Oh, they need crossbowmen? That’d be cool. I don’t think I’d want to get rid of Thumbring, though
Do your words about Thumbring apply to vs. AI, though, too? Asking because I was playing some civ (not Spanish) vs. AI the other day, and the AI’s villagers and horses magically avoided at least 95% of my skirmisher tosses and archer arrows (when I tried an early attack on his villagers, and when they sent horses to defend). Like, I was lucky to get two or three hits in, with 10 or 15 of my archery units vs. lumberjacks. Then when the horses came, it was game over for me. Way too agile, avoiding 95% of the skirm tosses. And that was only against Moderate difficulty.
I know that’s unrealistic because I watched a good ELO human player in T90’s TTL tournament use the exact same tactic I was trying with the exact same civ (I think Portuguese, iirc), and in TTL their human opponent had a rough time avoiding the skirms. The skirms killed many villagers and military units, all over the place. The same group of 10-15 skirms wreaked havoc on the enemy. For me, my skirms were pointless and a waste of resources. So, I feel, since I play vs. AI all the time (never vs. humans, never ranked), Thumbring is highly necessary. But I also hope the telepathic and omnipresent AI mind can be throttled back a bit to not be so unrealistic
I thought maybe the AI civ I went up against had some weird magical horse power, so I tried another game but vs. 2 AI instead… difference civs. Both of the AIs were micro’ing their horses/cav/knights to the N’th degree, rendering my archery units completely useless.
My takeaway from that was I should just use horses for early attacks, and most any attack or defense in early- or mid-game vs. AIs like I always do. Too bad, as I wanted to use archers more often.
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.
The carry capacity bonus can be a bit of an inconvenience with fish booming, but with the drop-off buttons, it’s easier to drop resources off manually when you really need them fast. Otherwise, the reduction in travel time does provide some benefit. Especially if the fishing ships are travelling a long distance for deep fish or oysters.
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)
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).
heavy scorpion upgrade is 1550 resources - giving it for free seems a bit much (with the 100f/100g, you’d be getting 1750 resources back after the 1800 you spend on imperial age)
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. And the team bonus ends up being much weaker (extra range is powerful, and extra LOS on a unit most allies won’t have is somewhat meh). Also Khmer already have a strong farming economy despite their farming debuff.
Koreans as they currently stand have a lot of synergy between their bonuses, which gives them a niche that they are very strong in. (faster stone mining into castle drop into UU or tower spam - and the only key techs that need to be researched are the ranged attack upgrades, which affect both units/builidngs). I don’t think they need a buff to their cavalry. Changing the effect of Eupseong would be a nerf however (range is stronger than extra damage, especially since when it allows them to tie the range of BBCs with siege engineers). Though I do agree with waiting until the DLC before making any changes
There are a lot of proposed changes that I don’t particularly agree with. Some of them appear to have been proposed without any consideration for how the civ was intended to be played. And some look like a change for the sake of making changes
The overall balance of the game is pretty good. The civ winrates are generally all in the 45-55% range. No telling where the new civs will land at this point, but I’d consider being within the 40-60% range to be pretty good.
I do put my thoughts on the Koreans in the personal perference list, which shows that I don’t think those are urgent balancing needs and may be mixed with purposes other than balancing.
Maybe the civ can be considered balanced now, but having wagons countered by skirmishers is weird in the first place. It makes sense to hope that the game changes that. They deserve better (but far from powerful) Stables both for balance reasons and historical accuracy, and that should still keep them balanced. As for the changes to the wagons’ projectiles it’s all about historical accuracy, which is up to everyone’s opinion.
Their free upgrades already make them the best tower civ. With +2 attack instead of +2 range they are still excellent. If you look into the meaning of Eupseong, it makes sense to improve all defensive buildings instead of just towers. On the orther hand, allowing Yeomen to give a longer range to both archers and towers can be a reflection of the fact that yeoman archers used longbows for defense on towers in history, and would be more in line with the Brits’ characteristic and identity.
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.
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.
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.
Towers are currently not meta and only used in yolo strategies. Dravidians should have ideally got the fortified church.
Unit will still die to skirms. As @UpmostRook9474 said, some kind of srivamsha shield acting with the charge bar will help though.
Will work definitely. But the wagons semm to be faster than other siege and that problem is there with organ guns too.
