I think having treaty for nomade could be worse than before. This could lead into people walling in other tcs and ressources or am i mistaken?
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I will take a bit of credit fo my post 11 XD:
And still no nerfs to Chinese, Mayans⊠No nerfs to Britons and the broken Franks paladin spam at TGâŠNothing to adress the broken sicilian cavaliers, first crusade and Flemish revolution.
I hope Byzantines get the deserved Logistica trampe damage on Knight line one day.
Fantastic, my favourite change
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Infantry UU buffs are great, it shows the devs listen to the community. They are still pretty expensive, but at least they have the stats to justify using UUâs over longswords. However, I think the devs listened a little too much to the vocal minority calling for wall nerfs. Negative armor on houses, how does that make sense?
Nomad treaty is a funny one. I donât think itâs a solution at all. Just will make every game into an undefendable Persian TC drop, with maybe some Celt sheep laming and resource walling mixed in. Treaties have no place in competitive ranked games IMO.
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So Burmese, Goths and Spanish stay the weakest civs in the game, with two of them still being extremely weak against archers and the other being weak in general, and Vietnamese and Koreans are still weak against cav
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They already got nerfed several time ?
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Non balance change: now if you go to the scenario editor you will get editor-related tips on the loading screen.
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Idk, this means you canât outrepair 3 maa at houses anymore, but still at walls. Is it supposed to stop including houses in your walls? Was this really an issue? Quickwalling with houses will still be a thing because of the high building speed for a 2 tile building.
Terrible decision. As if civs with good early eco werenât strong enough currently. Now they are supposed to be the only ones which can wall behind the rushes. Great work in disbalancing the game.
Early walls may be annoying to play against, but are completely balanced as the waller has to sacrifize a lot of momentum already to make this. Itâs not a strong strat.
Besides that for a drush fc build the extra 50 wood spent are peanuts, as this build is the least tight of all openers. And it is already one of the strongest, if not the strongest opener in the game. So great work in strengthening the drush FC meta with this change.
Both changes benefit the militia openers the most, and they are already considered extremely strong in the current meta. I donât understand the reasoning behind these changes. Only because some people notoriously demand ânerf wallsâ every time, that doesnât mean that walls are too strong. Itâs right the opposite, raiding is too strong and if we nerf walls it becomes even more OP.
Shall most of the games end in feudal because one player just happend to have the better rush with more eco damage? Why you donât buff the counters instead so people can use them for active defence better? Then nobody would be tempted to wall that early anymore if there were the counters actually capable of doing their job. Iâve had it several times that archer just picked of vills under heavy skirm fire, because you get just so much more value from killing the vills even if you lose the archers in the process. That need to be fixed. You shouldnât get more value from raiding while being attacked by the âcounterâ unit. If it is that way, no wonder people use walls. What else can they do against archers then if their skirm âcounterâ play gives them less value?
Itâs not that walls are OP, but because of that current raiding ftw meta they are just so basically necessary to get a strategy game. They are currently the single thing that keeps it a strategy game - without them it would just be a raiding game. Why should i queue for 12 minutes of repetitive gameplay? Always just chosing my best rush, gor for the eco no matter what and whoever kills more vills early wins? Thatâs bs, thatâs not aoe2. We love aoe2 because of the strategic depth and the first openers are just there to define the players role in the match. They are supposed to be an early skirmish so the players know âok now iâm ahead 2 vills, letâs go up and try to snowball thatâ or âok now iâm behind 2 vills. I need to be more agressive so the opponent canât easily snowball to a Vâ. Thatâs how it should work.
And btw the changes will completely miss the intention of âless wallingâ, cause they will just lead to mor drush FC play. You can citate me later, but I prognose you that we will see much more drush fc and therefore even more walling than currently. Because the change completely misses the current state of the meta and instead of counteracting the meta development it actually amplifies it.
Actually nice that they adjust the infacntry UUs a bit after the last militia buffs. Donât know if this is enough but I like they at least try it.
Totally useless⊠Acually even quite bad for the civ as it is a huge nerf to their Hussars. Previously Burmese could use the hussars to raise buildings. Nobody expects hussars to destroy TCs, but burmese can actually. This is no gone for a basically useless lategame atk bonus against archersâŠ
Good change. Was just a bit too much imo.
Can actually change poles gameplay a lot. Especially their lategame now becomes much more scary. And I think this will actually lead to them being able to show more of their real power cause you will play them more defensively in the early to midgame which I think is better in terms of utilizing their eco bonusses.
Ok⊠Not what I hoped for. I think their insane eco makes them so annoying to play against. Also this empowers their early game drush fc and maa archer openers even further. I think in the aftermath this is actually an overall buff to the civ, cause most people go for thumb ring way too early. I donât think itâs a bad upgrade, but it doesnât offer as much for itâs cost as the other archer upgrades. But maybe in pro play this will be seen as a slight nerf⊠But still the civ will stay among the best picks for 1v1 arabia even without thumb ring. (just to explain, having the critical mass of archers is in most cases just so much more valueable than firerate. You only want to add thumb ring when you have that critical mass)
Love it! Finally we get a good arabia gen. Besides it may be a bit more open, it is still defendable and leads to a lot of different game scenarios. Finally an arabia which has the versatility and balance of the map still on view. A map gen you can go for basically every opener and doesnât forces you to specific repetitive lategame scenarios like the last ones.
