Teutons: a balance suggestion

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

after giving it lots of thought I decided to bring up yet another time the very old topic of balancing teutons. Now, contrary to what many people think, I don’t believe teutons are lacking any tecnology or unit.
I think this civ, while lacking mobility, has all the tools it needs to put up a good fight against anyone else, if siege can be used to force a fight against ranged and more mobile units.

Teutons are a civ meant for slow pushes, with lots of hard hitting units at its disposal (think of siege onagers and teutonic knights). Their optimal composition (though ofc dependent on the enemy civ) would be something like infantry+siege, ideally a mix of halbs and teutonics knights together with siege onagers and trebs/bombard cannons. The problem is that getting to that ideal composition in a 1vs1 is almost impossible, due to its extremely high cost, especially in terms of gold.

As such, I think what teutons need is not better units stats or access to other techs, they need to lower their resources expenses to get to their ideal composition.

I believe this can be done in a rather easy way without taking away the identity of the civ. I propose the following changes:

1)Reduce the cost of the elite teutonic knight upgrade and remove instead the +1 armor bonus to barracks units: tks are very situational units, they excel at melee, but are extremely vulnerable to ranged units. They are also relatively expensive units, which makes teching into them a really big risk. I think lowering the cost of the etk upgrade would be beneficial, perhaps from 1200f 600g to 800f 500g. On the other hand, the +1 armor bonus to barracks units we have right now accomplishes almost nothing in most situtaitons, as such I think this should be removed in favor of a cost reduction to the etk upgrade.

2)Improve their ability to deploy siege: I think there are two possible ways to do that:

a)Onager upgrade is free upon hitting imp age: this allows teutons to deal much better with ranged units. This however could potentially represent too much of a power spike in early imp.

b)Alternatively, give teutons a discount on siege unit upgrades: by that I mean reduce the cost only of the unit upgrade (capped ram, heavy scorp, onager and siege onager) and not of the techs (such as siege engineers or ironclad). Perhaps a discount of 33% would work fine? The unit cost itself would remain unchanged.

I think buffing siege is the better way to improve teutons, since their cavalry, lacking husbandry, has a hard time catching up to mobile units. The numbers I wrote here are only tentative, they may be too much or too little (testing is needed!), but I think the approach described would work very well and could give teutons a bit more versatility, without destroying the identity of the civ.

Thoughts?

2 Likes
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I like the idea of free onager, but could be too much. i think Teutons suffer in castle age, where their knights are slow, and their archers sucks. In imperial they have optiond, and, altough free onager could help them, i’m not sure it will solvethe the problem

Discount in siege is a bonus for slavs already. And cheapee TK wouldn’t solve the issue of tjem being useless

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Fixing TK is easy, just have them benefit from Sanctity and Fervour, both of which are Castle Age upgrades.

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That’s a discount on units, what I am proposing is a discount on the upgrades. It gives the teutons some flexibility, decreasing the cost barrier for teching into powerful siege. The units themselves would however cost the same.

[quote=" JonOli12, post:2, topic:78487, full:true"]
Fixing TK is easy, just have them benefit from Sanctity and Fervour, both of which are Castle Age upgrades.
[/quote]

That’s way too strong. Tks are situational units, which is fine. The problem is that they are way too expensive for being “just situational”.

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I disagree on it being too strong, and the Elite upgrade could be nerfed accordingly.
It would also add a lot of flavour, since teh Teutonic Order was monastic.

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6

Simply let game see them as monks. They will also need Atonement to beeng converted. But, fun fact, in this case TK need also +12 monk armour, in other case Hussar will counter them 11
I dont think is too strong. +15% speed up is still not much

And what about Siege Tower benefiting from Crenelations? Teutons now will have way to protect their infantry from arrows in open field, posibility to fire back, and even have raiding unit.

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So you would have to tech into both infantry and monks to get TKs to their full potential, which makes them even more expensive. No, it’s not a good idea. TKs are fine stat wise, they are purely meant to be used against melee and they work extremely well at that, the issue is their cost. Anyway TKs are not my main concern, I care more about getting their siege more viable, that’s way more important.

