make them double the stats and cost of skirms. 240 hp with 30% ranged resistance, a 30 ranged attack at 3 rof with same multipliers as skirms, and 2 min range with 20 range. cost 130 gold 100 food.
nerfs raw damage output by 13%, makes it a more balanceable ranged damage type, and increases their cost by 54%.
they would also more than double their ranged hp and nearly double raw hp, increase their damage vs every unit that isn’t light infantry and artillery, and start out with more range.
they would end up killing bow riders nearly twice as fast while tanking twice as long. they would also tank over than 50% more hussar attacks and deal more damage to hussars than before, giving jans far more time to kill them while giving more powerful supporting fire. even against heavy infantry their dps would increase while massive hp increase means they counter them even harder.
would trade siege damage for having skirm stat line any day of the week.
So hasically you want to have a non-merc jaeger for the ottomans ? Well I’m positivevit will not gonna happen anytime soon !
Of course you would trade abus for non-merc jaegers… Any civ would…
And if you want to have traditional skirms, do not choose ottomans/swedes/britons/japanese/aztecs/incas as your main civ.
I think abus making siege damage is a fine design. I guess abus may need a buff for late game (like an additionnal buff per upgrade like huracas, or an age 4 card), but in supremacy games, ottomans are already strong enough as a whole, no need to make every unit strong.
By the way, can people please stop taking the OP bow rider or the OP unit of the patch as a reference to ask for buffs ?
by that logic dutch have jaegers in age 2 as well, and better than jeagers in age 3. jaegers are good despite having less damage and hp compared to veteran skirms per pop becuase 10 jeagers are cheaper and faster to send than to make 20 skirms, because 40% ranged resistance is huge, and because 5 move speed. none of the advantages abus have. the cost/train advantage, the improved ranged hp and the move speed define jeagers.
what does the abus siege damage do for them exactly? they do less damage at a slower rof than skirms to anything but artillery, which is problematic, and light infantry, which people in the forum apparently disapprove of.
without public data such as win rates and pick rates like in legacy and pretty much every other rts out there, the only way to tell if any civ is doing fine is our subjective experiences and guesswork.
since it is percentage and not shots taken/needed, you can replace bow riders with any similar unit, such as war wagons. it makes no difference.
Well, if you sincerily believe that twice the damage and twice the hp is only worth twice the cost, then there is nothing much I can objectively discuss with you, because in this case we will never be able to agree with each other.
It makes them look different from most other civs. If you do not like civ diversity not sure why you would enjoy playing aoe3 to begin with.
This has nothing to do with making pierce damage vs. making siege damage.
This is a problem I fully agree with. Sadly, contrary to AoE2, AOE3 does not have public stats of play rates and win rates directly available to players, even though developpers have the data (in a recent patch, india got nerfed to balance their “very high win rate”) and it might be possible (?) to retrieve game data per http request.
The only thing we have for sure is the tournaments. And the last 1v1 supremacy tournament showed a very high win rate for ottomans, but it is (to some extend) biased by the fact that the winner, Kaiserklein, picked the civ many times while seemingly being way above its competition (as his usually competitors did not participate). Is it because Ottomans are strong or because he did not care so much what civ he picked ? I would suppose it is because Ottomans are in a good spot now.
Personnaly, I would like to use standard units such as a Portuguese Hussar (+15%/+15%), a French/Spanish Dragoon (+15%/+15%), a dutch skirmisher (+30%/+30%), etc, as a comparison to show that a unit is too weak. And War Wagons are not exactly a reference unit.
But to be fair, I didnt really read that part because you were talking about bow riders, so I just thought “w/e, what follows is just comparison with an OP unit to make abus look weak”.
And after reading… well you didnt even compare your new version to the current version of abus gun. We are comparing for a units with melee armor:
30 (pierce) damage every 3 seconds => 10 dps
40 (siege) damage every 3.5 seconds => 11.5 dps
With the current multiplicators against light cavalry, itmakes:
60 (pierce) damage every 3 seconds => 20 dps
60 (siege) damage every 3.5 seconds => 17 dps
The damage difference is not big, if we exclude the annotying fact that abus will be slightly slower at firing and hence in practice will probably shoot one time less.
But as many people said, the abus gun is not the power unit of the ottomans, which is fine. And as a reminder: despite the investment of the artillery building, ottomans do have a version of “skirm” already in age 2, which we only also get with the dutchs and the indians (plus arguably the british and the japanese having a long lasting / long range archer unit).
But they are not talking about redesigning the unit. I mostly saw “please give the 3 ROF back” and maybe a few “please increase the multiplicator against light cavalry”, not your “please throw this unit with slightliy below average stats and replace it with an OP unit”.
