Which tournament could they be changing it for? RBW is empire wars. TTL is almost over and likely will be before the patch takes effect
I suppose my exposure to them is a bit limited, but they always seem kinda weak. Definitely weaker than Bolas or massed double-bonus skirms. But probably stronger than Guechas just because Guechas are so useless.
Tbh (feel free to quote me on this) Gurjaras is fine right now and pretty good (not strong) on deer map as well.
I dont think many people knows this, but there is a certain archer into super fast castle age BO with Gurjaras (which kinda counters MAA as well).
That involves taking ALL of the sheep from mill eventually, and this is the point where lots of player miss (its actually really bad to keep them until castle age)
The sheep bonus in team games and the original dodge recharge time were the only broken thing about Gurjaras. After the first patch when sheep bonus was nerfed and changed to diminishing returns the TG exploit was ended. Then the bonus damage % was reduced to 40, upgrade cost of Shrivamsha riders and their recharge time were nerfed and the civ was already balanced and competitive. Many units like maa, CA were actually very weak and unusable at that point and civs dependent on them couldn’t compete against the top civs like Chinese, Mongols Hindustanis at that time. Obviously these maa civs couldn’t exploit the mill garrison and early game limited food availability of Gurjaras at that time. All they had to do was to fix units like militia line, CA, scorps, towers and buff the extremely weak civs. Instead they listened to the “new civ is broken” folks and overnerfed Gurjaras. Same happened with Poles and now recently with Shu and Khitans.
So many that added up. Plus two dozen other civs got buffed.
They were not fine at all. Even before chicken, they were bottom 20 in 1900+ 1v1 winrate for more than a year before chickens were introduced. Even if its not intentionally done, when you buff dozen other civs and units and a civ dropped to bottom tier on all settings as a consequence of it, need to re-buff them within a couple of patches. They did that with Hindustanis but unfortunately left Poles, Gurjaras weak for several months.
Bottom 20 is almost middle of the pack to end… like 48-49 % winrate down
Wild chickens were introduced with 141935 and that’s exactly where you will see the big bump for gurjaras. The last nerf to Gurjaras before that was update 81058, almost exactly 2 years BEFORE the bump.
Gurjaras design though was always a bit flawed in favor of open maps and higher elos, so it often showed on the bottom 3rd or the overall stats whilst it was still frequently picked in tournaments - and sometimes even after the chicken bump on maps where the chicken effect didn’t matter.
(btw gurjaras sit on 51.5 % on 1k9 Arabia, they are a quite good Arabia civ - albeit clearly not living up to their heights with like 58 % winrate or so there - but is it wrong from the devs to nerf a civ when it has these absurd high winrates on release?)
The chickens definitely made things worse but even being in the middle in the only setting they’re supposed to be good at, is bad. Unlike other lower winrate Arabia civs, they’re not good on Arena, water or hybrid maps either. Were almost never used in Redbull qualification, so not an Empire wars civ either. Below average in all settings is awful balance. Its like the old zero eco bonus Vietnamese.
For the past 2 years they do 10 random admin bans plus 5-6 bans per player. That eliminates 20+ civs. After that both players still have to draft 6-8 civs. That’s like 30+ civs in the draft. Even like that they were not picked that often. Only picked 6 times in LY cup out of 23 sets. 18 times in KOTD 6 out of 63 sets, 4 out of 14 sets in The Garrison. And if you pick this current TTL where there are no admin bans, they were drafted only 9 times out of the 160 sets played so far. 150+ times they were not even in the draft. You could say they are more popular compared to civs like Teutons which are even more abysmal in tournaments but certainly not a civ that players prioritize.
Yes after they gave a couple of buffs - camel scout training time and +50 food from berries. But before that they were less than 50% even in Arabia. I’m totally ok with civs having lesser winrates in Arabia if they’re good elsewhere but shouldn’t overnerf when they’re meant to be an open map civ. Open map civs will have higher winrates overall due to Arabia being the most played map.
I think Blackwood Archers and Crossbows/Arbalests should do the same amount of poison damage, which would turn into an advantage of the Blackwood Archer that is cheaper and has higher rate of fire.
Or Kona could be much cheaper, especially on the gold side.
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Both? Even with infantry armor boy is frail at going toe to toe with other melees
If Kona is supposed to be an anti-Gunpowder unit I would actually just give them 2 Shrivamsha Shield (and increase the Gold cost by 5 potentially in compensation)
Given that I too would prefer dodge over extra armour (in fact, in my opinion, they have too much of it), the problem is that they don’t currently have a very specific role
How does a unit with 0 armor have too much armor. If it’s too much missile lower it and let them benefit infantry armors
If you look at the Mapuche tech tree, you’ll see that they don’t have Redemption (and obviously no BBC).
Do the developers expect players to deploy Champi (with +15 HP) against enemy sieges? I hope not. It is well known that the Maya, with their 100 HP eagles, are no match for a mass of Onagers. I don’t understand why the Mapuche should be any different.
That’s why I say, forget about armour and upgrades, even set it to 0/0. Give them a couple of doge and bonus attack against siege, and then they’ll have a role to play.
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I wouldn’t put it to 0, that’s too much imo, but i see your general assessment and support it.
I think lacking BBC is a big mistake. The Mapuche did use stolen Spanish guns, after all, and like you said, they don’t really have an answer to siege.
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If it’s just dodge it feels like a weaker Shivramsha no? Maybe I’m being cynical but I want these to be good
Clearly they need to have another destinct role than Shrivamsha. And that’s probably to be to snige Siege and against Gunpowder.
Nobody wants this unit to be spammable like Shrivamsha, it’s a specilised counter that should excel better in lower numbers. Just a few shrivamsha shield should be enough to bring it there - and one compensation for that can be to reduce the Pierce Armor slightly.
The different role is probably predetermined by the fact that the Konas don’t need any upgrades whilst shrivamshas start to really shine with upgrades, ofc most impactfully husbandry, bloodlines and the armor upgrades. So the Konas would be stronger out of the gate, but fall off in comparison when the Shrivamshas become FU. And as they are a Castle UU it would also not that easy to pump them out like you can with shrivamsha.
I think slingers were meant to be the answer to siege for most of the South America civs. They’re okay in that role but are a bit to generalized to be very effective.
Too many nerfs all at once and that bonus damage gain and loss is weird.
The early Champi Scout rush needs to kept in check but this goes too far with the cost, attack, and Runner changes, it really risks overshooting the right spot.
Increase training time only, maybe nerf the attack of the Scout but keep the Runner unaltered.
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I think just nerf its dark age’s training time was enough..
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