2 Likes
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I feel like siege tower is basically a meme unit with very poor game design, they should be moving slower but shoot arrows if garrisoned in my opinion. But that’s going off topic…

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9

This is the only one I do not agree with, as it would potentially make them OP against quite a few civs.
Monks need an upgrade to be converted, because their attack (Converion is an attack in the engine) is on a large cooldown, and has variable efficiency (it is RNG on how fast you Convert).

TKs are a straight Melee Monster unit. More HP and Speed to compensate for lack of Pierce Armour? Sure!
Making them immune to civs without attonement? No please!

10

I’m talking about that. Teuton Siege Tower after Crenelatins, start shoot Arrows. Even when infantry is inside. This mean, you can literaly build moving fortress. Or fill ST with Halbs and send to raid. No other civ will be able to do that.

One of the counters to the TK are monks, if TK will need Atonement to being converted it will adress that weakness.
Civs without Atonement:

All of them have other ways to deal with TK.

1 Like
11

Goths have huge trouble dealing with units that can challenge their Champions. Remember they miss Platemail Armour, and TKs already beat most Melee units cost-effectively.

12

Goths have Hand Cannon. Not everything Goth can make is Infantry.

2 Likes
13

The crux of the problem is really that TKs are at the moment not cost effective. Hypothetically, they are cost effective, but that gets nullified fast, if the enemy does not engage them and due to the slow speed you are not enable to reliably force such an engagement.

In essence that means, that will rarely have the fights you want with TKs. How that is bad should be clear. So, where leaves that the TK, when you face a competent opponent? Not only will he build the counter to them, but also exploit there really subpar ability to answer pressure on the own base. As it is the Teutonic Knight is a flawed unit that binds up insane amount of ressources due to creation and upgrade cost while having abnorm difficulties to trade in for value.

Key problem is the speed of the TKs is speed. Their stats and cost are great and the rate is above average to counteract this the suboptimal speed was implemented, but it did not tone down the strenght. It made it difficult next to impossible to deploy said strength. So how do we solve this?

A) Make them cheaper and keep the creation speed on the faster side.

  • Basically, you try to make them an unavoidable problem with this change. If enough of something comes you, something at some point will stick.
  • This would not be unprecedented; the Keshik is in all but name a cheap and fast produced Knight. The cost signifacntly lower while only lacking, if any strength at all in attack (one point less) and attack speed. He has even more HP.

B) Raise the speed of the unit to Champion speed or slightly below.

  • An unconditional increase might break the unit or it might not. Archers, Cav Archers and Scorpions still counter them superply.
  • If you want to make it in a more secure way, there are two options available:
  1. Make the effect staggered over the ages or more flavourfully with the number of relics collected. This is also the option that would allow counterplay from the opponent and encourages the greatest amountof strategical adaption while also promoting the monastery.
  2. Bind the increased speed to buyable upgrades through the ages. Options would be a little but general speed increase from the start coupled with availability of squires and a unique castle age tech. This way you spread out the power gain and spread the cost in the different ages. If you want to use existing tech; TKs could also be affected by all or just select monk techs. The ability of players to know that though and easily access it might also be to conveluted.

What should be a key concern is that the TK should be a unit that can stand on its own two feet. Attempts to make them viable by either enhancing secondary units and structures (rams, towers and siege towers) will make this slow unit a nightmare to micro. It would also increase the overall cost, because suddenly even more ressources would be needed to give TKs some legs. If the answer remains; why go TKs? I could simply produce Halbs/campions/knights and Skirms/Onagers for lower cost and half the micro the TK will remain a bad and rightfully avoided unit.

14

So, a lot of stuff has been said about how to make teutons viable again. Most of us agree on two things: They’re boring, and TK are to slow to be useful. At the same time, some of their bonuses seems useless. So, after thinking, about it, came with this wacky amout of ideas, that gives them a make over, and keep their identity at the same time. First, let’s take a look at the bonuses they have, currently:

Civilization bonuses

Monks have double healing range.
Towers garrison twice as many units.
Murder Holes and Herbal Medicine are free.
Farms are 40% cheaper.
Barracks units receive +1/+0 armor once the Castle Age is reached.
Town Centers can garrison +10 units.

