They’re also the weakest condos with no blast furnace
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True, but also consider that in Post imp games, everyone is running out of gold, and Knights or melee UUs and even Champs are few and far in between…
It’s mostly fights against Trash, previously built TCs/Castles and Siege from Mid Imp onwards.
AAh I forgot this is for TGs so there is trade. If there is good trade on both sides then Vikings is better. I agree.
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But that would come in late too.
A trickle is always a late game bonus, it matters little when it starts, it take time to stack up an to really see and effect.
I don’t think it’s possible, and I forsee a lot of bug in its implementation.
Why? Food never run out, at that poi just give them a food bonus, why make it complicated?
It would be a too unfair advantage for one civ out of 35 to have such a bonus in 1v1. People would immediately abuse that and just spam markets.
It is a completely new way or gathering a resource just for them.
Also, there is already something similar with portos feritoria, and you can already see how difficult is to balance it. Feritoria come in only in imp, it takes pop and it’s costly, all that to balance their resources generation.
You want to give something similar to a building that you can build in feudal, it’s cheap and it doesn’t take pop.
Well, ok the pop problem is solved by having to garrison trade carts, but it’s still OP, and it would require to touch delicate game meccanics, I’m onestly too afraid that it would cause more bugs, and people seem already pretty tired of those.
I don’t mean to sound too harsh, but really, if people get too tired about those bugs, we risk to have a bigger problem than balance in our hands, that’s why a prefer more simple but safe bonus.
I also don’t want a mob of players cry on how the Italians would be broken OP, there are already people who say that now condos are too powerful, which in my opinion aren’t at all.
This is very easy to implement with a saturation. One code line probably. So, say you get .4 g/s per military building up to 1.2
You get a gold trickle which is min(1.2, 0.4 × number of military buildings). So .4 for one building, .8 for 2 buildings, 1.2 for 3 or more buildings. So spamming buildings does not make sense.
The early game advantage of the bonus is that it is around 1 extra vill collecting gold, which is not a lot, but it is still much better than what they have now.
In castle age this is negligible, while in trash wars it has a good value.
been playing the italians a few times now (mainly TGs) and i definitely enjoy them a lot more. that condo buff seems really useful. being able to supplement pikes with condos instead of having to tech cavalry to counter things like skirms or siege(if the bbc are busy) seems much easier. so there’s a lot less side teching.
now that im using italians more ive come to appreciate their late game power spike as well… those cheap BBC are great… too bad they dont have siege engineers. and while GC take a while to train it forces us to carry on training arbs and pikes, which i dont think is a bad idea, otherwise we could just spam 1 blob (which ive never liked on any of the civs)
someone compared italy to ethiopia, and i think its a good comparison, both getting a per age eco boost, archers translate comparitively, yet i think italy is much better equipped to deal with goths, the condo now trades very well vs the huskarl so performs better than the subjective ethiopian match up and of course supplemented by dirt cheap HC or archers they can deal with goth champs easily
if anything it makes me feel that ethiopia is put in a worse light due to italy (their twin) being buffed so it becomes more evident where ethiopia is lacking…
italy even has a far superior cavalry line, better eco bonus as you get it before aging, and ethiopias UT is so crazy expensive(like seriously how expensive is it to get a SO with UT and siege engineers and then they’re still fragile AF so can be sniped by bbc or britons), while having weaker infantry, unique infantry, and cavalry lines…
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imo this is much to hard to balance… especially if we consider all the other work the devs should be focussing on… and how much this bonus will vary depending on map type/game type
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I don’t know if you or someone else here is an expert about this, but since it’s not my field of expertise, I don’t assume that it’s easy to implement, or that it’s just a line code.
I meant until you capped the trickle, then you also try to grab as many relics as you can and wall yourself in, prolonging the game forever.
Which is roughly what turks have with the faster gathering rate, I don’t want to give them a bonus just for the sake of giving a random eco bonus, I would like something that fit them.
One more vill on gold it’s pretty weak, gold it’s not an issue until late game, especially if you go archers.
Well, both champions and especially hussars are still better, but if you have already gran pavise for you archers, you don’t need any other tech, apart from the blacksmith ones, which you would need anyway.
That’s is the condos strength right now.
