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?
“More hunt = good for Mongols” is a statement that needs to stay true. That is my concern. Mongols are op, so I m fine with nerfing them, but basic characteristics of civs need to stay the same. The Gurjara solution seems good to me in their case.
If a map has like 5x more hunt/sheep it probably should not be 5x as good for Mongols/Gurjrars, but also not the same as for other civs. Rather 5^0.5 times as good.
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.
If it is the same on every map you take strategy away in civ picking.
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.
You have a too restricted view of the bonus as an early game bonus. There are many different maps that play out differenty, there also many different settings.
Now you suggest that a agressive civ like Mongols should not survive if they fail feudal age. So you want to force players play the Meta, this is quite terrible.
Gurjara bonus is negligible after 10 sheep. If you have 40 sheep. Its actually unwise to build additional mills for the extra sheep now.
40 is very extrem, but even with such a number, I doubt that it would be bad to build a mill for more sheep. Do you have the math?
Mongol bonus isn’t meant to be good on maps without much hunt. Its meant to be balanced
THIS is bad game design. A hunt bonus has to be good on maps with much hunt. The alternative is to make every civ the same and create pseudo differences only to fake some historic flair. The game also should be balanced, but boni need still to have strong and week circumstances.
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).
Its new to me that Sicilians are useless.
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.
The alternative is to give civs weaknesses, instead of weakening their strengths. Otherwise the civs become similar, and if the civs are similar, they are all played in a similar way, and this means tiny differences can make civs op. By making them different, they get played differently and it is less about tiny differences, and there are less op civs.
There is the 10x civ bonus mode and it is less broken then you would think.
So then 40. 2^(-x/500) should be good. Even if there’s 5 boars and 10 deer, Mongol hunters will stay faster but by a small %
You still have factors like lancers, CA fire rate, drill siege, Mangudai which are strategically relevant in picking Mongols. But yes you have a fair point that the bonus should persist and not die down to zero. I’ll change the original post with this function that doesn’t die to zero.
But a civ isn’t supposed to excel in all settings. At least not to the extent where its almost like a free win.
Not really. I’m modifying it to be an everlasting advantage but this isn’t true. 40% faster hunt is not just a feudal age aggression bonus. You can use it for fc-lancers or drush-fc-xbows or early castle drop Mangudai. Lots of ways to use it.
Yes, the 1st 10 sheep give you 27 food/min. 11th-20th sheep generates 8 food/min, 20th-30th a little less than 6 food/min and so on. You’d have to spend 100 wood on the mill and another 180 wood on 3 farms. You’ll need 1 vill on wood and 3 on those farms to get back that wood and around 850 food after ~13 mins. Whereas if you rather take those sheep, you can just the same amount of food with 4 vills on those sheep in ~11 mins but there’s no need to put extra vills on wood to compensate for the mill and extra farms. So its a 2 min advantage in dark/feudal age. I believe I don’t have to elaborate on how that’s a huge advantage for the early stages and give the momentum.
No matter how you split the wood and food vills, if there’s no fishing involved, the player who eats the sheep directly will be ahead by a good margin. And if there’s fishing involved, you’ll be down by atleast 1 fishing ship because you’ve built a mill and thats -20 food effectively. Either way unless there’s something like shore fish or a bunch of extra boars, its not worth doing additional mills.
Again I see your point about bonus lasting throughout the game but we aren’t discussing about removing the bonus, just reducing it. I also agree that a bonus should have strong and weak circumstances like Cumans 2nd tc or Burgundian eco discount but Mongol bonus has 0 weakness, its just always crazy strong. All % reductions or rework is aimed at balancing the resource advantage one civ gets when compared to another and how the rest of their tech tree is. And as you know, Mongol didn’t have lancers in their original design. So giving a unit which is deadly when there’s a timing advantage to a civ with such a bonus and keeping it forever is bad.
Surprised you watch tournaments but didn’t notice that Sicilians are never even drafted irrespective of the event format. Anyways as per stats they’re one of the least played civs all events combined and a consistent bottom-5 civ in the past 1 year at higher elos.
