (to 160W 160G) OR
  2. Panokseon speed buff +25% (TS base speed only 0.9 vs Galleon 1.43, hence making Panokseon a “Mahouts” of the sea is necessary) OR
  3. TS +1 range (probably even +2)

I prefer Option 1 as it is the safest, and can have no negative consequences to the metagame.

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When did I say that?

My point was that koreans, with a 20% wood discount, would basically have have the same discount that shipwright give, but from feudal (in contrast with late imp).
They would sacrifice the faster production, but they would save a lot more wood over the ages.
Also, their TS would cost less since castle age, wich is also a buff, there is no need to make them cost the same wood of a galeon in imp.

its what you imply, you say gold is abundant in castle and wood is hard, but if you can’t research shipwright in castle age so how does that make it broken? 180 gold is no joke, imagine the floating resources you’d need to “spam” it

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Ok, first, I never said that wood is more hard find, only that is more important because it have more uses, so you need more of it in contrast with gold (buildings, farms, ships, upgrades, maybe military
).

Second, I didn’t say that shipwright could be researched in castle, only that with 20% wood discount it would be like having it in castle.
In my opinion, if you stake it whith shipwright in imp it becomes too much.

With less wood required you could shift more vills form wood to gold.

ain’t no gold remaining if you’re going to “spam” 180g units.
And correct me if my math is wrong, even with the proposed 20% discount; its just 117 wood after shipwright (I don’t know how the engine rounds it up) over current 122 wood. Literally 5 less wood over the current TS cost and nobody’s complaining about these OP Turtle ships and I doubt shaving 5 more will upset anyone

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Paladin, Leitis, Bombard Cannon, Champion, Heavy Cav Archer, Hand Cannoneer and Onager.

Lithuanians have a lot of Gold options too.

I do not see a problem with that, since Turtles are still brutally expensive on Gold, and will never be as spammed as Galleons are because of it.

You would use those adjectives but you would still never admit the truth, that they are clearly way too overpriced.

Paladin, Leitis, yes heavy cavalry. The one-dimensional angle about Lithuanians.
BBC and onager without siege engineers, nothing to write home about. Champion without plate mail, worth it. HCs are also meh and not really a strategy without a real bonus. Heavy cav archers, expensive to transition and produce, and are not even FU and no bonuses.
So yes, Liths are very one dimensional with cavalry and monks gold wise late game

Thay are not, they are like War Elephants on the Water. They clearly are worth that 180 Gold price, since they beat 3 FU Galleons for each of their own.

The Gold price ensures you cannot mass them, but it is always good to have a few, since they are the best Ship, in terms of raw stats.

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Most civs are that much one-dimensional, and many are even more so. I do not see the problem.

I do not really see the problem. You can leave Shipwright. If they become OP, you will remove it

With the TS durability, power and pop efficiency you don’t have to continually produce them, you spam them after shipwright and then you are fine for the rest of the game.

Agree to disagree.

However, I wouldn’t get my hopes too hight for the next update. The trend seem to be that they are making updates with less impact on the balance as they go on, so it probably means that they intend to settle on this path regarding the balance.

You’re still nerfing them from 35 to 20%. All because of a fear of hypothetical TS overbuff

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I really like most of the proposed changes!

I think 20% is a bit too much, maybe 10 or 15 % would be better to start with. I think both elite jannisary and elite conquistador need an accuracy buff, these units are very strong in castle, but somewhat underwhelming that in imp.

Perhaps +1 pierce armor may make the cataphracts too strong, I cannot really decide about this one. Maybe a small price decrease to the units would be better
I’m really unsure tbh.

I honestly would really like to see bracer given to cuman. Perhaps reduce the kipchak base range of 1 to compensate. This would be a nice boost to cuman cav archers.

I think we can scale the food quanity up a bit for each consecutive age, like an extra +50 every time.

+15hp is a bit too much probably. would probably start with +10hp

That AND because in my opinion, saving 5% more wood across all ages in a water map is a big improvement, that in my opinion should be balanced.

I do not necessary agree with the changes you propose, but I agree with the direction you want to go into, except the scout line, militia line changes but we have discussed that already.

