Free ballistics? 
Yeah, lets make them completely broken.
Last time I checked, with free thumb rings, Tartars is not âcompletely brokenâ. Instead, Tartars is actually slightly below average even with a solid early eco bonus.
Also, please provide some more constructive ideas next time instead of just being purely sarcastic.
Its fine as a bonus but Portuguese dont need this
In some other topic we have discussed how to balance the weakest civs (turks, koreans, italians, porto)
Free ballistics can work, even if i would like portos pushed toward the uu.
Other equivalent bonuses are cheap University tech, or even wood free
If you lock it behind requiring university like Magyars needing blacksmith back then its not broken
Would you mind elaborating why Porto does not need this buff?
Ballistics ist not comparable to thumb ring, its wayyyy more important.
Actually I m not interested writing 500 words to descripe that, maybe ask people who are deeper into the game. They will tell you the same.
It comes to my mind that all gunpowder civs are pretty underwhelming with current meta. Some of them are doing relatively okay merely due to other bonus and options. I probably need to have another post discussing this issue in particular.
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Haha unforunately it is just not true. Thumb rings vs ballistics is a highly situational choice. Even considering both players can micro like beasts (not something players below 1800 could achieve), thumb rings is much better when fighting against melee units as they stand still to attack archers, not to mention the higher DPS brought by thumb rings. On the other hand, ballstics will offset opponentsâ micro when fighting against archers as well. If you are confused by my explanation, I strongly recommend you to watch Heraâs video on comparing thumb rings with ballstics. I think he would offer you a better explanation.
- It affects water too, and Portuguese are already a top water civ
- Portuguese have good options in the Castle Age because of cheap Crossbows and Knights
- I think the gold discount should be 20%, 15% is good but not with Portuguese. I would make drush and m@a much stronger
- Organ Guns need a SMALL buff
- Devs said that the reason they donât have Squires is they could protect siege much easier and it would be op while Celts have super fast Halbs lol
- Feitorias should take 15 population
Yes I watched that some weeks ago, but that video is only about theory under very unrealistic assumptions for your statement. Of course its better if the knights run straight towards you, but thats rarely the case. In practise games consists with units running not in a straight line to you, a lot of hit and run all cross over where you need ballistics. Thumb ring doesnt give you that much on its own because arrows wont hit too much since archers usually face the problem dealing with moving targets.
Every at least decent player will always go ballistics first and not thumb ring, you can watch that in 99% of tournaments or 1v1 games you can find. Even Hera (or any other pro) would never go the other way around.
Coming up with with such a theoretical video appears kinda strange to me. Thumb Ring is a great upgrade, but way less important than ballistics and usually pays off in a combination if you already have ballistics.
Dammn, now I wrote more than I wanted. Anway, the impact of free ballistics is too big.
Portuguese x-bows and knights are only good if the discount is higher considering they do not have the second gold mining tech, something often people ignore. I think a bigger gold discount would be good, but I also want Portuguese to have a power spike in castle to kind of compensate for their sad early game.
Free ballistics for Portuguese makes their water stronger, but this change wonât affect the ranking of navy civs anyway. In general, on water Italians is just too broken and Vikings could be insane if they survive in Feudal. Portoâs strength wonât kick in until you have UT and mass caravels. That wonât happen until mid-late TG.
Organ Guns might be just fine as they are since they are supposed to be those units that are hard to mass yet quite unstoppable after massed. They were very strong when Portuguese was first released and then nerfed. I do think maybe a faster moving speed would be better because right now they canât even escape from onagers.
Feitorias without a fundamental change might never be considered seriously on a competitive level. It is a fun concept, but I feel like the devs might feel itâs a pain in the â â â to balance them right. It probably just ends up as another Atheism.
I mean the Ballistics addition is nice but Itâs not needed if those that I mentioned + Gold Shaft Mining existed
The answer to why ballistics is researched first is pretty simple. Thumb rings requires 300 food, simply not something you can afford in early castle age. Normally you wonât get to afford thumb rings until late castle or even early imp. I personally always go for ballistics before thumb rings, but that does not mean thumb rings will be less important than ballistics.
