Currently they have lost their monk tech which was given for free to another civ, and while their new tech is essentially a lesser version of the frank’s free bonus for cheaper castles with extra steps, I believe this warrants a new free bonus for slavs.
Boyars are in a good spot, as are their infantry and the eco bonus in their faster gathering farms, so it shouldn’t be an instant eco bonus or a bonus that effects the quality of their boyars -
I believe personally that the bonus should be simple and help replace their monk bonus with an increased emphasis on healing their units with herbal medicine to keep their emphasis on quality over quantity in mind.
Suggested fourth free bonus:
Castles + 40 Garrison space
Allows healing of one’s own army or ally armies en mass with strategically placed castles to support army sustainability, as well as provides more ability for villagers to Garrison in a single castle rather than making additional town centers when vill numbers are well above the normal 20 in the gathering area.
As well this may be used to increase arrow volley numbers to greater amounts the more the castle is garrisoned by Slav or ally units and evenly possibly increasing max arrow volleys for their castles based on Garrison and unit stats.
Able to be used both offensively and defensively.
Additional buff: Slavs gain Architecture - Frank’s have it with their instantly cheaper castles, slavs would be well within reason.
, I would suggest that detinets be switched with Druzhina in imperial age and Druzhina moves to castle age to improve their initial men at arms into castle age longswords rush sustainability and helping them against knight rushes by an early improvement of their pikes and so on.
I also suggest that Slavs gain Bombard Towers.
(At the moment detinets effects towers as well but Slavs don’t have good towers at all in imperial age)
No-one cares about healing once your armies are that big in the lategame. It’s more important to maintain momentum, and just keep pouring units into combat (obviously not streaming them to their deaths), not healing, that loses map control.
Lol, you really took inspiration from your name on this bonus, I see.
I don’t really favor discussing buffs of mid-tier civs outside of the context of also buffing other mid and low tier civs. But if Slavs are to be buffed, I’d prefer the more direct route of improving their existing bonuses - farm bonus to 12 or 13%, or throwing in Arson and/or Squires along with free Supplies.
As @TheConqueror753 says, this wouldn’t be particularly useful in most cases. Most people will pass on tying up to 60 of their valuable military units up for some healing. Maybe up to +10 garrison space would be situationally useful, mostly for villagers.
Added a part about increasing max arrow numbers which will help Slav units and ally units in increasing arrow volleys for defensive or offensive measures.
Basically no-one plays like you. No-one else cares about defensive bonuses like this, it’s boring. There’s a reason the Persian TC drop and stuff exists, defensive bonuses just aren’t as interesting as aggressive bonuses.
I believe you underestimate the power of healing units like teutonic knights and boyars en’mass.
Similar story to healing vietnamese rattan archers or Italian Genoese crossbowmen; it’s simply worth it to keep up your army’s health.
Or even just healing knights in general rather than letting them die and waste gold that could have been saved for the next wave against the enemy. Healing units is key to victory in many situations.
With +40 Garrison space and a focus on healing via castles rather than monks in addition, the slavs will be able to field and heal their units with a single building, rather than waiting to need to field multiple castles to achieve the same result.
Furthermore, this allows the slavs to even fall back to a single castle that they can still maintain their army from if their other castles have well and fallen against an enemy pushing in with great aggression and this will allow the slavs a greater chance to push back with fully healthy units.
Where teutonic knights have their town centers, it’s my belief that the boyars need their castles.
Added bonus buff suggestion- additional buff: slavs gain Architecture - Frank’s have it with their instantly cheaper castles, slavs would be well within reason.
They have that in free supplies, they have that in faster farms, they hardly need for anything in the early game. It’s better if it’s something that helps them through the mid-game and into the late game.
Looking forward to @HealFortress’s future thread about how Khmer need a buff by adding +30 spaces to their houses and make them shoot arrows so that you can strategically housewall half the map by leaving your villagers stuck in their homes.
The faster farms is something that kicks in in the lategame, when the farming eco is up and running. And free supplies is only good for M@A early on, when it’s still a slight advantage, and it’s well known that M@A don’t yet make the cut as a powerhouse for most games. @MatCauthon3 is right, it’s their early game that needs buffs. The lategame is fine with the halb + siege, and farms + hussar.
Slavs are one of the last civs that needs buffs, they are OK in random map, and pretty high tier on EW, and on some maps (e.g. Gold Rush) if they get a Castle up and can spam their cheap Castles, they can be very hard to stop.
Why do you think Slavs need a buff? I think they are a very decent upper mid tier civ at worst on basically every map.
Boyars are a very niche unit but I don’t see that as a problem inherently
Given how hard it is to utilize militia/men at arms and that it’s generally speaking what the civ is nudged to do in the early game and the fact that people will no doubt attempt to put it into practice rather than use their brief archer window or their generally strong scout cavalry rush backed by faster farms, that would be the reason for their lowish winrate in the early game rather than them needing a specific early game buff, which I believe would be a mistake.
People play slavs and they will attempt their unique qualities, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be successful - I believe that graph is a picture of the rate of failure to pull it off by imperfect build order and micro.
1700+ players are failing with slavs because they cant execute a simple build order? Thats your argument for why slavs are sitting at 40% in the early game? Alright. Im done with you, you cant be anything but trolling at this point
No one’s perfect, so yes.
There’s more to it than build order, it’s also the fact that you need numbers for men at arms to work, where archers are more efficient and scouts are better suited regardless of numbers above 5 or not in common raids.
For myself, men at arms and so on are easy enough to just ignore in low numbers, I expect better from players at higher levels.
