Some ideas to balance the Persians

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Persians in nowadays’ game seems too unimpressive. As a cavalry civilization, Persians have few cavalry bonuses. The war elephants are too expensive to build without economic or discount bonuses, and their imperial unique technology is almost useless in most cases. Additionally, the lack of bracer makes it hard to fight in the late game. Moreover, it’s too easy to predict Persians’ tactics in the game.

So, after all, I have several ideas on how to change Persians’ bonuses to make them more competitive in the game. I want to share them and also hope that the developers will take notice of this topic.

  1. Make stables share the bonus of TCs and docks.
  2. Change the team bonus to Cavalry having +1 attack against archers, instead of Knights having +2 attack against archers.
  3. Villagers work 10% faster within a 6-tile radius of TCs.
  4. Receive Bracer and two of the following: Fortified Wall, Siege Engineers, and Bombard Tower.
  5. Remove the old unique technology Mahouts and incorporate its function into the Elite War Elephant. Design a new unique technology specifically for infantry or cavalry instead.

Here is my explanation for each proposed change:

  1. This bonus would allow players to mass cavalry more easily. In the late game, it would make Persians players more aggressive in raiding opponents’ bases.
  2. While the Knights’ +2 bonus against archers is strong, it becomes less effective without a sufficient gold income or enough knights. Therefore, nerfing this bonus and including more cavalry units would be more efficient and versatile.
  3. The increased speed of training villagers can create a burden on resources. Allowing them to work faster around the TC would help alleviate this burden and improve resource collection efficiency.
  4. By receiving the Bracer technology and additional technologies, Persians players would have more strategic options and reinforce their defensive strength in the late game.
  5. As mentioned earlier, the Mahouts technology is largely ineffective. By incorporating its function into the elite war elephant and introducing a new unique technology for infantry or cavalry, Persians would have more viable options in various situations.

What is your opinion on balancing the Persians? Please feel free to share your thoughts.

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1 - ok, sounds good to fast produce knights of fewer stables
2 - ok, I dont mind either way
3- sounds luke a huge buff ! you get faster sheeps/deers/boars, and faster farms for most feudal farms. Then for each new TC you also get faster lumberjacks (move lumber camp vils to TC as well) If so I would remove the TC working speed.
4- Then I would remove them something to get a “significant weakness” (as in my post below)
5- This should be something most people agree about.

For the eco:

  • Persians eco is not that bad. I think an above average eco would give you +100/150/200/250/300 (cumulative) resources at minute 10/15/20/25/30. Persisns should be that far away. A “simple” +100 or +200 resources upon feudal already put Persians to this level. And your (3) give you 200f with feudal farms only.
  • Persian TC bonus roughly gives you +1 vil every 4/3/2 minutes per TC. You need roughly 0.5/0.67/1 farmers per TC to hold it. So the good old “+5% TC speed in dark age,” already makes up for that.
  • A fixed work rate like +15% TC speed from Feudal age would also do the trick (like many already suggested)
  • The “problem” of Persians eco is that it scales so well, so “we” want to have it weak in early game ir mid game. Removing the starting 50f/50w would make a good opportunity to buff the eco for mid game. Or we just slightly buff the eco to struggle less in early castle (ex with a free tech or additional resources)

For my thoughts about the rework, I shamelessly copy my comment from another thread:

I guess Persians will get better cav archers (maybe bracers or a civ bonus), as it is what most voices are asking for. So the question is: what should they lose for it and what should be their weakness.

I personally like giving a weaknees to a civ because it enabled them to strenghtens another part of the civ (thats how civs get balanced). Just like:

Mayans and Chinese trade their weakness to halbs+SO (and Huskarls spam to some extend) against being S tier on arabia.
Indians were lacking a counter to eagles, and got reworked into Hindustanis with UU countering eagles, but lost halberdiers for it (and then their top tier eco) for it.

I would like Persians to keep gunpowder, because otherwise they get too similar to Magyars/Huns. And I dont want them to lose Hussars, paladins, or camels.

Losing Halberdiers may be interesting, as it would be the first paladin civ without it. But it would make their barracks really terrible.
Losing elite skirms may be interesting as well.
Maybe losing husbandry and giving their CA line +20% movement and attack speed ?
maybe losing bodkin arrow and giving their cav archers +1/+2 range and damage in castle/imperial age ?
Maybe losing Onagers ?

