Teutons are NOT underpowered

I hope their presence in a FINALS of Empire Wars shows that this civ is not weak. It is apparently a good civ on open maps, too, since it was picked on Land Madness of all maps.

According to Viper, reasoning for picking the civ in EW are:

  • it’s still a cavalry civ, and cavalry civs excel on open maps. You might not be able to force Knights vs Knights fights, but you still can kill a ton of villagers and cause massive idle time
  • farm savings bonus is 1 of best long-term bonuses in the game, comparable to Indians eco for example (over 50 farms, for example, you save 1200 wood).
  • the extra room in TCs and towers means the civ is harder to raid (for example, you can keep 10 on gold, which is about as many as you generally want in early Castle age and not suffer any losses to raids)

Then the civ has minor perks like:

  • free Herbal Medicine (if you build a Castle, you can garrison your Knights inside and heal them up without going through the bothersome process of necessarily building a Monastery and waiting for the tech - basically your Knights get more HP circumstantially.
  • better fortifications (Castles being Bombard Cannon-proof is not a small feat and already kicks out of the door a lot of common comps, such as late game Ethiopians or Bohemians, forcing you to use exclusively Trebs)
  • Knights extra melee armor means that even though they lack Bloodlines, they ARE better in some circumstances than generic Knights and in some circumstances you want Teutons Knights.
  • resistance to conversion means that full Knights in Castle age is way more viable, especially in those 10 vs 10 fights where it’s Knight/Monk/Pike mix between 2 cavalry civs, the Teuton player has an advantage not only due to melee armor on Knights, but also army composition-wise.

Yes the civ “dies to cav archer” (which I don’t believe is necessarily true, you just need to play super defensive, with tons of Castles, TCs and Skirms), but many other civs have bad matchups: Franks are bad into Saracens, Berbers are bad vs Ethiopians/Vikings, and so on.

This post was mostly because I am annoyed by how many people fanboy Teutons so much, which is understandable but I really don’t think this civ needs buffs. It has one of the best eco bonuses in the game, far stronger than, e.g. Lithuanian bonus (yes you can say all you want that Lithuanian bonus is better early and allows you to go 18 pop Scouts, which is true and all, but afterwards your eco is ■■■■ and Lithuanian eco gets worse and worse while Teutons eco gets better throughout the game including in late Castle and Imp). It has a reasonable tech tree, and plenty of options, only some are non-traditional/niche, for example Halb Siege is not very common because it’s hard to play but it’s a really good comp if you get it going and here Teutons have extra armor on Halbs AND on Siege (common counter to something like Scorpions is mass Knights and here having +3 melee armor definitely helps).

8 Likes

Is there a lot of people that calls for Teuton buffs?

Skirms is not best choice in imp tho because of missing attack upgrade.

Also I think Franks has an advantage over Saracens, and Berbers are okish vs Vikings on RM.

Also I think Teutons and Berbers are both not T1 in land madness? Like magyars

Also I think people seldom play in Land madness and/or open maps.

Teutons need a nerf if anything. The +2 armor on both all cav and all infstry plus buffing the farm discount plus there already existing bonuses was a bit too much

I’ve seen more than I’d like, and I basically see 0 people advocating for Goths or Spanish buffs, so probably there is a bit of a bias here yes.

I’d say armor is more important for Skirms, without last armor, you don’t actually trade THAT cost-effectively vs FU Arbalest, it’s basically an almost even trade.

yeah OK I agree about RM, I was thinking Empire Wars, Franks are stronger vs Saracens on RM you are right, point is, Franks also are at a disadvantage vs any Camel civ long-term. Franks is really a civ that is all about Feudal and early Castle age, but if you fail to create an advantage there, you are almost always in a bad spot in any other age.

I think all things being equal, Vikings do their early Imp go-to strat and Berbers can’t do much about it without an eco bonus. Skill clearly matters a lot and it’s hard to discount Berbers of all civs but let’s say it’s like 60/40 maybe for Vikings? Point is that Berbers also have their weaknesses (no eco bonus being the main one).

yeah true but since they were picked I think Teutons are like top 8. Berbers probably like top 4 on that map.

well I wouldn’t go that far either xD they basically can’t play ranged units other than Hand Cannoneer, that’s not a small disadvantage, the compensations they need in return must be generous imo.

Check the ladder winrate of teutons, if I remember right they are very close to top5 sometimes even in.

Denfinitely nerf worthy

Yeah, it would be better for Teutons to get +1 melee armor starting in Castle Age, but not an additional melee armor in Imperial Age.

I don’t believe in winrates, the question you should ask yourself with a civ always is, WHY does the civ do badly/average/excellent on some map/format.

And Teutons to me seem balanced, a lot of pro players agree they are balanced for the most part, RM winrates only bring you so far because even in high elo, people don’t play perfectly or take the game too seriously.

dunno, +1 melee armor only seems underwhelming considering you don’t get Husbandry. Might as well play Sicilians at that point…

4 Likes

I’d say armor is more important for Skirms, without last armor, you don’t actually trade THAT cost-effectively vs FU Arbalest, it’s basically an almost even trade.

Not really - the range is more important than the armor imo

yeah OK I agree about RM, I was thinking Empire Wars, Franks are stronger vs Saracens on RM you are right, point is, Franks also are at a disadvantage vs any Camel civ long-term. Franks is really a civ that is all about Feudal and early Castle age, but if you fail to create an advantage there, you are almost always in a bad spot in any other age.

