Yes.
Probably. But I didn’t want to handle it this way.
Cool with most changes.
I’ll just add one thing: it’s time for Khmer to lose hussar on top of the good stuff they’ll receive.
Okay, one more thing: Poles new bonus feels contrived. Why not have villagers heal even more around folwarks starting dark age? This shall help them more on open map than closed map where they already thrive.
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I had a suggestion long ago to nerf their stable but it is not Hussar. Instead my opinion is Husbandry should be gone from some civs and Khmer should be one of them. BE bonus and their UU can just get the compensation.
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These are some good changes. Hope elephants are at least a little bit more usable now with civs like Bengalis and Khmer.
Also quite decent. 5 rams would do the same damage as 6 did currently. Might be a bit easier to counter forward castle drops into imp builds. Scorpions might get used more often in decent numbers.
Unnecessary imo. Makes feudal ranged units even weaker against defense.
Amazing changes but I’m afraid this makes Saracens even stronger relative to other civs.
Quite disappointing to see no changes to these two civs. One is super OP and overused in competitive aoe 2 and the other is almost completely useless. Yet both untouched in what’s expected to be the “big balance changes” patch.
Many people might feel like its too small and nothing but its actually a huge nerf. They’d die to camels, heavy camels, pikes, halbs one hit sooner which is significant for a unit that regenerates. Hope the unit doesn’t get nerfed any further.
In general this is good but looks like a triple buff to Khmer. If changes to stable elephants and scorps turn out as good as they seem on paper, Khmer might end up becoming a top 10 civ next patch.
Surprised that Romans were left unaltered after making their bonus generic to all civs.
Water related changes might be good, hard to tell. But rest of the changes are fine. Its decent overall for a minor patch but too little for what’s supposed to be a major balance patch.
Did the math. A castle age castle will be -
- Generic Battering Ram - Castle will be rammed down 42 → 34 ramming. (Time 210 → 170 seconds)
- Cumans Capped Ram - Castle will be rammed down 34 → 32 ramming. (Time 170 → 160 seconds)
- Gurjaras Armored Ele - 54 → 45 ramming. (Time 162 → 135 seconds)
- Other Armored Ele - 72 → 59 ramming. (Time 216 → 174 seconds)
Nobody makes Pallisade gates for multiple reasons. Removing one of them won’t change anything.
Or the opposite. Now they will find it very difficult to use their only eco bonus while other civ may ignore market and rely on their own eco bonus.
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How about simply remove blast furnace and buff Tusks Swords from +3 to +5?
Hussar spam won’t be a thing anymore because will lose to ordinary Hussars with Blast Furnace and motivates the use of BEs
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Quite decent for most of the castle age rams. I think it will make a bigger difference when there are vills repairing.
Why will they find it difficult to use the market? And people with other civs aren’t ignoring their civ bonuses today unless its tower or feudal upgrades based. They just use the market because the last 100-200 food to click castle age is acquired faster through a market than by directly building farms and then gathering that food. That’s going to get harder now which is an advantage for Saracens.
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I had the same idea at one point too.
That would have been fine if it wasn’t for the scorpion and elephant buffs they will receive. Khmer too often played spamming hussars due to their turbo food eco.
Really dislike the market change. Mostly fine with the other changes but a bit disappointed in regards to some of the civs that needed a tweak not getting it (such as Bulgarians, Sicilians).
No one seems to be talking about it and I get it as its a prety minor thing, but I really like the ability to set multiple building gather points. Its cool to be able to specify what route your units take when you are setting them to run across the map for example so you could avoid walking straight into castle fire or avoid a clump of enemy units or sneak around in an unexpected way or something of that nature… Also you can set your monastry gather points in a way so a single monk can go to all the relics and pick them up and drop them off one by one without you having to micro manage it or wait for the monk to be created first. These might all be low ELO things but I am excited to try it.
8 Likes
TheViper is not really fan of the market change.
I think Xbow+Arbalester upgrade cost may need to be reduced further to actually see the power spike of that line. Maybe the food cost should also be reduced the same amount.
I like the new pathing. Controlling Cavalery groups finally feel responsive. I just finally played Robert and got the achievement by beating the Dukes, it’s much better now (feasible!).
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I did a little testing with Bengali elephants in scenario editor. The elite battle elephant was sometimes able to move 18 tiles when it had the faith upgrade (which meant the monk had to chase to finish the conversion). Nice change, still weak to monks, but makes counterplay against the monks easier. Escorting units can take advantage of the extra time.
side note: the elite battle elephant was moving a touch slower than the regular battle elephant (seems like a bug to me)
Palisade gates are mainly made for convenience factor (attention span is practically the 5th resource of the game). Reducing vulnerability to archers is a good change, and the gates are still weaker than then walls (which is fine - gates were historically a weak point). For archers, though, they’ll need to be in castle age for the gate to be a weak point.
A change meant to nerf fast castle strategies. Buying up to castle age is still possible (but a bit more expensive). And starting food resources are still usually enough to get a player to castle age. However, if a rush where you don’t farm doesn’t work out well, you’ll have a harder time rebalancing your economy (so fast-castle all-in strategies won’t be quite as strong - and some of the worst offenders had their UU castle age train time increased).
Meant to weaken Huns on nomadic maps (where the Hunnic Horse is way too strong). I think a better change would be making the Hunnic horse a unit that can be trained from the TC. Then the bonus would no longer be specific to nomad (in theory), but would still mainly be practical in nomad-style maps. And the train time would impose an economic penalty (but collecting sheep and learning where your opponents are may still make it worthwhile).
Much cheaper upgrade cost makes it more practical to get. Low movement speed was also a big weakness of the Turtle Ship. Still a slow ship, but significantly better on that front.
Poles were a bit weak in early game. Folwark farms cost more to set up than normal farming (which means Poles either give up on using their bonus or have a rougher farm transition). Saving 75 food in feudal and early castle might not be a lot, but it does make up for that extra cost. It will make Poles a fair bit better on Arena (better Light cavalry options to fight for relics with), but I don’t think this bonus is as strong as Turks free light cavalry line upgrades on that map. Nice new bonus imo that fits with the Poles emphasis on light/medium cavalry. As a side note, the winged hussar upgrade after this bonus has the same total cost as the hussar upgrade (but winged hussar is more gold-intensive). Will help Poles late-game winged hussar spam a little, but that was OP mainly due to the Folwark farming eco (something this bonus doesn’t help with setting up). So I think this bonus will mainly help with the early game.
I’ve used a Monaspa ball against their direct counters to win a match before. So I think this change was needed. Monaspas will likely still be strong, but easier to deal with. I don’t think Monaspas should receive any more nerfs though. If Georgians need further nerfs, it should be in their early-game economy (that way they’ll actually be a defensive civ as their label says they should be)
My two favorite changes from the update were QoL things: the ability to set gather point relays (very helpful for collecting relics: I can set the monastery’s gather point to a relic and then back to the monastery for automatic pickup). And Custom random is a nice feature (and is helpful when you have a civ draft to adhere to)