All in all, they made some great decisions, but also some really bad ones for the strategic balance of the game. I see already the complaints of âman itâs only drush fc all the timeâ and ânerf wallsâ again. Because they still miss the basic understanding why walls are so essential in the strategic balance of the game. People will always find ways to wall of if the overpowered raiding presists in itâs current state and the castle age also prestists to be the by far biggest powerspike (also for itâs investment) in the game.
And btw I donât understand that, because it looks like in age 4 they fixed both. Raiding is way less powerful in age 4 and the individual age powerspikes are also way weaker than in age 2. So I donât understand why they donât apply this to age 2 more as it looks as if they understood that this causes problems for the strategic balance. And yes, you see that because of that adaption people wall way less in age 4, because itâs just not that essential as in age 2 to get an interesting strategic gameplay.
So please devs, why donât you apply your knowledge of strategic balance to age 2? Why do you try to nerf the basically only remaining counterplay to the most OP strategy (which is raiding) to the ground? Why you donât give us counters that give enough value so itâs worth spending ressources into them?
And btw walls arenât too strong. Itâs just that people complain when they are hitting them with their raiding units. Cause they are not capable to adapt. Donât punish the whole community because there are some players that are unwilling to learn the game and only want to play âlearn and execute rush ftwâ. Thatâs not age2. And these people also donât understand that this wall cost increase will just lead to more drush fc. And therefore, ironically, more walls.
Yeah sure, they will stop complaining if they see that their demanded change leads to even more walls⊠And even if, they complain every time they even see a palisade wall, they are this kind of ever complaining people who donât want to understand that some things are just necessary and the world just doesnât works like in their dreams. And if they nerfed walls to the ground they will leave the game cause then itâs boring and repetitive and queuing is longer than the game itselfâŠ
If you want less walling, buff the counter units and/or reduce/delay the castle age powerspike. Then itâs less tempting to go for drush fc.
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Indians should be renamed and we need a new Hindi themed civ (plus Dravidians and perhaps Bengals too).
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Iâm quite curious to see whatâs going to be the impact of walling nerf to Mayans and Chinese, which are probably the civs that enjoy the most going for dark age walls thanks to the extra villager(s) and loom from the beginning.
For Mayans likely not too much, since they mitigate the nerf with their wall discount (that should be nerfed imho expecially thinking to team games) and can still be good opening more aggressively, but for Chinese might be quite a problem since theyâre not the best civ early feudal.
By the way this is another reason why Iâm not liking the Viking change, since itâs another civ which is most likely penalized by the wall nerf I would have waited to see how that played out. In general Iâm not a big fan of stacking major general balance changes and civ balance changes in the same patch.
I think this will be the case with civs with wood eco bonuses, especially dark age ones. But this may apply in civs with feudal eco bonuses⊠For example, vietnamese saves a lot of wood in the early feudal, so they can mitigate the nerf with their wood discount. Lets see what happens.
It looks really beautiful 
I hope that the characters from the Trade Carts will be new regional models for the Villagers in the future.
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Why is everbody freaking out about vikings losing tr? Yeah there might have been other solutions but I honestly kind of like. The eco is still great but your army packs less of a punch in early imp all while their infantry options got buffed. And they do have insanely strong late game army comp with berserk, skirms and siege ram. Itâs just so expensive that you rarely get there. Especially since non elite berserk used to be uselessness but maybe that is different now (weâll see). Kinda prefer these changes to just nerfing their eco nc that wouldnât have changed the playstyle (just make it a bit weaker).
Not a comprehensive argument (done that too many times by now) but a hint: I watched kotd qualifier deciders this sunday and iirc each set that I saw (was 4 or 5) it had Vietnamese in it. So weak against cav or not (itâs not their strenghts but imo itâs fine) the civ should be good enough in general or otherwise people wouldnât consistently pick it in a tourney.
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I dont like the 5 minuts treaty in nomad, its way to much. 2 minuts of treaty should be fair enough.
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Eithervway I think Koreans are too weak against cav. Tbh not really sure how good Vietnamese really are, but I have seen them struggle way more against cav civs or eagles while being pretty good sgainst ranged civs.
Vietnamese are flexible, so they are a good filler civ that isnt going to be banned.
However, they struggle against cav in castle age in most elos. I would like to know their tournament performance against cav civs.
Itâs not just early Imperial, their Crossbows will be weaker in mid to late castle age, as well as their arbs in for the entirety of imperial age. And their infantry Imperial Age infantry was not buffed at all.
Castle Age berserks are looking like a decent
option, but Champions will still be better than Elite Berserks in most situations, and now theyâre going to have less effective ranged support. Berserk + Skirm + Ram is a composition that dies to enemy cavalry. Pike+ Arbalester is going to be much less viable against strong heavy cav civs with the reduced fire rate and accuracy.
Infantry + fully upgraded archers was a big part of Viking identity, and losing that seems unnecessary.
Except kotd4 arbaia is even harder to wall than current arabia⊠it has literally no treeline!! Just check all the qualifer games, I dont see even one single drush fc so far (everyone goes drush fedual or maa)
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In other news, they finally remembered to add the hussite wagon and obuch profile icons, which is pretty neat.
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Nice to see infantry UUs get better, no matter the buffing this time is enough or not.
It is too late. Before able to build a castle, age to imperial, wait the resources and research it, you are already dead by the opponentsâ arrow.
Btw, Farimba cost as same as Manipuri Cavalry but the former +5 for all units while the later +5 for only vs archer. 
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