Compared with mangonel, it has lower movement speed, lower range without upgrade and lower damage.
I used eight nest of bees and eight mangonels to fight the same number of troops of the other party. Mangonel completed the task better and faster and destroyed the other party.
What are the advantages of nest of bees now? It should be strengthened a little. At least the same level as mangonel
15 Likes
definitely agree, it feels like china isn’t worth learning right now as they are an incredibly complicated civ with no unique upside.
5 Likes
I dont think there should be a stronger mangonel, playing vs china with their higher HP siege engines on a choke map is already cancer. Maybe we should remove nest of bees and give them another unit? I dont think this unit is easy to balance.
they are fun to play at least lol
China need buff
1 Like
Viper about china: “Tricky to play, very difficult. But there might be a lot of potential”
You: THIS PROVES CHINESE NEED BUFF
No it doesn’t It’s ok to have civs that’s harder to play. If you are a bad player or not up for the challenge, you can always just play english
I don’t think this is a binary choice. I agree that China has the potential to be a top tier civ with their current bonuses but it’s going to take a while for this potential to be realized because they aren’t worth the time investment for pros and casual players alike.
If the nest of bees was stronger it would give China a straightforward strategy that people would play while they were getting used to China’s unique mechanics. If a month or two later it was nerfed players would be familiar with them and able to switch to other less obvious strategies. Players who start playing after the nest of bee nerf would be able to benefit from the strategies developed by the players who got familiar with China during the nest of bees phase, making the learning curve less steep.
Similarly I think longbows got overnerfed from the closed beta but it makes sense to do that right now because England is super easy to play. If their power unit is S tier it makes them really oppressive while everyone is learning the game.
France is going through a similar curve, they are easy to play and have a powerful unit so top players are spamming them in tournaments. It’s not that they are that crazily overpowered and unbeatable, it’s just that they are quick to learn and reliable so people will favor them when they are first picking up the game.
To keep the meta diverse you need to accommodate for player skill level as well as theoretical power level.
I really dont think a civ should be buffed just because they are hard.
Only case where you should consider noobs is if one civ have a really easy to follow hard to counter strategy that its just way too hard to defeat without being good. For this way it makes sense because noobs cant just pick another civ when they lose vs it with all. The other way around, noobs losing with a civ, I dont think is a reason to change it. They can play another civ. The devs intented chinese to be a hard civ and that’s what it is.
It’s also ok for not all civs to be as strong as each other at all points in time. And making a this perfect balance is also pretty much impossible.
Question,
where the nest of bees completly upgraded?
Gunpoweder Range, Imperial Age + University so u get the Chemistry upgrade? Cheaper Nest of Bees / Clockwork Nest of Bees?
if you produce out of clockwork (+50% hp) with an official supervising - (+200% production speed), have the cheaper upgrade, they cost 225W + 225G then, with all the upgrades in imp, 20% more range - chinese unique siege tech + free gunpowder tech in imp as soon as University is build - 20% more damage.
I think they get competitive then tbf. specially since in a normal game mangonels are countered by springalds, with the extra HP they will need more shots to go down, cost around 25% less then mangonels and just scale better to the end then mangonels.
I think I miscommunication a bit. This isn’t about accommodating noobs, or rather literally everyone is a noob right now so balancing around noobs makes a lot of sense.
If you don’t do this you end up with closed beta England and current France, against dehli with increased scholar costs, and china with the supervise ability locked behind a feudal age tech. All of which is probably going to look balanced a year or two from now.
I agree not everything is going to be perfectly balanced. I just think it’s cool when players are rewarded for learning harder civs with a “wow China is so OP” momenet rather than “oh hey look this guy picked China and isn’t being stomped”
Somehow Chemistry does not apply to Nest of Bees. Its damage stays at 8 in age 4.
3 Likes
The Nest of Bees has NO minimum range, a disadvantage on the one hand and an advantage on the other.
1 Like
Everything I say now is from a competitive 1v1 perspective.
China rn is the absolute dirt of the dirt and that’s why they are “hard to play”. Cause they are bad.
