Separate balance for treaty mode

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

Maybe the game needs a separate balance for treaty mode.
More than half of the balance complains in the forum are about treaty mode. It’s nearly impossible to balance the game for 1v1 and treaty equally.

Every civilisation gets a some (de-)buffs that only apply in treaty mode.

Maybe more importantly, card decks have to be made specifically for treaty mode. This way they could also change the effect of some cards for treaty and remove early unit shipment cards from the list of available cards.
People are forced to make a treaty deck and are unable to use a none treaty deck and the other way round. Also prevents accidentally choosing the wrong deck.
There has to be a premade deck for treaty of course.
This would also solve the problem of people using none treaty decks in treaty mode.

Maybe to some degree that applies to other game modes like deathmatch. The original AoE3 had separate home cities for deathmatch and supremacy modes.

4 Likes
2

i like that idea, would solve a decent amount of issues…

1 Like
3

I agree with your opinion

If game developers only care about treaty, they should separate treaty and 1vs1.

1 Like
4

Hm, I don’t know, it’s supposed to be the same game. The treaty playerbase is small compared to supremacy.

I’m not sure right now that asking to change civs and cards for treaty is something to do. + new players would struggle if things work differently from supremacy to treaty, especially cards.

As unbalanced some civs on treaty are, you guys always adapted from the normal game.

2 Likes
5

I was about to post this. They should be completely separated in my opinion.

1 Like
6

You have to make a separate deck for treaty so it might be possible to balance the game by just changing up the cards a little.
If you make a treaty deck you already see the changes and the cards that are absolutely useless for treaty get removed from the selection.
The changes should only be applied to civilisations that are very overpowered or absolutely underpowered in treaty.

2 Likes
7

most changes happening to treaty will also have a positive effect on team games.

that is what they are doing, you think oxenfurt for sweden was nerfed for supremacy? no, the card was only useful in treaty. same goes with most trade cards frankly.

or are you suggesting different cards between modes? cause i am against this.

listen, i know this is hard to swallow, but:

most balances changes could simply be made to upgrades or cards for both gamemodes to balance them semi separately. you dont use unit or resource cards in treaty, so if a faction is underperforming then simply buff that, or nerf them if they are overperforming. similarly for treaty: just nerf the most egregious lategame cards.

let me give you an example of what i would change:

France: nerf wilderness warfare (20% HP for skirms, cours and natives), nerfing it would help bring france more in line but on the same time it isn’t a card france absolutely need esp in 1 vs 1. for 1 vs 1 the change would be inconsequential, while for treaty and to a lesser extend team games it would positively improve the games balance.

like if you honestly think that changing elephant handlers or oxenfurt reform is bad for 1 vs 1, then you’re playing 1 vs 1 way wrong.

8

Agreed. I have a lot of experience with treaty since I “grew up” on that game mode on AOE3.

It’s a fact that there’s a smaller player base of treaty players compared to the 1v1 or team supremacy community, but treaty is still an important, really fun part of the game and deserves its own set of civilizations balances.

The ESOC community knew that 1v1 balances didn’t really translate well with treaty game modes, so they made an entirely different patch to balance every civilization’s performance for treaty.

I wish the devs would look into this and somehow implemented a way to make the civilizations perform differently for treaty games. Back then, the ESOC team made a loader before starting up your game, you could choose which version to play: the original game, the ESOC patch, or the treaty patch (which was very refined and well-balanced).

Yeah, it’s mostly true. Really experienced players can really make a weaker civ seem really dominant on treaty against a much stronger civ.

But even then, some civs just don’t have a chance in treaty (i.e. mainly the warchief civs) due to the eminent eco drain later on. Only 75/100 settlers are constantly gathering due to 25 always dancing on the community plaza. They don’t have all the juicy mill/plantation bonus cards that make European civs thrive late-game. They have inadequate mechanisms that just don’t stand up after a long time such as (like Lakota’s infinite bison cards).
And some rely on finite resources like wood, but don’t have a consistent way to gather them to stay in the fight. The Haudenosaunee rely on wood to train their musk unit (tomahawk), but without a good wood trickle or good, infinite wood card, they lose their ability to produce their musks halfway through, making it extremely tough for them to play without a crucial function.

I played a 2v2 NR60 on Orinoco using Portugal. Against me was a very, very good Lakota player and his German ally. We were actually trading well because he kept maxing out teepees ON the front lines, and I constantly had to use mortars to bombard them while his buff units were hurting mine.

Eventually, he only lost because his eco couldn’t keep up, otherwise he did extremely well microing and keeping max pop. He ended up with the most kills (most from killing weaker, cost-efficient Chinese units) but it was his civ’s intrinsically weak lategame eco that killed him, not his lack of skills.

That’s a design problem no matter what cards you pick, or how well you play

9

The main thing I wanna see is reduce the buiding restriction. Make it so the entire half of the map is available for construction and lock the other half.
It will be much easier to balance maps for treaty this way too.

2 Likes
10

That is the most beautiful suggestion I have ever heard of on this forum.

Funny, I’ve always hated the little circle we get to build on, but I would’ve never ever thought about that lol

12

Hoping that they make it official. I’ll definitely be playing with your maps once they bring mod support back (wha’ts taking so long???). The tiny radius where you can build is really bad.

1 Like
13

so out of interest how do you do that? is it a rule you imposed? or is there say walls in the way?

i’d like for treaty in general to enforce Halfmap, esp on maps like orrincco.

15

I think it’s a good time to reopen this debate, should the treaty be balanced separately? :thinking:

16

No leave it alone, I play both treaty and supremacy and it would over complicate things.

17

I think that the proposal that had been made to reform the imperial age a bit helps a bit. Since certain civs like italy in treaty seriously need a lot of buffs, but I think some of them will unbalance the game in supremacy.

18

No matter how you want to change the balance, treaty balance cannot hurt supremacy. Treaty can be unbalanced but the player base is small and niche. Minority follow majority.

19

Well, treaty balance is lategame balance, where every civ should have chances to win that late in the game. A easier way to do it would give balancing expensive imperial techs on the capitol/monastery/firepit or wherever since treaty decks are blocked enough for more HC cards.

Also most treaty cards arent used in supremacy cause use them instead of crates or units means a lost game

1 Like
20

I don’t know how much money are the developers willing to invest in a some form of “Treaty balance DLC ?!” but the community is really small tbh and they only play 2 maps which are Upper Andes and Orinocco (sadly).
Vividlyplain helped them a lot by adjusting certain maps to fit better the Treaty format and congrats to him, he did a good job. A good thing will also be to maybe try to adjust those 2 maps with more techs that further balance the civs age V gaps if possible ? I’m talking about techs that do stuff only for certain civs that have a disadvantage against the rest, etc. Idk.