That’s also fine. But given a bonus like 40% faster hunt, a proper tech tree handicap is remove bloodlines, change the hp bonus to 33% for light cav and cavalry archers from castle age (meaning no bloodlines in feudal, free bloodlines for Mangudai and light cav, almost for CA but weak lancers, knights and camels) and make the 25% faster firing CA as castle age UT while Nomad effect becomes a civ bonus (or gets removed, both are effectively the same). That way they can hit castle age very fast and can either play crossbow early ballistics or boom a bit with light cav and switch to Mangudai.
Giving them the Plate Barding Armor for cavalry and the Siege Engineers for the siege weapons is a clear way. Then remove the bonus of additional projectiles for Galleys and Dromons, and change the Cilician Fleet with the Cilician Engineers that provides Scorpions +2 range, War Galleys/Galleons +1 range, and more projectiles to Dromons.
To be honestly it could be better if possible to try to swap the majority of tech trees between Armenians and Georgians. I have suggested it before. In fact based on the history the Armenians are supposed to be the one featuring cavalry and the Georgians are supposed to be the one featuring infantry. Even players from Armenia do not be satisfied. It’s just like the dev accidentally had named the two civ files reversely and then just chose to left the mistakes.
This time another Armenians vs Vikings game, Tatoh vs Hera. Vikings big lose again.
Not only the Armenians need some adjustments, the Vikings might need a tweak particularly on land.
The Vikings could have a not bad economy but hard to turn the economy into a decent military on land. Maybe the reason is that their economy is not an immediate advantage, needing a while to show the power of Hand Carts, but when reaching the time their military units are awful.
I would like to give them the Siege Onager upgrade, and if needed remove the Siege Ram upgrade in exchange.
For more, introduce Shieldman (or Ulfhedinn/Jofurr) and the Elite to replace the Longsword and later, which was suggested in my latest thread. It could have higher pierce armor.
By the way I would also like to let the Longboat able to fire without turning the direction like the Hussite Wagon. The archers on the deck can just fire backward, not like a ballista on the bow of ship that needs the entire ship turn 180° for firing backward.
Their UU should not have thumb ring due to its mechanic.
Although say that the UU can be adjusted the stats independently, they do not need to have a better Archery Range too. The UU provides the civ the ranged fire.
When giving them better heavy cavalry and better siege weapons historically make sense, it is wrong direction to not buff those but buff archers.
I just think having both Plate Barding Armor and Siege Engineers is fine. They do not have any obvious or direct economy bonus on food and not have both Siege Onager and Siege Ram. The Arbalester could also be removed for them if needed.
Khmer have the +1 range for scorpions as the team bonus.
I give Armenians +2 range for scorpions as a part of the Cilician Engineers.
I can accept to change the +2 range to other effect like regeneration for siege weapons, but I don’t think it is really a simple duplication. It’s just like the Huns having +20% effective stable as the team bonus and the Franks having +40% effective stable as the UT. The other part of the Cilician Engineers would still bring the Armenian navy above the average when I removed the additional projectile bonus.
They should not have both additional projectiles and +1 range for War Galley. I would like to keep the range and abandon the projectiles since the range affect less than the projectiles in my opinion.
For other civs you might understand why the dev made them not accurate on purpose, for example you might aware of the thoughts of the devs that they think making Celts a siege civ could be fun, especially the siege identity was rare in AoK.
The issue of Armenians and Georgians is more like an accidental mistake. If the dev want a DLC with 2 civs: a cavalry civ and an infantry civ, letting the Armenians be former and the Georgians be latter would be totally fine. If they really want a water civ, they should not just design another infantry + water civ especially when based on history both infantry and water are not supposed to be featured. The Mule Cart is full of Georgian style but available to the both civs, while the Warrior Priest has both Armenian and Georgian elements but only available to the Armenians.
Even though it would be wonderful, we do know the swap is unlikely to be happened. I just want to complain.
Why this sound like more nerf to Aztecs. I guess your intention is nerf their all-in monk push and make them play more standard boom play. However, they have no answer against strong Cavarly civs in imp and they should win before that and their only answer is castle age all-in monk eagle push and that is their only viable play for some matchup after incremental nerfs and introducing more strong cavarly civs.
If you want to make them viable for standard boom play aganist strong cavarly civs they need either halb or some strong buff for Jaguar to make them some kind of power unit.
