New Civs Discusion and potential Changes (Sicilians/ Burgundians)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Hi Guys,

I looked a bit in detail into the new Civs and Have some Idears for Balancing Changes and potential Problems:

Burgandians:
First what seems fine:
Getting Cavalier in Castle seems ok bcs they have no Bloodlines. Getting Eco ups earlyer is hard to judge yet, that Farms make Gold sound op first, but its very little (someone said around 1 Relic for 40 Farmers) so it seems all fine.
Flemish Milita is hard to judge yet, but to get around 80 Military at the start of Imp sounds like a very strong all in, which might be unstopbale. But it would be balancebale by adjusting their stats in this case.

Potential Problems and Solutions:

Their Unique Unit: This Units Charge Attack MUST be nerfed.
It gets up to 40 additional Attack. With this atatck they can 1 Shot Arbs and nearly 3 Shot Paladins. After that Attack they can run Away to a Castle, charge up and 1 shot again.

possibale Solutions:
1: reduce the additional Attack bcs 1 Shoting Arbs and nearly Halb is to much. 40 is sure to much.
2: Make them a litle bit slower then Knights. Knights have a Speed of 1,35. If they have a Speed of 1,25 then they cant just run away after they did their Charge attack which would make it possibale to Punish them after a bad engagment.
3. Could give them a Movespeed debuff for a short Time after they did their Charge attack to force them to stay in the fight for a bit after their Charge attack.

Sicilians:
The reduced Bonus dmg might be strong in Feudal Age for Archers/ Scouts, but they dont have very strong Arbs/ Paladins to abuse it later on ingame, and in Castle Age you mainly fight Knights vs Crossbow or Crossbow vs Siege, which has no Bonus Dmg. But the reduced Bonus dmg might be strong for their Unique unit vs Hand cannoniers.
The Eco bonus is very Weak because it safes Wood when the Farm expieres, because the Farms lasts longer:

Wood safed:
Horse Collar:
Food from 250 to 325 = 30% more food: more wood Value --> 250*60 / 325–> The Farm costs 46 Wood, but you get the safed 14 wood when it expieres
Heavy Plow: from 375 to 575 --> 39 Wood cost (when expiered)
Last Farm upgrade not that important, because it takes SUPER long until you reseed the first time with it.

Comparison: Teuton bonus = 40% cheaper = 36 wood per Farm --> Bonus dont safes as much wood as Teuton. It safes more in Post imp. Additionally to the fact that it safes less wood in Castle age, it dont safes it right at early Feudal age when you build the Farm, but in early Castle Age when you reseed them. Later safed Res are worth less, because you have a bigger eco = fairly weak eco bonus for their lacking Tech tree = very depending on Unique Unit/ Tech

They seem to depend on their Unique Unit a lot and with this on their Towers.

The units seems strong, but also very expensiv with 60F 35G. Also you need stone to produce it so i gues it will be kinda balanced by its cost.

Tower Rushing might look strong at first, but the Towers cost 200 Stone and only fire additional Arrows from Vils:
–> Tower rush Starts have low Eco: with low eco you wont be bale to produce 200 Stone towers, Vils and Sergants at once (or at least not a lot). Also it costs more to repair them because they cost more then a Tower and you can build less. Additionaly they are 4 Tiles big, which makes them easyer to surround with vils to take them down.
If you send your vils back to have a better eco to get more sergants, then you will lose Tower wars because Sergants dont fire additional Arrows, while enemy Towers with Vils inside will.
If its still to strong nerfing the Donjons Hp in Feudal age and/ or Sergant production time in Feudal Age might be an idear.
I dont think yet a Tower rush in early Feudal age will be problematic, but they will be strong with a Sergants attack in mid Castle age, when you can attack with mass Sergants and Forward Towers.

Potential Problems and Changes:

Their Unique Tech: You can get 10 Sergants per TC IN CASTLE AGE.
10 Sergants would cost 950 Resources, and the Tech itself costs around 1k Res. With 4 Tcs you get 4 times the Units for your Res, which would be a very strong Castle Age push and a bit to much I think atm.

