The addition of Gambesons has disproportionately hurt Persian Trashbows

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Just an observation; Gambesons doesn’t have an overwhelming impact on most archer civs, because they do 10 damage compared to 5->6 pierce armor, reducing damage taken by 20% compared to before gambesons. Which is decent, but not crazy, taking them from needing 14 hits to taking 18.

But Persians max out at just 8 damage, as they lack both bracer and the arb upgrade. This means that instead of doing 3 damage, they now deal 2, and now instead of taking 24 shots to kill a champion, they need 35, nearly a 50% bonus! This is starting to get quite ridiculous. Combine that with the higher wood cost and is there even a reason to use trashbows anymore? They were already not that great; now they’re basically terrible. Skirms are already better than them against both pikes and other archers, and their one real strength is weaker than ever.

Combined with the loss of their nomad bonus and Persians have now dropped to the single worst civ at the highest ELOs, at around 40% win rate, and dropped down 13 ranks over all ELOs.

Isn’t it about time to help them out a tad?

Just my personal analysis of them, they have two problems.

The first is that all their eco bonuses are drag you in bad directions. The bonus resources are great, obviously, but that encourages you to go up faster, which leaves you in Feudal without enough eco to do much but support villager production, because that’s when your bonus villager production kicks in.

Because the bonus villager production doesn’t kick in until you’re in feudal age, its value is already diminished, and only serves to take away from aggressive tactics, since it makes it more difficult to sustain villager production and a military at the same time, but if you don’t take advantage of it, you basically have no eco bonus at all!

The problem becomes worse in Castle Age, when you have to choose between building 3 TCs and somehow sustain an extra 45% food drain, or go 2 TCs and manage with only 2.3 TCs. Go for 3 TCs and you almost inevitably end up over-committed on economy and unprepared for an enemy attack; go for 2 TCs and you only end up weakening your aggression AND falling behind on eco.

And then, you hit your ideal villager population and have a better eco than your enemy for…maybe 5 minutes, before they catch up to you. If you haven’t taken advantage of that extremely short window to attack, you now not only have no eco bonus, you also have no other bonuses.

That, of course, is their second problem. ALL they have is their eco bonuses, unlike almost any other civ. Which means, of course, that long-term you’re screwed, unless you take advantage of trashbows…but wait, they’re much worse now than before.

So Persians are now basically bad at every stage of the game. Basically the only thing they can do now is the Persian Douche, which is pretty dang sad.

I want Persians to get a bonus that fits with their theme, doesn’t make their TC drops more annoying, and if possible, makes their War Elephants a bigger part of their typical gameplan.

  1. Persians now have access to Bracer.(This mostly fixes the Gambesons issue)

  2. Villagers now turn in 10% more gold and stone at Town Centers.

This will take advantage and synergize with their TC HP bonus. It will also encourage highly aggressive Town Centers, which seems to me to be something they were supposed to be doing already, but is instead bastardized into the Persian Douche.

  1. Move Kamandaran to the Imperial Age.

Honestly, it’s only really useful there anyway, and especially combined with the above bonus to gold collection, it shouldn’t change anything in how it’s used.

  1. +30% War Elephant Speed is now active by default on reaching the Imperial Age. War Elephants being slow is enough of a punishment on its own, they don’t need to be charged for it.

  2. New Castle Age Tech: Mahouts(yeah, I can’t think of new persian names): War Elephant conversion range reduced by 4. Monks must be much closer to convert them, making them a much better opening option, but less viable after block printing has been researched.

This should help them in both the short term and the long term and make them quite a decent civ overall!

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Is it that time when I repost my non-invasive Persian change list again? :stuck_out_tongue:

But seriously, Persians need help. And their correct architecture…

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Tbh they are quite boring but I think by buffing their town cemter work rate in feudal, castle, imperial they should at least be okay for pros

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Ah screw it, reposting the list. Get some more attention for it:

-Switch architecture to Central Asian. At least give them their correct buildings, since they are in the game.
-Add Steppe Lancer. They literally used them irl, and Persians in AoK/AoC were known for having a wide stable access, let’s give it back to them in this new age.
-Add Caravanserai to share with Hindustanis. Persians invented them, so frankly they should have been given them in the first place. Also a nice boost to trade.
-Do with Mahouts what happened to Royal Heirs and Berserkergang. Roll the upgrade into the unit/elite upgrade and replace it with a new tech.
-New tech should make Cavalry Archers somewhat equivalent power/utility-wise to full upgraded or a bit better. Persia is famous for its cavalry archers, hell “Parthian Tactics” is literally their contribution to the basic tech tree.

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Tbh they are quite boring but I think by buffing their town cemter work rate in feudal, castle, imperial they should at least be okay for pros

I’m not sure that would work out. Right now they’re actually the worst at high ELOs, while being stronger at average ELOs, which indicates TC work rate doesn’t work out very well at high skill levels.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the TC work rate, especially lacking Dark Age, tends to compensate for player mistakes more than it offers opportunities to be better than average. There just isn’t enough time to take advantage of it if you’re playing efficiently, and it instead becomes a negative more than a positive.

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I’m not convinced that going for Cavalry Archers is a good idea. For one, their lack of Bracer would mean that without adding that as well, even with a UT they’ll still be disappointingly average. For two, they’ve never really been a cavalry archer civ in the first place, so that would be a major shift in their theme, which I’d like to avoid. I would prefer to see Persians be strengthened in their current strengths, rather than be given new ones. Especially since we already have quite a lot of CA civs.

Which is why I’d like to see them get bonuses that advantage their TC bonuses and war elephants, which are their two main distinctive traits at the moment. Though to be fair, adding Bracer to their tech tree WOULD boost their CAs to at least be fully upgraded.