Their problem in open map is that they have very minimal bonus before getting into Castle age plus no scout in Feudal age. Many good cavarly civs have a sizable lead in Feudal age and can easily overrun them. I would suggest revert their 18% production speed bonus to make them at least compete in feudal at first.
Konnik alredy very strong units and fairly easy to mass. No for more buff for them.
Also keep in mind that Celts hard countered by many civs in imp. they should win some matchup early. Straight up nerfing their castle age seige bonus isn’t good idea.
I don’t think it is good idea to Italians pushed more forward for archer civs. They are more of Jack-of-all trade civ with two distinct UU. They are also fairly competant in wide range of maps and don’t need further buff.
I would propose increase Melee armor of Genoese Crossbow to make them better against melee cavarly and that’s it.
Small nerf on archer discount is fine but El dorado eagle is that problematically strong? Mayans aren’t good civ for mid-late Imperial age and in late game, strong Cavarly UU or Paladin can easily overrun El dorado Eagle. Also straight-up nerfing them make them even more terrible in closed map where they are already one of the worst civs.
Also many other suggested, mangudai isn’t deserve nerf. they become basically nonexistent in tournament these days.
Bit complicated but I like overall idea of adjusting Poles.
Slavs doesn’t need more buff in the current circumstance.
Nerfing Aztecs after they have regularly been nerfed for the last 4 years is bad. But nerfing their monks, their only possibilty to counter bombard canons vs HC civs is even a worst idea.
But a civ isn’t supposed to excel in all settings. At least not to the extent where its almost like a free win.
In my opinion Mongols are too strong, but its not a free win. Are we playing an completely unbalanced game all the time? They had the bonus all the time and it was even stronger, so I think it is weird to say that its a free win.
Yes, the 1st 10 sheep give you 27 food/min. 11th-20th sheep generates 8 food/min, 20th-30th a little less than 6 food/min and so on. You’d have to spend 100 wood on the mill and another 180 wood on 3 farms. You’ll need 1 vill on wood and 3 on those farms to get back that wood and around 850 food after ~13 mins. Whereas if you rather take those sheep, you can just the same amount of food with 4 vills on those sheep in ~11 mins but there’s no need to put extra vills on wood to compensate for the mill and extra farms. So its a 2 min advantage in dark/feudal age. I believe I don’t have to elaborate on how that’s a huge advantage for the early stages and give the momentum.
Eating the first sheep is the biggest advantage. Finding more than 30 sheep is rather realtistic in castle age. I had that on Landnomad with other civs. And of course I eat them with other civs, but with Gurjaras I would build mills for them, because at this stage the immediatly more food from eating is not as good as the long term effect. But 30 sheep in dark age, I don’t know a map where that is realistic. And even then it would be better to eat the first sheep and store the later ones, but not to go back to eating after storing some already.
An interesting thing about the bonus is that you sacrifice early food for later food income.
I also agree that a bonus should have strong and weak circumstances like Cumans 2nd tc or Burgundian eco discount but Mongol bonus has 0 weakness, its just always crazy strong.
The bonus itself does not need weaknesses, most boni dont have weaknesses themselves, but Mongols overall need weaknesses. Mongols have a strong early and late game because of Mangudai-Hussar combo. Then there is also the Steppe Lancer thing. I would nerf Mangudai, because they feel unfair. And I would nerf Steppe Lancers too. The hunt bonus was already nerfed, it probably is still a bit strong, but it should remain somewhat close to the original.
So giving a unit which is deadly when there’s a timing advantage to a civ with such a bonus and keeping it forever is bad.
Nerf Steppe Lancers.
That’s also fine. But given a bonus like 40% faster hunt, a proper tech tree handicap is remove bloodlines, change the hp bonus to 33% for light cav and cavalry archers from castle age (meaning no bloodlines in feudal, free bloodlines for Mangudai and light cav, almost for CA but weak lancers, knights and camels) and make the 25% faster firing CA as castle age UT while Nomad effect becomes a civ bonus (or gets removed, both are effectively the same).
Huns can easier reboom, because they need no houses. This is not irrelevant. But it does not feel good to spend money on that for Mongols, because its only beneficial in a bad case. It would make sense as a civ bonus. The HP bonus for Light cav and Steppe lancers only applies from castle age onwards, so it could be a unique tech. Steppe Lancers could be just generic, because Mongols did not always have them. That Mongols have the strongest Lancers is a bit strange, and op. But Mangudai-Hussar combo is also a concern for me.
