The Burgundians still OP

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
43

yes and only like 10 civs in the game have heavy CA with Bracer and decent upgrades (either last archer armor or PT) which is why Chinese CA is so valuable, if you are Italians sure you can play FU CA in Castle age but in Imp you have no long-term scalability.

I believe Chinese are fine and should not be touched, there will always be a top dog, if you nerf Chinese, next top tier Arabia civ is likely something like Poles or Khmer. Removing Camels, might as well remove Arbalest at that point, the whole point of Chinese is their wide tech tree, they lack options in Imp which is why they are so strong early on, notably no Supplies on Champions, no PT on heavy CA, no particularly good Monastery, no Siege Engineers, no Bombard Cannon, the UU is actually worse than many people think, dies hard to Onager for example but also to other things.

or we can leave them as they are, if you remove the discount on unit upgrades you literally got a Burgundians copy but with Camel and Arbalest and no BBC and that’s extremely boring.

I don’t know why people are so adamant on nerfing the top civs, it’s literally an infinite process, if you nerf Chinese, Mayans, Britons, Franks, new top dogs like Khmer, Hindustanis, Lithuanians, Mongols, Tatars emerge.

Then people will go like “oH lEt’s NeRf TaTARs” and there you have it again until we are at “let’s nerf Turks”.

I think Chinese are fine, they don’t have 1 dominant strat, they aren’t super easy to play in low elo, and even in high elo they lack some key upgrades (for example Hussar) that make them not trivial to play late game. Surely they are harder to play than, say, Aztecs, “Eagle all in”, where you do Eagles and Monks and as long as you micro well, you always win.

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44

agreed, %25 or %33 eco bonus should be very nice plus flemish militia should be a bit lower (-5 hp or -1 atttack or low anti-cav bonus etc.)

45

Basically I agree with you that there is no need to nerf the Chinese.
What I stated, just means that if people want to nerf the Chinese, I think these ways are suitable, such as the adjustment of Rocketry and elite CKN mentioned above, and the loss of Heavy Camel.

Regarding the latter, the Chinese have full Halberdier, so the loss of Heavy Camel and even the entire Camel line is bearable and give them a small weakness in the Castle Age. Also, this is fairly accurate. There is no camel distribution in China proper, so China’s dynasties (mainly referring to the dynasties established by the Han people) hardly used them to fight. The Chinese in the game have them mainly because this civilization currently also covers peoples such as Jurchen, Khitan, Tibetans, etc. located in north and west of China proper, where Bactrian camels are distributed like Mongolia.

46

Not going to lie I still find people calling Chinese OP weird and confusing. There is just 0 evidence in the match data to support they are OP outside of maybe the >0.1% and even then it’s not clear cut. For pretty much the entire playerbase (<2k) they underperform. Not saying they should be buffed or anything but the amount of people who trip over themselves to declare they need to be nerfed who aren’t even impacted by them blows my mind.

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47

That’s the thing. for the Very best Chinese are arguably the best.
go watch any tournament and you’ll see Chinese are among the most played/picked/banned/sniped/etc.

I believe Chinese need a nerf AT THE PRO LEVEL. I also Think they need a buff for the non pro level.

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48

Also viable CA, better scorpion, - Paladin, -HC.
Then how is that a Burgundians copy?

49

I don’t understand why CA is always mentioned.
Japanese CA can be fully upgraded, but it is still not a mainstream strategy either.
Chinese CA is even rarer than Japanese CA, how can it cause problems.

In Chinese games, the most common strategies I have seen are still Knights/Cavaliers, Camels, Crossbow/Arb, and CKN, but I almost haven’t seen CA.

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50

Isn’t that fact (though Chu Ko Nu is OP), the thing is they are the only archer civilization with such insane economy and being able to also go other units effectively, combine that with the cheaper technologies they get then you have a civilization that has way too much potential, no other civilization has that power as Chinese, why a civilization that is excellent going archers also needs viable melee units to start with? .
Removing blast furnace means they still have good castle age dominance but their power dramatically goes down in Imperial and gives them an area where they are weaker, if anything they will be more pushed towards archers.

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51

The reason that the Chinese are often seen as an archer civ is just that they don’t have paladins, but they should not be simply considered as an archer civ. They are supposed to be a versatile but not specialized civilization.

Italians and Portuguese have full arb and cavalier too. The 2 civs have better guns and monks, and the former has even hussar and full champion. If there is indeed a problem, having both good archer and good melee is never that one.

Besides losing heavy camel and nerf CKN, maybe make the tech discount -0%/-10%/-20% in feudal/castle/imperial age to nerf them in the early and mid game a bit. Maybe.

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52

But not the economy that chinese get, here’s where the big difference goes.

53

The civs have their own bonus respectively.
Economy is what Chinese better than Italians and Portuguese, but the 2 also have something that Chinese cannot win.

Now that you’ve admitted that the problem is the economy rather than units, why not give advice on the economy particularly? If their economy is OP, nerfing melee has no effect on their economy, and the economy would be still OP for a pure archer civilization, just look at Vikings. Now you are going to remove their BF, next you might go to remove their TR.

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54

Because that’s one of the main strenghts by design of the civ, much like how Vikings are also designed to excel at economy, I would rather respect that but nerf the problematic options that those ecos lead to. Vikings since the removal of Thumb Ring are now kinda balanced with the free wheelbarrow and Hand Cart techs, same logic goes to Chinese if they lose blast furnace.

55

the most main strength and the core identity of Chinese is their versatility rather than the economy, actually. Lowering the discount to slow down the speed at which they switch the use of units is already an appropriate adjustment for them.

You can reduce their options such as losing good monks so they can only rely on light cavalry against siege weapons (which is happened), and losing camels so they can only rely on pikes against cavalry. However, definitely do not push their main force towards a single side, archers. Versatility please.

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56

My idea is to reduce the discount to 25% but give an additional 25% for every age you advance past the prerequiste age so wheelbarrow will cost 113F 50W in Darkage and only 50W in the imperial age.