Celts
Stronghold (250f, 250g) : Castles, towers and town centers fire 25% faster
Mongols
Nomads (TT 40 → 20sec / 300w, 200g) : Castles, town centers and houses do not lose population when destroyed
Saracens
Madrasah (TT 30 → 20sec / 250f, 150g) : Monks return 33 gold when killed. Monastery works 50% faster.
Slavs
Orthodxy (200f, 300g) : Monks +3/+4 armor
The aim of theses changes is giving a real use to UTs we never see. I took up some proposal seen on the forum, and I think they’re good ways to make them more appealing without being game breaker.
Costs could be adjust easily for the balance sake. (the techs are currently underwhelming, but the civs are in a good spot). It could also give some ideas to compensate some eventual minor nerfs to the civs.
Some other UTs might need some changes (Hi Flemish revolution), I focused on this topic on the one we rarely see. Feel free to share if you have other ideas
Good change, I like i, makes it useful against raids
This will actually make the tech useful, but not sure if it fits thematically.
This technology definitely needs a complete rework, pretty sure the vast majority of the people agree on this. However I think monastery +50% faster work would still be useless. How about monks cost -40%? (This wouldn’t be OP before anyone says it, portuguese get -20% as civ bonus, yet still dont use monks often, and for this you even need a castle and spend resources)
Unfortunately slavs don’t really use monks because they can already counter knights and siege pretty well. However I agree with this change just to make it a bit more appealing.
Yeah this tech is a weird one, 40% won’t change much as well but it would be a nice start. Problem is that Saracens are already good at countering knights or Elephants for exemple, monks are not that essentials for them in many cases…
It’s also true, at least it will be a bit more useful
To me this seems like it makes the tech worse. The advantage of madrasah is that you can build a lot of monks and clown around, but before a significant number die you get the tech.
The problem with a tech gating a discount is the same problem with supplies. You have to delay things past critical timings in order to get the savings
I understand the problem. But I still believe this option is better because you need monks to die to take advantage of the current technology, and obviously you shouldn’t be wanting any of your units dead, that is just a bad design. And to solve the supplies and similar techs problem: we need very low cost and fast research time. I must admit that the tech being unlocked in castle just makes it harder to be justifiable.
Mongols shouldn’t have that as a tech, should be a civ trait. Maybe swap the Nomad tech out for Drill and a Mangudai/Cav Archer boost as Imp tech.
Saracens tech should also be a trait. It’s useless, your units has to die to get something from it. Waste of resources to research. Maybe Monks get additional range or speeded up conversion/healing rate.
this would be insanely strong and would make Celts one of the best defensive civs in the game. I think Celts are already a fairly good civilization so I don’t think it’s needed. For the cost, the firerate of Castles is also improved so I’d say it’s not a bad bonus already.
even like this, I think the bonus is largely useless. It’s fine though, Mongols are already a fairly strong civ, it would feel unfair buffing them further.
sounds good on paper for a Monk rush but when you factor in how many resources you need to actually get this tech (Castle etc.), then you realize that by the time you get it, it’s too late for Monks to be relevant anyway. I do agree the tech is bad though, and Saracens as a civ are not great so they could use something more.
10 hits from Crossbow to kill a Monk? I think Crossbow should stay a Monk counter unit, not a fan of this change. I also think Orthodoxy is already decent, iirc it allows Slav monks to survive 1 more hit from Scouts/Light cav, the problem is again the difficulty in building a Castle in the current metagame.
Guilds mostly depends on if the market price hasn’t bottomed out before you get it. At bottomed out prices guilds could give you 242g which is a lot when you only save 3 gold on each transaction. That’s like 8100 resources sold after the tech required.
But closer to the default prices it’s pretty good.
E.g. if you sold enough to bottom out both wood and food (around 5400 resources) you’d save close to 500g with guilds. Split between two players each with guilds would save around 250, making the 3 gold savings on each transaction at the bottom “profit”. On 3 relics (90g/min) and 42 farmers selling (140g/min) that would be 13% more end game gold. Whether this is underpowered is up for debate.
The tricky part of the analysis is that you have to take the food cost of guilds at the margin. So 300f doesn’t get sold at the high prices, you add it to the 2700 food you’re going to sell. Making it the 2701-3000th food, which of course sells at the bottomed out price. This also means if you never sell really sell food (for whatever reason) you might skip guilds and just pocket the 400g because the marginal price is higher.
