China: has been seen multiple nerfs, In closed beta, everyone used to start with 4 villagers and Chinese started with 6. Since the stress test and now, everyone starts with 6 and Chinese don’t get any additional villagers as advertised both in their description as well as on the AOE website.
China still lacks a way to counter heavy units in age II with the new pacing, Crossbows/Palace guards/Knights are all units you get in age III. Your best bet is to build a wall and hope it gives you enough time to rush castle but if they are through the wall you are boned. The lack of 2 extra vills can be extrapolated to have long term eco impacts for pacing and either needs to come back or the tech pacing needs to be changed to account for their lack of counters/economic slowness.
On top of that, the Nest of Bees are trash units, worse than Mangonels in every possible way. They display 8x8 damage but in practice they deal less damage than a Mangonel 12x3. And Bee damage does not increase with Chemistry in Age 4 despite being a gunpowder unit, which is I would assume is simply a bug.
Mongolia: The lack of age 2 lancers is just absurd all things considered, Rus, French, HRE, and Eng all get special access to age 3 units early (Men at arms, Knights) meaning their age II push is hard to counter. The lack of crossbows and knights doubles down on this just like China, Deli, Abbisids, they can’t counter an early heavy armor push without trading extremely poor via archers, spears, or light cav.
For a civ that is supposed to be about harassment and early push they oddly lack the tools to do so let alone counter an enemy push from civs listed above. Their economic changes such as the removal of the packing up towers (yam network), removal of breeding upgrades/sheep spawn, and moved tech to oovo means their pacing is slow and hard to keep up with civs like French and Rus who can build multiple buildings to research faster. The inability to early push or at least light buildings for raid resources is extremely impactful on their pacing and can lead to games outside of 2v2 being a bad trade regardless of your harassment.
I just feel like the game was better in beta or at least theses specific civs. Most of the community feedback for both of these civs doesn’t seem to have struck the devs or was overlooked, it was clear from the community and even the “pro” players what was working and what was not.
Would have preferred to let the Bees still have 24 projectiles as it looked really impressive when firing. They can lower the damage each projectile outputs to nerf it.
I can’t tell if this is a joke but if it is I laughed. So much for asymmetry, I thought it’d at least hold out a year before they try and make everyone the same.
Mongolia is kind of hard to judge, because there’s that dumb TC drop strat that works waaay too well right now. But it does seem underwhelming otherwise. Mangudai are great at raiding and kiting, but they’re not a big impactful unit in an actual battle. Seems to me like they really want to go for a civ that’s all about negating enemy eco and winning early, so reenabling the lancers in the feudal age would be a good way of making them more effective at that.
That being said, Mongolia is the “weirdest” civ in the game, it’s possible that it will shine later on when players get more experience with it.
China, on the other hand, I’m not even sure what strat you’re supposed to go with, because they’re not particularly good at anything. They’re supposed to be specialized in artillery, Relic went overboard and the nest of bees was beyond broken in the closed beta. Now it’s arguably worse than a mangonel. The dynasty system is interesting in theory, and would make them a late game beast. But in practice, I’m far too busy keeping up with my opponent in 1v1 to randomly dump 2000 ressources on a building, unless I’m far ahead (in which case the game is usually pretty much over). In practice, I’ve rarely gone beyond the Song dynasty in 1v1 games.
As you said, it also has 0 answers to armored units in the feudal age, you just have to boom and pray.
I guess there is value in a civ that doesn’t specialize in anything but has a solid base, but if that’s what they’re going for Relic needs to improve their eco, so they at least have something going for them.
I think Mongolia is fine, if you start spamming mangudai ASAP and massing them over time while micro’ing them mongol can do some damage. Heavy units don’t matter much if you’re shooting and running away from the opponent just run circles around them and they’ll die. Knights can’t counter them afterall as long as you’re always on the move.
Yeah and also by reducing the projectiles the animation is no longer in sync. Watch a nest of bees and how it appears to be still firing but with no projectiles coming out it is really obvious the weapon is smoking and shaking for no reason.
I’d prefer the full 24 projectiles for the spectacle too but if not that at least adjust its animation so it stops the shooting animation when its actually done shooting.
