It’s pretty much known already that Burgundians have the worst design in the game, not even that unique to begin with, heavily inspired by Franks which are a poor design to begin with, nothing to be inspired about there.
Having a gimmicky unique unit that serves as a cheap Knight basically, since microing that charge attack is barely microable, we’re left with just a generic Knight civ with gunpowder, and dont forget the doomsday weapon, Flemish RevoNOT-AOEIItion, Franks must be jealous.
With that being said, Burgundians are far from being a well rounded AOE II civ, we can’t really rework that chaotic mess of gimmicks, so we’ll have to deal with, also devs almost never bail on bad ideas no matter how vast the consensus is among the community.
Now there is one thing we can change, which was also recently tweaked a little, it’s their eco bonus:
Economic upgrades cost -50% Food, and are available one age earlier than other civilizations.
Quite an quirky rickety ceoncept to begin with, poorly implemented gimmick, they had to supplement it with a 50% food discount to make it worth using, however they went too far, 50% food discount is better than Vietnamese eco bonus that gives 50% wood discount on all techs, and I’m not even calculating the effect of teching it one age earlier. It’s such an unelegant addition, just to get away with an initial awful concept. Food is not tasty enough? add more sugar.
It’s a common approach these days sadly, implementing ideas by force, by sheer OPness, Urumi (another horrible design), they just made him a Shotel on steroids, cause why not, same about Hauberk- to save Sicilians from being a graveyard civ since it was way too hard for them to introduce the Donjon nerative into the game, so they gave them a Tarkaphract, win win win.
Back to Burgundians economy, now we’re at a point where there is no strategic desicion making position, wether to use this bonus or not, it’s ALWAYS worthy, and therefore not strategic and worse- not playable. Serves zero playability. Instead of giving the player a chance to challenge their own greediness they turned Burgundians into a flat eco civ that’s just supirior than others with nothing meaningful to play with.
My suggestion is not enough to fix this civ single dimensional stereotypical identity but it can help at least with our gaming experience, here it is:
Economic upgrades are researched instantly, and are available one age earlier than other civilizations.
Now you can actually feel invested and fully vulnerable commiting to your greediness, yet highly rewarded.
I’d even go for more bold and elegant version of this bonus by removing the age restriction whatsoever, Handcart in Dark Age, sure.
Let me know what you guys think, I hope I wasn’t too harsh with my criticism, nothing personal.
Thank you for reading!
. I actually enjoy playing them, but I don’t think I would like that as much if I can’t actually use their eco bonus. I also really like the DoI civs. They are fun, new unique and interesting. Urumi is a bit broken, but it’s an interesting design, and I do like it.