Spanish build bonus used to apply to starting TCs on nomad. This was changed with update 81058 (April 2023 - is also when spanish got their 20-gold bonus and conqs lost 1 PA), and any data from before then is outdated and wouldn’t reflect their present situation. That does include Warlords 1 and almost half of the games from the last 2 years. And the changes from that patch were pretty well targeted to hurt Spanish on Nomad-style maps while boosting them up on other map types. And there’s also uncertainty to consider (which tends to be notable for maps that aren’t Arabia/Arena).
I still expect Spanish to be strong on nomad specifically (for a number of reasons - including some water factors), but nowhere near what they used to be.
Chinese has a bit of a weakness against onagers (or so I hear): they’re missing redemption (which means that they can’t convert siege) and bombard cannons. And Chu Ko Nu are a strong unit that is weak to onagers (like most archers).
Now it becomes the “upgrade” of 2HSwords, plus a bit anti-cav prowess, instead of mingling with villagers. Raise their anti-elephant bonus to +5 may make them more useful
The bonus never shrinks to zero. Also late extra sheep are still most likely to be placed in the mill.
It doesn’t matter what the math behind that bonus. Its effect is 29% for Arabia with boars. Beyond 2 boar like huntable and 3 deer like huntable, the hunt advantage shrinks to zero.
It makes the bonus kinda pointless, You could also just give them a flat food bonus then.
The fun about boni is how you maximize them, if you cant do it its boring.
Mongols must be nerfed, but its part of their identity to be strong if there is a lot of hunt.
And the reasoning is to not let Mongols have a monumental advantage over other civs in maps with too much hunt while still keeping them almost as good as how they are currently in standard resource maps.
Why should the Mongol hunt bonus be so good on a map without much hunt? It doesnt make sense. It has to be better on maps with more hunt like the Gurjara bonus is still better when there are many sheeps. Make them weaker on standard hunt maps.
Balance and game design are completely different. Giving a bonus to a civ that won’t matter to its gameplay or will be overpowered based on its tech tree is bad design.
Finding out ways to maximize the boni of civs is the fun part of boni. Otherwise we didn’t need different civs.
The problem of extra rules for everything is, that it is unintuitive, difficult to understand and lame, because it ruins civs strengths. And with that attitude more and more extra rules will be introduced, it will become a mess. The players will be forced to play in one specific way, because without little op things there will be less different strategies.
I’ve proposed that they get removed because of the farming bonus of their respective civs. For example, a sicilian farm with the updated civ bonus will generate 750 food with just heavy plow which is a lot more than the 550 food for a regular civ.
The bonus increases the strength of the upgrades, so removing the strongest upgrade is really lame. Such things make civilisations potentially uninteressting, because the potential of the bonus is lower.
extra los for trash units is the perfect example of a badly designed bonus and was hence removed. It has negligible impact in a game. It was replaced by something too powerful. Supplies removal to compensate for militia line is still valid because the bonus continues to be applied for Infantry, they are also an infantry civ.
Honestly the food discount was probably a bad idea. It just seemed to work at this specific point in time with Eagles cost increased, Kamayuk cost increased, I think also Slinger cost adjusted, Team bonus for Skirms and Pikes removed and Supplies removed. Its a bit close to giving a civ individual unit costs. It is leads to further adjustments in further patches, whenever a slight missbalance is seen like now. At the end its not clear what the point of the bonus is. Its like Pikemen cost less basically.
Inca are a Pikemen civ with a better Pikemen as unique unit also. What about make Pikemen cost like 40-50% less without other discounts? I would like this design idea much more, because it clear to understand and also emphasizes the civ identity more.
They had 70%+ winrate before that and still have the highest winrate (close to 60% ) after patch 81058.
They were mostly banned during warlords 1. Warlords 2 stats after the Nomad tc nerf - 23 games 18 wins 5 losses. Obviously a few games can have uncertainty but 18-5 is a huge difference.
It will be but not to the point where its almost a free win. I’m not just nerfing conqs without a compensation. I’m doubling the gold they’d get from techs. The whole point is to increase the scope of other strategies with Spanish but make fc-castle drop into conqs less broken. They’ll still have great monks, potentially hit the next age slightly faster with the increase in gold per tech. But just 3-4 conqs won’t do that much damage as they do now.
