Sooo a Dev got Inca Trushed, Defended Horribly, Rage quit, then made these balance changes

Balance is a tough thing, especially in a game like this with so many levers. I try not to judge devs because it’s an ever-changing thing, and it’s not always going to be right 100% of the time.

But if they really are about to nerf Inca vils without giving the civ any buffs… that is ridiculous.

First-- yes, I agree that Inca is still playable without the trush & vil rush strats. They have a lot of options. BUT this was the one aspect that made them unique and better than other Meso civs. Nerfing it is just pushing Inca firmly to a Tier 2 role, with no real reason to pick them over Aztec or Mayans.

Inca has this one strat that they excel at above all other civs. ONE STRAT, that was obvious from a mile away, easy to scout, and easy to defend against if you know what you’re doing. Yes it’s frustrating if you don’t, but so are Mangudai. It’s a total Feudal all-in that can be completely handled & punished by someone who reacts half-decently. BUT it was the one thing Inca was great at.

So let’s review their Civ bonuses, now that their one extremely useful and unique bonus has been nerfed to dust harder than a Phase 3 Marvel hero post-snap–

  1. Free llama. Hey it’s better than nothing! But since starting herdables are now guaranteed to be near your TC, it’s nothing more than +100 food you can tap into in early feudal age. Not much of an eco bonus compared to any of the others!

  2. Villager Blacksmith upgrades-- now starting in Castle Age. Annnd what is the point of this bonus now? It’s not going to help your vils fight back or survive against knight or xbow raids. It’s basically a worse version of the Spanish vil tech. Now instead of getting this bonus in the Feudal Age, aka the time it’s most applicable, it’s pushed to lategame where it’s way, way less useful. BTW, remember how Inca was one civ that could survive & thrive against a scout rush without quickwalls or spears? Don’t worry, that unique little advantage is gone. They’ll now have to react against a scrush exactly the same as every other civ. Cause what’s more fun than everyone being exactly the same?

  3. Houses support +10 pop. No complaints here, it’s a nice little bonus. Not as big as some others, but I’ll take it and say thank you like a good lil’ crippled orphan boy in the soup line.

  4. Buildings cost -15% stone. Again, nice little bonus, though overshadowed by some others (cough Franks)

  5. Team “bonus”, faster building farms. This one has been mocked since the beginning, and is such an obvious target for a buff that the fact that the devs aren’t doing anything about it while they nerf the civ… seems like clear undeniable proof that this is all the result of a salty poopy-pants noob dev, and not in the interest of actual balance.

But just to elaborate for anyone unfamiliar-- Incas team bonus has a near-negligible affect on their & their team’s ecos, while forcing an adjusted build order or else risking a severe punishment. Remind me which other Civs have a team bonus that negatively affects the team unless all the players are aware & adjust to it?

Someone on reddit calculated the increased farm building speed as 2% overall food bonus.
WOW. Buckle up Speed Racer, I don’t know if you can handle the pure G forces of a TWO PERCENT SPEED INCREASE. Someone tell the Vulcans we’re approaching FTL travel and are ready for First Contact.

Remember that without this bonus, every other civ gets click the Horse Collar upgrade right before placing new farms, and it will finish in time to affect the new farms right as they finish. But if you’ve got an Inca player on your team, you better be ready to get your Horse Collar a good 7.5 seconds BEFORE starting to build your farms (I hope you’re ready to micro those vils for 7.5 XTREME seconds of SPEED wood chopping, or else they’re just gonna be idle while you wait). If you don’t plan for this, the farms build too quickly and miss out on the bonus-- +75 food, a 42% increase. That might not sound like much to the late, great Lucille Bluth who apparently helped design the Incas, but most players know that food and wood are extremely important in Feudal Age.

So to reiterate-- the Inca team bonus forces the player and all teammates to adjust their timings and build order. If you do it right you get a 2% bonus, if you do it wrong you miss out on 75 food per farm, at a time in the game where food & wood are critically important.

Let’s tally it up. With this “balance” change, Incas now are sitting at 2 good but minor civ bonuses, 2 that are nearly useless, and a team “bonus” that at best gives +2% food boost and at worst costs you 75 food per farm. That one’s about as useful as a cursed typewriter that’ll make you a best selling crime author but also make the crimes come true.

IN CONCLUSION, Give them something. It doesn’t need to be much. Ideally their Team Bonus could become something that’s actually a bonus, but I won’t be picky because Incas seem to be balanced by the Sinister 6 of Sloppy Civ Design. They just need SOMETHING positive to offset what is a HUGE nerf to the one role Incas actually excel it-- messy Feudal trush based fights.

And until they get something like that, I have no choice but to ridicule the soft-hearted noob dev that clearly got so rocked by a trush that they ragequit directly into the codebase to make these “balance” changes. Having been on the other side of that many times, and seeing just how terribly some players handle getting trushed, and how upset it makes them… I present, in one act, my new script for a dramatic reenactment of the game that prompted this furious frothy change. It is based heavily on my experience from ranked games, so I hope you find it devastatingly realistic.