But lets make something fun that fits their nomadic identity: What about a faster hunt bonus, that gets better at every age. Make it like Mongols hunt 20%/60%/120%/200% faster. It would make more sense to search for hunt later on on maps like Landnomad. It would fit their Nomadic identity, and at the same time would not be too strong in the early game.
These new changes are convoluted ## #############
Not a fan of complicating things like “food discount, but hey only this unit and that unit but not this other unit”
Or “attack speed buff but x amount in castle but y amount in imp”
Civ specalists will be ok but it punishes random players. Well have to be checking the tech tree 5 times a match just to understand what the fuck is going on with these
Also Poles are no hotshot on the ladder. Why are they getting such a heavy nerf? They need halberdier because just how are they going to fight cav civs and camels after you nerf knights AND obuch
I don’t see how this is any complicated, it clearly says what it means in one short single sentence like cavalry units get 20%hp or infantry and slingers get food discount. Is it too hard these days to learn that 1+1 =2 or 15+10 = 25?
Have watched some games with Turks in Warlords III.
They may need a bit nerf too.
If the problem is about the scout cavalry line, then move the +1 pierce armor into the sipahi, or make only Light cavalry upgrade be free.
If the problem is about the Bombard Cannon, change the bonus of free Chemistry with a new one that allows Hand Cannoneers to not require Chemistry and makes Chemistry costs -50% like other gunpowder technologies.
Monaspas still are too strong yes, but also they have a flawless dark age, strong feudal with self healing scouts, strong castle age with self healing Knights, good defensive bonuses and OP late game eco, with answers to everything in most land maps.
I said before, Plate Mail Armor shouldn’t be free, and non-elite Karambits should lose 1 PA.
Nerf their team bonus to 15%, exclude Monks from the gold discount, currently they can push with triple gold comps too easily in castle age.
They may not be the buffs that fit historically but given this civ design, you can’t give them full cavalry upgrades, powerful infantry, decent ranged units and great siege despite having good economic bonus, relic picking advantage. You could probably remove bracer and then do these changes but that will make their uu as worse as urumi swordsmen. My suggestion is just based on this civ design and tech tree. Its unfortunate that civ design doesn’t match its history.
You don’t need a direct food bonus, they have a strong permanent bonus on wood and gold. Wood converts to food. The civ has generically strong infantry. Its natural to counter that with ranged units. Considering that full cavalry+powerful siege will become a very strong alternative. Think of celts with bloodlines or teutons with husbandry.
The Frank Chivalry effect is a terrible duplicate as well. It should have been 40% faster knight line upgrades for a lower cost.
Maybe scorps +2 range effect is fine as a separate upgrade but not along with a bunch of navy effects.
How about galleys, drommon and mangonel line shoot an additional projectile as an effect of Cilican fleet and civ gets siege engineers. Removes the extra range, siege gets better due to wider area effect and the upgrade remains simple on what it does. Civ remains balanced without thumb ring, gunpowder and plate barding armor.
Blackforest tg maybe, not otherwise. Non elite have 1 p.armor even on mounted version and an extremely low rof. They’re the only cavalry uu worse in terms of value for cost compared to their civ’s knight line in castle age. Given this dps, cost is also very high compared to most other cavalry uu.
Idea is to discourage all-in “eat tc” pushes and as a compensation infantry is improved.
First of all weakness in one category doesn’t justify being overpowered in another. Huns CA discount or Korean tower build time bonuses were broken on legacy Arabia even though those civs weren’t great on Arena. Imo good balance is not letting something be too broken in one common setting.
Second they’re bad on Arena, not closed maps. They are quite decent on closed maps which are larger (NAC4 hippo arena, NAC5 Copenhagen, Territorial, Regicide fortress etc) because they have good mobile units. El Dorado is too high increase in hp on such a unit, especially given the rest of the bonuses (like extra starting vill, longer lasting resources). Its ok if Mayans get slower with the starting vill advantage removed or gold doesn’t last longer.
And like I told them Mongols always get banned, sometimes double banned. Very rarely when they’re not banned they end the game with Lancers. Don’t understand why people don’t notice the bans section or the fact that the civ itself isn’t seen. Either lancers need to be removed or hunt plus mangudai should be adjusted to balance it out. With such changes you might actually see Mongols more often since they won’t be banned.