Maybe moving bloodlines to castle ageand squires to feudal could be a solution. Scouts are extremely good right off the bat.
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.
Khmer have well rounded elephants. Bengalis can emulate the same. Khmer scorpion team bonus is bonkers now with ballistics change.
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.
I realised it and changed my suggestion to
200 wood per age → “Receive 10 wood for every villager trained”
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.
Celts - All sheep are converted within units LOS civ bonus is replaced with “Towers fire 25% faster”.
Chinese - Probably major rework is coming. But I’ll give one. " Demo ship +50 HP" civ bonus is replaced by “Demo ship +10% attack”.
Cumans - Cuman Mercenary effect changed to Knight Line +30 HP. (Paladin is replaced by Heavy Cavalier for Cumans, Huns and Magyars. Heavy Cavalier has 140 HP and 13 attack).
Dravidians - Medical Corps changed to Melee Elephants cost -50% gold.
Ethiopians - Perfectly balanced imho. But agree with free halb due to power creep era.
Franks - Cavalry +20% HP is limited to Knight line +20% HP.
Georgians - Start with a mule cart changed to TCs spawn one mule cart on age advancing.
Gurjaras - Lose Husbandry.
Hindustanis - Villager discount is 10% in all ages.
Huns - Atheism is replaced by new tech, Heavy Cavalier +3 attack. Check Cumans for details.
This is the 1st time I saw someone nerfing Bengalis as the 1st priority. Ratha is the only thing that kept them alive in open maps, maybe even closed maps as Parthian Tactics is removed.
Quite funny indeed. Bengalii elephants have faith level of conversion resistance in castle age. Yet I can’t make them work in castle age. I wish Bengalis has an economy bonus which will enable them to do scout rush in feudal age. Then there will be no need to overbuff Rathas.
I really hate this spawn on reaching new age gimmicks. Isn’t a bonus like “Mulecarts are bulit and repaired 100% faster” a good enough bonus especially for a ddefensive civ.
Why? Rajputs hstorically had good cavalry. The one thing they could lose is their team bonus which is just meh!
Agree with free hab upgrade
Don’t think its useful especially since early imp Dravidians have discounted trebs now and then discounted bbc for free.
Hindustanis should not have had the vill disocunt in the first place. It enables an easy scout rush.
No, it should work differently. That is, knowing where the deepfish is, you can place the first dock optimally. Or in Nomad-type maps you don’t have to walk far to get to the shortfish.
The problem is that seeing all the fish on the map is absolutely OP. It allows you to clearly see the causal generation of the script in Migration and maps like that.
Surely the Bengalis should have thumbring, and Paiks should only apply to elephants. Besides, the Ratha should not have all that extra armour against arrows; maybe 1 more melee endurance instead. In short, there are some changes I would make.
I’m sorry, what are we talking about? It’s like complaining that the Vikings don’t have a bonus for doing a good scout rush. It makes no sense. With the Bengalis you ideally play Scouts & Archer I would say, since you have scouts with extra damage against enemy skirmishers. But even if you end up playing Skrims is fine. Indeed, since you have Bloodline the Bengalis are OK playing a long feudal.
I understand that they may be more tricky to play, but in reality they are on a comfortable 50% winrate in Arabia, and plus they are great on both Arena and water maps. This is without forgetting that not all civilisations have to be decent in all maps. Specialists may exist.
Very strong on some maps. Automatically tells you where ponds are (or if ponds exist). Also can indicate where enemy TCs are on some maps (Mudflow, El Dorado, etc).
2 extra villagers upon hitting Feudal is a pretty good economy bonus. Otherwise, an almost-generic scout rush is still fairly decent. (+2 attack against skirms makes their scouts slightly better than generic)
Rathas are basically a substitute for the knight and cav archer lines, and both of those are at least borderline OP imo. So Rathas naturally will have to be at least borderline OP to compete with them.
Do you think these are still good options for Koreans? Both were quite heavily nerfed a few years ago. As I understand it, tower rushes are pretty niche nowadays and not usually viable, and later in the game towers are rarely worth building over castles. War Wagons are still decent but melt to skirmishers nowadays.
This I agree with. The format of the Ornlu video ends up making it pretty silly, because either he’s happy with a civ and proposes something needless, or he’s so unhappy with a civ that he can’t fix the perceived problem he wants to fix… and instead proposes something needless!
