Teuton Balance Suggestions

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Here are some thoughts about Teutons and how to make them both more viable and interesting to play:

I think Light Cav at least is necessary for Teutons as they lack raiding possibilities and have a really hard time in trash wars. The lack of husbandry is nothing but annoying. It also doesn’t make much sense to have the best knights of the line (Paladin) but to lack knowledge about breeding horses. Franks also got squires as opposed to the vanilla game because it just sucks to not have these kinds of techs. It didn’t make sense. Same thing with Teutons who need a tad bit more love to become a good civ. The potential of this civ is great but almost never reached and you rarely see them being played successfully. There are too few situations in which Teutons excel as their strengths are rather situational. And that’s okay. But effort should allow Teutons to improve upon some of their weaknesses as they are quite a static civ that has many issues when gold is becoming scarce. This is not just about adding techs to their tree, it’s more about giving them incentives to play in a more pious way.

Which is why my idea is as follows: Give Teutons LC and on top of that add relic boni to Teutons (instead of husbandry and other things) that work like this:
1 relic = 5% speed for mounted units, siege units and ships (and maybe Teutonic Knights)
2 relics = +1 damage for all military units (inf, cav, archers/skirms, ships and maybe siege units and towers/castles/tc)
3 relics = +1 piercing armor for all military units (inf, cav, archers/skirms, ships, siege units monks)
4 relics = additional 5% speed for mounted units, siege units and ships (and maybe Teutonic Knights)

Why 5% at first and fourth relic? To somewhat account for the fact that the Teuton army is a bit slow, but confirmation in their faith gives them more fervor and haste. It would also give Teutons more reasons to make use of monks and it’d address their weaknesses without making it silly or overpowered. The Teuton army would be fairly strong with 4 relics, but not too strong compared to other civs and their boni. And the opponent could always try to counter the Teuton relic hunt. The Teutons are more of a relic civ than Lithuanians are in my opinion, so it wouldn’t break comprehension. It’d also compliment the Teuton campaign which starts off with collecting relics and tops it off with Barbarossa’s bones being brought to Jerusalem. Moreover Germany is full of cathedrals, churches and chapels that stem them from medieval times. And many of them give or gave shelter to sacred bones.

I think it would be fun changes to the civ without making it overpowered. And LC would be just fine, no Hussars. And should you think for some reason that LC should stay locked for Teutons, so give their scouts some love to make them viable in trash wars and raiding scenarios. But I think it’d be easier to just give them LC. Historically it doesn’t make much sense for Teutons to not have light cavalry at all. As a trade off their food cost could be upped to 90 for Teutons only starting in Castle Age. Or consider them to be some kind of mercenaries which is why their trash trade off would be gold costs = 80 food, 10 gold. There are many possibilites for trade offs to balance it out a bit.

That’s it for now. Have a great weekend everybody :slight_smile:

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As light cav in the game is slower than scouts I think the light cav upgrade could be made available to them yes. I don’t like the unique feature of Lithuanians to be spread on too many other civs. And Teutons to stay slow is fine imo.

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No, Teutons are fine, neither weak or OP (Evidenced in the winrates).

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Teutons might need at best a minor buff but they definitely don’t need another civilization bonus and we don’t need to steal what makes Lithuanians so unique.

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I understand what you all are saying. But winrate alone is not enough to measure balance since it does not tell how the games went down. It might have been all tower rushes which would be pretty dull.

How many of the won games were late game wins? I am very sure that the vast majority wasn’t. The stats don’t tell this kind of stuff. Crennelations is too expensive, you never see that. Ironclad is maybe nice to have, but it doesn’t change much or is very noticeable. You don’t go for that, you simply take it up along the way if you can. It is by no means a game changer (it could be if it gave pierce armor). And civs that historically had a worse navy (e.g. Lithuanians, they never had a navy worth mentioning, neither did Poland) have a better navy than Teutons which also is slow, expensive and with the lack of bracers at a great disadvantage (Franks also need a better navy, at least the Lithuanian navy should not be better than the Teutonic or Frankish one). And don’t get me started on “architecture”. A lot about Teutons does not make sense. The lack of bracers (crennelations could always be nerfed by -1), architecture, husbandry and light cav does not make any sense at all. Neither historically nor for balance reasons.