And “some people in the forum disapprove” is not exactly the best reason. You have constantly people disapproving the nerfs for their OP civs.
its more pointing out how much worse abus are compared to skirms.
if you believe the changes makes them jaegers, explain why.
if it’s just a visual change on a stat enforced through negative multipliers vs literally anything but infantry, it’s not really diversity. Real diversity should have a positive effect on gameplay and not be crippled by massive restrictions. If abus only deal base damage to light infantry, that 40 siege damage basically does not exist.
so, the 3.5 rof and the negative multiplies vs villagers, ships, all cavalry and artillery have nothing to do with doing siege damage? if they did range damage, they still would have negative multipliers vs artillery, light cavalry, villagers and ships?
its all-subjective guess work, we both agree on that.
abus have a .75x damage malus vs light cavalry, not a 1.5x bonus due to .5x malus vs all cavalry.
its 30 siege damage every 3.5 seconds, not 60. this halves your calculated dps to 8.5 vs 20.
it is a complete third of your main army comp, half your trainable unique units, and the only unit along with artillery with more than one combat card. it is also the ottomans only light infantry unit and supposed counter vs light cavalry and heavy infantry, which they do worse than standard skirms or even longbows despite costing 2 pop. in damage, hp, resistance and multipliers they are inferior. now compare that to soldados who at least have the same hp, multipliers and resistance.
it is not slightly below average; they have less damage than skirms while having roughly half the hp. skirms do nearly twice the damage against units like light cavalry while having over double the ranged hitpoints and double raw hp. their stats per pop is absolutely garbage. even strelets have more raw and ranged hp than abus after the 20% penalty. It is the only unit in the game to do so.
I agree it is not, pointing out the absurdity of people complaining about abus performing too well against light infantry when that and artillery are the only things abus deal more damage to than skirms despite massive hp difference. though dealing with light infantry is why you get royal guard hussars and spahi as well as carded falconets and bombards, not your only light infantry unit.
Abus guns are still strong in age 2 with a good range and work well with jans. Buffing them will make them too good in age 2, if they were to be buffed maybe change 1 of the cards to increase their attack or rate of fire slightly.
It’s the other way around. YOU are asking for changes. It is YOUR JOB to explain how it will change the balance and affect the game.
And as long as you believe double the HP and damage is worth double the cost, it is hard to take your balance changes idea seriously.
Siege damage means that the unit does not care about resistances. Abus are more effective against units with pierce armor compared to skirmisher/crossbows unit types. So less effective against Black riders, war wagons,… than Hakkapelits, dragoons.
A diversity does not need to be game breaking. Just aminor difference. Like French/German having the +10% stats on skirmishers for a +400w/g. Small stuff making a smalk difference.
You are correct, I didnt see that. So abus are less effective against light cav compared to jaegers. Against dragoond, they get a x0.5 while skirms ger a x0.8 from ranged resist, so abus are around 60% as effective against dragoons ( and 50% against bow riders and war wagons, but it is the thing of the unit to be comparatively less effectivevagainst melle armor units).
So we can argue for giving abus a x1.5 against LC instead of x0.75. I still do not see what you want to throw the whole unit out of the window.
And then again, when you talk about changes, it should not be the job of the readers to look up on the wiki to understand your changes.
So are you on the opinion that Kaiserklein justs distespectimg his opponents by beating then with the weakest civ in the game ?
Come on, do not just pick words out of context and answer to the global comnent.
I agree that it is to some extend subjective, but there is something we can get from tournaments.
I do not agree with the fact that every single if your main units should be OP or above average. Go talk with aztecs main who complain about how weak the arrow knight is, namely the single anti artillery unit for a full infantry civ.
Yeah I missed the x0.5 against cavalry, you are not adding anything. So we back at “why a whole redisign and not being satisfied with the small changes like ROF to 3 and x1.5 to LC”
If everyone gives a different idea on how to change the balance, especially with unit redesigns, I think it will just make balance harder for devs.
you make a claim that it would turn them into jeagers, and when I explain how I don’t believe it will and ask why you think so, you say it’s on me to prove your claim?
abus are strictly worse than skirms against units until they reach 50% rr or are light infantry, which leaves only artillery. hence skirms are significantly better against hakkapelits and dragoons than abus. skirms also deal superior dps to heavy infantry.
that leaves only 75% resistance artillery, which again is problematic, and light infantry as the only units that abus are superior against. that siege damage isn’t a minor difference, it breaks the counter system since artillery should counter abus, and it leads to their damage and rof being nerfed against every single unit type except infantry to compensate.
it also leads to a situation where ottomans have multiple ways to counter light infantry through superior cav, abus and artillery, but no effective way to counter light cavalry.
more so I am comparing abus to skirms, who deal twice the damage to light cavalry while also tanking twice the damage, and even deal more damage to hussars than abus.
fair point, next time I’ll list before and after.
its fine if they aren’t the best, but they need to function. abus dealing 50% of the damage against light cavalry and less damage against most other units, while at the same time having half the effective hp is broken. Moreso when they end up being too effective against their counter, artillery, and a unit type otto already have many counters to, light infantry. arrow knights are a cost and pop effective counter to artillery, abus are not against light cavalry.
imagine if arrow knights where terrible against artillery but effectively countered cavalry. that’s the situation abus are in.
we all make mistakes, no need to be defensive about. it doesn’t make your other arguments invalid.
you shouldn’t just assume the devs are incompetent. a data informed approach to design and balance fun and engaging gameplay is the ideal. but that also doesn’t mean players should be silent and keep their ideas to themselves because the people in charge know better. Player sentiment and feedback are important.
interesting that you brought up tournaments again. I just checked the most recent tournament in esoc and every otto match outside of mirrors has been a loss. even kaiserklain has a 0% win rate with otto. if we were balancing off of tournament performance otto would need a hotfix as a d tier civ.
this is the problem with a small sample size in a tournament setting which doesn’t represent the game for most players. it’s incredibly inaccurate and swings tournament to tournament, especially when one player represents the lions share of its performance. this is more true for aoe3 with its small tournament scene compared to other games.
but coming back to abus, one game in particular interested me. an otto vs lakota match where the lakota player wiped out the otto fb with bow riders against jans and abus. despite costing 2 pop those abus where dealing the dps of a single skirm, and the match went exactly how I expected it to.