For team games it could work, even though it’s still a pain to train them.the main problem for the TT of the GC is one 1v1, where usually you focus on just one or two kind of units.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want them to be trained as fast as chukos or keshiks, but at least for them to be on the longbow level.
Also, GC trade their powerful bonus vs cavalry with less range and no bonus vs infantry, not even pikes (which even ES get), so while they aren’t terrible vs infantry, they’re aren’t either the most suited unit (just look in how they perform vs konniks, viper made a videi about it some time ago).
LOL etiopians are stronger than Italians for those reasons:
- they have halbs and camels, they don’t rely on a slow to train UU for counter cavalry.
- their trash is better (again halbs)
- their archer bonus is free, don’t require a castle, and start in feudal, so it’s a lot more better than Italian one, and their archers are pretty much similar (on equal numbers wins who shot first).
- their siege it’s simply a lot more powerful.
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No, but if you give them a bonus, with the cheap age up they become similar.
Not identical, but similar in the concept.
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How about +1 melee armor for archer?
That will really helpful in the feudal age and not influence the balance too much.
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Also, regarding the free armor bonus upgrade there is something that hasn’t been considered, which is that archer armor upgrades are the only upgrade affecting HC.
HC after chemistry (which is a requirement not an upgrade for them) don’t need any other techs, it one of their few advantages.
Archer armor and conscription are the only 2 exceptions, so free archer armors could improve a fast imp into gunpowder strategy, as well as facilitate a potential transition into HC on a late game where you didn’t make use of archers, but only of cavalry or condos for example.
I still prefer +1PA, but that is a nice advantage of the free archer armors bonus, and it could incourage people to use HC.
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It would mean that in feudal, archers would be able to tank 1 or 2 hits more from scouts (depending on the blacksmith upgrades) which isn’t bad at all.
The main problem of +1MA is that after feudal, from castle age forward, it becomes negligible.
You already get +1MA with pavise, which help a bit vs knights, but if you would get +1 from the bonus and +1 from pavise, for a total of +2MA, it would have the same effect of +1, one more melee armor doesn’t make any difference any more, while +2PA help a lot even in the super late game.
However, one variant of the bonus that archer line only receives +1/1 from feudal, so you have that +1MA versus scouts in feudal, and more importantly you have the +1PA for the late game.
I personally prefer PA only because it’s more useful during all the ages (it help as much in feudal too).
But, +1 pierce armor means the oppose skirmisher will be more difficult to counter the Italian crossbowmen, no mention if the Italians leads the game or the oppose player use Turks, there will be no efficient solution after the castle age.
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In general Italians have a very bad eco on land. The worst in the game imo. So +1PA is more useful to survive
So why just add an eco bonus on land?
Italians has great archery range, not bad stable and good barrack, military bonus may be easy to break the balance.
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Italians already counter turks really hard, so +1PA isn’t game breaking.
Skirmishers would be a bit less effective yes, but they are a trash units, so they would still be cost effective (it means one more shot in castle and 2 in imp).
The main effects it would be in xbows battles, where the Italians would have an edge vs viets or etiopians, but only after they research pavise, wich is fair since they pay for it while the other 2 civs don’t pay for their better bonus.
Also that, it likely that even a viking or aztec player who have good eco and good xbows (but no bonus) is able to outnumber and outproduce your xbows, and win every engagement.
Right now italians have standard xbows before pavise (which means a castle) and even after, +1/1 alone isn’t a strong bonus.
Any eco bonus would make them more powerful on water, and their military is good, but they don’t have nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, it’s like playing on full tech tree, except that you don’t have all the units, you just lack any bonus.
Honestly if we want to give them an original buff, the idea of building generating resources may work.
I am trying to propose ideas. I like a lot the option of the gold trickle since it is very original. Let me try another one.
You can use a bonus like: “all (human?) units cost 5% less”. Human means no navy, no siege. Basically what a monk can heal. But you can include all the units as well.It sounds negligible, but it affects vills. The concept is similar to Koreans and Portuguese bonuses. Portuguese for instance have a weaker infantry discount than goths, weaker archer discount than mayans and so on.
Italians would follow a similar path.
You can just tune the water bonus, right?
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Water tech -50% > -33% or -25%, and buff its eco on land. I had said it at the another topic before.
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I disagree, I’m really skeptical about it, and I fear for balance and bug.
However, if I can’t change you mind, let’s just agree to disagree on this point.
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