Also, only ranged units can do hit-and-run, and I do admit that ballistics is better off with ranged units such as archers and skirms (you donât want to engage fights against skirms with x-bows anyway). But when facing knight rush or siege push, I highly doubt that ballistics will help you much shoot down slow-moving mangonels, monks, or knights that are already on your face.
Free ballistics will save you 60s only with around 5 more x-bows and around 175 woods. Even assuming ballistics would have that much effect, the opponent wonât have to wait too long and avoid fights for their own upgrades. Considering as Portuguese you are likely behind in up time and army production due to weaker eco, this would be a nice power spike to catch up and get back more map control so that you would have a fairer fight in mid-late castle before its late game potential starts to kick in.
they do not receive the final gold upgrade.
leitis get wrecked by archers.
Lithuanians barely break 50% win-rate when you consider ALL people playing them, from the viper down toâŠwell meâŠ
they barely see tournament play and werenât doing well in the only tournament that used them pre buff.
furthermore pre buff numbers shows that Lithuanians werenât doing very well overall.
if you were to increase the gold cost of the Leitis, i would recommend a compensatory buff to the civ.
the unit is already perfectly viable, just expensive, the unit literally has 1 type of unit that is an effective counter to it. the archer. that said i agree with decreasing the cost of the upgrade.
best camels in the game, fully upgraded cav archers, just missing arbs, otherwise perfect archers.
decent siege, fully upgraded hussars, solid barracks only missing final armor upgrade.
and one of the best ecos in the game to back it all up. i donât think Indians are lacking options.
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Generally, ballistics itâs more important than TR, you can even see it because not every civ have TR, but all have ballistics. TR correct the randomness of the shot, while ballistics allows you to hit moving target, it means than you can either hit or not a standing target without TR, while without ballistics you will neve hit a moving target (unless itâs really close, or moving towards the archer).
So yes, free ballistics itâs a lot more powerful than free TR. Itâs even more powerful combined with the other portos water bonus.
Portos just need a bit of a eco lead, like buffing the gold discount, or extend it to tech. If you really want to exaggerate give them camels, to compensate the lack of squires, or free stone mining upgrades, to help them toward castle/feritorias.
They donât need insane bonus.
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Free ballistics clearly can work for Portuguese. Very powerful buff both for land and water. What I do not like is that this would push Portuguese towards archers. We have a lot of archer civs. That is why I would like to see more organ guns, and a separate wafer buff.
Free ballistics would kicks in slightly earlier than buffed organ guns, but maybe just add free stone mining to help portos to put the castle up.
Overall, free ballistics is better than what they are now. Just saying that even a buff should push towards game variety. Organ guns are very unique, they were the way to go for Portuguese.
Halabs + guns could bu pretty cool. Probably just a better rate of fire/accuracy to deal with archers and it would work.
Then can you explain please, why did italians and vikings become that two civ which are being âoverratedâ by the community, why not portuguese and malay for example? Clearly, the thing what you explained is happening, but it can not be the only reason why italians and vikings are considered the best civilizations on water. There are balance issues aswell.
Iâm still sticking to nerfing Italian dock technology discount to -30%, decreasing viking warship discount -15% in imperial age. Regarding other water civs Iâd give berbers shipwright, give koreans +3LOS for their fishing ships aswell (not just villagers), and change the saracen transportship bonus to give a cost discount aswell.
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Yes, Iâm not saying that italians and vikings donât have the most raw power in water, what Iâm trying to say itâs that they arenât unbeatable.
Well, this is just an hypothesis, but I think they have become the most overrated water civs for 2 reason, first, because their bonus are the most obvious (cheaper docks, ships, tech) while other have different bonus (like towers, harbors or water UU, or simple a good eco, but without a specific water bonus), second, in the last years we tend to look more after the prosâ meta (especially in tournaments), and they always go for the most powerful civs for the map, since they try to have every little advantage that they can, since they have high stakes. But in a normal game, it matter less who have the slightly more powerful advantage.
That being said, I agree that some changes could be made, but Iâm against, giving them some insane buffs, like making TS costing like a galleon.