PUP March

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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General

  • Champi Scout Adjustments:

    • Champi Scout speed reduced from 1.1 → 1.0 (Runner, Warrior and Elite versions unchanged)

    • Champi Scout attack reduced from 4 → 3.

      • Gain +1 attack vs. Cavalry

      • Gain +1 attack vs. Camels

      • Gain +2 attack vs. Shock Infantry (+1 → +3)

Developer Note: These attack bonuses are only applied to the Champi Scout and not to the Runner, Warrior and Elite. This is targeting the specific interactions between starting scouts in Dark Age.

  • Champi Runner adjustments:

    • Champi Runner bonus vs buildings removed (1 → 0)

    • Champi Runner upgrade cost increased from 100f 60g → 120f 60g

    • Champi Runner upgrade research time increased from 40 seconds to 50 seconds

  • Champi Warrior adjustments:

    • Champi Warrior upgrade cost increased from 125f 100g → 200f 175g

  • Champi-line cost increased from 45f 25g → 50f 25g

  • Champi-line Outpost build time changed from 15 → 30/25/20/15 seconds (with Scout/Runner/Warrior/Elite)

  • Champi-line Train time increased from 30/30/21/21 seconds → 45/40/26/21 seconds (with Scout/Runner/Warrior/Elite)

Mapuche

  • Settlement train times adjusted:

    • Skirmisher 52 → 56 seconds.

    • Elite Skirmisher 33 → 36 seconds.

    • Spearman 44 → 47 seconds.

    • Pikeman 33 → 36 seconds.

Tupi

  • Curare effect on Blackwood Archers reduced from 3 damage over 15 seconds to 2 damage over 15 seconds (Archer-line unchanged at 5 damage over 15 seconds).

  • The dead unit refund bonus for Blackwood Archers now correctly refunds 15% of the total cost (7.5% per each Blackwood Archer).

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Huh. Apparently the new Inca Monks were supposed to have unique voice lines this whole time. I assumed their using the female villager voice lines was intentional because they didn’t record new Monk lines. I hope that means they don’t have male voices. I’ll have to check it out.

Edit: I tested it. Now the Inca are the only civ with unique Monk voice lines for both genders, which is very interesting. However, I discovered a bug. If a standalone Relic is picked up, but there is a Monk with a Relic from the start of the scenario, only the standalone Relic will count for a Relic victory. If the Relic the Monk was originally holding is put in a Monastery, the countdown will stop, and it will resume once that Relic is ejected.

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I like they listened to the feedback that they tried to make too many changes at once and didn’t change the training time. let’s see how this will play out - i hope these nerfs will be enough (and imo they should, but it’s really hard to tell)

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Has the feature to select both hotkey wood camp and mining camp for settlements been added? Am I asking too much? You just needed to make it resemble a mule cart.

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Really…? They gutted the unit in multiple areas unnecessarily.

And also kicked the Mapuche for no apparent reason.

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Well I for my part see a lot of different community feedback reflected…
idk - maybe you should start listening to other peoples inpiuts then you might see that aswell.

ofc devs will not just make anything anybody in the community demands and it’s clear that if they decided to go a direction they won’t completely reverse it. So it’s a question of how disagreeable the community members are in recognition of these adaptions. If you are like one of one billion in the extreme of disagreeableness, they probably can never fit your specific demands.

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So dark age champi scouts are completely gutted (okay, whatever - not like militia are any better but I wish they didn’t hurt its scouting abilities with the speed drop). And then the upgrades are more expensive (which I don’t care for either) and the unit is slightly more expensive. I think the unit needs testing again after dark age, but my own suspicion is that they’ll be fine if the upgrade nerfs or the cost increase are reverted (but not both).

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I see a lot of people angry that the Champi was nerfed too much in a different way to the PUP.

Also who on earth was asking for the Mapuche settlement unit creation speed to be nerfed? I never saw any complaints about the civ, let alone that aspect.

I don’t see how “just nerf Dark Age Champi creation speed” was that specific when tons of people were asking for it.

There’s making reasonable defense of the devs actions, and then there’s this.

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More like “Champi Scout Decimation:”

It’s four direct nerfs.

And at least two indirect nerfs:

Now, not only is the Champi Rush gone, but their scouting ability is also nerfed into the ground. Seriously, just the attack nerf would probably have been enough, but look how they massacred my boy!

