That’s a really good point. It also seems a little too close to the Persian and Poles attack bonuses vs archers. Maybe Manipur should keep the buildibg damage and add the archer bonus. It could also be swapped with Howdah to allow countering crossbows in castle age. We can’t afford mant elephants that early in the game anyway.
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WOW! Tons of great changes from a bird’s eye view. I’m gonna need some time to digest this… But from taking two minutes to look at the changes so far, my favorite changes are buffs for UU infantry, and changing Ladder Arabia to the KotD version. But my least favorite changes are further walling nerfs. But perhaps this is a way to indirectly buff early game infantry, I hope.
AoE II balance looking better than ever. Except for the Cumans and DLC civs, I feel achieving “perfect” balance is down to minor tweaks.
Ah, but Malians don’t have Blast Furnace. So that +5 from Farimba is actually +3, because 2 of that +5 damage goes into making up for missing Blast Furnace. While Manipur Cavalry is more like +7, because Burmese have Blast Furnace. Manipur Cavalry also affects Cavalry Archer type units, since they also have the Archer armor class.
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I knew. I just compared those 2 tech themselves instead of the whole civ, not complaining about them. 11
As far as I learned, none for the new Manipur Cavalry.
If so, that will be overpower.
Oops, I mean Manipur Cavalry also gives bonus damage to Cavalry Archer type units, because Cavalry Archers have the Archer armor class, and Manipur Cavalry is bonus damage vs. the Archer armor class.
Interestingly on Voobly, no one complained about walls. Arabia generation was perfect and Tower Rush was not a meme strategy. I am happy Arabia generation will be perfect again next patch, now, time to revert the stupid Tower nerf.
Viking nerf was needed, the ret.arded Faster Imp Arbalest has gotten boring.
What winrate and banrate do Chinese, Mayans and Franks need in tournaments to get nerfed? At least Chinese require skill, but seeing Frank and Mayan picker for the 15761312nd time is insanely boring.
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This is awful. The beauty of AOE2 is the balance between masters of different strategies. A good waller/eco/boomer player is a match for a good aggressive player. These further nerfs to walling reduce choice and make the game less interesting. If this continues, every game just becomes about early aggression. That’s boring.
As other people have pointed out, instead of vil fighting, this is going to be about laming and walling opponent woodlines/resources. In fact, when you pass a villager, it may be worth following them to their TC/dock now, as you have five minutes where they can’t hurt you.
Despite unhappiness with occasional early villager fighting, nomad-style maps are almost always voted into the pool. So, vil fighting is not significant enough to need addressing.
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They look really great.
Would we get them in the regular game officially? I mean, not caused by mods.
The existing regional monks might not be implemented since the sensitive religious issue, how about the regional villagers? I think that would be interesting.
Also, the unique castle sets if the unique building sets are impossible.
I haven’t tested a real game but all I did was spawning trade carts for different civs in the editor and changing the civ, it’s definitely vanilla and ingame in the beta version of the upcoming update. The trade cart model changed depending on the civ (meso civs already had an alternative, here in green)
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Well currently it’s just totally inconsisten. Sometimes you get maps that are very easy to wall sometimes you get terrible map gens. I like kotd arabia because it allows for variety in gameplay, so even if it is too open for arabia (Arabia was always a “balanced” map!!!) it’s just better than the current nonsese we have, so I’m happy that they finally acknowledged that their crazy idea to change arabia entirely was a bad idea.
It’s also about ressource access while being pressured and imo kotd arabia is way better than the current arabia where you often have map gens where you can be pushed of a ressource too easily and it’s gg. kotd is for sure better to not give too easy opportunity trying this in the early game.
And there are even more poits why i prefer kotd arabia. To summarize, it’s just arabia how it should be and no overengineered mess, where wouldlines spawm in crazy clusters, parts of the maps are empty and your tc is in the center of a huge crater… What’s that bs?
Maybe kotd is harder to wall (but I actually doubt it). But at least it’s more consistent in terms of fairness but also for the distribution of important map areas, to say the least.
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I’d rather Infantry Elite UU’s be buffed to justify their higher cost. Especially, Elite Berserks which have 2 UT’s to pick up.
Very much looking fwd to using Infantry UU.
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Most every elite infantry uu is already plenty strong. Make them too much stronger and they would need a trash weakness
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Wait, were you spesking to me?
Cuman nerf is sensible and fair I think. Can’t have that kind of boom and flexibility in one civ. Very, very good changes, some of these must’ve come from Trirem or someone else with good insight of the community.