That’s for closed maps. On open maps, sparing a few most other civs don’t have the eco/military flexibility as Chinese in earlier stages. And the use of onagers with siege engineers is limited on non-closed maps. Anyways I’ve removed the plate mail armor, so its no longer a double nerf. And I have proposed solid some nerfs to those civs which are almost as good as Chinese too, so it won’t bury them down. Removal of heavy camel can make them a bit more vulnerable to late castle age cavalry play from their opponent.
Sure the hunt bonus can be capped to a minimum of 5% too. Or I could use a function like faster rate = 40. 2^(-x/500). Bonus will drop to 20% by the time a rhino and deer is eaten and 10% on most standard maps. Anything beyond that will be negligibly small. Was that your concern? Bonus becoming zero?
But how? Its still 29% faster than a generic civ which is approx 220 wood or 190 sheep food worth of villager time gained. As you can see this is still one of the highest eco benefit at that stage. I’m ok if they held a small advantage on maps with a lot of hunt but it can’t be a huge number like 25+. Even with diminishing returns Mongols will be good on maps with a lot of hunt because they can go up faster and stop their opponent from taking the extra hunt with military advantage. But not broken to the extent were you can get outplayed in feudal but still hold the advantage because of a broken bonus.
Fun is mostly just an overpowered bonus. Og lancers, 0 frame delay Mangudai, obsidian arrows, Conqs that took lesser damage from skirms were all fun but not balanced.
Gurjara bonus is negligible after 10 sheep. If you have 40 sheep. Its actually unwise to build additional mills for the extra sheep now. Mongol bonus isn’t meant to be good on maps without much hunt. Its meant to be balanced
But that’s what good balance is all about. Its not balanced to have a bonus overpowered at late stage because it has to be too weak during early stages to balance it out making the civ useless (like current Sicilians). Celts miss the last wood upgrade. Khmer don’t need drop-off but base rate of farming is lower. Turks get Artillery but lack siege engineers. Franks get extra hp on knights but lack bloodlines. All of these are good balance.
Give Chinese bombard cannons if it lost heavy camels. This nerf will cause Chinese be dead in early imperial age.
Remove Georgians cavalry regeneration.
Monaspa cost increased from 45g→50g
Could you explain why do Italians archers need to get buff?
Karambit Warriors are already weak against most of other civs infantry UUs. Why does its armors line get nerfed?
1)Archer discount dropped to 10/15/25 from 10/20/30. 2)Base cost of plumed reduced to 55w, 50g to adjust for it.
3)El Dorado cost increased from 750f, 450g →800f, 500g
Mangudais are nearly extinction on tournaments. Why do it still get nerfed?
Just buff xbow of archer civs and the meta will be nore diversed.
Chu ko nu + bombard = cant be countered
Xbow upgrade and arbalest upgrade received nerf last year. Non-top tier archer civs get their xbow timing delayed and they suffered more than britons or mayans.
I’m sorry but this reason can’t be convincing for me to accept why is only Italians archers get buff. I’m an archer micro player but I don’t play aoe2 for a long time due to crossbows and arbalests get nerfed in 2022. (not last year sir)
I really hope the xbow upgrade cost should be decreased from 175f 125g→ 140f 90g
Base attack of scorpions increased from 12 to 16
Romans scorpions cost -60% gold→ cost -50% gold
If the xbow nerf and the scorpions weaker attack remained, nobody would like to use them at all.
I’m tired of watching cavalrys, hussars and knights dominated 90% S tier tournaments this year.
errr, Why Briton change sounds like a nerf to me. Like, are you telling me to totally rely on the longbow which is a unit trained from castles which require a lot of investment to even compete with other civs? And castles are always primary targets to take down in anygame…so I have even less buildings to mass the one mandatory unit to have a chance to win???
How about just making longbow a unique generic unit for Briton at this point? like Archer → longbow → elite Longbow?
Before the xbow nerf, there were many complaints about non-archer civs spamming xbow. And I thought the reason was discouraging non-archer civs from going fast xbow so often.
I think more buff can be given to several archer civs by respective buff or one generic tech to buff xbow and allow some civs to research.
No, you can still do Arbalesters if you’re planning to go up fast with moderate eco. They’ll still have an extra range and produce faster. Right now in such games you might not be able to afford Yeomen. My suggestion is for games where you hit imp with good eco and need a better late game ranged unit. Overall since Yeomen gets cheaper it might be worth considering longbow play sometimes.
