- Otto consulate‘s 7 Azaps/200 experts is too strong, it should cost 300 experts.
- Sweden age-2 3 Landsknechts still costs 300 coins, it should get a 40% discount as same as German.
- Dutch 500-coin Buckriders shippment is useless. Please let it cost less, 300 coins for example.
- Gatling 0.25x anti-cavalry nerf is unreasonable. Please combine this anti-cavalry nerf with age-4 Coffee Mill Guns to make it balanced.
Dev, please consider some of them, thanks
2 Likes
I can t agree more.
the highwayman card needs some buff to make it pragmatic,like the ancient regime and prince-electors for French and German.
1 Like
Your proposed balance change for CMG would make CMG gatlings worse against hand cav vs the base unit. CMG effectively increases dps by 33% whereas the handcav nerf halves their current dps, meaning gats would do ~33% less dps against cav with this card. This sort of tradeoff is good for church techs but not cards. The gatling balance changes in the PUP are good as-is. It just means USA needs to make anti-cav now, meaning a reasonable mass of regulars or carbine cav. Gatlings should have a weakness to cav as part of the game balance; gatlings still do better against cav than most artillery thanks to gats snaring units.
9 Likes
That unit alone is responsible in elimination all the Inca players.
3 Likes
I cant agree on Landksnecht change they did. If devs turned them 3pop cost was for a reason. (Sweden laming them). Why a german player should train doppels when Lands have a charged attack and need less cards??
3 Likes
Because you can’t guarantee getting landsknecht as Germany without sending an Age 3 card.
2 Likes
I can’t work out the Justification for why Buckriders costs as much as it does. Ok, you get 3 Highwaymen, that’s 345c. Is a 10% discount, pop reduction, and ability to train from stables really worth ~950 res more?
If removing the shipped Highwaymen also removed the coin cost I would take it in a heartbeat.
2 Likes
highwaymen should cost 80golds. 100 gold is too much for this units
Honestly, I don’t think the 500g cost is needed. But the real issue in my mind is the combination of effects with the Theaters card. The Buckriders card takes them from 5 to 3 pop. Sending Theaters reduces the cost further, initially to 1 pop (equivalent of the Ruyter), now to 2 pop. People complained it was too strong.
For two cards, Buckriders opened up a slightly stronger version of the Ruyter to Dutch players with a charged attack. When I playtested it, I didn’t feel that they were OP at all. They were still quite easily countered by appropriate units. They’re stronger than the Ruyters, but they should be because you just poured two cards into a single unit. If the 10% cost reduction was too much, go back to the 120g cost and let players have the better version of the Ruyter (30f, 75g, 1 pop). The Germans get their dragoon upgrade with just one card for the Prinz Chevaulegeurs (sp?).
If you want to spend multiple cards to juice a single unit, that should make them strong. When I send 4 elephant buff cards as India, I expect them to be powerhouses because there’s a lot of opportunity cost to get there.
For some reason, the FE devs really just don’t want to give outlaws a broader role in the game. I’ve never heard a good reasoning from them about why. They’re fun units and it’s nice to see some different strategic opportunities open up. The catch is that every time they try and do this, they end up immediately correcting course and nerfing back down into uselessness again. The population cost constraints alone are so unbelievably limiting even for civs like the US and Mexico that are given key cards to enable their use. You still have to spend multiple cards to make them viable to use. It frustrating to see these options continue to be in the game, but also continue to be the lowest of low tier choices. What’s the point of offering an option that’s always a bad choice? That’s just designing in a noob trap. For a tiny handful of niches, let outlaws have a role. The US and Mexico should want to use their unique ones. Let the Dutch have proper Buckriders, and let the Sioux have a proper bandit/Wild West build from their cards.
4 Likes
The problem is to make outlaws better you have to buff them past the civs options it was designed around usually leading to completely OP situations
African civs spamming 1 pop shadowteching longbows paired with age2 goons was op
Usa cowboys ensuring nothing will touch their prescious gats and beating musks was op.
