Hi guys,
Just watched a recent viper video on YouTube where he says he feels like Saracen market needs a nerf (starts talking about it around 7:40). Nicov is also in his chat seeming to advocate for a market nerf.
Saracens get cheaper markets (save 100 wood). And the big bonus, commodity fee reduced to 5%.
I’m not sure my feelings on a nerf, or what would get buffed to off-set it. But it seems like an interesting topic, curious to hear your thoughts!
The market is situational. If you put your villagers fine in the right place to work, you don’t need to trade.
But in special situation or in late game where you have less gold, this good trade from Sracens is a good benefit. Don’t forget Saracenes does not have any Eco bonus except the cheaper market that is not huge Eco bonus.
To an extent I agree, though I think for the Saracens it’s a lot less situational, their market allows them to be very flexible I think, and in almost every situation it’s beneficial to trade your resources around with very little fee. Aka quickly buying and selling res to allow your to get fast power spike upgrades.
Personally I like that aspect of the Saracens. But I’m wondering if this community feels that its “OP” like Viper seems to be saying.
I think the biggest advantage is, when your enemy blocks your gold income and you need gold to defend. But as my experience says the low elo player does not know to use the market perfectly. And that is why Saracenes are in the bad state at the moment. I don’t like Saracenes too. I miss some Eco bonus.
Only pros like viper are able to use the market bonus that we’ll, so I can see the argument in their opinion for a nerf.
The problem is, most of the players aren’t able to use that bonus so well, some even ignore it, so nerf it would mean having a sensible drop in the saracen pick rate.
This is a game for every elo, not just for pros, and while it’s ok to consider and discuss about what they say, we shouldn’t take it as written law.
There are eco bonuses much more powerful than saracens market. I wouldn’t like their market to be nerfed since that gives them a special identity .
Viper is obviously a great player, but his opinions on balancing are very often wrong/don’t correspond with the stats. He’ll play a game and say “xxx felt good”, completely unscientific, or say xxx trades poorly when the numbers/resources invested were completely unbalanced. That video is a perfect example, playing a much worse player who is playing one of the worst civs in the game, who frankly played poorly. The were never picked in HC3 btw, other than losing in a showmatch.
Saracen WR, even at 1650+, are below average.
Saying the top 1 player doesn’t know balancing properly but random ladder players do is nonsense. It has been shown multiple times that stats are particularly unrepresentative of high level balance (Aztec, Chinese and Britons are top 3 best civs yet all of those are just average according to winrates). His opinion on how something feels in an actual game is much more valuable than paper calculations on how xxx fares against yyy in equal resources which never happens in an actual game.
Besides I doubt Viper said Saracens are OP he probably just spoke about this specific bonus (I haven’t watched the video)
I don’t want to deny the importance of a gut feeling, especially if it comes from an experience player.
That being said though, his feelings doesn’t value (in absolute) more than mine or the felling of any other player, and it’s simply not representing the entire player base of the game, that is why despite valuing (from a personal point of view) his opinion, I disagree, because the “OPiness” of the bonus is something that is present only in high pro level games, and the game shouldn’t balanced around just a minority of the player base.
Feelings are very prone to human bias, numbers aren’t. If a bonus is OP, the civ should have an above average WR. And those 3 civs are highly, highly unlikely to be the top 3.
Sample size is insanely small
There have been some changes since then like Persians getting nerfed and pathing improved but I don’t see that making Chinese Aztecs and Britons drop out of top5.
If stats are not subject to bias then please explain to me why Britons are bottom 5 of 1650+ elo
I’m afraid this opinion of his is as misguided as Hera’s opinion of the plume nerf. I mean c’mon, it’s their only eco bonus, combined with their new archers it’s at last a usable 1v1 civ, you don’ down like that a poor man that can finally step up 11
Look at WR by patch.
There’s no “human bias” in numbers, there is small sample size, which is the case of the current patch Britons WR (plus people probably misplaying them with the improved pathing).
Britons aren’t top 3 now after the pathing (probably weren’t before). Chinese same thing after pathing and losing redemption imo. Aztecs maybe top 3. Celts, Franks, Slavs, Spanish (and maybe others) in the discussion.
Also, I take it you are not a statistician. There were 212 trials, let’s assume Saracens are actually strong and should win say 53% of the time (~112 games) - the probability that they win 88 or fewer (which is what has happened this patch) is 0.00051440868.
Your tier list would heavily contradict most pros opinion even after the patches, I’m pretty sure archer civs are still dominant. And I’ve never heard anyone say Spanish or Slavs are anything special in 1v1.
If Britons are bottom 5 due to small sample size, how can you tell that’s not the case for the 20+ other civs that have smaller pick rate than them in the list ? Britons have 5th highest pickrate. You also still have not explained why Aztecs are average according to stats. If you need to come with an explanation for half the stats then you should not rely on them at all, that’s not how stats work.
look, i’m not disagreeing with you about Saracens needing to be nerfed. i don’t think they need nerfs at all, i’m just saying your sample size is small.
I give evidence, you just say “nuh uh”, seems to be a pattern with you.
I’m going based on the data, adjusted a bit for the new pathing. Slavs were already A tier in that video posted (not that that really matters). Spanish have good results, a very strong castle age unit that should do alright vs the improved knights (conqs), and can go knights/cava/pala themselves.
Your Britons question doesn’t make sense. I didn’t say Aztecs were average, nor do the stats, please don’t lie.