Obuch must be nerfed

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
41

Obuch is an amazing support unit. Poles economy is set perfectly for obuch and szlachta previlages. The nerf they need is to bring the gold generation from stone further down to 20%. Same for the Portuguese berry bonus.

Folwark mechanism probably needs to be changed to add extra 10% food when food is deposited rather than when re-seeded. it will be more micro. But not as abusive as it is now. Poles player can just delete farms and place new ones thus immediately get a huge food surplus. The winged hussar spam during late game is just too OP. You barely have time to respond with your own raids.

42

No you do that and that bonus and Portugese bonus become just worthless.

Honestly I never seen a Poles player delete the farms (neither my experience nor seeing pros doing that) so no, better just take away crop rotation, so the Folwark economy is still strong but falls down hard in Imperial (Poles are the only civ that has reasons to get that tech, and is because is too strong, 55f per new farms is broken in Imperial). Also nerf Szlachta Privileges cost so is harder to get in castle age.

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43

I myself have done it on Arena. Wood is not really a problem on Black forest or Arena. Regardless the change should start with “Forwark adds extra 10% food when food is deposited”

I don’t have problem with “Szlachta Privileges”. Its a unique tech. I don’t have good opinion about the free gold, free wood, free food bonuses. They tilt the game. Its better if they were in range of 10-20% and above 20% is only for resources not collected by Villagers and fishing ships like relics.

44

Is one of the reasons why Poles are soo opressive, I ve seen several game where Poles player just wall, the boom into like 35 farms, gets the UT and start spamming 30g Knights, the opponent just can’t do anything vs that and forces the player to go Imperial because can’t stay anymore in castle age, then the player lack any military to counter that, resign (I mean one T90 TL game one player just resigned when Poles got to Imp because is obvious you just cant do anything vs that. If it was more expensive (like Chieftains cost) means Poles still can aim to a late castle age Knight spam, but then pays that by staying in castle age for even more time, and pust in a position where you research that or go for Winged Hussars with Trample damage (that should be the cavalry that Poles should spam, not cavalier).

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45

You saw lobo using the cv he has already mastered and does the same every single match on arena and wins like 90% of the times, sick boom, sick imp time, sick non stop mass production and easy switch to 90 farmers and endless winged hussar spam that wins over halbs.

But talking about that game, the bizantine player made a big mistake by not going cataphract, despite tatoh had full vision on lobo’s map, the main issue with the obuch on that game was how powerful it actually is, few castle obuch destroyed the bohemian wagon like nothing from tatoh and tanked a lot both the janizaries and the elite ele archer, without the obuch support my friend was losing all his elite mamelukes like flies, i have been saying this since the expansion was released, but it never cease to amaze me the number of users who claim that all infantry units should behave like obuch, they completely ignore the fact that the obuch trades cost effectively vs elite teuton knight cause even losing the 1x1 fight they leave a naked etk that another unit can kill easily.

Obuch is the problem, even hera said that on his video and you can ask any other pro player about them instead of thinking that obuch is fine and the problem with poles are the cheap knights.

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46

Definitely untrue for poles as that bonus is just their second eco bonus on top of what is probably the strongest food bonus in the game.

Same goes for portugese, people tend to forget they are basically better italians with great bonuses on land already with fast techs, Gold discount, and wide tech tree

47

Obuch at least should have higher gold cost and champions should be cost-efficient to deal with Obuch, like most infantry UU


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48

Poles need multiple nerfs but Obuch certainly is one of the main offenders. The fact that you rarely see this unit, doesn’t mean that it’s balanced, in fact, it’s significantly stronger than competing units, like Berserk, Huskarl, Woad Raider etc.

Even if you ignore its armor-negating effect, which gives it incredible synergy with units like Imperial Age Cavalier (you can actually beat melee civs with Obuch + Cavalier spam as also proposed by their SP campaign where you fight the Teutons of all civs), its stats are too high for such a cheap unit. At 55f 20g, it costs about 1/2 of a Knight, trades nearly evenly with a Knight but more importantly it makes no sense for an infantry unit to have 2/2 base armor because infantry by design is meant to be weak vs archers (including, to a degree, Skirmishers which should be a soft counter). Hate this as much as you want, but this is how AoE2 is viewed by the developers atm and they go the extra mile to say that Crossbow-like units should counter slow units (since they don’t counter Knights or Siege and if you make them weak vs infantry they become useless).

So either every other infantry UU needs to be buffed like, A LOT, or Obuch needs nerfs. It’s the best infantry UU in the game by far and there are some pretty good ones in there like Huskarl, Kamayuk, Berserk, Urumi Swordsman, Ghulam, Serjeant.

The fact that Obuch would be the best infantry UU in the game by a large margin, even if you took away their effect (armor negation), speaks miles of how overtuned they are.

At the cost of being pedantic, Poles Knights or Hussar spam is the main way to win, particularly on Arabia, but it’s NOT the only way Poles can play, remove Knight-line altogether from Poles, give them Halberdiers and you have something similar to old Vikings, turbo boom into killer Arbalest blob which they have FU for all upgrades that matter practically. They civ also has above average Siege, FU Champion-line, the best Hussar in the game


Poles can also for example play:

a) Obuch + Skirm (low eco composition that is extremely annoying to deal with and hard to counter, although it lacks a bit of punch, it’s more of a “grind down” composition)
b) Obuch + Pike + Bombard Cannon (not as good as Halb + BBC but Obuch here goes a long way in covering the shortcomings that arise from lacking Halbs with its 95 HP in Imperial age which allows it to a degree to fight Paladins & similar when mixed with Pikemen)
c) Arbalest + Hussar (my personal favorite as it’s incredibly easy to play, you just send everyone to gold and spam Folwarks, it’s basically old Vikings, what makes this so good is that it’s very easy to macro). Conveniently the food that you got left after hitting Imperial Age and buying the Arbalest upgrades makes the transition to Hussar, trivial.
d) Cav Archers: Poles have a very good Cav Archer that, although it lacks PT and last armor, is good enough when you need it because much like Lithuanians or Bulgarians, it has all the attack upgrades which are the ones you want more in Cav Archers. For example vs Franks, Teutons, it’s a very good option in Imperial as these civs don’t have strong ranged options to punish the lack of armor.

In a way, if you gave Poles Camel Riders, they would be Byzantines with an eco bonus, it’s really hard to find an army composition with Poles that doesn’t work and I’m not so sure you can call them a Cavalry civ when they have so many attractive options.

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49

I also have to add though, that the civ design of Poles is healthy, and it’s just a matter of number-tweaking. I think in general front-loaded bonuses that pertain food are not healthy, because they allow for record Imperial Age timings and make taking damage in Castle Age irrelevant. For thia reason, Hindustanis and Poles are top tier (you will always make villagers so it’s a food saving), and Folwarks could be reworked into giving the last 12% of food and not the first 10%, for example. Obuch on the other hand could probably get a +5f +5g, or +5f -1 PA.

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50

Yup! Thats a fair point. The cost can be increased. But I do like the tech. Tech does suprise opponents when they themselves were thinking its time for imperial.

My thoughts exactly. For hindustanis though, its a bit tricky. They are very beginner friendly now. Changing them will nix that niche.

51

What if we swap UT? Why Poles must have to be a mid/late castle civ?

For some reason new UU (From DE) costs don’t overlap each other. Your proposal will make it same cost as Urumi. Maybe a straight +10g is better not just for this weird reason but also for a nerfing their cost efficiency.

52

Its still -5 food, +5 gold compared to Urumis if this change is done. And anyways it doesn’t matter if costs overlap. Many infantry uu have the same or nearly the same cost.