Team bonus: Units resist conversion.

Unique units
Teutonic Knight (heavily armored and powerful but slow infantry)

Unique technologies
Ironclad (siege weapons +4 armor)
Crenellations (Castles +3 range; garrisoned infantry fires arrows)

So, let’s start

Free murder holes are gone. Sometimes murder holes it’s useful, but all in all we can get rid of it. Towers no longer garrison twice as much units. They’re enough and betters civs to go for a tower rush. Insted of that, we gonna give them something that may seem useless at first, but will sinergize good with our final idea: Siege Tower garrison twice as many units, and cost no gold.
Next, we gonna get rid of free herbal medicine (who would think about it ?), and instead , gonna give another bonus to the siege tower: Units garrison in siege units regenerate (rate similar to a regular tower). This is affected by herbal medicine.
Next, we give TK a speed boost: +5% per relic colected (max 3 relics) OR being affected by fervor (I preffer thefirst option tought)
Last, Crenellations affects siege towers.

So, this would by the result:

Civilization bonuses

Monks have double healing range.
Siege towers garrison twice as many units, and cost no gold.
Units garrison in siege units regenerate.
Farms are 40% cheaper.
Barracks units receive +1/+0 armor once the Castle Age is reached.
Town Centers can garrison +10 units.
Team bonus: Units resist conversion.

Unique units

Teutonic Knight (heavily armored and powerful but slow infantry, that gains speed by colecting relics)

Unique technologies
Ironclad (siege weapons +4 armor)
Crenellations (Castles +3 range; infantry garrisoned in Castles, Towers and siege towers fires arrows)

What’s the final result: now the teutons can rely on siege towers to move their slow units. At the same time, siege towers have more armor (due to Ironclad), and can deal with archers (ST shouldn’ tdo that much damage, but it will help Teutons lack of responses agains archers). At the same time, TK could defend ST from melee attacks. Also, TK gets faster, but not That much, just fast enough for being viable.

So, what doyou think? I now I’m changing a LOT of stuff, but let’s be honets, Teutons have a lot of bonuses because they keep adding thinks cause noone knows what to do about them.

15

I fully agree with the op.

-Free onager, cheaper tk upgrade would be good to allow teutons use where they are special and good at.

-Removing the teutons weaknesses feels boring to me (like giving them techs or making TTK much faster). The idea of making the unit monks is interesting but I feel it is better to keep the game simple and straight forward to avoid confusion.

-The +1 meele armor bonus felt very uninspired and I wouldn’t mind seeing I go again.

-The idea of siege towers shooting arrows after crenelation sounds unique and fun to me.

1 Like
16

I played these guys the other day on Arena 1vs1 ranked and I won’t touch them again anytime soon. They lack bracer and no trash Cavalry upgrades without Husbandry too. This civ is slow and the trash units in general suck. They don’t even have Siege Rams when dealing with an Archer civ either. IMO, they need to get access to at least Bracer or upgrade to Light Cav or something with Husbandry. Those Onagers are expensive, and they don’t last long term for any civ to use 1vs1.

1 Like
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I think beter than ST cost no gold, will be gold discount on every siege. 25% maybe. And more garrison space in towers is usefull, because they can place towers defensivly and more villagers can hide. And free Murderholes are ufefull for the same reason, but this is not essential.

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Well, their siège is already quite good, so make it also cheaper would be too much. And yes, the things you said are useful, yet they need to lose something if they gain that much

1 Like
20

You could make them Monks but without giving them the Monk armor class. Because even if they had +12 monk armor, LC would still deal a minimum of 2 (1+1 bonus damage) which would make them 50 hits. Which ruins the TK’s gimmick of being able to eat 100 hits from all trash units.

2 Likes
21

But isn’t unit class depending on their armour class? So if something have monk-class armour, so this is monk. Not reverse. The same with Archers or Cav or everything else.

And bonus damage can be nullified. For example, Camels don’t deal bonus damage vs Catas. Or Hand Cannons vs Huscarls eather.