Just gonna post some random shower thoughts here on the Burgundians. I’m a casual watcher of some twitch streams like nili, t90, and theviper, and have heard some common lamentations regarding the Burgundian civ. They seem too 1-trick pony, they borrow weird “revolution” mechanics from age 3 that not all like etc. They are not considered strong at the moment, so I was looking at their civ bonuses thinking, “how could these be tweaked and improved, but still keep the civ’s identity intact?”. So this is what I came up with.
*“Economic upgrades available one age earlier” replaced with Economic upgrades research 10/20/30/40% faster in dark/feudal/castle/imp
-Right now I think their current eco bonus is rather unused at high competitive levels. The meta seems to basically be, “well, I can research heavy plow on the way up” or something, because timing is pretty set in the meta for so many things, and having just one civ exist outside of that doesn’t work quite as well as hoped I think.
*Stable techs cost -50% (I would keep this one)
*Cavalier upgrade available in Castle Age
-This one could stay I suppose because it fits the theme, but I would prefer to just get rid of the whole “one age early” theme and instead change it to something like Cavalier researched instantly which would happen in early imp as opposed to castle, but still be a mid-game spike. Sort of similar to what you guys did with the Saracens, maybe because you don’t want to give bloodlines to the Coustillier, they could get a “Knight units +20hp” civ bonus. Since their cavalier would definitely be weaker being moved to early imp than it was before.
*Unique Technology-Flemish Revolution: I’ve seen a few comments on not liking how this feels like Aoe3 and it just being an “out of aoe2” type of tech. So how about a slight rework?
Flemish Revolution(Cost increase to 850F, 600G; Research time increase to 60s)-(Remove the upgrade to all existing villagers feature) Create Flemish militia at town centers. Also return 10% of a villagers food cost as gold when killed by an enemy (And only an enemy, not self-delete or gaia).
-So basically that last part I felt was a mechanic that was already in aoe2 (Madrahsah), but gave the burgundians something unique against late imperial raids. They already have an identity as a economic powerhouse, so why not give them something else in that food-gold theme that would force an enemy to take more consideration into late game imperial raids.
Anyway, just some thoughts on how to improve the civ.
Peace.