Actually, I am not sure what to do because I kind of expect the current civ design “great cavalry with eco power in the mid game” to be kept (so: string hussars, paladins, camels + faster working TC), but I am not sure what to give them as main tech tree weakness…
Like if you have strong stables, strong CA, and gunpowder, what significant tech/unit can you lack ?
Weak trash sounds like an easy road but I dont want to take it too far, and lacking an early and mid game eco sounds like a horrible idea.

Anyone has an idea what could be a good weakness for Persians ?

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Certainly, Persians should not lose their powerful stable. However, we can consider removing the 2x hit points bonus for TCs and docks and maintain the buff to work rate. As for weaknesses, I believe it would be acceptable to have a terrible barracks, considering the already disastrous stable of the Dravidians. Receiving the Bracer technology and sacrificing the plate mail armor and halberdier upgrades would be an ideal compromise. We could even take it a step further by keeping only the pikeman and longswords man, without any barracks technologies. In that case, the new imperial unique technology could allow cavalry to inflict extra damage against infantry units.

However, I understand that the developers may not be willing to make such radical changes, and that’s perfectly fine with me.

4

I agree that they need something to encourage them to do aggressive Town Center drops. I’m not sure that your idea is perfect, because it doesn’t really encourage aggression, it just provides a general Improvement across their entire economy. But I like the thought behind it.

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Too close to Poles TB

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Thank you for your notice, my bad, then just take the original TB is better.

7

Yes indeed. The Mahouts should be given to elite war elephant by default

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I think Persians have decent eco, their weakness is lack of versatility in units selection. Persians have good stable and that’s it. I can imagine several ways to fix this problem:

  1. Bracer, it will make them strong CA civilization.
  2. Fast light infantry similar to shotel to support their stable units against pikes.
  3. Bonuses or units for strong Castle Age push. To play like this: 2 TC + strong pressure → than boom.
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I think it is the other way around. They have a versatile military, (only really archer/CA/skirms imperial power and monk techs), but have a lack of eco from mid minute 15 to minute 25. And this lack of eco make them fall behind at high level.
Pros do not want to play them in 1v1 because their opponent punish that too hard.

They have a good win rate on Arabia:

They mainly struggle on Arena, probably because you want good early to mid eco and good monks to secure relics.

Only lacking bracers for trash units make them good in trash wars, I dont know why many underrate their trash. I think having good ##### + ### should be the main things you want in late fame.

Against pikes, they have:

  • hand cannoners
  • trashbows
  • their own FU halberdiers (at most 25 other civs can argue having as good or better).
  • heavy scorpions (the lack of SE is compensated by having BBC)

Evetything you propose are significant upgrades, so I feel they should lose sonething to compensate, for any of these. Or you give a minor early to mid game buff.

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That’s the point, Persians has halberdiers which make them capable in trach war, we can nerf this by delete the halberdiers, supplies, gambesons, plate mail armor and squires. This would result in the worst barracks among all civilizations, but on the other hand, considering the bonuses I mentioned yesterday, it’s not a big deal. In this case, I believe Persians should be given a new UU which has high melee armor (3 for the general, 7 for the elite) and 1.1 or 1.05 speed with 8-12 attack to against pikes.

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Thanks for replying, after combining the replies and some thoughts on my part, I have a new version of balancing. Here it is.

  1. Maintain the original team bonus. Remove the bonus of start with +50 wood, food and TC, Dock 2x hit points. Instead, make stables share the bonus of TCs and docks.
  2. Villagers work 10% faster within a 3-tile radius of TCs.
  3. Receive Bracer but lose access to the halberdier, supplies, gambesons, plate mail armor and squires upgrades.
  4. Add battle elephant line to Persians’ stable. Remove war elephant from castle and substitute the elite battle elephant upgrade, weaker in hp and attack but move faster (multiplier of trample damage will not be changed).
  5. Receive new UU called Immortal Army, which has high melee armor (3 for the standard, 7 for the elite) and 1.1 or 1.05 speed with a decent attack (9 for the standard, 12 for the elite). The name “Immortal Army” is chosen due to its historical background.
  6. Remove the old unique technology Mahouts and replace it with a new unique technology specifically designed for either infantry or cavalry.