Interesting idea thematically but I’m not sure why they should effectively have weaker paladins. (Also the name is pretty bland.)
Castle drop is always a bit of a dangerous strategy. If it succeeds, you gain a secure foothold, have a forward unit production building, and often deny some resources as well. It can be a bit all-in though. Towers after that are more about denying resources or extending your foothold then they are about dealing damage. And war wagons share an attack upgrade with the castle/towers. There are responses, but the same is true for any strategy. If an opponent uses skirms, war wagons are still a rather tanky unit (with free armor upgrades) that can be retreated and healed by a monk or inside the castle. If it’s a large number of upgraded skirms (something that would take a fair amount of investment), then adding mangonels is an option as well. Battering rams are also a counterplay option, but can be dealt with by the forward villagers or mangonels.
Skirms may counter war wagons, but skirms take a fair bit more tech investment than war wagons do. So I think Korean castle drops are still one of the strongest castle drops out there. And war wagons aren’t a unit to ignore (in numbers, they can take down buildings surprisingly quickly due to bonus damage)
Koreans might not be the best civ for every map. And they do have their weak points. But if allowed to do what they want to do, they have a lot of bonuses working together. I’ve used Koreans in tournament games, and the synergy in castle age is both notable and potent.
Oh no. The team bonus from being a strong one to a risky one that was difficult to balance. It would definitely have balance issues to reveal all fish.
Although I have no problem with the current team bonus, but If you want to emphasize that they are excellent navigators who observe and use monsoons, why not just have the team bonus make fishing ships (and maybe trade cogs also) move faster by about 10% to 20%? That should be great for catching natural fish, but has no effect on fish boom.
The price of making them cheaper and affordable in mid-game is that their stats have to go down as well. In the end they’ll be like slightly slower, slightly more expensive, and slightly stronger version of Knights.
Any additional resources or discounts can create much more value in the hands of high elo players than in the hands of ordinary players, and it’s just that receiving a large amount at once makes this phenomenon more obvious than receiving a small amount relatively regularly.
They can’t be Caucasian anyway. They deserve more aggressiveness to match the style they were given, not better defense.
Really want see them get more stuff while keeping the discount on Barrack techs, like the earlier access to M@A, Longsword, and Two-Handed Sword, or double the effects of Forging-line upgrades. The former is moved from the Armenians, and can be used well in conjunction with the discount to create a strong militia line game; the latter will have the Blast Furnace removed, but can provide a useful boost to infantry and especially scouts in early-mid games.
Even if you only have 18 or 19 villagers when hitting the Feudal, 180-190 extra wood can still let you afford 1 more military building. In the Feudal Age, Dravidians were never weak, and even losing 10 extra wood would not have much impact. That’s also why making them recieve wood just when every villager trained might be risky, as it’d allow them to get extra resources earlier, such like 300-400 wood totally in the Feudal Age.
As I mentioned before, the really critical period is from early Castle Age until their EAs can be successfully gathered in sufficient numbers. They need more help during this period, and more wood would certainly be useful, for things including, but not limited to, creating siege weapons. With the other suggestions they will also have better infantry, then the wood discount on siege can definitely be replaced by more extra wood of this bonus.
Different types of resources have different levels of importance at each timing. In my opinion, it is a misconception to think that 1000 wood is equivalent to giving >50% refund for the Imperial Age. If it was giving 1000 gold or 1000 food, I agree there would be risks, but wood doesn’t really have the same value as other types of resources at that point.
I don’t really insist on the idea of 10x the number of villagers, but I’d honestly say that if this bonus would be changed, the direction should be having mid-late games more extra wood, such like:
(100/200/300 + 5x the number of villagers) wood when hitting the Feudal/Castle/Imperial, so there would be 190, 400 and 800 wood if you have 18, 40, 100 villagers when hitting the Feudal/Castle/Imperial.
Still (10x the number of villagers) wood, but having a limit like up to 800 wood.
Fixed 200/400/600 wood when hitting the Feudal/Castle/Imperial.
No change to the current extra wood bonuse but a new economy bonus added.
I think we should give them Husbandry first, instead of considering giving speed with a UT first but ignoring Husbandry. Their EAs can be competitivehave enough when having faster firing, regeneration and Husbandry in late games.
