[Updated with the December patch drop]
With Persians revitalized, there might be some sentiment that they will be nerfed.
IMO, I don’t think they need a straightforward nerf but rather rebalanced a bit. My idea of the tweaks are below with some rationale that follows. I think overall is a slight nerf but might make cavalry archers more appealing (early parthian tactics is a good start but it’s still a hard sell without bracer for many in games that are not the campaigns).
Mounted units get 4 gold (-1 gold) for each military unit killed. This is a very strong bonus especially for trash wars, but even before then it’s quite strong. -1 might seem small but it’s -20% and easy to underestimate. Edit: As some replies wished, this is gone. A bit unexpected given the devs have been making smaller incremental nerfs. The result is that their camels are generic and CA far less interesting. However, light cav getting gold per kill is too much. Now I think it’s even more urgent they make Persian CA more interesting such as my 3. and 4.
Savar +4 bonus against archers. Again, -1 bonus is bigger nerf than it seems. It now kills FU arbalester in 3 instead of 2 hits. But in messy fights it shouldn’t feel like a lot Edit: Given I know myself have a bad track record of predicting updates, I nailed this one.
Cavalry archers are affected by cavalry armor upgrades.
Lose access to ring archer armor. These two happen together. This can help switching between cavalry and cavalry archer play. As Persians, transitioning from cavalry to CA will feel like you have already picked up the armor upgrades + extra armor potential. It also works in reverse transition: start with CA in castle age. Getting cavalry armor directly benefits switching back to melee cavalry. This way we might have another civ that is enticing enough to go CA early.
At the ceiling, we are also talking about a very tanky CA with 6/8 armor potential taking 1 damage from TC arrow, which could make up for their raiding potential without bracer To balance this, they lose last archer armor upgrade, hurting mostly their skirmisher and trash bow. This not only nerf their trash wars (already excellent made even better due to new cavalry bonus) but also their gold-less option against archers.
Edit: 5?. Kamandaran additionally give -60% gold discount to CA. (It’s either this or point 3 above. Not both) With the gold bonus gone, I hope to see their CA being more interesting. Still locked behind a tech and no bracer. Not the most novel idea but could help with a rare CA+heavy cavalry combo for them to play.
Price for this UT could be adjusted
The ones I am keeping in my version of the Persians:
+5% TC and dock work rate in dark age. This should be kept not just because going back and forth is an embarrassing look. Many have come to the realization that faster TC work rate starting in Feudal is too late and hard to make good use of. Food is extra tight in practice without better economy beforehand or you waste this bonus by having more idle TC time.
Halberdier I decided to not jump on the bandwagon of getting rid of halberdier for good camel civ (now better by generating gold). Instead I decide to weaken their skirmishers. Just a bit of variety in design thinking. Plus I don’t think halberdier is key to why Persians do so well right now.
Double HP TC Personally I like to keep the potential for unique and super risky strategies as well as keeping the meme alive, even though we all know Persian douche is not fun for everyone.
You see, I’m trying very hard to make bracer-less CA appealing enough.
I feel this should be just 3 gold ber killed unit and only limited to Knights to motivate the use of Savar in battle.
The idea of Savar is to be the best Paladin vs ranged units, I would rather keep that attack bonus but simply make the Savar upgrade more expensive (1170f 700g) so archer civs can react and stop Persians to get into that point when possible (like how Hauberk UT and Houfnice upgrade got more expensive).
To be honest, we don’t need even more advantages for Persian CA (Castle age Parthian Tactics + gold per killed military units are more than enough bonuses and more is just too much).
-2 gold is -40%. My hot take is this might nerf too much tbh.
Last time a -40% in Aztecs carrying capacity hurt them real hard ever since. Hence my concern.
I still love the idea of the potential of smoothened switching between CA and melee cav. Was CA play that common for Persians in castle age that common nowadays? Early castle age?
At least we agree cav generating gold is a really strong bonus
Persians were not a bad civ before. Now, on top of the gold bonus, they got the (stong) 5% TC workrate back, the Parthian Tactics bonus, the WE buffed a lot, new (useful) UT, and a more accesible late game cavalry, which is a buff for 1v1.
I wouldn’t say that outright removing the gold bonus would hurt them too much
And that is just fine, why a civ with strong start, faster timings, strong boom and strong military units from Feudal to Imperial Age also needs to be absurdly strong in Post-Imp?.
