Proposed Balance Changes V.2

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
21

Yeah, but that argument can be made for Italians, portoghese, spanish, goths, koreans, persians, turks.

Onestly, byz are ones of best suited to resist to early pressure.

Exactly, that bonus is more an offensive bonus than a defensive one.

22

How. No BL means really weak to scouts, because normally you want to match scouts with your own. So you have to have perfect walling and spear positioning just to not take a disadvantage. Cheap skirms are great against most archer civs, but making skirms is doomed idea against the most popular one: Mayans, as EW will be nearly impossible to do anything about

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23

Bloodlines isn’t something you usually pick up in feudal.

24

Usually not, but if your enemy doesn’t have his own, then its often worth doing because scouts are best countered by scouts

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25

Never mind, I’ve put the reasons now.

26

Does anyone have anything to say about any of these?

27

Your reasons are not really justifications for why the change needs to be implemented, they are explanations of the mechanism by which the change will affect the game. These are different things.

For example most of your explanations are of the form:

  • Claim that change should be implemented. How change impacts game.
  • E.g. Aztecs should have their production speed nerfed. This will cause a nerf by reducing early rush pressure

When they should be of the form:

  • Problem identification. Problem justification. How change solves problem. Claim that change should be implemented.
  • E.g. Aztecs win rate is sky-high in the early game. This is a problem for slow civs. Nerfing the aztec’s production speed will reduce the early game win rates vs slow civs and leave other things mostly unchanged. Therefore Aztecs should have their production speed nerfed.

You need to provide a reason for why a change needs to be implemented. Listing reasons the change will have an effect doesn’t do that.

Again, changes tend to have two effects:

  • The best strategic option given scenario S for a civ has changed (argmax f(S) changes)
  • The value of the best strategic option given scenario S has changed (max f(S) changes)

Since the entire purpose of civ design is to have the argmax for a given scenario be different for different civs (e.g. vs archers some civs will go cavalry, others high pierce armor foot units) these are the most important changes. That is we want changes to be implemented that avoid players simply copy-pasting strategies between civs and encourage individuals to play civs to their strengths and exploit enemy civ’s weaknesses. The best changes will alter/maintain argmax to be in line with the civ’s design and change max such that the civ is competitive in terms of dealing with whatever the enemy throws at it without having unintended side-effects.

You need to go through your list and for each one:

  • Identify which scenarios are potentially problematic.
  • Justify why those scenarios actually are problematic.
  • The mechanism by which C will actually bring about a solution.
  • Why change C is well targeted and likely won’t cause other problems.
  • Does solving this problem improve/maintain/deteriorate the civ’s feel/design/theme?
    • Again the point of different civs is to have the optimal response to various things be different.
  • Does solving this problem improve balance for the better?
    • You have to be very careful with this because win rates don’t tell you everything.

When you do this you will find that most of your changes fail for one reason or another. E.g. you are ignoring important mechanisms like how Genitours dominate foot archers. Or the change has side effects and over-buffs them in certain situations. Or you literally gut the theme of a civ (e.g. Mayans)

For example here is a potential Burmese change:

  • Burmese have a problem with archer civs but not cavalry civs. Since we want civs to have responses to everything and not generate civ-wins this is a problem. Providing them with the 2nd archer armor helps their skirms which overwhelmingly will help with archer civs but not affect cavalry civs. Arambai armor comes down by 1 to compensate. This change is a detriment to their theme/design of weak archers. It’s the main drawback of the change. This change is likely to be an improvement for balance because Burmese currently have such a low win rate vs many archer civs and this is due mostly to castle age dynamics. The elephants can still shield skirms in Imp vs archer heavy play.
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28

Only problem: I can’t edit the original post anymore. Do you think I should just develop this for a couple of days and then release version 3?

29

If you are just going to take the changes that exist here and make up reasons/arguments for why they should be implemented then no. It will be obvious that you put your conclusions ahead of your analysis.

However if you actually prune the list by going through and checking what I mentioned and eliminating the changes that are bad for whatever reason, then probably what you end up with won’t be half bad. In that case sure go ahead and release a version 3.

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30

Ok, it will take a while, but it should be higher quality. Do you think it is safe to use the winrates as guidelines for when games end, even if they are outdated? I just don’t really want to go through all the tech trees, because I can’t remember everything about every civ.

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31

Oh, also, do you think I need justification for civs I think should be left as is? Or is it fine to just say they are balanced or nothing at all.

32

The winrates are really really difficult to use as evidence. In general the problem is both of these things can cause low win rates and you can’t tell them apart very easily:

  1. The civ’s strength in certain scenarios is fundamentally too weak and needs to be changed
  2. The civ’s design is just really novel and only dedicated players will have the time to figure it out

A similar argument holds for what can cause high win rates.

So in general it’s probably best to just be open about the fact that you’re proposing changes because you believe option 1 is the problem. However you are open to arguments about why 1. isn’t the problem.

You really should define balance at the very top of the post. Options include:

  • A player who randoms into the civ will have a fighting chance (e.g. 45% < win rate < 55% for randoms)
  • A player who knows the civ well has a fighting chance against (but doesn’t overpower) whatever the enemy uses against them.
  • 50% win rate on certain maps (I would avoid this personally).
  • Something else

You might want to start a post to ask people “What is balance to you?” before you go ahead with version 3. After all it helps a ton in identifying and justifying problems when you have a concrete definition.

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33

That is a useful idea. Thanks.

Same.

34

Would you do that as a poll? Or just as a discussion type post?

35

Portuguese need another eco bonus


36

No, some people could report you of spamming.

Also, it is hard to enter a new thread and see that is a continuation of a previous one. Tha5 discourages the discussion in the new thread.

Threads in this forum use to star alive one week or less, unless it is abou5 a controversial topic.

Someone’s personal thoughts about balance can be good or bad but rarely are controversional, so threads like this dont last a lot of time.

Better to continue woth this thread or wait one full month before a new one.

Hopefullt someone will post a new threas about his oponions. You could then discuss his ones with your ones.

37

I usually am against of this chsnge but after reading this, i would be open for that only if they lose bracer in exchange.

Currently only franks and celts miss bracer and last armor upgrade. But they have thumbring. So with this burmese archers would still be horrible but be fine in castle age.

(Elite) Arambai attack values can be tweaked accordinly

38

Didn’t see you answer here, sorry.

Yeah in theory it’s a good strategy, if you know that the enemy civ is lacking BL to grab it, but it’s a double edge blade


BL takes not just about the food cost of 2 scouts, but also about the time of 2 scouts to train. It depends by how many stables you have, but either way your production will suffer some idle time. This gives the opportunity to the no-BL civ to instead adding 2 scouts more. So it’s basically better scouts vs numerical advange, and everything comes down to how many scouts the BL player already have.

Sure you can add a stable just for BL, but that is a huge investment for feudal, and then the enemy would have an eco lead.

Also, it’s not uncommon to add some spears to scouts, both for defense and offense, and with byz cheaper spears is even easier. Byz can even go full spears and skirms in feudal, and if pulled out correctly, it’s super difficult to counter.

That’s why I usually prefer a qualitative approach instead of a quantitative one, with of course all the limitations that it presents anyway


39

It will probably take me a month to fine tune the changes anyway

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