Ornlu's 45 ideas to balance all 45 civs

[benithisrael]

@KHANATTILA

The funny thing is that they would be even stronger in the map where they are already strongest at medium, high and top level: Migration. That is why it will never pass as an amendment.

It is the team bonus which makes them strong on migration. Because,you can fishboom wihtout getting housed. If you change that to something else like
Docks provide +5 pop space -> Fish locations visible at the start of the game
It will help the entire team get good locations for fishboom and not different from history how 'Tamils’and Keralites knew how to exploit trade routes and monsoon currents better than other Indian enthnicities.

@UpmostRook9474

@benithisrael

Khmer will still be played as a knight spam civ

The reason is the economy in the Castle Age usually cannot afford Battle Elephants. The elephants had been cheaper by 20 food, but still only Malay may be able to go with them in the Castle Age unless they get even cheaper to a extent, such like just a bit expensive than Knights and just a bit stronger than Knights.

I think that having the elephants more useful in late games can make them more attractive to players so that people could be more willing to transit from Cavaliers to Elite Battle Elephants as if the Elephants were equivalent to Paladins, and this way should be a easier work than making elephants able to be spammed like Knights in earlier games.

If Battle elephants were cheaper by 20-30 gold, then every elephant civ in the game will attempt to transition to battle elphants in imp instead of cavalier.

@UpmostRook9474

@benithisrael

I dislike age up bonuses too and the Ethiopians should have been an one off.

I guess that is on purpose. The devs want the Dravidians to go aggressive and have a power spike at beginning of each Age. Receiving hundreds of wood at once can fit this purpose more than receiving a few wood regularly like when a villager is trained.

This design just sucks and the wood bonus does not scale. It only works for serious wannbe pro players who use the bonus like a cheat and not for the average players who appreciate flexibility and adaptability in any civ design. the civ is extremely unpopular at the lower level. At the pro level too, It works consistently for ethiopions because they get faster firing archers. But faster firing skirms are not as good dps wise. Yet Orunlu mentioned the ethiopion bonus as not enough.

@Pulikesi25

Dravidians - Barrack techs cost -50% → All tower and infantry technologies cost -50% (Updated heated shot will do extra damage vs cavalry and be a partial solution to Dravidian cavalry skirm problem).

Towers are currently not meta and only used in yolo strategies. Dravidians should have ideally got the fortified church.

@Pulikesi25

Urumi swordsmen cost reduced to 45 food 15 gold, speed increased to 1.1 and for elites 1.15

Unit will still die to skirms. As @UpmostRook9474 said, some kind of srivamsha shield acting with the charge bar will help though.

@SMUM15236

In that case why not take away free stone mining bonus? It will nerf FC → Hussite Wagon.

Will work definitely. But the wagons semm to be faster than other siege and that problem is there with organ guns too.

@Zelley00

I wanted to take the opportunity of one change per civ to normalize the strength of most paladin civs. Hence the Lituanians, Burgundians and Persians changes.

Maybe moving bloodlines to castle ageand squires to feudal could be a solution. Scouts are extremely good right off the bat.

@Zelley00

I am not expecting the 5% wood ship discount to have such a big impact, but it is fair to set the global military units wood discount to 20% everywhere. So compared to now they gain siege discount at the price of range/barracks 20% discount (ships unchanged).

Fair enough and pretty similar to portugese gold bonus. Dravidian bonus on siege should be removed. Siege engineers should not be in tech tree and Shinkonson should give +2 range for mangonels and scorpions.

@JasuniSmith

As an all-out elephant civ - that’s what Bengalis are intended to be. I don’t see a good reason to take away the Khmer’s current identity as a scorpion civ.

Khmer have well rounded elephants. Bengalis can emulate the same. Khmer scorpion team bonus is bonkers now with ballistics change.

@JasuniSmith

Medical Corps is not useless. It makes their elephant archers practically immune to chip damage. Also makes taking an onager shot much less scary, since the elephants will heal automatically (without needing to keep a relatively fragile monk around - who only heal one at a time anyways)

Elephants as a unit regardless of civ can take one or two hits from a mangonel. If you have enough elephants to justify medical corps, then you have already won the game especially as Dravidians. Specifically, They don’t get any economic bonuses and making elephants will put them behind opponent. For a Dravidian player to think of elephants as an option, elephant as a group of 2 or 3 should be able to generate a lot of value. But Elephant archers in group of 3 will be made mincemeat by skirms. Armoured elephants will die due to no support against knight spam by opponent. Unless Dravidian unique tech can address weakness of elephants which is speed to run from unnecessary fights and engage opponent when fight is favourable, medical corps or similar effects don’t bring any value to the table and thus useless.
The design of Dravidian elephants is also poor. They lack husbandry and bloodlines. Espcially husbadry is imporant for balance, all elephant civs are balanced to have 0.99 speed which is more than archers and skirms. So these elephant work as cavalry against archers. But only Dravidian elephants are stuck at 0.9. They can’t chase down archers or skirms. On top of this glaring design hole, With the Siege discount, there is no incentive to create Armoured/Siege elephants since your other siege units are cheaper. If Armoured/ Siege elpehants need a role in Dravidian gameplay, a speed boost is paramount.
Hence my suggestion:
Medical corps -> Mahouts
If needed the name of tech can be changed to " Gajashastra" from Arthasastra book or something else from mideval India.

@JasuniSmith

10xvil wood doesn’t really help for early feudal aggression (so actually weakens civ’s early game if you advance on less than 20 vils). Would be better in castle age and may even be broken in imperial (100 villagers → 1000 wood would basically be a >50% refund for imperial age if you’ve overboomed).

I realised it and changed my suggestion to
200 wood per age → “Receive 10 wood for every villager trained”

@JasuniSmith

@benithisrael

Spawn 2 Vills per TC per age → Vills are 10/15/20/25 cheaper each age

Since this doesn’t actually increase the number of vils you get, this may actually be weaker. Better in dark age to be sure, but this is basically a variation on the hindustani civ bonus.

I proposed hindustanis get rid of the vill discount bonus in exchange for ‘cavary armour upgrades being free’. Indians had +1/+1 armour on their camels. So its not something out of the blue.

Perhaps a new DLC Dynasties of India -2 can be made with 2-3 new civs to shuffle around bonuses and fix the absymal playrate of Dravidians and Bengalis as well as broken areas of Gujjaras and Hindustanis.