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I think you have the wrong perspective here.
Devs don’t NEED to be defended. We are not in court and they didn’t do anything they aren’t authorized to do.

Ofc it’s fair and share to give devs feedback, suggest stuff you would like to see.
But THEY are in a responsible position and want to actually improve the game. If they don’t think something will be a good fix they won’t do it. And that was probably why they didn’t increase the training time. Cause you need to see that champis replace the milita line for the civs - and increasing that would make it really difficult to play full dark age with these civs.
And that’s why the approach of the devs they chose is actually way better than a blunt “just increase the training time” that didn’t took this reality into account. Devs took the responsible decision to go for a path that is way safer. And ofc you can criticize them. However you were just wrong and demanded a blunt nerf that would have actually backfired. And that’s why they are devs and you don’t and we in the community should always only make suggestions and before preemtpively criticizing devs for not implemention our ideas look if effectively what they did wasn’t actualy better than what we suggested.

And please stop playing the accusing lawyer here. It’s NOT a court and devs aren’t on the dock in cross examination. It’s the wrong approach. We’re all togehter in ONE BOAT.

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Correct.

They are the devs because they can program. I can’t program.

It’s the court of public opinion. And I don’t like how they took the one civ I really liked from the DLC and kicked it in the head multiple times, despite it being fine.

I was mid-tournament, and now one of my options has been gutted. I don’t have a wide variety of civs I can use well, so that really hurt.

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I heard feedback claiming the mapuche training in settlements was too strong.
Was it? Hard to tell without the stats.
The nerf is rather minor, so it’s probably something they did because they got that feedback similar what they did with coustillier.

I am pretty confident Mapuche will still be a very strong civ, just because of the berry bonus. BTW can I critize you then when it turns out Mapuch STILL are a top tier civ even with the nerfs you deemed to be unnecessary?

BTW: I also like Mapuche. Not as much as I like Tupi, but with the right tweeks Mapuche can become a very interesting civ to play with and against. IT WILL require tweaking though, it’s a really tough design to get right.

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I’m in a fair few AoE2 groups, never saw it mentioned once. If there were any complaints, it was about Bolas Riders, but they were few overall.

“Still”? I’ve been looking at the Mapuche win-rate. It’s not good.

Their berry bonus is nice, but it’s far from the strongest Dark Age food bonus around.

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If their winrate isn’t good yet it’s probably because people haven’t figured out yet how strong the berry bonus is really and how to use it optimally.
And it IS one of the best early food bonusses. Cause you can go earlier to the berries and you can take more before you have to add farms. A double effect, that I have to admit I haven’t figured out completely yet how to use optimally. You can also tatoh rush with that btw, it has a lot of applications, but it needs to be figured out practically as we are too used on our standard patterns that it’s nothing we can get right when playing the first time.
At some point the community will have figured it out and then Mapuche will be top tier with so many early bonusses to play with.

However I am curious where do you have the mapu winrates from? Are they reliable? And whar are they in actual numbers?

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AoEinsights

AoE2 gets figured out at lightning speed these days. If none of the pros have figured it out yet, it’s probably not busted.

Mapuche are held back by mostly relying on non-power units. They don’t really have a heavy-hitter. Sure, they can be a nuisance to grapple (or, used to) with their counter-unit bonuses, but nothing that screams “I’m a problem and you have to deal with me” to the opponent.

I just think the nerf wasn’t needed and felt too soon after the civ came out. Khitans are a hilarious reminder of the opposite problem; players were complaining loudly about them for ages, because the civ was (and still is) insanely broken. But there, nothing was done for months. Here it’s a kneejerk after a few weeks to something I never saw described as a problem.

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There it says 51.2 %
That’s actually quite good, almost very good.

And we need also to reflect that this includes a lot of closed and water maps where mapuche will struggle massively. What is also something on the list of “why this civ needs tweaking”. So, considering this it’s actually quite good. It’s lower than the other TLC civs, especially Tupi seem to be absolubte bonkers (which I somewhoe actually expected.. I think the civ was just too smooth… just not at THAT level).

IDK… I’ve seen worse performing civs being nerfed. It’s far from “not good”. What winrate do you expect from a civ you like?

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15 extra seconds would have changed anything

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actually… it seems they did that aswell, just not mentioning it in the patch notes :frowning:

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I only saw that number on the lowest elo bracket.

Everything else had them on 47-49%.

Not unusual. They keep saying they fixed the Alexander civ’s priestess voice lines, yet still haven’t.