So hard that they still are a top pick for pros in tournaments…
But why is that zealotry to make Persians as another CA spamming civ?, no matter what but lacking Bracer means noone will go to mass cavalry archers because they won’t scale well into Imperial, Look at Cumans for example (Extra speed + Steppe Husbandry with cheaper Archery Ranges).
That 5 gold per kill makes Tatars Keshik bonus getting gold while attacking so weak compare to this persian bonus. I would understand if that 5 gold would be served only for knight line, but it applies to all mounted units including light cavalry while with tatars it’s just your unique unit.
I can only see the gold bonus not affecting light cavalry. This civ was incredibly bland as far as cavalry civ goes.
This nerf was enough to drop them down from S-tier to A-tier for some pros. It was also enough to make them drop their win rate perpetually in the lower half.
How many civs out there will you call “CA spamming civ”? CA play is far less common than knights for example.
Huns, Mongols, Turks, Tatars, Magyars, Japanese after that new bonus, even Saracens, Bulgarians, Hindustanis, Lithuanians and Spanish can play CA sometimes.
Kind of defeats the purpose of the upgrade. That’s the niche they are giving persians having a knight line upgrade that makes them best vs archer line. You could argue they get -5 hp and die to heavy camels sooner.
This should be removed from Persians for good. Either Georgians should receive it after the Monaspa bug fix or Magyars should get it.
Do you mean they benefit from scale barding armor etc instead of padded archer armor line? This could be very powerful and interesting. Very easy to switch from knights/camels to CA or vice-versa. Great to add light cav.
A nice interesting change, I like this. Gives some weakness to skirms, keeps CA as they are. I think trashbow and Kamadaran should become cheaper with this as well.
“can play CA” I agree. “CA spamming civ” just doesn’t fit most of what you mentioned. Heck many more civs even Georgians can play CA with the bonus and heavy CA accuracy buff but have way better things to play in castle age at least.
Seems like lots of people have issue with this being too good. I don’t mind Magyars getting it though (eco bonus from aggression).
Not instead but affected by both lines, raising the ceiling of their bracer-less HCA. I thought it would be good because in practice you can just focus on cav armor first which I feel fits Persians play style.
No probably that’s too much. You could potentially get to +4/+6 armor in castle age, becomes extremely difficult for scorps to kill and upto +8 in imp. If its only from melee cavalry upgrades thats still a great change in terms of gameplay.
The gold bonus for Persian is not as strong as you think.in trash war because only hussars can generate gold and they have to kill military units with their low attack stat to get it, they trade horribly against halb and take forever to kill other hussar. Sure they can kill skirm, but not when other units are around to protect the skirm.
your Sarva nerf is anti- unique theme and pointless because generic paladin kill generic arbalest in 3 hit as well.
Keep all the bonuses (nerfing bonuses until they’re worthless is the WRONG way to go) but take Elite Skirmisher from the Persian tech tree, that would be a unique nerf and also strongly highlight/force reliance on the new Persian gold bonus.
They also have trashbows for lategame ranged units anyway.
As I understand it it’s really late-game/team/closed maps where the improved Persians are really crushing, so this nerf seems well-targeted.
It’s a very strong bonus. You might not realize that even in hussar vs halberdier after some grind between them you suddenly have more gold (maybe later for stronger cav unit that generate more gold per unit). It has high snowballing potential
Yeah I think in a similar vein, I approached by making their goldless counter to archers worse.
edit: oh wow, the devs agreed with one of my points (about Savar) in the PUP. I feel more strongly about the gold generating bonus though.
I agree with this point. Having worthless insignificant bonus prevents other civs to have them in its full shape. That’s what, in this case, for Persians, I propose outright remove the gold bonus instead of nerfing it.
In some situations it definitely puts keshiks to shame.
But they also require a unit to be killed and does not apply to villagers.
I wonder someone found a way to analyze batches of games with Tatars and with Persians to see how much gold was generated in practice in real games.
Removing the gold bonus is fine, I kinda don’t like nerf because Persian just feel generic and boring again. However, my biggest issue is that as a side effect, they also removed the only reason to use Persian HCA in IMP…greatttttttttt. Now there is no reason to use them as Persian.
How are they exactly boring again? They have again the dark age workrate, They have the best Paladin vs ranged units, they now have Caravanserai, they still have Parthian Tactics in castle age, they got the new Citadels UT, War Elephant is now better than ever.
They are much better than before TMR and still in need for more nerfs tbh.
Cmon there’s so much Zealotry to make Persians another CA civ? Lacking Bracer alone is the reason why going CA as Persians isn’t a good option.