I dont think halberdier can fight Cavalry archer as they moves much faster. Hussar+ GC can help fight CA. Paladins (only 11 civs available) even takes longer time than Genoese xbow to train. Mass Pikes + GC combo should be enough to fight off any cavalry.
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Where do you get the data? What I see is different from you. Italians has a win rate lower than 45%.
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That doesnât mean anything, thereâs no map data so most of them might be water map wins
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No only 1 minor buff (faster TT for GC) so that they are on pair with other civ.
The FS I just wish that they stay the same as now (though we still donât know what theyâll do in the patch).
To this is enough, your isnât a bad idea, but I fear they never make such drastic changes.
Iâm sorry but again, itâs not how it work.
Exactly (it only one of the problems of reading those data as you are doing) the sample is not adequate to state this. What if about that 1.5 (which is low when compared with others) 90% are water maps, how can you say that the Italians are balanced in the land maps.
You canât just take those numbers and state what you want with them without a correct analysis.
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You can use pikes as support but in the long run arenât enaugh, you need mass GC, and now you struggle to mass them because of their TT.
Also pikes+GC are easily counter by ES, so you will want to add hussars, but then they became too many units to train.
Even halb+GC combo will be countered by Elite Skirmisher. Whats your reason for supporting Italians to have halb?
I understand if it is to strengthen late imperial Italians. Again, it is fine without halb in late game as Blacksmith can be fully upgraded
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I never said that italians need halbs, just faster TT (training time) for GC, but I suppose that there are people that would like to go for halbs and another unit (not GC).
Also going for both halbs and GC wouldnât be just easy to counter, but also a waste of too much anty-cavarly bonus.
To me they just need a little help to play their UU archers.
Itâs more about CA, but a faster TT on the GC would help also in imp, where they still take a lot of time to mass.
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Coz you quote my opinion on Italian pikes. I thought you support to grant halbs.
Btw, I agree massing GC is more difficult than other UU archers. But it is ok to fight off knight/cavalry archer with pike+GC combo in Castle age. Training time buff doesnt seem break balance either.
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Sorry, my mistake, someone want halbs for Italians, not me, I misspoke.
My point is that in castle age you donât want to train both pikes and GC, since they are easy to counter, you want to choose one of them so that you could add another tipe of units, like light cav for ES.
So if you choose pikes you will struggle during the transition to imp, since you donât have halbs, and you will be more vulnerable to cav. You can use them if, for example, you think that in imp they wonât use cav, or you want to go HC, but against full cav youâll lose.
So if instead you go for GC, you can decide to use another unit, like light cav (so you can transition to hussars), but if you arenât able to mass GC, you wonât be able to counter the enemyâs cavalry, so again you are on the back foot.
So you almost never want to go pikes+GC, because even if you can counter cav well, you left yourself open to be counter easy with ES (but also manganels, other halbs+ES, scorps), but if you go with only one them, itâs not enough.
They need to make GC viable to mass in castle age, and the problem isnât their cost, but their TT and the fact that you train them at a castle.
When saying CA, he probably meant castle age, not cavalry archers 
Btw contrary to regular cavalry, cav archers do not really threaten Italians imo (except for Mangudai which for some reason perform okay vs GC), I even think thatâs the best scenario an Italian player can hope for. Youâd stay on archers troughout castle age and afterwards continiously add GC.
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Even Mangudai lose in equal numbers. GCs are super strong, to the point that they need a long training time.
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Yes yes sorry, I meant castle age.
Of course they lose in equal numbers, why should the mangudai wins? They already beat almost every other units in the game, and also they can simply run away and hit somewhere else.
The GC are strong only when massed, long TT prevents you to do so, also against mangudais Iâll probably use ES, GC while effective vs CA, they are more used for melee cav, thatâs why they need to be massed, and a fast TT.
you sure? Mangudai win 1v1 and definitely win equal engagements. While ofc this is an irrelevant discussion since no decent player will let mangudai take such engagements without siege rams or something else in front
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There you got a couple of minutes of discussion on that matchup: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/567193396?t=3h42m23s
Not sure what to conclude from that apart from mbl not knowing when to get which upgrades for GC^^ However, within that 5 minutes there were some fights when both players had most of their upgrades and it seems that Mangudai perform slightly better than GC in equal numbers even before siege rams were added. Still think itâs hard to tell.
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Also Iâm going to trow here an idea that I had the other day, Iâm not convinced myself about it, so I just want discuss, itâs also not related with the buff to their GC (which I think is the only buff they really need), this one is more for fun.
So the idea is this one:
- They lose the champion upgrade (they retein the 2HS and full infantry upgrades at the blacksmith).
- Condos get +1 PA and +1 bonus damage vs eagles.
So the idea is to see a bit more of their infantry and their UU, the more pierce armor is to bring them on pair with the champion, yes they are faster and they have +10HP, but they have less attack (-4 compared to champion) and no bonus vs archers, so they wonât be like mini huskarls.
The bonus vs eagles would be so that they can substitute champs in that role, with less bonus (+1 vs +4) but more speed they could force more engagements.
Right now condos are used for counter HC (which is a unit that isnât seen that much) and for landing, both role where condos shine, but like this they could fit in a role of a more mobile, less powerful champs.
Again this isnât a real buff/nerf for balance, I donât think they need it, it is just for fun.
Can people stop balancing civilizations around the winrates? Makes me so annoyed. Iâm calling it now, if people wonât stop balancing civilizations around winrates, balance will only become the same or worse.
For the weaker minded people:
First of all, you donât know if those winrates are legit. They are in fact not accurate, an example: The games played in 1600+ elo (7860) added to the games played in 1000-1600 elo (131,948) and to to games played below 1000 elo (79291) doesnât add up to 202,017 games, aka the all games played according to the statistics (they should be equal to each other, I hope I shouldnât explain this one - early high school stuff).
Seconldy, even if those statistics were perfectly accurate, winrate is NOT the same as the probability of a civilization winning (given that this is a constant). For example a probability of a coinflip giving head is 50%, altough after several flips, the amount of heads will NOT be always equal to the number of tails. In age of empires, the probability of a coinflip giving head is the same as the probability of a civilization winning, and the percentage of the amount of heads flipped is the civilizationsâ winrate.
Thirdy, note that winrate and this probability value is not even close to each other if there were not very but very much flips (or matches in aoe language) made, if anyone needs proof just read an article about the law of large numbers. 1 months of matches counts very few, in other words there can be easily a 5% difference between the probability of a civilization winning and their winrate (by easily I mean there is even a 50% chance, depends on the winrate, the closer the winrate is to 50% the higherthis chance is). Again, for people who didnât understand my statements, this means that those statistics can have huge inaccuracies for example the actual portuguese âwinrateâ, as you call it, is 5% higher.
Once again Iâm asking people to try to be independent when suggesting balancing changes. If you really take balancing seriously, donât take these winrates into account, and try to be as honest as you can, otherwise your suggestions wonât be taken seriously neither by the community (atleast by the bigger part) or the developers. Note that those civilizations might be weak ones, which ones have low winrates (has a pretty high probability, but not as high enough that we can lean on it), but suggest buffing them with different arguements than winrates.
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It i the only way to know if something is actually balanced, or not.
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