They didn’t have lancers, deer pushing or using the house trick to lure far boars weren’t a possibility. Even then they were by far the strongest on Yucatan. On other maps you have to also take into account some of the OG civs’ broken bonuses. Teuton tc started with 3 extra range in dark age, Chinese started with just -150 food, 3 extra vills before tc on nomadic maps, Korean could build towers faster have an extra range for free, get their SO to 12 range, OG war wagons were a lot cheaper yet stronger, Huns CA discount. Then later in HD there was Obsidian arrows, 25% faster berries for Franks, dirt cheap Arambai with 17 attack, OG Cumans and lancers etc. Imagine if any of those came back. Given such broken bonuses, the hunt bonus wasn’t relatively too much. But almost all of those broken bonuses are gone today. Its not even a new civ to justify DLC promotion.
The OG mill bonus was fine for 1v1. In TG, people shared about 8 of their sheep 2 from each flank and 4 from the other pocket and Gurjara player built a 2nd mill on deer and collected 56 food/min (3 farmer equivalent) in dark age which was a huge advantage. That’s the reason why it was changed to logarithmic. Now if they shared sheep Gurjara would get 7 food extra/min which isn’t worth for their team.
Btw the thing you did is fine for African clearing since you’d be taking shore fish and would build extra mills for it anyway. If its land nomad you’re taking the wrong approach economically. Use the mill wood and lesser farms to get the next tc up sooner and eat those sheep for food. Its much better to get more vills sooner. 4 or 5 extra vills is a lot more powerful than 8 food/min.
In reality lack of gunpowder, halbs, supplies, ring archer Armor and plate barding armor are supposed to be weaknesses. But the hunt, hp, fire rate bonuses over compensate for it. As you might have noticed there’s already a lot resistance against a small Mangudai cost nerf. If the hunt bonus were to be left as it is, civ has to lose bloodlines and indirectly gain it on specific units through civ bonus or UT. Its fine for archer opening civs to get a timing advantage.
This will lead to discussion of more changes.
Since I think the tech tree features of the Armenians and Georgians should be swapped, obviously I want to strengthen the Armenians’ cavalry and sieges and transfer their infantry strength to the Georgians. Like other civs with UUs in where they are not good at, Armenians should be awful in Archery Range units while having useful Composite Bowmen as a make up.
Make the elite upgrade more expensive and include +1 range.
They are still far from the Armenians.
The Celts have a more immediate, stronger wood bonus with no startup cost, as well as faster-firing Mangonels. The most reason in my view they can’t have Bloodlines is that their Hoang rush in Castle Age should not get any stronger. However Armenians’ Mangonels are normal and the economic bonus requires startup costs. People do not go Hoang rush with them. What’s more, Plate Barding Armor does not affect them in the Castle Age, and in the Imperial Age they still don’t have the Siege Onager upgrade.
The Teutons’ farm discount affects cavalry more directly than the Armenian economic bonus, and their cavalry already have extra armor to compensate for their lack of speed, even the siege weapons have extra armor. Even applying the changes discussed, the Armenians only have the generic fully upgraded Cavaliers and Onagers, without the Paladin upgrade and the Siege Onager upgrade, and the longer-range Scorpions don’t affect much until you get the Heavy upgrade and have enough number of them.
It’s hard to like a UT that only affects upgrade time, even if the cost is cheap. If I’m already done with the upgrade, then I have no reason to look into it.
I don’t get why giving Scorpion +2 range can’t coexist with the other 2 naval effects. If you think of them as a range improvement and giving Dromon more projectiles, that’s just two effects there instead of a bunch.
Looks like you choose additional projectiles (= attack) instead of range for the ships? I wouldn’t mind changing the siege improvement from Scorpion range to the extra projectiles of Mangonels, I’m just not sure of its effect. Basically equivalent to Torsion Engines if it means a larger damage area, and Counterweights if it means more damage.
Again they could still get the plate armor especailly they have no Paladins and Siege Onager. I think usually in the Imperial Age, siege weapons are hard to use at the same time with cavalry because both are expensive and require expensive upgrades. Only one between the both would be selected for use so you would not face the both.