Clearly it would help if they had the Husbandry, regeneration and Elite Battle Elephant upgrades.
I’d rather it also makes siege weapons have the gold discount too with the elephants than a wood discount as a bonus. They already have extra wood for creating siege.
Bombard Cannos can also be replaced with Redemption.
True. But allowing Skirmishers to counter Wagons is counterintuitive from the beginning, against the purpose of wagons themselves. Making Wagons siege or cav + siege makes more sense, and also makes more sense for their bonus against buildings.
Totally forgot Goths - Agree on removing Hunters +5 attack vs boars bonus
Incas - Perfect imo. Maybe blacksmith infantry armor affecting villagers from castle age can be removed now as they are very strong civ anyway.
Italians - Hard to say. Maybe increase the dock+uni tech discount to 40%? They are not top 5 in water or hybrid as Dravidians, Romans, Armenians are added and Portoguese, Berbers are buffed.
Japanese - CA is replaced with mounted samurai that has the same stat as current Japanese CA.
Khmer - Agree. Remove Husbandry.
Koreans - Free archer armors is replaced by Spearman line +0.3 range.
Lithuanians - Remove fire ship line.
If I may use your level of expertise, I have a question concerning the Armenians and the Dravidians. In the interest of making the Armenians more historically accurate but still competitive and not OP, there was an interest from the community in removing both the mule cart and the extra arrow (you get it with the UT).
The problem I see is that they would be a little slow to get going, so they would need some kind of bonus in the dark age. So I was thinking you could give the current Dravidian team bonus to the Armenians, plus something related to fishing boats (they produce faster). Do you think that’s enough?
Magyars - Perfect except the useless villagers can kill wolves in one hit bonus. And I don’t know what I would give them instead. Maybe Heavy Cavalier up
Malay - I’ll say they are perfect. Ornlu’s idea of removing latest civ bonus will make them underpowered especially at low to mid level. My change will be Harbor ROF reduced from 3 to 2.
Malians - Again perfect. I’ll probably agree with Ornlu.
Mayans - Maybe team bonus doesn’t apply to palisade wall.
Mongols - Agree.
Persians - Savar should lose either 1 MA or 1 PA or the extra bonus attack vs archer that they have outside of team bonus or increase the upgrade cost+time. They are just better than Paladin in 99% situation.
Poles - Lose Crop Rotation.
Portuguese - Gold discount reduced to 15%.
Romans - Agree. There is no need for them to have such good knight line.
Saracens - Probably agree.
Sicilians - Donjon doesn’t unlock Archery Range/Stable. Instead it provides +5 pop space.
Slavs - Either remove monk bonus or buff it to 25%.
Spanish - Half agree. All cannon ball travels faster instead of just CG.
Tatars - Very interesting idea indeed. I second that. However in that case, different Caravanserai bonus should be considered in the future.
Teutons - Replace Paladin with Crusader Knight. CK will have 150 HP, 15 attack, 2/4 armor (and another 2 more due to civ bonus), 1.40 speed. Unit cost and time might be higher than Paladin.
Turks - Agree.
Vietnamese - UTs swapped.
Vikings - Bogveigar gives +1 attack to Berserk instead of archer line.
I wouldn’t really know. I will note that Magyars are considered a strong civ despite not having any eco bonus. The proposed changes would make Armenians more of a naval civ, while the mule cart bonuses are more generally applicable.
Magyar bonus isn’t useless, but it is niche (and a niche that doesn’t come into play much because people dislike the risk element caused by predators, which causes them to be included less by map scripters). Much like the Celt sheep bonus, I don’t see a good reason to remove it
Portuguese - as much as Ornlu calls them OP, they really aren’t excelling. Their win rates are <= 50% (including Arena), which makes a general nerf hard to justify.
Romans - historical reasons. Apparently, the Roman empire used a good amount of cavalry in its last centuries. I’d rather weaken their eco bonus and give them supplies (would weaken their gameplay generally, including cavalry and scorpions, but improve their infantry play).
Vikings - what would you rename the tech to? The name refers to archers.
A more moderate idea will be giving several euro civs alternative of CA, mounted crossbowman. They mostly function like cavalry archers but shoot a bit slower with higher base accuracy.