So no, I do not agree that Teutons are in a good spot. They could be with a tad bit of fine tuning but aren’t right now. Their playstyle depends very much on having gold and it lacks too many important techs to be called defensive. All in all their strengths and weaknesses do not end up in a unique play style but rather limit this civ by quite a lot in late game. You simply can’t raid with scouts. It’s not cost effective at all, they die way too quickly. But raiding is essential in this game. So not being able to raid effectively is a big downside.

I rarely see Teutons in any tournament or being played successfully by a streamer (not counting team games, I don’t care about them as they are a completely different story with the ability of trading).
And it mostly is because Teutons just lack the means that are needed in trash wars. The slow speed is a pure annoyance and doesn’t make any sense for this civ (not more than it would for others with heavy cav) except for the Teutonic Knight, who should always be slightly slower than a Champ. Against archers Teutons can only go knights and onagers since their skirms just don’t cut it. And if Teutons for some reason are just supposed to be slow by design, then they need better pierce armor to answer their weakness to kiting be it due to slow speed or lack of range.

Teutons only works when they have gold. Once it’s gone they lack the means to stay competitive as their skirms and scouts are in no position to win a trash war. And if you can’t win a trash war, you need to raid effectively. And if you can’t do that, you’ll lose eventually. And it’s due to design flaws more than anything else. Teutons are slow and expensive and their boni do not balance that out enough. Any archer civ rips them a new one if the skill level is somewhat equal. (And without husbandry you are not even able to raid trading routes effectively as the time to catch up to trading carts is just woeful; I know that’s a team game aspect, but I wanted to give an example of how annoying the lack of 10% is). As an opponent you can starve out Teutons in late game as they can’t do much about it.

Don’t get me wrong. I do see the strengths Teutons have. But these strengths do not synergize well and the lack of gold completely cripples this civ. Winrate doesn’t tell you anything if you don’t know how the games were won. Maybe Teutons are fine until castle age and that’s the explanation for their winrate. Maybe any game that goes into trash wars is somewhat unwinable for Teutons. Winrate doesn’t tell you that.

Similar things could be said about many other civs and their specific flaws, but my focus is on Teutons and I have not seen any good argument that disarms my points as to why Teutons still need a bit more love. The winrate of 51% does not justify the shortcomings of this civ in my opinion. Cheers :upside_down_face:

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I’d maybe change their siege unique tech to something more passable. I mean, it’s not a bad bonus, but as teutons you already have such a good counter to anything melee that charging into teuton melee units with is already a dumb decision most of the times.

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Try saying that to any Arena clown worth his nose 11 Or BF player for that matter.

Replace “Germany” by “Christian Europe” and the sentence is still 100% accurate. Teutons do get the better end of the stick with their complete monastery and conversion resistance.

Yikes civ downsides.

Well if people can throw late game with a civ that gets to choose between top tier paladins, good infantry, siege onager, BBC and bombard tower then it’s not the fault of the civ.

I’ve already seen this suggestion, but there is a problem: wtf do you do in the late game against siege that has even more pierce armour. Even if you remove the melee bonus from Teuton infantry, generic halbs are still enough to defend siege. If your civ has no BBC/ redemption+block printing it’s even more dead against siege than usual.

The navy bit is well, another round of “lol water balance”. I suppose they gave Lith an okay navy because their starting food allows them to be competitive in the early game, while Teutons are an AoK civ, designedby different people, with different water play mechanics in mind and less gameplay experience. It probs wouldn’t break the civ if they were buffed on water.

It makes perfect sense. I mean look at their infantry, cavalry, and siege, does it feel like a tech tree that needs bracer?

Because the civ with conversion resistance on all of its units doesn’t need to have light cav and fast knights to ruin monks even more.

A bunch of civs are like that, and it’s fine that such civs exist.

Oh my. Teutons are the best anti trush civ, the only civ that actually uses murder holes, plus they got free herbal medicine that has been buffed to relevance, and the double garrisoning space will save your villagers quite often. And as expensive as it is crenellation is literally bombard cannon and cannon galleon immunity. If all this isn’t defensive then what isn’t.

Then don’t wait for gold to run out and raid with knights?

Because their old reputation sticks to them. That’s it. Just like nowadays there are still people going around claiming that civs like Vietnamese or Bulgarian are weak despite their buffs.