Well lets first try to balance Vikings in EM then XD but I think all the balance changes are based on RM, I seldom see EM changes tbh (and never see people talking about Teutons in EM)

yeah OK I agree about RM, I was thinking Empire Wars, Franks are stronger vs Saracens on RM you are right, point is, Franks also are at a disadvantage vs any Camel civ long-term. Franks is really a civ that is all about Feudal and early Castle age, but if you fail to create an advantage there, you are almost always in a bad spot in any other age.

The thing is Saracens has only one econ bonuses. Also In RBW5 pool there are a lot of maps with berries as well. So actually you see Saracens all in more than Frank all in (Marketplace all in in particular…)

Franks can go halbs vs camels, it is not a really great issue (Saracens usually play as archer civ anyway, their Camels are too generic)

I think all things being equal, Vikings do their early Imp go-to strat and Berbers can’t do much about it without an eco bonus. Skill clearly matters a lot and it’s hard to discount Berbers of all civs but let’s say it’s like 60/40 maybe for Vikings? Point is that Berbers also have their weaknesses (no eco bonus being the main one).

I think all things being equal, Vikings do their early Imp go-to strat and Berbers can’t do much about it without an eco bonus. Skill clearly matters a lot and it’s hard to discount Berbers of all civs but let’s say it’s like 60/40 maybe for Vikings? Point is that Berbers also have their weaknesses (no eco bonus being the main one).

Difficult to counter knight all in as Vikings in RM maps

yeah true but since they were picked I think Teutons are like top 8. Berbers probably like top 4 on that map.

I mean that does not show too much imo.

As someone with a math degree, People like you scare me

1 Like

Teutons have 50.46% win rate (1v1 1650+), 50.81% win rate (1v1 all) in ladders from aoestat.

1 Like

Thx for checkinch that up!

Well then I don’t think they are nerf ready yet from win rates.

4 Likes

Well Teutons are not underwhelming currently. Not only were they decently strong in the EW tournament, they are also arguably the best Arena civ.

Prior to DE, they didn’t have any armor bonus and their Farm discount was weaker, too. It seems that the devs went a bit overboard in their last Teuton buff, where they introduced the +1 melee armor in Castle Age and +2 in Imperial Age at the same time. I think they should have had a more gradual approach.

1 Like

Can you check arena too?

52.62%, 48.74% (All, 1650+).

They are too weak against archer civs (Britions in particular)

3 Likes

They lack husbandry, not bloodlines. A big part of the Teutonic identity is massive attack and armor levels, but no speed upgrades.

2 Likes

I have a degree in Physics, it’s important to realize that statistical biases exist and small sample sizes exist. In a game like AoE2, there are numerous “variables” at work in determining the ultimate key variable “winrate”, such as build orders, whether you go Scouts vs an Archer or Cav civ, etc. More importantly, AoE2 is a VERY complex game, and the implicit assumption you make of people having devised optimal strats is NOT necessarily true. For example, we saw recently in EW Bohemians picked and win vs what is considered an overall top 5 civ, we saw Poles go toe to toe (sort of) with Berbers, in short there are many things winrates don’t tell you, player experience, novelty of the game, etc. all play a role and when there are many variables, data gets less clear so making statistical inference is also less significant. It’s pretty much common knowledge in MANY MP games that balancing ONLY around winrates is detrimental, the historicity of such approach always resulted in failure in numerous online games.

Just to give you a small example, Malay is 1 of the civs with the lowest winrates in RM, but according to Viper, they are fine (a statement I agree with). They are VERY hard to play, and even people at 2k/2.2k don’t play optimally or know the nuances of all civs. But they have important timings, such as FC Elephant all-in, they get a form of eco bonus, they can go full archers, and so on. Why do they have low winrate? Probably because people play “vanilla” strats most of the times, such as Vikings full Archers, and making Elephants work is not as easy as making early Castle Crossbows work. In short, once more, winrates aren’t everything because you can’t make the assumption that games are played in a computerized, fully mathematical way.

yeah it goes without saying they are good on Arena also. I wouldn’t say best civ but definitely top 3-4, Burgundians, Britons and maybe Aztecs are up there also.

yep my bad it was a typo, I slept very few hours today, meant to write Husbandry.

2 Likes

I don’t really think they are top 3-4 Arena tbh, Britions Burgundians Malay Cumans Huns etc both are better than Teutons.

1 Like

Archers destroy Teutons. They have almost nothing to stop it. That said, they one of the few civs that can stop the Goth flood, since the Teutons are great in close combat. But archer civs like the Britons are a nightmare for the Teutons.

No gold shafting mining slows them down and does not help bring out their awesome gold-heavy units. In team game, Teutons need to set up trade in team games quite early. Since their non gold units suck for the most part, apart from Halberdier.

Britons, Burgundians, Malay (forgot that one good job for filling that in ty) I agree.

Cumans, I mean for the 2nd TC in Feudal? I don’t know if that makes them top tier. You still have a massively delayed Castle time and overall you probably don’t end up with many more vills (and also lose all relics). Though with the discounts on the production buildings, that might give them some early Imp spam potential so with latest buff they got I could see them being top 4-5 yeah.

Huns, I don’t see why you would think this civ is even top 10 on Arena, to me it seems flat out bad.

Mangonels/Scorpions stop archers. Knights stop archers too. In Castle Age, you can also do Skirms, in Imp, archer-line falls off hard and Knights become way stronger, Husbandry or not.