Solutions:
1: Make it more expensiv of a Tech (simple, but not best Solution I think)
2: Switch the Castle Age with the Imp Tech. If it would be the Imp tech it would be a much higher investment to go for the tech (because you need Imp first) and additionally would come later Inagme, when the Enemy has a bigger army to defend. This way it wouldnt be such a very strong Castle Age Push and easyer to defend, because in Imp the Enemy has a bigger Army himself.

Switching the Techs also wouldnt make the other Tech OP, because its not Worth to get the Tech before the Player has a big army. Their might be some Situations in which it might make sense to get the Gold, but it shouldnt be abusive.

Another Weird Thing and possibale Change:

I dont understand why the Burgundians have a Relic (team) bonus, but the Sicilians, which are supposed to be a Crusader Civ (with their Sergants and First Crusade Tech) would be much more fitting for such a Bonus.

Idear:
Give the Relic Bonus to the Sicilians and Change it to: relics produce additional Stone to Gold.

Right now it seems the Sicilians will be very depending on their Unique Unit, because they dont have any other outstanding Unit in their Tech tree. To produce them they need Stone. Because of this a Bonus which would give them a little bit of Stone would have a Good synergy with their Civ design from a Game design perspectiv and it being a Relic Bonus would also suits their Theme as a Crusader focused Civ.

Obviously the Burgandians would then need another Team Bonus which would Suit their Cav Theme

Now my Question to you Guys:

1: What do you think of the New Civs, do you agree with my First Impressions:
2: What do you guys think about my potential Problems and potential Solutions/ Changes to the Civs
3: If you like the idear to give the Sicilians the Team Bonus to get a little bit of Stone from Relics which Team bonus would you then give to the Burgandians?

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I think there are concerns with the new civs but they are relatively minor.
you can put Sicilians on the back foot by tower rushing them and forcing them to build a donjon which eats up all their stone, meaning they can’t boom effectively.
i do think the 10 serjeants/tc is a bit much and should be monitored.

as for Burgundians the only thing i am concerned about is the power of their castle age UT when its researched late in the game and their Unique Unit. if they try to flemish pikeman rush in imp, they are literally all in on that and it should be monitored but i don’t think it will be all that good

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I think these kinds of discussions are too early…

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The only thing I see as a problem atm is the UU.

I’ve played a few Sicilian matches, they are good but it is easy to get stuck and/or slower castle age. Mangonels don’t really survive direct hits either. They can be countered early and late. Cavaliers/Paladins trade pretty well against Serjeants and handcanoneers work too.

I think sicilians can be really strong if you get some early advantage and if the opponent doesn’t really know how to counter. But there are risky moments and time will tell.

I think they are pretty good, a few stat tweaks and perhaps some minor changes!

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Y as I said I also only think that some things might be problematic, like the free Sergant Unique Tech and the Burgundian Unique Unit.

Atm I even think that Sicilians might not be Op, but more of middle of the Pack.
Their tech tree is not very outstanding and they dont have a good economy Bonus, and Eco Bonuses are very important in 1v1.
Not having Thumb Ring and only having Cavalier will will make them depending on their UU I think.

Thats also why I would like to change the Team Bonus to give them a Bonus which has synergy with their Donjon by getting them a bit of stone.

Beside their UU their Knights might be good in Match ups vs Camal Civs, because Camals dont have super high Bonus dmg. By reducing this They might have good Match ups vs Camels with Knights, or at least not get as countered as others are.

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Right now is the best Time to start about potential Changes.

If something is to strong or to weak, then the Devs might look what suggestions the Community has made.

Thats why I also gave potential Changes to potential Problems, or just Changes which would make sense from a Civ Design perspectiv like the Team Bonus change for a good Synergy Bonus

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What you think specific about my Team Bonus Change idear?

I think for a Civ being design so much around a 200 Stone building a Stone Bonus like this might be very nice and suit their Civ design.

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i think its dumb to yank a team bonus from one civ just to give to another in a modified form. leave the bonuses as is.

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The only changes i would make to coustelliers

Reduce movement speed when they don’t have the charge bonus, that way they would not abuse their superior speed against knight to cycle charge them, but they will still decide when to engage in optimal conditions

Cap the charge bonus to around 70% of the enemy unit health, 1 shooting arbs and vills is too much, but cavalry can take the full damage

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Did the dev press 4 twice by mistake when setting the charge bonus for coustelliers?

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Dude, it is less than 24 hours, how can you have an integral notion in how new civs impact in overall balance?