Mexico spamming shadowteching free goons was and sometimes still is pretty bad.
Also many outlaws are pretty good but high pop, so when paired with civs like brits japan usa mexico sweden this is solved so have to be careful
The truth is its hard to balance without breaking core features of civs. Its also often gimmicky to play into some dude spamming 1 unit that is better than normal options. So they tend to regulate them to the fun, but not strictly optimal tier. Which allows flavor but doesnt allow the player to circumvent balance completely.
Sometimes its ok to play for fun. I dont think wokou horsemen are great for china but sometime the suprise goon wins me games. But its risky. Feels balanced to me this way.
2 Likes
I totally understand all of that. And OP stuff needs to be nerfed.
But, what it looks like is that the attempt to balance these units relies on modifying the pop cost. Well, that’s a really rough point of balance. Going from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 3 pop cost is a big deal and completely changes the way a unit fits into an army composition. I look at this and think, well, why can’t we modify other aspects of these units just like any other unit in the game to bring them into balance. We’re arguing over 5% here, 10% there on many units and it’s a real debate, but for outlaws, we’re talking about a 50-100% change in pop costs.
Ultimately, outlaws need a proper niche. Right now, that niche seems to be:
- Age 2/early Age 3 filler units that are cheap gold cost but require a big upfront investment in wood for houses
- Gimmicky exploits for early rushes until the devs nerf it
- A handful of civs that have card support to relieve the absolutely broken pop cost barrier and make them usable outside of this tiny little window.
- They’re very limited mercs whose presence you can predict based on the map
The solution seems obvious enough. They need a proper niche.
- Charged ability as a big source of damage
- Gold cost
- Comparatively fewer hps or armor (not professional soldiers)
- Mexican Standoff at baseline, that is, they can get critical hits, but also suffer reflected damage randomly
Good RTS that are competitive give you lots of guarantees. You know exactly how strong units are, how many hits it takes from one unit to kill another. Good players learn to predict whether they’ll win or lose a battle just by looking at the unit count and composition. That’s good. But what if you add chaotic units to that environment? Add some units that can be either mediocre, really good, or really bad based on the roll of the dice? That’s what outlaws could be. A gamble. Now, re-envision the card support and unit balancing around that dynamic instead of by just taking away 2 of an outrageously inflated pop cost per unit.
Cui bono?
- Obviously the USA, Mexico, and African civs focus on outlaws.
- The Sioux have outlaw cards they could rely on for a “Poker deck”
- And now we also have options to open up specific units to civs like the Highwayman to Dutch, the Indian pirates to India, or the Ronin and Yojimbo to Japan, as just a few examples. Do these via cards. You don’t have to take them. But when you do, you at least feel like it’s a viable and meaningful choice to opt into.
1 Like
That’s why random mercenaries will never be useful.
I’ve always been proposing a fixed set of mercenary combinations (could be civ specific) like consulate allies or African/American upgrade options.
Map-dependent natives and outlaws have a similar but smaller problem. At least you know about what you have after the map is loaded. But only civs that can deterministically access them could make good use of them. Other civs can send cards but rarely train them.
I don’t necessary mind random mercs and map-specific outlaws and natives. Both players play with the same set of options. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they’re garbage, but it’s fair.
However, we have Theaters cards which give Ronin to every civ. With maybe Dutch or Ports, the Ronin makes sense. With others, it seems like a legacy quick fix. I’d rather see that card specifically give one merc type that’s guaranteed and themed to the specific civ. If you want the one guaranteed merc option that is good for your civ, send the card. In mos case, you probably won’t do a merc focus anyway, and if you do have a merc focus, you’ve already built in the card support (ex. with Swedes, Germans, or the African civs).
3 Likes
agree, but the Damage Bonus against shock infantry must be decreased to 0.3 or 0.35. since now shock infantry even can’t win while attacking to Gatling Gun.