Yeah, removing early lancers from mongols made me lose all interest in playing them. They also scrambled techs around and maybe removed some…
For chinese, nest of bees looks very underwhelming and the fact that they dont have those 2 extra villagers on the start was a big nerf for a civ that had no early eco bonus on top of not having any early heavy military and players also have to deal with that dinasty button on the center of the screen that literally everybody asked for it to be removed or moved to a corner.
Their feudal age gunslit towers are cool tho… 25 dmg/shot 2shotting villagers is no joke
I feel like Mongols would rather benefit from some passives enhancing their eco bonus. Like a temp speed and dmg boost when starting attacking a building in some form, which hits a cool down after. Also, distributed continues income on damage dealt vs on chunk on burning would help.
Most early harassment is working only on villagers and spearmen and when you start to mow down buildings, you’re rather time than Ressource bound.
Bro are you serious? Mongos have some of the best eco in the game if they can start trading. They can double build merchants for only 25 gold each. They don’t need a boost to eco.
I have seen these arguments before- but that doesnt mean its not worth reiterating…
I agree that what u say is a problem… but the problem might really be- the devs are making hasty changes based on the initial complaints and its causing them more issues when they are nerfing the very thing that might be goving a civ its only one up” on the others… its always gonna happen “players are gonna spam the best unit to win- thus seems like its over powered. Though not true. Devs need to be careful not to bend to every will of complaint… and players need to find workarounds instead of complaining for fixs. This will all take time to smooth out. BUT what we dont want is a Rock Paper Scissors game. Rus beats chin, beat mong, beats, rus- kinda rounds where ur almost doomed if your not on the right side of the civ…
If your opponent let’s you get there, yes. I just don’t think this will survive the next month, when people stop overestimating early Mongols aggression and rather go offensive. Then this will get exponential harder to pull off and sustain. The raiding bonus on the other hand is way less dependent on what route your opponent is going and enforcing the unique character of this civ, imo.
I think they (Relic) had a knee-jerk reaction to alpha and beta feedback. The feedback was based on four-six civs. When you think about it, perhaps revert the changes and testing the factions in the sandbox as they were designed would be healthy?
In the beta, people actually felt that the English were going to be beyond broken at launch.
china lost its unique starting tech (more vills) and right now needs massive buffs because their only play is rush feudal and TC spam to hold until castle age as they cannot trade cost effective in feudal against french/rus meta picks (99% of games are french/rus in ranked) unless you’re actually drastically better than your opponent.
mongols need big buffs too right now against meta picks mangudai are their only saving grace for aggression and its counterintuitive that a race meant to be aggressive is forced to boom to castle to get their bread and butter
major buff chinese and mongols - either that or heavily nerf rus/france
the TC drop is bugged. the cart speed is only meant to be 50% increase but for some reason its like 150% increase. once thats fixed TC drop is no longer an issue
trading bonus is busted but for it to be effective you have to trade long distance mongols dont get walls and trade lines are so easy to sack its not worth it unless your opponent is literally braindead
trading in 3v3/4v4 games is good but in 1v1 unless you abuse yam and build towers along the entire route mangudai arent going to save someone sacking the line
From 4-> 6 start vill was already a nerf to Mongols, as it means the ovoo advantage is smaller. Mongols have no good specials units/techology too. Mangudia kind of weak (too expensive), and not useful in late game.
Horseman is so bad, they should at least get free upgrade when age up too. I feel like early houseman is actually a weakest in many situation that you don’t make them in age 1.
Most of the time I found building scout are actually better than horseman as scout can “tank” more arrow damage, and horseman die before able to hit much anyway.
Buff in Horseman will be nice… some bonus for mongols horse too. Right now if you build horseman you even lose to archer (esp. longbow, mongols so terrible vs longbow). Even you have Lancer in age3, it is still a weaker version as no good technology like France or Rus.
I am a main China player and I can agree that in Dark and Feudal ages you can only spend on deffensive units on your TC and pray to survive until castle age. After that you are free to go to the battle. I don’t know if Relic wanted this or not, but is the way it is now versus France and Rus civs.
For Mongolia is the reverse, you start strong In Dark and every age you up you will be weakened and on Imperial you will be the worst civ. Maybe this is did on purpose for relic. Every civ has his age to shine.
just run circles around them and they’ll die. Knights can’t counter them afterall as long as you’re always on the move.