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It is ridiculous. A clown fest.

I don’t really why the Devs (who actually don’t know if they can play the game) try to destroy the game again and again.

I love new content and I hope we would have nice new civs (even we have way too many) but the civs development is just sad. Maybe is because no one from the original game is still around or don’t know.

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If you tower, you can’t boom effectively either. They will just Donjon rush you with serjents who actually can build Donjons and free vills so they will have better eco than you

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You can boom more effectively then they can. Also. Donjon spamming with a 200 stone building? Glwt
And those sergeants build very slowly. And yeah 200 stone to build a single donjon so those extra villagers are mining stone

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I personally feel like donjons should be a free tower upgrade for sicilians in castle age and sicilians should be able to only build normal towers in feudal. The current situation feels kinda gimmicky.

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I’ve yet to see both civ in action, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. But my overall opinion is that thier bonuses aren’t as strong as some people make it sound. They both sound like late game civs you don’t want to let freely boom, with a pretty bland tech tree and no real strong unit to build a strategy around outside of their UU.

3 Likes
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Have you ever concern that other people could not share your opinion? You play maybe 3 games and then to decide everything is broken? Like my opnion I feel the UU are not broken…

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From what I have seen, Coustilliers are the biggest problem unit. They have basically Cavalier stats in addition to having charge attack to wipe at least 3rd of equal sized heavy cavalry armies while being cheaper on engage. Their charge attack needs to be reduced below the health of villagers and archers (so like 35 total as elite version) for the start and maybe they need to move little slower while their special attack isn’t up.

Also Flemish Militia having champion stats while dealing ton of extra damage to cavalry is so weird. They need to lose some of the bonus damage to cavalry.

Sicilians need a nerf to 7 or 8 serjeants per TC instead of 10 from the UT. I do not think Serjeants or Donjons need tuning but getting 4750 resources worth of units for 900 resources just for having 1 or 2 extra tcs is little too much. If it would be 35 or 40 Serjeants it would be total of 3325 or 3800 resources, still very strong but more fair for the investment of 5 tcs and castle (that obviously will secure your base very well).

Otherwise I feel the civs are very balanced, just these 2 UTs are little too strong. Coustillier is completely busted, best unit in the game BY FAR.

TLDR; Nerf coustillier ASAP. The Flemish Revolution and First Crusade technologies need tuning down but are not as urgent.

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But, the biggest news of the patch may actually be this: it looks like a fix was implemented to foundation scouting. Is this even AoE2 anymore? That’s like one of the fundamental bugs of the game.

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I never said everything is broken, have you even read my Post?

I said the Burgundian UU is broken, because additional 40 dmg is to much, and with its high speed hit and run tactics are to strong, which is why I showed some potential nerfs.

To the rest of the Civ i basicly said it seems Balanced or hard to judge yet like the Flemisch Milita/ Eco Upgrade Bonus, but apart of its UU the Civ seems fine.

To Sicilians I basicly said that their Unique Tech is to op, because it can Give up to 50 Sergants for the Cost of ~10 Sergants. Getting 5 times the Value out of the Tech is a bit to much.

Apart from this I think the Civ will be middle of the Pack.
Donjons dont seem so strong, because they just cost to much for a Tower rush Strat. The Bonus to reduce Bonus Dmg might be to strong or fine, but its hard to judge yet.

The Sergant itself I think might even need a little Buff to its costs. Its stronger then a Champion, especially vs Archers (like Malian Champs), but 35 Gold seems a bit much. I think more like 55F 30G would suit them better if you compare them to Champions with 45F 20G cost.

So i never said everything is broken, I wanted to point out that they arent as busted as most people complain. Thats why i even proposed a little buff for Sicilans in their Team bonus, because most bonuses seem fine, except the Coustilliers and the First Crusade Tech. This are the only 2 things which are obviously to strong atm. Also even if the Civs itself wont turn out to strong I still think these 2 things should be nerfed, because otherwise to much of the Civs Power is in 1 Unit/ Tech. By nerfing this OP Unit/ Tech you can give the Civ more Power in other aspects like Eco, Tech Tree or Units (like making Sergants more cost Effectiv like pointed out above)

I would like it if you criticize the things I sayed when you criticize me for my Post, and not about things I never said.

1 Like