This is a nice buff too but it would mean a new castle unit for Britons. If that’s a good unit, it will become a huge buff for Britons which is unnecessary. On the other hand if its too niche, Britons stay balanced but the unit becomes a pointless addition to the game. But I’m not opposed to this way of buffing. I’d however keep the crossbow as such and just replace their Arbalester upgrade with longbow for more cost and let it have the elite longbow stats.
I see, I can understand the reason behind this but it just feels off. What happened if most of my castles get destroyed, which will always happen in imp with treb and BBC? The Arbalesters are now weaker and they don’t have thumb ring to compensate, and Arbalesters without thumb ring is a terrible late game unit but +3 range compensate the slow attack, not anymore with this change. It also affects the skirm too as they no longer have +1 range from yeomen. The push for longbow is just not good design as it further limited my option for a civ that already limits itself to archery range and treb.
Because there are camels, monks for castle age and halberdiers for imperial age.
Either tech discount has to be completely removed or the 15 pop tc has to be reverted back to 10 along with some nerfs to chukonus to justify such a huge buff.
Georgians without cavalry regeneration will just have generic cavalry same as Chinese. A free mule cart is a much smaller eco bonus compared to the Chinese potential of having 2 extra villagers throughout feudal age. Georgians also don’t get a tech discount like Chinese nor have extra pop from tc, camels, arbalesters and also don’t get bombard canons. And yet in your opinion somehow Chinese without heavy camel upgrade is very weak in early imp while Georgians with even fewer bonuses and options are still solid after your change?
Is it possible that you’re caught with the “new is op” hype trend?
Georgians before the food penalty removal were actually one of the weakest civ in terms of winrate in all maps and settings across all elos. Eco nerfs make them slower and harder to get to their uu or power unit. And non-elite Monaspa requiring 2 additional units for an extra attack will further delay that. Monaspa player would need 40 units to get +4 which will take quite some time. You can’t justify them having same gold cost as Leitis while being a strictly inferior unit.
As far as Chinese goes, a civ can’t be too strong at all stages of the game. They’ve 65+% winrate in multiple S tier events in the past year and have been used in too many open maps. Even without heavy camels they’ll be a good civ on Arabia but weaker on larger maps like Land Madness which tend to favor cavalry civs.
Consistently poor winrates across all maps except water, all elo brackets in the last 15 months. (and maybe even before). Extremely low winrates in games finishing under 30 mins and those finishing between 30-45 mins.
Mainly intended for pikes/halbs. Scale mail armor free is good because it buys them enough time to get the benefit from the 2 vills gained due to faster up times and removes the early game weakness that existed before. But +2 and +4 armor aren’t necessary. They get a solid timing advantage with potentially extra vills already.
Base cost of plumed just adjusted to fit that discount. The net cost will remain the same and no need to change it to make them cheaper on gold. 25% is too much of a discount for a civ that lacks no archer upgrades which is contrary to civs with large discounts. (Gurjara, Byzantine lack blast furnace, Goths and Poles lack last armor)
Effect reduction is better imo. +40 hp is 67% increase in hp which is A LOT compared to what other eagle civs get.
Next time when you watch tournaments, look for the bans column. They get double banned in most of the rounds. In the rare cases where they aren’t, the Mongol player wins the game before Mangudai. If you don’t see them in tournaments it doesn’t always imply a unit is bad and that’s why no one makes them. Also it can’t be justified to have Mangudai cheaper than other CA uu like Arambai, Rathas while being a striclty superior unit.
If you began in DE probably you got used to the broken attack move. But unfortunately that can’t be the right balance.
Not at all. As someone else mentioned, before 2022 every game had to be a crossbow opening. 175f, 125g is still cheaper than their counter unit elite skirm’s upgrade cost. It would also force cavalry civs to get bloodlines, husbandry and +2 armor which are more expensive than crossbow, bodkin combined.
Just NAC5 and its because of the regrouping bug. Hidden cup, crossbows were seen in almost every single set. Even in warlords main event and quals, crossbows have been made in Arabia, chaotic category maps and a few other maps where players are close to each other. Obviously you can’t expect crossbows on Nomad, Migration or large maps like Spiral.
And its also untrue that hussars and knighs dominated 90%. There’s been a fair amount of CA play, gunpowder uu play etc.