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I think like 90 % of the community wanted exactly this adaption. So easy choice for the devs to just make this.
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Burmese have halbs with +3 attack. Cavalry with bonus damage for archers is reasonable since they had only first armor upgrade for archers, so skirmish isnt pretty good.
Losing thumb ring for vikings will not do anything outside of make weaker the late game, where vikings already struggle, It also make the very standard fi arba with vikings eco even more meta than before because we don’t want thumb ring to reach imp fast , don’t understand this change at all.
As for burmese, i think it will not do anything at all in 1v1 and in tg burmese have the elephants which already destroyed very easily archers. Don’t understand neither, they just need usable skirmishers with +2 defense arambai was already bad especially at this stage of the game.
I like the castle infantry uu buff always welcome even if it will see absoluty no use as before, it’s always a good thing.
Byzantines do not need any buff on closed maps where they already excel. Don’t understand why thet get buffed here by making mush and fi monks or simply siege monks defence better? i think that this civ was already fine and get a lot of uses (water , hybrid, closed map where they are a very good civ, they only struggle on open map where they are ok and this change won’t do anything about it).
Cumans changes is good for ew why not.
Walls nerf need to see, seems good on the paper
KOTD arabia is good so i like it, more random is good ! But by playing the qualifier of kotd and by playing this map quite a lot, i can say that this map is very hard for defensive playstyle and it promotes a lot skipping feudal and walling up then make 1tc siege, so i excepts the same critic from this map in short times without any doubt by the same persons asking for it.
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Lets’ face it, a civ with super good economy with a, easy way to go for fully upgraded arbalest is kind of broken, same thing was with Indians long time ago when they had arbalest.
Skirms with just 6 PA are still going to be very bad, Imnot fan of ths change either because it makes Burmese cavalry less unique.
Why ? beause economy doesn’t matter for making archers only to get a combo whith pikes or skirms or by getting fast imp timing nor of these options has been nerfed, going champion or berserks if you can was already a very good idea in late game where arba is too expensive on gold and are not pop efficient.
Nerfing economy is a better way to deal with opness of vikings
And how do you deal with crossbows or lest say the fast imp vikings where you have 2 option kill the massed archers before imp or spamming skirms?
o Walling Nerfs: Not feeling them. But we’ll have to see how it plays out. I still feel reverting Feudal Age Tower HP and nerfing the remaining civs with super strong Feudal Age Towers is the better way to counter walling. But it seems the devs are committed to turning infantry into the counter for early full walling. So I hope this works out in the end.
o Burmese: Maybe Burmese now want to prioritize Manipur Cavalry over Cavalier? I don’t know how much more valuable +3 attack is over +20 HP vs. Archers. But for 450 more resources than Cavalier, the Burmese have an upgrade vs. Archers which researches 60 seconds faster than Cavalier. And it’s not like Burmese are ‘that’ terrible vs. Archers in the Castle Age. No +2 Archer armor? Yes. But a Knight line only lacking Paladin backed by an indirect eco bonus to farming? Also yes.
o Byzantines: Probably the most Siege civ in the game without having a direct bonus for Siege 11. Cheap Spears and Skirmishers for gaining Feudal Age map control, tanky forward buildings with huge LOS, cheap Camels for protecting Monks, and now Monks with super fast healing? Ouch!
o Cumans: Meh. It’s okay. Not good. Not bad. Just okay. I’d rather see a civ redesign that scraps the Feudal Age TC for a viable Feudal Age Siege Workshop. Every other bonus, except the Feudal Age TC, ought to stay.
o Vikings: An infantry civ going for infantry? WHAT MADNESS IS THIS!? (sarcasm). Not good against Archers anymore? Thumb Ring only affects Skirmisher accuracy, which is already 90%, and Viking Skirmishers are otherwise FU. Also Siege Ram backed by the Viking’s super good farming eco. Not good against Cavalry anymore? Pikeman with +5 bonus damage vs. Cavalry and +20% HP isn’t that much worse than Halberdier, with Chieftains being only 300 more resources than Halberdier, while also affecting a greater variety of infantry units.
o UU Infantry Buffs: All of my Yes!
Overall: The most exciting balance patch for me since the Long Sword buffs. Game balance is better than ever before. And I feel AoE II is nearly there to being close as it can get to “perfect” balance (excluding a small handful of civs which need redesigns rather than buffs/nerfs.) All that’s left to achieve “perfect” balance is small adjustments for certain civs.
2 Likes
Isn’t durability better against archers? No way this expensive UT will ever be prioritized over cavalier. Especially since if they go halbs early you end up spending res on a useless tech…