They have no civ bonus, eco bonus, special military stregth or upgrades that make them outshine any other civ in dark and feudal age.
Your civ bonus is locked behind paywalls, which everyone else gets for free.
They have no real eco bonus for early/midgame, no cheaper upgrades, no special upgrades to make them exceed in anything, no early MAA, no early knights, no special unit to play with while the special unit you do have (chokunu) is more a meme than a playable style, no civ bonus (faster building/imperial official is nothing that lets you pick up momentum at all) with low momentum landmarks that you cannot play timings around.
They have nothing in early game to play with (literally anyone can do any strat in feudal better than them), which forces you to play castle age rush every game and ignore civ bonuses and pray that he doesn’t shove his flatstats lead into your face.
Even reaching castle age, they have once again no special unit to play with, some pocket money freegold here and there but nothing big and insane paywalls if they want to unlock a single civ bonus/upgrade.
In teamgames they might be okay to play cause you have other players to compensate for your weakstate but man china is just the “worse version of X” with everything they want to aim for in 1v1s.
Ramrush is just a bad HRE/English/Mongol version of it, cav opener no chance compared to rus/french, archer rush complete dirt compared to prelate eco or longbows, castle rush english, HRE, French do it with momentum and pressure without huge investments.
China just lacks playable uniqueness overall.
Some basic civ bonus or military unit that somehow gives them an edge over other civs in the game in feudal, such as other civs have it too.
6 Likes
Could you explain how the imperial official is nothing? To me 20% increased effective gather rate and turning a military production building into 3 seems very powerful. They should in theory have one of the fastest rushes in game.
The increased production time can be really useful, especially on stuff like clocktower, but overall the investment of 150 is quite huge and the mechanic is too limited for the 20% bonus economy income.
You have a 50% greater investment compared to prelates with half the eco boost, meaning you have later timings and everything else you try is just late compared to that.
Especially in early game, when we talk about openers that give you momentum or all ins that can finish you of, it’s the economy and not production speed that’s the limiting factor.
China is so bad cause they have nothing that’s good in early game and again, while triple production queue sounds good, it doesn’t make up for the fact that they have basically again, no proper early game eco boost/upgrades/military to play with.
4 Likes
hmmm, I’m not convinced I will have to do some testing.
Sounds like someone that hasn’t played alot of chinese 1v1 then.
You literally lose against everything in game since everything is just a better version of you.
There’s absolutely no doubt about that, objectively.
3 Likes
Nest of Bees is sadly a garbage unit now. It deals way less damage than a mangonel. Chinese would be better off if they had mangonels instead. The game displays 8x8 damage which would of course add up to 64 damage, but in practice this unit deals less damage than a Mangonel with its 12x3 damage attack.
Nest of Bees must be buffed to be a superiour version to mangonels in Age 3. Their damage needs to be increased and something about their attacks must get changed: They seem to miss too often.
In Age 4, Nest of Bees must benefit from Chemistry, which they do not. This is a bug.
2 Likes
And it sounds like you’ve played enough China that you’re salty about losing but haven’t quite got there yet XD.
I’ve been there myself with dehli but I figured it out and I’m doing fine with them now.
Delhi is not china.
Since I entered top 400, everytime I pick chinese it’s basically insta surrendering and it’s my most played civ by far.
You just can’t get any wins anymore and I desperatly tried it so hard the past days, pushing my winrate from ~75% down to under 60% now with nearly only losses as chinese.
Mained them in stresstest as well and I like the visuals/audio, really immersive, but man they are dooog balance wise rn.
Every little advantage you get is important.
Delhi has clear advantages.
Free tech, units have walls, increased gold from holy sights with early holy sight capture.
China has… faster production and building speed?
Again, it’s hard to find anything that makes them exceed in anything cause they have nothing.
No early Maa, no knights, no special eco, no special tech, civ bonuses locked behind double tech and so on.
They are always passive and have to play with stuff that anyone else has anyway without a clear and proper civ bonus.
I really tried to force myself to like them but I can’t anymore.
For 1v1s they just seem unplayable.
Any all in breaks them.
9 Likes