But its not easy for other civs to take out Briton castles very quickly because of warwolf trebs. I agree with your opinion that Arbalesters won’t be a good choice late game but its not meant to be a super late game unit anyways. In general, if you’ve lost all the castles with Britons, you’re probably playing trash war.
You can make more high-quality knights than camels when you have the same resources. I have seen many times that camels are killed by knights. monks are easily killed by cavalrys.
Xbows upgrade for 175 food, 125 gold is called “cheaper”? Do you see those archers pro players make xbows nowadays?
Do you really watch warlords? Only Vichester vs ACCM has more xbows plays, others have never played xbows but elite skirms in castle age. Even some best archer players like Liereyy and Sebastien didn’t make xbows in main events until now.
Many general people firstly get into aoe2 from the tournaments. You want people think that only cavalrys/knights are useful but other units are like the dust?
You do watch the tournaments but don’t know now the pros love to make Steppe Lancers instead of Mangudais? Besides I don’t want Mangudai costs get cheaper, but I disagree that you want to increase the cost of Mangudais.
Do you? Not just Vinch vs ACCM. Mbl vs Sitaux had crossbow play in 3 games. Tatoh vs Heartt Land Madness was a crossbow opening, Yo vs Sebastian semi-open category Enclosed game was a crossbow opening from Yo.
And did you watch the qualifiers? Several sets had crossbow play. Sebastian vs ACCM multiple games, Mihai vs Villese land madness, Dark vs ACCM, Miguel vs Vivi, Kingstone vs Dogao, Capoch vs Mihai, Liereyy vs classicpro and a few more in ro24.
Just because they didn’t do in 1 set it doesn’t mean xbows are useless. Liereyy did xbows today against Hera. And sebastian might do in quarter finals.
Camels are cheaper and except some niche like Lithuanian knights with extra relics or Burgundian cavalier, camels always win in equal numbers. Monks are for defense against early knight raids, not as a solo counter for large numbers of knights. All of this is for 20-40 min. Afterwards you have halbs.
Yes its cheap because elite skirmisher costs 230 wood and 160 gold. The unit itself costs wood and gold which are fairly easily to collect. And the upgrade improves the hp, training time, attack and range. Its cost is quite fair for the benefits. And also yes, xbows are seen fairly often in pro streams. Nowadays even more often because they’re active on empire wars ladder. In RM it used to be seen almost every Arabia game before Gurjara/Hindustani DLC was released and now its more civ matchup dependent as it should be.
Because they’re made from stable, and you don’t have to gather stone to make a castle. Pretty much the same reason why you don’t see dozens of other perfectly good unique units on open maps. If you’re expecting fc castle drop into uu, its only going to be with gunpowder unique units on Nomad or closed maps. That doesn’t mean all other unique units are mediocre or avoided because they’re already too expensive. Castle units on open maps are usually played after 30 mins if its good for that matchup. And you can find quite a lot of such games in older events where Mongols weren’t getting banned all the time (like Kotd4, TTL1). That being said, its still a unit that’s quite cheap for its stats.
I watched the Armenians vs Vikings game in Warlords III.
I really think the Armenians is too strong on water. Even though they did not have a famous naval history, they are more powerful on water in the game than the Vikings who were famous for the maritime activities in history. Their Galleys shouldn’t have the additional projectiles at all.
On the other hand I again feel that Dromons should have a prerequisite to slow down their immediate availablility after hitting the Imperial, similar to what Chemistry does to Cannon Galleons but this one could cost cheaper and take shorter. I mentioned in my latest thread that a potential new technology named Catapults can work for this.
Maybe start from castle age but 10% in castle age and 20% in imp. But don’t want to buff the castle age any further since its already quite strong.
I felt the same way too watching the game yesterday. That civ might need some buffs for land and nerfs for water. But I’d give it some more time, a couple of other events and formats before going for a nerf.
Armenians need a buff to their siege workshop, on land maps they are underwhelming (bad stable, bad SW, mediocre Archery range).
They deserve siege ram/siege onager and siege engineers (pick 2 out of the 3) or BBC.
Their only way to push castles are trebs, which compete with bowman production.
The civ is already at a disadvantage being an infantry civ and their siege options are so limited.
Armenians should get a full SW as well as Plate Barding Armor. The fact that they don’t have their two historical specialties is insulting. Additionally, it would be nice if they got Siege Engineers for free or an age early.