The Dev Who Was A Noob

EXT. ARABIA - Open on a 1v1. One rook dev vs. one Inca player

Dev: “Hello, I’m NoobdevTheNoob, GLHF to my opponent! I don’t know what strat you might choose but I look forward to matching wits!”

Inca: Obviously does a Trush cause they’re Inca. You know it’s coming dude. If you don’t, well, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to realize the 2+ vils on stone when they age up at 16 pop might be a clue

Dev: “I am SHOCKED and appalled! But that’s just one tower far away so I bet I can just ignore it!”

Inca: Builds another tower

Dev: “OMG NOT FAIR HOW IS HE DOING THIS?? Well I’ll just build my own tower and see how he likes it!”

((DevNoob proceeds to try and build his own tower… in range of the Inca tower… with only 4 vils. People actually try this online, I don’t get it))

Dev: “NoooOOO my tower isn’t working! This is moldy baloney!”

Inca: Builds another tower

Dev: “Well he’s only got 8 vils. I’ll attack with 9. Because I’m a developer, I know that 9 is more than 8 so this will deal vith it”

Inca: Slaughters the devs vils in a total massacre

Dev: “WHAT HOW COUDL THIS HAPPEN I HAD MROE VILS! Well let me try something different…”

((DevNoob doesn’t try something different. Dev alternates between building new towers in range of Inca towers, and rushing with not enough vils to do any real damage. Again, people really react this way. After it already didn’t work. Even at 1100+ rating. I don’t get it))

Dev: “NOOO THIS ISNT FAIR YOU ARE USING NOOB STRAT THAT IS SO NOSKILL YOU NOOB. YOUR VILS ARE CHEATING THEY SHOULD BE DEAD”

((Dev calls Inca player some more names, then ragequits))

Dev: “I reacted exactly correctly and played like TheViper King Hera but his vils still beat mine. Inca bonus too OP, wins 100% of the time, and there is no counterplay. Let’s put it in the Castle Age only, because I am a pro player so I know the most important time for villagers to get in the mix of battle is during the age of Knights, Crossbows, and Mangonels”

Fin

((DevTheNoob and Inca Player bow to thunderous applause. Then Dev nerfs the indoor acoustics of the theater because the clapping is too loud))

TLDR; Heavily nerfing the one strat Inca are the best at, while failing to buff any other part of the civ (especially the rotten poison apple of a team “bonus”) is irresponsibly bad balancing, and seems more like the reaction of angry noobs on the ladder than that of a rational actor. Also, I very much don’t want to do real work today, so I’m going to get upset about this on the internet instead

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I know there will be some disagreement, partially because people think this isn’t an egregious change, and partially because I just wrote a ■■■■■■■ 3 page essay attacking the awesome creators of a game we all love, all over a tiny potential change in an otherwise masterpiece.

Please don’t hesitate to disagree or clap back at my ranting :slight_smile: As much as I actually do feel ^ this way, that this is a criminally negligent nerf to add without a corresponding buff… it is a tiny change on the scale of things, and there are a million other fun civs to play because the devs do great work and have made a game that is so well-balanced I can complain about this minor tweaking.

But that said, this was absolutely 100% a reactionary tweak by a noob dev that got totally rocked by an Incan Trush and got super salty about it :stuck_out_tongue:

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Wow, that post was a lot to take in. I’m not really sure that it’s because of a dev getting trushed that this nerf happened, I’d say probably not.

It’s more likely the result of those who got to ~1400-1500 elo by memorizing a build order or two and then get completely stumped when they meet a strategy that isn’t the meta they expected in the guides due to a lack of game experience and not knowing how to react to unexpected strategies.

But there’s a lot to agree with in your post.

+1

+1, definitely

This was actually a very noob friendly feature, and whenever I managed to recruit a few friends to the game, Incas was one of the civs I always recommended, because it just helps so much in the early game to have that +1 armor on your vills. From my experience it is very easy for new people to get frustrated by the game as they keep getting defeated by the early scout/maa/whatvever rush and never come back to the game :frowning:

EDIT, just few more reasons why Incas are such a nice noob friendly civ:

  • Start with food under your tc: so you have much more time to find the rest of your sheep and boars and noobs do really appreciate more consistent starts
  • houses space 10, not 5, makes it harder to get housed, which is a common LEL problem. This is imho better than Huns don’t need houses, because getting used to not even building houses makes transition to other civs that much harder
  • castles being slightly cheaper also helps, as even LEL players generally realize the defensive value of a castle
  • and as mentioned above, the beefier vills means you’re more likely as a LEL player to survive any feudal rushes even if you don’t go forward for a tower rush

This is a bad TB, but so are many others. I think with the inca utility of being able to seriously disrupt the player via a feudal rush, having a crappy TB was justified.

