The Goth infantry spam was already well known previously, but then it was only in late game. To make their early game strong, they were given free loom. This saved both the TC work time and meant an extra 50G at start. They have become too strong now. Of course I do not want their only economy bonus to be revoked.
Essentially all they have is free Supplies, free Loom, free Arson. I don’t think there was a need for free Arson and their original bonus was good, making them research Arson themselves.
The three dimensional buff to Goths has made them slightly unbalanced as of now. The free Arson maybe good in a way, it is just saving 3.57 LS or 2.67 Huskarls worth of resources.
Either of the two changes shall be fine:
a. Loom instantaneous but not free (spend 50G, but not TC work time; the complete opposite of what the Aztecs have now)
b. Nerf the Infantry discount by 5% across all ages. The Spear units are definitely cheaper than generic and won’t outmatch the Byzantines bonus until Imperial Age and will have same cost in Castle Age (still produced faster). This also makes sense since the only distinguishing factor would be lack of Armor or Attack with a difference in discount.
The sword line on the other hand would be 3 food expensive in Feudal Age, but 4 gold cheaper as compared to Slavic infantry under same circumstances. Again in Castle Age, they would have the same food cost as one with Supplies, but would be 5 gold cheaper.
To sum it, for every 20 resouces of original cost, the infantry would be 1 resource more expensive in every age which means 3F 1G for Champion line, 4F 2G for Huskarl line, and 3 total resources for Halberdier line.
People before goth’s buff:
“Goths are just useless, too predictable, too bad…”
Now that they are a solid civ:
“Goths too OP pls nerf”
Is just me or anyone hate to see new top civs in the field…
you are literally the only one saying that the discount should be reduced even more, well tell me if someone said that just before that the discount was widespread by ages (back when it was 35% since feudal).
The thing is, what other options have the goths to go outside of infantry? there’s a reason why the discount is not tiny.
Without mentioning that they are one of the few ones that can use effectively longswords in fair numbers in castle age.
Even at very high level play Goths aren’t invincible as they know well how to counter them, so is better to learn this at first place.
Goths do not have the economy to support them, and without Stone Walls, they are forced into their overly-efficient Infantry strategy, or they auto-lose.
Goths are one of the few civs that can do nothing else, except their one good strat.
Try to innovate as Goths, and you will likely be crushed.
They are a good civ now, and do not need any nerfs. They are just highly predictable, which is why they barely see tournament play at all.
If you nerf Goths Infantry, even by a little bit, then you will have to over-compensate with something silly, like Trash Cavaliers.
I get your point. Maybe -15% in Dark, -25% in Feudal and -35% Castle Age onwards. The main point is to nerf them in Feudal and Dark ages since that’s the time their economy bonus affects them.
Yep, that’s something I have been thinking. They have good infantry, but in some conditions that’s not enough due to lack of Plate Mail. They have full blacksmith for archers but lacking Thumb Ring means they cannot do anything other than Elite Skirmishers and Hand Cannoneers, units which are mainly counter units. They have good stable options unless you notice missing Plate Bard. They have a variety of siege, none of which is average due to missing Siege Engineers. They are one of the 3 Civilizations (I remember of RotR, but you can add 2 considering the DE civs) missing Dry Dock (the others being Teutons and Mongols). I don’t use monks often but I can safely say they are far from good. In the economy section they miss Gold Shaft Mining, which means any non-trash unit other than Infantry in Imperial Age would be harder to sustain. They have Crop Rotation and Two man Saw, which means they are okay heading into trash wars.
I would also like to see the free loom changes into loom instant research.
Atztec had free loom once and it was removed because it was op. Aztec are a flexible civ and pros played them slot so it got nerfed.
Goths have the bonus now, and they have the highest winrste now for quite some time since that buff was introduced. But because they are not flexible, pros don’t like them.
It was overbuff in my opinion and statistic seems to support this.
Goths weren’t that bad in the first places, people just followed blind the subjective feelings of the pros. For the general non Pro 99% of players goths had always a decent winrate even before the buff.
Goths were not good pre patch before free loom. They were arguably the worst civ in the game at that point. Any pro would have said the same thing. You would never see someone pick Goths on an open map pre buff. Goths don’t need any nerfs they’re perfectly fine right now. If any changes are necessary, have the dark age discount removed for infantry and have them get a larger discount from Feudal to Imperial. You can’t compare Aztec free loom to Goths because they had an eco bonus too and Goths don’t. Goths are a one trick pony that’s it. They don’t get supplies, so that’s your balancing factor right there in reference to cost.
Bruh, it’s the whole point of the change to have at least some synergy between their game plan and their eco bonus.
I’m not going to re-write that essay from the other day so here it is in short version: just like in shooting games you don’t balance around people who can’t shoot straight, in Age you don’t balance around people who can’t attack before Imp.
So in short. Balance around the top 100 players around the world only. Is that what you want to say?
if there was a civ winning like 60% of games in low elo, while having perfekt 50% for top players, then that civ would still need a nerf and the problem not written of as if those players have no right to a balanced game in their skill level
every RTS balances around the top. you want to know why? becaue those who aren’t the top aren’t losing because of balance.
at low ELO you aren’t losing due to balance. you are losing because you made errors, or are you telling me that low elo players can perfectly execute a build order, and can perfectly scout and defend a rush?
the fact is that below about 1800 you’re far more likely to lose a game because you made a mistake then due to balance.
even the best civs right now only have around a 54% winrate in overall stats, which is perfectly balanced. you can easily beat anyone by just executing a feudal archer rush effectively and putting them behind.
Every RTS i can ever think of has balanced around the top, not the bottom.
if you balanced RTS around people at 1k ELO you’d have to balance archers around people not microing and splitting them.
I don’t ask you to be a pro, I ask you to not let yourself die against deathball civs by overbooming. That’s quite different.
I suppose that it would be worth a shot, but it could also come down to pure randomness. In some unranked loobies (that aren’t accounted in the stas btw) I’ve noticed some people were… overestimating their skills. Should Teutons be buffed because some low ELO legend tried to make a late-game CA army with them? Should Burmese be buffed because of this random dude who was content playing Sim City with his Dark age farmers?
should elephants be nerfed because player 1 waited until imp to attack with his army and his opponent had 80 fully upgraded elite war elephants that wrecked?
i got a perfect example - my buddy the other day built a forward archery range as britons in feudal, he also had 2 stables and pumped out scouts and attacked an opponent who was building skirms to counter archers.
does this mean that Britons scout cavalry are in need of a nerf? or did his opponent have incomplete information and lose because he was preparing for one attack and got hit with another?