Which is the minority of games, really. If trashwars mattered that much people wouldn’t play Mesos or Franks as often. And there is more to trash wars than spamming trash units. You know, relics, market (good Teutons have guilds) to throw in some gold units once in a while. And the civ that can throw in elite teutonic knights AKA the dude that only takes one damage from any trash unit don’t really need better trash.

this is starting to make feel sad for meso civs

Then again, trash wars are the minority of games, and even then some people just quit when the game reaches this stage because they don’t like it. And even then, a careful player that used the market well and got his relics can win that.

Question is: is it a flaw, or an intended weakness?

I like the interaction between this tech and rams. You don’t have siege rams but they are harder to snipe.

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Sry, they have been a slow unit civs since AoK, i really don’t like the idea of improving their speed… i don’t remember if the farm cost bonus was from AoK, but I like the way they work around that civ.

Also I think your relic bonus is too much complicated, specially compared to lith one that just improves attack and you can explain it in one line. But I like the idea of bonus around relics, at least for monks civs.

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Cheaper farm is an AoK bonus.

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Thanks, but I also like the +armor they added… they have a nice eco and can spam slow “heavier” knights… I don’t think they need a change

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it feels like one of those highly situational bonuses. If the ram is attacked by something like a villager or a pikeman, yeah, it’ll help, but when the enemy is resorting to taking out rams with vills or trash, the game is probably not looking good for them anyhow. If the ram is attacked by any decent non-trash melee units, the bonus makes very little difference.

Either way, I feel like Teutons probably do not need a major buff, but then again, according to Hera’s recent tier list, they’re not that great overall, so giving a slightly better UT in place of Ironclad could be a nice way to give them a little boost without needing to tinker with their civ bonuses any further.

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I think is too complicated with all these different relic bonuses.

Here is my suggestion:
The armor bonus is change to +2/+4 meele armor in castle and imperial age for siege units. That is basically, their UT currently.

The caste agel ironclat UT instead gets changed to +1 meele armor for all meele units (infatry+cavalry)

Onager tech 50% cheaper
(optionally remove the similar bonus from overbuffed Bulgarians)

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Bulgarians are fine. They are strong but dont deserve an urgent nerf.
They need their siege discount more than the blacksmith discount in imperial age (mainly for onagers and maybe scorps). Better dont touch them.

On the other hand, teutons are also fine, and they arent as boring to play as before, imho

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They should add a Mounted Teutonic knight unit and a shielded dismounted one with a armor bonus. That way they can be the tank faction of AoE2. Also add horns to them , they look to much like templars.

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Teuton villagers should be able to take out their deer hunting bows and shoot enemy militia (but only militia). (-> same mechanic as Briton Villagers in AoE4).

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Teutons are fine. The only think that arguably needs help is the Teutonic Knight, which is still 100% pure unvarnished meme.

Sadly, there’s really no way to make them any different, not while preserving their identity. But right now, Teuton infantry have pretty much rendered TKs irrelevant. I suppose you could let them heal nearby stuff or something, that could be cool.

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Teutons is a solid low to mid elo civ being similar to Frank’s but with a stronger eco upgrade and less versatile cav upgrade while lacking archers. Their farm bonuses is top 5 and probably better then celts wood bonus since it doesn’t get watered down as a player gets wood upgrades and they will alway go into food units. Their combo of halb + siege onager is extremely solid as a deathball and they have the option to go paladin which is why they’re so scary on something like arena. Only thing that really could do with a change is TKs since right now they lack a purpose since they just get blasted by missiles and are too slow to avoid that.

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Yes, you are 100% correct, they need a buff.

Unfortunately a lot of people here have no understanding of how the game plays in practice at a high level. Not only are they a knight civ when the meta is 90% archers, they also have the one advantage of mobility removed with no husbandry. This is alongside a myriad of other weaknesses like zero late game raiding potential. Hera put them C tier on Arabia and he is right of course.

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um what? cav civs are doing just fine right now.

because their knights literally get conversion resistance and extra armor for free.

i agree teutons need a very minor buff, but that is about all.

like he was right when he said that plumed archers are trash?

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Nah, the only cav civ who can compete at the top is franks because their bonuses are insanely good. It’s still Chinese, Vikings, Mayans, Britons that dominate the top tier, and the next tier is basically the same with 80% archers.

Hera has a very good grasp on the game. Plumes are not a great opening for Mayans which I’m guessing is what he meant in this context. Mayans are better off with regular archers in most situations anyway.