How do you feel about this new version, please reply freely。

13

Losing supplies and gambesons doesn’t really hurt them but having generic heavy camels and pikemen without plate mail and squires is leaving them pretty weak vs. cav civs imo.
Except mongols all civs with camels got also halberdier or a bonus for camels

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What kind of play style would you like to give to Persians? For instance, it could be:

  • Cavalry archer civilization like Huns and Magyars
  • Boom into strong late game like Byzantines
  • Offensive civilization like Malians or Aztecs
  • etc

You’re trying to give Persians a little bit of everything. I don’t understand how it should be played.

Combination of full stable, fully upgraded CA and heavy infantry UU looks weird to me. Light infantry (karambits, shotels, ghulam) can accompany cavalry, but not heavy infantry.

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where is Turks for 20 char

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Oops i didnt think about turks, my bad.

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You are right, but what I mainly want to express is make Persians’ stables great and adjust their infantry to balance capability of late game. Obviously, Persians should go cavalry in most cases. Besides, cav archer offers another style that Persians’ player can go into, also gives extra way to deal with halberdiers besides use hand cannoneer or crossbow. You can treat my new UU as a whimsy, in fact, even have this kind of UU is not a big deal, because we can set its build time, reload time, price and other factors to balance it so that it can be used as a tank position to delay the opponent’s infantry attack and gain time for our cavalry archers and hand cannoneers.

In my opinion, Persians don’t have everything, they still have a normal siege workshop, bad monastery, the worst barrack and university lacks some technologies, even all of their units are literally generic without any bonuses or tech in battle except when knights vs. archers.

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  1. Huns already have 20% faster Stables as a team bonus, so not only is that suggestion not unique, but Huns get the full benefit from Feudal Age whereas Persians would need to get to Imp to get the full effect.
  2. Still an underwhelming bonus. Not useless but still underwhelming. Instead could do Knights train x% faster.
  3. This is…interesting. Early game faster gathering of sheep and boars, but not as fast as Britons or Mongols’ respective bonuses, then transition to faster farming which is faster than generic Farmers but not as fast as Slavs.
  4. Agree with getting Bracer, disagree with getting 2 of those 3 techs. One maybe, but not 2 out of 3. And of those I vote Siege Engineers, especially if it can apply to elephants.
  5. I am both for and against this. For because you’re no longer pigeonholing a UT to their one UU. But this is a weak argument considering other civs have UTs that target their UUs which are either good (e.g. Logistica) or bad (e.g. Bearded Axe). Against because paywalling the movement speed behind an Elite upgrade (An expensive one at that too) discourages training them in Castle Age to begin with. That, and it closes off any potential shenanigans with other elephant units should Persians gain access to them in a future patch.

As for my personal thoughts, double down on having access to every (non-unique) mounted unit in the game FU as their core identity. This will make playing them more flavourful, fun and easier to balance as they have a clearer identity. Linking this here as these were ES’s comments on the civ.

Giving them gunpowder was a big mistake imo, as it not only gives them an identity crisis, but it uses up a lot of their power budget which could’ve been used to give them FU CA’s and Galleons. You remove gunpowder, and suddenly you have more options to buff their key strengths, their mounted units and navy. Also Kamandaran as a UT is great…but Persians shouldn’t have gotten it. Would’ve been great on another civ that doesn’t have Arbs.

My suggestions would be as such:

  • Give them access to every non-unique mounted unit in the game (So getting Battle Eles, Steppe Lancers and Ele Archers with their Elite upgrades).
  • Remove gunpowder (HC, BC and CG) and Halb, give them Bracer. This way they have FU Cav Archers and a full Blacksmith means at least their foot soldiers have all weapon and armour upgrades even if they don’t get Imp unit upgrades.
  • Give CA’s a civ bonus (e.g. increased attack, fire an extra arrow, take the Mongol bonus and Mongols get a new CA bonus).
  • Remove Kamandaran, replace it with a UT that gives mounted units either a gold discount or bonus damage resistance (Or both).
  • If not keeping Mahouts give (Elite) War Eles the bonus movement speed staggered (i.e. War Eles +15%, Elite War Eles another +15%). Then give them a UT that heavily discounts gold cost of their foot soldiers.
  • If keeping Mahouts, then make it apply to other elephant units too, and make the foot soldier gold discount a civ bonus.
  • Team bonus could either ramp up based on Knight/Cavalier/Paladin, or be changed to something like faster training speed, more Pierce Armour etc.

They already have clear weaknesses in their foot units (No Imp upgrades for their mainline Barracks and Archery Range units), and their defences fall off after Castle Age. They were designed to be a booming civ with a strong lategame offence.