As the second biggest spain lamer behind piro, i think spain was overbuffed in DE. On of their weakness was the lack of RI/RC in early age 3 (no goon/skirm shipement). So HI timing / harassing was a way to play against, now with the 9 xbow age up you can denie every colonial play from your opponenet (most of the time spain train mous/rod in transi which are perfect with the 9 xbow age up).
So your opponenet is forced to play age 3, and if your oponenet goes for age 3 (because he can’t anymore stay age2), he can’t realy punish your fast age 4. And now there are a problem. One of their politician allows to unlock for free guard xbow and royal pik. The value of those tech are 2000 gold / 2000 wood, that’s mean your politician is super worth it just by himself (an age 4 cost 2000f/1200g) and allows you to send super age 4 shipement (24 guarded xbow/ 24 royal pik + classic age 4 stuff). It’s super broken.
My suggestion :
remove the 9 xbow and back on 4xbow/4pik. Spain don’t need 5 good age 3 politician
The age 4 politican don’t tech for free guard xbow.
In ep9 spain was fine, i think tc wagon age up + xbow upg are good but the currend itteration of spain is too strong and super easy to play. This version of spain is better than Vanilla one, which was considered too strong.
Spain is a problem to balance, they’re on the weak side on team games, but their 1v1 is quite strong with their new politicians… I wouldn’t want to be on the balance team right now
Spain is quite popular now in 1v1 (there are plenty of good player, Sam ofc, me, perez, optimus, miggo etc…).
You can’t block their age 3, spain can clic arround 5.20 if you are fast and with tc + tower you can’t realy slow down their ff.
Yup, but what I wonder is if a civ need a nerf if there’s like 20 players that’s using it at his best. But as said I don’t 1v1 so I almost never see spain, that’s why i’m bit surprised.
Maybe you guys from esoc should make a list about some balances and how it should be, as Kaiser did for bugs.
Something complet and well made.
Not sure devs are reading every subject and every message. + there’s a lot of bad ideas about balance on that forum (like the dude that want to make musk shoot way more slowly as it was irl).
Maybe they’ll read a complet subject about balance made by EP players, let’s hope so. And make it post by a well known dude.
If @Amphiprion6 thinks spain needs a nerf. I would consider it. He plays alot of spain. And from a resource stand point. a tech worth 2k wood and coin plus the age up 2k food and 1.2k coin. That is a very cheap one plus the shipment advantage spain has.
I think the 9 xbow is fine allows spain to have better plays. But the Fast Industrial is looking very strong.
@Amphiprion6 Thank you for posting it. Doing posts like these. Or players that are expert on 1 civ can definitely push towards balance of the game.
9 xbow denie HI play which is bad and not necessary. This politican don’t give more depth on spain, if you don’t know what to do, age 9 xbow, it’s never bad.
I think most people really enjoy the new Papal Guard politician, so the nerfs should be careful as to not totally eliminate it from competitive play. It’s also note-worthy that we aren’t seeing this FI strategy with portuguese, french, and germans. This could suggest that it is indeed Spain that is over-powered rather than the politician, or it could be that Spain is just simply the best at it, so there’s no reason to pick another civ to do a Papal Guard FI.
If the politician is to be nerfed, I think might be appropriate to add an additional cost, similar to commerce logisticians (ironically, I think logistician extra cost should be removed). With an additional 1k wood cost, Papal Guard would still be the strongest Age IV option in terms of it’s rebate value, and the FI would be slowed down drastically. If the FI is no longer competitive in any way after adding 1k wood cost, then it could be reduced to 500 wood.
If it’s just Spain that’s broken, then perhaps reverting half of their DE shipment curve buff would set it right.
This FI is better with spain because spain can play arround xbow/pik (pik is a royal unit and you can send 3 upg on your pik/xbow). And age 4 you can send 24 xbow/pik which is insane when they are from guard level.
if being overused is a argument for a civ strength… check current ladder games in the higher elo. Feels like at least half my games are vs spain lately.
Like that is the worst thing that people around here ask for, complaining about flags and “this X thing is not realistic enough” in a game that let you use a rinos and monitor lizards as war animals, hey friend, make your own suggestions shine by their weight, not by criticising others
Spain is definitely stronger than tad however it’s not the strongest nor the lamest… I hope the balance will visit inca and Sweden and maybe german first before they come around to nerf spain.
Spain is totally fine right now as they are!!
All of their strategies can be properly countered by effective scouting
The 9 xbow age up makes up for a huge weakness that spain had that was making the civ totally unplayable against civs like ottoman, India, brits or even france.
Also it is only a problem if you overcommit your army under the spanish tc. Which you shouldn’t do against any civ BTW!!
They are not even top tier!! Germany and otto have way stronger ffs, and good luck trying to FI against them, and brits are still a terrible match up for spain as they can simply stay age 2 and mass and have more stuff!!
Spain still have bad eco even with spanish gold which takes time to pay off and if they cant do any damage any civ will outscale them eventually!!
Also spanish FI is also strong but rely heavily on shipments as their economy will still be weak, skirms still have more range then bows and again dont overcommit under the tc if you know that 24 units can pop at any moment!!
Spain are not bad against otto and india without 9 xbow. Against brit i agree but i win most of my game against brit without 9 xbow (and 50% of my current game are vs brit for some obscure reason). Still, spain-brit mu was more even than spain-dutch imo.
German is super strong but i think spain is better, also german will be nerf because they get more xp than they should (from what i have heard). And spain is better than otto. You are fast enough to deal with the otto ff, and after 10 min your eco is better, and otto don’t have a good response in mid age 3 vs carded lancer.
It’s the opposite, SG pay off super fast, then decrease over time. When you send SG first age 3, its cost efficient at min 11
You make some valid points, but still!! Dealing with a bunch of sepoy or janissary on your base as spain is not an easy thing and they can do a lot of damage!! Also india can boom behind that and get a huge mass.
9xbow is not an op politician and it gives a good option to Spain to hold and encourages players to go for different builds other than just all in rushes!!
Problem is that people don’t expect it, over commit and loose their army, there might be other aspects such as the xp bonus or the age 4 shipments that could be nerfed, but the 9bow age up is fine, maybe make it 8xbows like the pike shipment but not remove it!!
It’s fun because i think we are agree but we don’t like the same things, i like to have hard time vs HI timing ahah. You need to pop mm + 7 rods + 4 cav at the right time and it’s not easy, now 9 xbow and you are fine ^^.