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Which is a mistake. Persians are very well known for their cavalry archers irl. The tech “Parthian Tactics” is their contribution. It would be like making Mongol cavalry archers bad, it’s off-theme.

Persians strength in AoE2 is supposed to be their cavalry and flexibility. Having plenty of viable options is what they have been traditionally good at, and what I suggested just brings that up to code. Would giving them Bracer also do it? Potentially, but I haven’t thought of all the ramifications that would have on Kamadaran yet.

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I’m not against them having very decent cavalry archers, it’s just that there are so many civs with powerful CA bonuses, even giving them both bracer and a powerful CA tech would leave them as just one more among many, it’s just not going to achieve the goal of making them interesting or good.

I think the ideal solution would be giving them Bracer and the eco bonus I suggested, which would give them very capable CAs without ‘forcing’ them down that road.

Then just give them a way to make their elephants more viable in the earlier parts of the game and poof, you’ve got yourself a fairly distinctive and potent civ! While - importantly - maintaining more of their existing identity. I don’t dislike your suggestions broadly, but they’re just so MUCH of a change it basically feels like a whole new civ, and I think they’d be better that way rather than so dramatically changing an existing civ.

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I’ve always felt that the Persian eco bonus feels quite nice. 2.3 Town Centres is pretty good for most of castle age, you don’t have to commit to building the 3rd TC, and 1.15 TC is quite a nice compromise when you’re going all-in.
It might be different at higher level.

I’d greatly support 3. 4. and 5. regardless. Mamouts as a castle age tech which gives WE some monk protection for 300 res could almost be enough to make WE viable in some normal games. It also fits thematically.

For buffing their TC bonus, I wouldn’t mind seeing the 5% bonus in dark age back again. And remove the 50 free wood to make them less good on hybrid maps.

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Another day, another Persians thread. Because why not? Why balance team didn’t give anything to Persians on the biggest patch of the history?

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I’m not sure they would have even considered the impact gambesons would have on trashbows; they’re not that common to begin with, so it’s a rare two-level proxy nerf.

And then they coincidentally decided this was the patch to equalize nomad starts, so it was kind of a double whammy on Persians in losing their resource bonus there, too, dragging them down even further.

I honestly think Persians have always been pretty bad, which is a big part of why people mention them so often, it’s just finally obvious since some of the main things that artificially inflated their win rates are now gone.

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Probably because that patch was mainly focused around infantry. Something Persians are not good at.

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I think Bracer would be too strong for trashbows. Their -1 range vs fully upgraded Arbs and Skirms keeps them in check as a trash unit.

Bracer would also be a large buff to Persian Castles, Skirmishers and Cavalry Archers. None of these are needed IMO.

Instead I would recommend giving Persians access to Arbalester. That would add back the +1 damage against Champions lost from Gambesons without affecting their range. It also would have no affect on other Persian ranged units. The Arb upgrade is expensive, and requires some commitment to archers in Imp.

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Trashbow being a trash unit need to be compared with other trash unit. And in this case, skirmishers.

Persian trashbow are stronger than FU skirmishers since they do double the damage now to gambeson infantry.

Also i believe Persian have HC? But i might be wrong on that

I don’t think trashbow is the problem with Persian in all honestly, they need other stuff like a new UT and mahout baked in war elephants, and maybe a new bonus or have back their faster dock/TC in dark age

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I too think persians need a little buff, but i disagree that they are hurt more than the other civs without bracer and arbalests (celts, cumans, Franks, slavs, teutons) persian crossbows are on the same level as these with the option to make them to trashbows and in addition to that they can also make Hand cannoneers.

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None of this is necessary. The reason why gambeson infantry becomes deadly is because of how slow they are. Just give back the tc work 5% faster in dark age, remove dock work faster as a bonus for balance on hybrid and the civ would be really solid. They’ll get a villager advantage in dark age itself and they won’t be lagging behind with limited map when fully upgraded gambeson champions are out.

And what exactly do you expect to achieve with the war elephant buff? Its an irrelevant unit for 1v1. Buffing it is just a fun moment for BF, michi and amazon tunnel players. Ideally it should be a secondary unique unit with some other cavalry that’s good against infantry being their primary uu.

how are any of these relevant to Gambesons being problematic for Persians?

It just makes them a CA civ instead of a cavalry civ. Its ok to do that but as a compensation they should lose gunpowder.

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Because we were talking about solving problems with the civ.

Fine.

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We do have a cavalry archer civ without Bracer which are Cumans and I think a new UT for CA should be fine for Persians

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Trashbows doesn’t supose to be a militia counter… They goal is deal with pikes which they do very well

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The problem is, they’re really not that good as a trash unit. The thing people forget is that they take wood, not food like skirms, which means they’re dramatically more expensive in the endgame, since wood translates to like 10x as much food. You’re looking at a skirm costing like 40 wood, vs a trashbow costing 60, and at that point they basically trade equally against halbs while being much, much worse against archers. Add to that being almost useless against infantry and the reason for their existence becomes questionable at best. Doing 2 damage vs 1 is still not anywhere approaching a counter, and I’d expect mass infantry to clean them up fairly effectively.

Bear in mind, most top-level players rated trashbows as mediocre at best before this patch, and now they’re 50% worse against something they at least semi countered before.

Persians are currently the worst civ for high-elo 1v1, so is it really true that bracer would be such a problematic addition? After all, they lack Keep, Arrowslits, and Treadmill Crane.

I’m not fundamentally against giving them arbs, but it does kinda take away from the kitschiness of getting a cheaper low-quality unit.

I think the war elephant could be viable for 1v1; it’s a powerful unit mixed in with other units, if it’s not instantly converted.