In the end I don’t want abus to have double the hp and damage of skirms, I’m pointing out how much worse they are currently and that they need changes. My preferred change would be to add a swordsmen heavy infantry and bashibazouk light infantry unit to the ottoman roster and move abus and jans to age 3 while buffing them. Encourages a more micro heavy gameplay age 2 that feels fairer to fight and lets the ottoman army comp scale naturally.
Abus Gun after all DE nerfs is still a decent unit.
However I would consider to give him Veteran upgrade automatically in III Age the same as most other shirmisher type units have (regular Skirmisher, Forest Prowler, Cassador…).
Moreover most of Dragoon type units do have automatic upgrade to Veteran. Abus Gun is supposed to counter them so I think it would be fair to give Ottomans this upgrade for free. They have the weakest economy in the game after all.
This small modification would not buff Abus Guns in Age II which is also intended. We don’t want them to be stronger in Commerce Age.
That is not what I meant. I didn’t explained it because I feel it is weird for me to reply to someone’s balance idea and having to give more details than the OP himself.
I think double damage and double hp is worth more than double population and double cost. This is because double hp make them tank better against counter and virtually provides double the production speed. Double the hp also means that the damage output does not “drop to half” when the unit get only half speed.
The only drawback is in “medium microed” skirmishes, where the enemy one shot your units one by one, as he would have a lot of overkill against regular skirms.
Jaegers are basically double skirms with +10 hp (250 hp), +10% pierce armor and +1 speed. 200g is similar to 100f/130g due to gather rates. Yeah these boni are very good; speed helps for kitting; pierce armor and hp helps in skirm wars, but I still see the Jaeger as similar to a double skirms, as being a merceary comes with drawback (upgrade, weakness to spy-like units).
For this reason I see a double skirm much more like a Jaeger than a Dutch skirm.
I agree with that.
I meant here that I do not see a problem asking for an increase of the multiplicator of abus against light cav. I do not know how well it goes with the “actual civ balance”, but for me it would be a fair buff.
If you think it is fine if abus are underwhelming as long as they can do their job, then we are on an agreement.
Sorry about that, I edited the message right after posting it, as I was being a little emotional while posting. Didn’t think you would reply on the non-edited message.
It is not what I meant. I just think that aoe3 is a very complex game and at this point it is very hard to know how to balance things, as everything has so many implication. So it would be easier for devs to say “abus are a little weak against light cav, let’s buff that a little bit”, than “let’s redo the whole unit and hope we do not oversee any big implication on any matchup”.
I think that devs of aoe3 do a great job at balancing the game and offering content (even though some of their design ideas bring a lot of polemic such as for mexicans and hausas), but I do not think they have the time to make a complete analysis for every single balance change. They use PUP for that.
Nice ! Thank you for the link, I didnt follow there is a new tournament ! And this time Mitoe is participating.
I was refering to this tournament, where Ottomans got 10 wins out of 12 games:
For the current tournament, I notices Ottomans in one mirror match up, one loss against Lakotas, and one loss against Haudenosaunee. I feel at this state there is still nothing to worry about. Especially as Lakotas got bow riders in age 2 that are very good against Ottomans.
didn’t have time to watch the games, but I will surely watch a bunch of them.
These are also different changes from the double skirm idea. I do not like the idea of adding 2 units to the ottoman roster.
If Ottomans need a buff against light cavarly, I would rather think about increasing the abus gun multiplicator, and maybe give them a fortress age shadow tech.
It is still hard for me to see if Ottomans really need buffs, as some civs are known for having glaring weaknesses, like aztecs vs skirms/artillery, china against heavy cavalry, swedes/ottomans against light cav. But I currently do not see a problem with a small buff to abus against light cavalry.
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I just saw this tier list video for supremacy 1v1: Aoe3 Civ Tier List - INSANE changes! February 2022 - YouTube
Ottomans are highly rated, so I do not worry about them. Even though it is surprising to me to see China, Germans, and Ottomans that high. For ottomans, it is possible that they get very good rushes/trades early so that the opponent cannot transition to light cavarly well enough and janissaries are enough to deal with them.
I remember jaegers having 5 move speed, and that’s what the wiki said as well.
adding more complexity and variety for ottoman age 2 play would be a positive. a melee only heavy infantry and a light infantry combo is easier to balance than jan/abus age 2 and adds more micro to the otto army comp. also gives more room to buff abus and jans and improve their scaling.
