I feel like Slavs became much less played in favour of Khmer. There are some similarities between the civs - better siege without bbc + monks with redemption, farm eco bonus that supports similar cav options. Slavs have better infantry especially in early feudal and post-imp and better monks, while Khmer have better archers, so I can see why - archers counter infantry and monks and they’re not easily countered with siege in this case.
As a Slav, I’m disappointed. I want some bonus that will make Slavs different. Ideas:
- monks create 50% faster - good for fielding a monk attack quickly, combines well with Orthodoxy
- siege creates faster - the same idea as for monks
- alternatively, combined slightly faster produced monks+siege
- skirm bonus that will make it tougher to go archers + skirm counter, like melee armour or speed bonus
- more generally, some sort of armour bonus that will make it tougher to clash with Slavs on their terms
Any trash bonus has a nice historical connection to it: Byzantines have good trash and Slavs had a lot of Byzantine influence.
Slavs are definitely not the same as Khmer. The fact that they both have a siege bonus and comparable farm bonus doesn’t make them the same civ. Slavs have infantry+cav(boyars are basicly same or better than paladins) while khmer have archers+elephants. Both of the civs have a lot of situations were one is a much better choice than the other.
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Slavs is still a very strong civ, that doesnt need a buff.
And it is not the same as Khmer, just because both have a farm bonus.
In a TG you pick Khmer for elephants mainly, while you pick slavs for infantry+Siege Onager.
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Since latest patch, you pick slavs probably for heavy cavalry, but I agree with what you’re saying.
The only clearly problem is Orthodoxy.
Its effect is not bad, but people usually don’t and can’t gather lots of stone, build a castle and research it while going monk rush. When people can research it, usually the monk rush will not work anymore in the game. So it is regarded useless or meaningless.
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Nobody made that claim, most definitely not me.
I’m not talking about TG, balance is much less important there because other players can cover your civ’s weaknesses, no civ is weak in TG. This doesn’t address my point at all.
Infantry+HC only are hard countered by pike+xbow army which can be massed more quickly from feudal and is cheaper. Siege counters them in turn, but getting enough siege out with enough support also takes time, that’s my problem. Faster smush would help.
Alternatively, you have to go with skirmishers, but then you have an army where everything costs food and that delays your uptime. Stronger skirms would make it more worthwhile although I still prefer FC smush.
Yeah, Boyar has the same disadvantage.
The strategy I envision is FC forward castle monastery sw and push into opponent’s base when he’s unprepared. Orthodoxy won’t save your monks if they aren’t massed or protected anyway, but it’s a nice boost against snipes when your opponent counterattacks or they get left behind, so you don’t have to go for it right away, only when you have enough monks. You can even build a castle later on (if there’s not enough feudal army countering) to support your push then with more than just boyars. Orthodoxy is for this, not that useful in other situations.
The problem is, this kind of rush isn’t fast enough, there’s too much to build and produce that’s only available in castle age…
Usually It will be hard to implement since the resources may not allow.
I would like to add an extra effect for Orthodoxy. Now it is not only supplying +3/+3 armor for monks but also make Boyars resist convertion by +50%.
If you wanna use Boyars, you must build a castle this low-cost tech is gonna be worth research in passing.
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Interesting idea, would allow slightly different strats than what I’m thinking.
Or even better, just buff Orthodoxy to give +6/+6 armor to monks instead of just +3/+3 which hardly offests only the blacksmith upgrades.
personally, I think the problem isn’t with the slavs being under powered, but with khmers being so strong with what they do. Look at the recent redbull wololo tournament and just how often khmer were getting picked (granted the settings were different, but still). Slavs still got picked a decent amount though and some civs didn’t get picked at all (did the vietnamese get picked even once?).
In my opinion, no, more armor do not help.
The problem of Orthodoxy is not that its effect is too weak, is that people will not build a castle only for a monk-related effect.
Look, the UT is called ‘Orthodoxy’ which is a religious term, which means it has to be a monk-related effect.
So I keep the monk’s armor and give Boyar the ability to resist convertion.
Military units become more religious by the power of religion, making the sense. 
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You cant remove Boyar’s big weakness of monks. They will become a ‘one unit kill all’ type as feared by the Viper in his latest UU tierlist.
The easiest way for devs to balance the currently useless UT is to simply vastly increase its effect, if you think about it.
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Camels, pikemen, many crossbow or knights, there are always other way to counter.
Look at the Teutons. Is Teutons overpower now? No.
This shows that you did not know the essential of the problem.
People do not dislike it. People can not afford it. Resources will not allow it.
How can you gather lots of stone, build a castle and research it while going monk siege rush?
When you finally have a castle, usually it is in the Imperial age and the monk rush become useless at that time.
Simply vastly increasing its effect is meaningless. Just make it able to benefit other strategies, even a little bit effect is also more helpful.
Well, they did just that when they added Faith to Slavs.
Hera posted a vid where he got salty against boyars, accuses them of being OP… and just as he said “I can kill them with halberdiers but I shouldn’t need them” his deathball of chu ko nu just rekts the enemy boyars. So no, I’m not really sold on such an idea.
While it’s indeed not going to be usable for this strat, maybe that +6/+6 armour would allow them to be seen more in imp, and make monks more viable for healing?
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Monks for healing aren’t so good except early on. Monks in imp aren’t that important either unless you’re really going with a big mass, the armies are just too big at that point, so the gold investment doesn’t translate to such an immediate advantage. (Not saying you shouldn’t use monks in imp, just that their power in early castle is much different.) Massed monks are good by themselves although carpal tunnel inducing. Finally +6/+6 it doesn’t offer combinations with alternative strats, it’s just monks monks monks, it’ll either be stupidly OP or a meme strat (good for making the enemy panic but not worth it if countered successfully). 50% extra faith to boyars is more interesting in that sense.
Agreed on boyars still being weak to mass pike+xbow, it’s easy to get bogged down by numbers. They take less time to produce now but are still a castle unit.
One more idea that would make building a castle easier: receive 100 stone when reaching castle age or something like that. IDK if it’s good, just throwing it out there.
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People may use that 100 stone for another TC, so they can have 4 TC in the castle age.
Slavs eco will be more crazy. 11
We can have armour effect on Ortodoxy and make the Tech useful.
In UT we now have +3/+3 armour. Simply add to this +6 Monk Armour. Cuting in half LightCav bonus against them. Of course not need to be +6, can be less, if this will be too OP.
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