I love the steppe lancer attack speed buff but the other changes seem unnecessary.
Lithuanians are unique because of that +150 food they start with, please don’t change that.
Cumans should rather get access to bracer than Kipchaks getting +1 attack.
Byzantine cataphract +1 pierce armor would be a bad change, they should be weak versus archers since they’re strong against basicly all melee units.

Others look pretty fine, not all the best in my opinion but are good.

But your ‘balance’ is still worse bonus than shipwright civs. Vikings have overall strong wood AND gold discount (and a much cheaper, more practical UU) in imp, Ports have feitoria and gold discount. The wood saved doesn’t float around imp unless you get a huge advantage by imp over other water civs

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Vikings save less wood through the ages.

They fill different roles, you can’t compare them, LB is a bit more powerful than a galleon, TS ir roughly equivalent to 3 gallons.

More than the feritoria I would have counted the tankier ships, still
 don’t see why you think they would be that much better, they don’t even have shipwright.

Which, combined with the other civs bonus (towers and TS) is perfectly achievable, and it shouldn’t be underestimate.

First of all, I really like most of your propositions. They pick the better suggestions which lately have been discussed in this forum while not including all those not-so-well-thought-out ones. But as for the details I have some objections, so here are my comments.

That’s basically the only one I strongly disagree with. I don’t think it’s necessary for the late game (Champs easily kill Hussars if they are able to force engagements), it doesn’t really matter for the mid-game but most importantly it could break the early game. Maa already perform well against scouts, imo that definitely should not be further augmented. Also it’s fairly easy to add spears with your maa while it’s not easy to add a quick range after you committed to scouts. The speed change you proposed for the milita line would already be a huge buff for maa play.

I’d prefer the second one to distribute their bonuses a bit better but I guess in the end that’s really a thing of personal preference. To also distinguish it more from Chinese and Spanish bonuses, imo the best solution would giving them


 although I don’t think the university itself needs to be cheaper.

I like these. In the past, I was a bit skeptical of the early game power of free archer armor upgrades (for later stages it’s absolutely fine) but honestly, after some many of the weaker civs have been significantly buffed in the previous patches, I think that’s justified.

Accuracy buff for elite janni sounds good - the unit really falls off in imp because of counters and even after that change still would have a lot of weaknesses at that stage of the game. However, I don’t agree with light cav pierce armor. There shouldn’t be more than one civ bonus per unit. I’m still not entirely sure about what do here, but my idea would be to give them 1 extra pierce armor on the knight line. Yes, that would be insanely strong but they are just insanely bad on open maps right now, especially vs archers. You are basically forced to go knights and mangonels in castle age vs archers which really is a pitty, making it the currently weakest ara civ imo.

Like others, I also don’t think it’s a good idea to give them more pa. I agree with the rest.

Elite Kipchaks feel underwhelming atm, very true. But to me it seems that largely stems from their horrible range, that’s why I really like


 makes perfect sense imo. It’s indeed a bit unusual to not have chemistry but who cares about regularity for a civ that can build a second tc in feudal.

Agreed to Leitis change. I also think that the +100 food per age up resembles the Ethiopian bonus too much. But I don’t have a better suggestions tbh, maybe sth like units cost less food (only like 5 or 10% to not let that get out of hand) while removing the starting food, altogether. Also one could argue to leave the Lithuanians as they are (with that +10 gold on Leitis) for the moment and reevaluate them again later.

Agreed. +5 or max +10 hp should do the job, though. An alternative solution would be to introduce a hc-specific tech (like parthian tactics for ca) that gives them better stats (firing rate, hp, pierce armor, or accuracy, maybe several of them) and not give it to every civ with access to hc. That would be especially nice for civs that struggle vs eagle spam in the late game.

They need a buff but this is way too much. Reducing the elite upgrade cost and giving (only) the elite version +1 pa should be fine. Maybe +1 attack for non-elite is good, as well but I think that really needs to be tested. I guess nobody wants the op steppe lancer from the early days back.

I don’t think the UT tech usage would be increased by this, but yes, arablest without bracer doesn’t make sense at all. They definitely should have bracer. Too compensate they could lose arabalest, thumb ring or the last armor upgrade. Also I agree with the water changes, we really need more civs that are good on water maps and Malians would be great here, if they had bracer and galleon. Malians do well on hybrid maps but are just awfull on full water if you don’t happen to kill your opponent before imp.

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