Just retract the change, easiest solution. I think having this strategy as an option is really interesting for team games and this kind of early pressure prevents the teams from playing boomville.
Also, the extra stats on the vills was just such a noob friendly feature for newcomers to 1v1.

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I agree that they shouldn’t have taken away the villager upgrades in feudal.

I disagree that the Incas are a b-tier meso civ as a result. They’ve got the most complete tech tree of any of the Meso civs, siege engineers with a nearly full siege tree, full barracks with full infantry upgrades, full archery range with all the archery upgrades, and two solid UU’s.

They aren’t going to compete with these other meso civs at their game, but they are more flexible than those other meso civs. They should get some compensation, but I honestly don’t think they need a whole lot. Or we can just revert the vill change. Whatever works.

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Nicov, a top player, already explained that the nerf is completely fine
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I don’t disagree with him on the subject of the Incas being a good civ. I feel like that bonus was very well-rounded to help the incas generally with/against pressure early on, and it could have been tweaked (or the surrounding effects could have been tweaked) to reduce the efficacy of the trush.

I felt like it really did help against archer civs early on when no trush was on, simply because if you blend in eagles and get the armor upgrade it did double work to help your eagles kill the archer/skim mixes whilst also reducing the damage you’d take from raids and that was a quality benefit that’s being removed for the price of an annoying strat.

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I only regret that I have but one Like to give for your post.

Good change, You still can go Trush because of the stone discount

Agreed. Incas were one of the first civs that I had multiplayer success with. I didn’t use the bonus for tower rushes, but instead for defense. So, I would prefer that the devs eliminate the stone discount before castle age, rather than impact the villager bonus.

If the devs insist on nerfing the villager bonus to eliminate the trush gimmick, then at least compensate for the loss with some other buff. As other people have suggested, maybe improve the team bonus.

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What was nerfed? Total noob here

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hasn’t yet.

probably will be

inca vills in feudal no longer get blacksmith bonuses

How unhealthy it is to imagine this deep why devs did that.

It’s probably to remove a “toxic gameplay” just like how they removed “archer destroying buildings” from Mayans and Saracens.
Tower rush will still be there, but it’s sad that you lose at the same level because your Villagers can’t trade vs Incas Villagers.

That said, I would rather the Incas to have another or more identity than just “tower rush”. There is better game design and gameplay to do.

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Maybe they could buff andean slinger in exchange or something

salty inca player should try another civs now 11 and drop 200 elo

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The dumbest, stupidest stat got removed. I hope the Inca mains will lose 300 ELO. Those player will be freeelo.

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Let me quote Nicov (a 2k4 player) on this: “If a strategy needs very little execution/skill to work well, whereas the defender needs to play like an absolutely flawless beast to have a chance to deal with it, then such strategy is broken.”

Can we stop pulling out the “it was scoutable” and the “it’s easy to counter” when it simply wasn’t? Yeah, you can scout the 8 vills coming forward, good job, Now enjoy your:
A) 40 min slugfest where you try to relocate your whole eco while your opponents follow you with tower everywhere, somehow managesd to get to castle and start spamming eagles around
B) Having a map so bad he blocks all your res by min 15
C) Having a map so good you defend with 2 towers and send archers fwd hoping to kill him. Ofc he can simply tower his base and try another all in push in castle age with a castle + siege + eagles, but at least you hadn’t problem with the towers, right?

This quote is also coming from Nicov: “You can defend vs scouts with spearmen, you can defend vs maa with archers. You cannot defend vs 8 armored inca vils unless you have a good map. There is no direct “counter to it” other than trying to buy a couple minutes to get some archers out with +1 attack upgraded (since maa and scouts are useless vs such vils). If your map is open and you have a slow civ then you are doomed. Let alone if the inca eagle did some laming in dark age.”

Nerfing the inca rush is a good change that should have been done a long time ago

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I almost play low tier civs (Vietnamese, koreans, Portuguese, cumans, sicilians…). Should I start playing inca after the patch? 11

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they will buff incas, but not inca rush. until that buff you can play it 11

This is not worse than the multitude of players who remember two build orders and get to 1500 playing Arabia. Most likely the nerf is the result of extreme amounts of salt from these players.

On his elo yes. On lower elos people just ragequit (true story, tried to introduce friends to AoE2, most of them get trashed early and ragequit, because basically without quickwalling, scout rush is super effective on low ELO ranges)

Yes there is. Making more military than you would normally. Most players who don’t defend from it and saying that it’s “impossible to counter” are players who literally have no clue what they are doing, and they deserve to lose to it. I see players try to build towers in range of the inca towers, or sending too few villagers to try and fight etc.

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They only want to nerf the Chinese Team in 2v2. @Lyx 11

I also total against the change of Incas.
What is next? Nerf the Persian Douche?

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