Ottomans are the most played civ on all elo except 1900+, by a huge margin. It makes ranked games boring very fast as some times half of the games are against Ottomans. We want to see more variations of the game instead of facing Ottomans all day.
Ottomans are picked because it is easy to play, allowing players to free up a lot of apm and efforts from making vills. And it is quite a strong civ as well.
We need some QoL changes on Ottomans, to make it harder to play, requires more player attention. (THIS IS NOT BUFF OR NERF THEIR STRENGTH BUT ONLY MAKING IT MORE COMPLICATED TO PLAY). They maybe need a small nerf as well on abus.
My suggestion includes: split the mosque upgrades further, forcing ottoman players to upgrade mosque techs more often, like one upgrade required every 10-15 population, this makes them more likely to forget upgrading population and get pop capped (just like other civs forgetting making vills). TCs can only be built by explorers, and split the vill limit upgrade and vill train speed upgrades.
This makes playing Ottoman more troublesome, closer to other civs. So more players would explore other civs to play instead of only playing Ottomans
That it is the most preferred, because it is easy does not mean that it needs changes. I don’t see much sense in the changes to the church, the obus in 1v1 is good, in fact it is a problem considering that the janissary is bad against cav in relation to its Is it enough to have to keep nerfing the obus, so that the Janizaro howitzer combo is garbage against other combos? considering you pay a lot for that no thanks
You forgot Azaps. Just need to do 12 base range, with +2 for both Vet and Guard. Max range becomes 16. Also the cost nerf can be reverted. The range is the problem, not the low cost.
Not sure what Abus nerf you had in mind, but I’d like to see the interaction between Abus and Cassadors fixed. Abus basically hard counter Cassadors. Cassadors are supposed to be super hard countered by artillery and hand cav, but they’re supposed to be good in the skirm wars.
Even if Ottomans have a 50% win rate overall, that’s just an average based on individual win rates against each civ. It hurts morale imo if you like playing civs that have a really hard time vs the most played civ.
I could see both Russia’s and Portugal’s WR increase just from Ottoman’s pick rate dropping a bit.
It is a free world but To be honest, if you still complain about Azaps, you should stop playing this game. If you want to win over them in every condition, then look for your own attitude if it is biased.
the issue with the azap, is it ironically requires less brain to use than its replacement, pike xbow, in its current status.
Azaps were fine not long after release. Niche, but a unit that covered a specific weakness of ottomans: high dps hand cav and especially strong goon types. However, ottomains high on the OP abus gun refused to stop botting FIs. So devs kept buffing the hell out of this unit until it became not only a pike that doesn’t die to goons, but a xbow in all but name as well.
Now azaps, are for a pittance of cost more, able to remove the weakness of pike/xbow: micro and making the right ratio. Pikebow comps require alot of micro to not expose pikes to musk/light infantry fire yet also have enough to counter cav. You are constantly dancing and trying to time reinforcement batches. its why musk huss is so much more forgiving. But the azap? 2 azaps nuke musk, cav, goon the same regardless unlike 1xbow 1 pike. no thinking, no micro’ing. just shoot and scoot like xbow with better animation and no fear of getting snared by hand cav.
My solution? A few patches back they were imho perfectly balanced. 6 or 7 base damage on range and higher mulitiplyers vs goon types. plenty of scaling cards. gave otto a bit of variance from abus/jan botting, yet didn’t demolish any semblance of balance in many matchups. This change would make them again niche which i say somewhat sarcastically we know the community mindset is often “If i cant make it in 100% of games and win, its sh*t” but otto still has a amazing age2 spikes these days. You still have jans abus deli humbaraci and 7 azaps is a great shipment so lakota cant BR spam you to death. Make ottoman semi 700w still appealing or silk road too vs semi ff civs. But not so brain dead a stance switching extra armor high dps and range pike beats musketeers cost effectively. Let the azap do its job without breaking the counter system
The RoF nerf effectively brings them back down to just under 7 which is probably fine. I think the issue is that they have the same range as xbows. They only need to be able to handle goons that are 12-14 range so 16 is excessive and makes them a lot less vulnerable to their counters. If they were ~14 range then they’d have to move close enough to musks and goons that xbows in the back row could hit them. They could maybe get back +1 range via the Flight Archery card so that they have a range advantage over goons with Ranged Cavalry Caracol.
It’s even worse than I thought. They actually get extra range with each upgrade. So even with a base range of 14, they’d still keep up with WW or port goons in the late game and out range musks even more. Why does something that is essentially a pikeman have to keep up in range with skirms!?
They are Heavy Infantry, why do you insist to compare them with crossbows? They are more of a pikeman than crossbow with that fact. Due to that tag, it is easy to counter them, if they were Light infantry like crossbows, we would be on the same page with you. Also with the new ranged ROF, their base damage per second is lower so you got what you wanted, I can’t understand why people are blind to that. Just because nerf didnt happen how you imagined doesn’t change the fact that the unit got nerfed.
Because someone with apm higher than resting heart rate of a rock knows that a 16 range 20% range resist (see svea lifeguard to really understand the implications) 4.5 speed heavy infantry unit will both never trade poorly vs musk with its current attack, and can simply switch to melee and run down skirms with poor hand attack (aka most of them). Requring the opponent to overinvest if forced to fight age2 since 1 unit comps cant beat the azap monocomp, sans walls skirms. And that completely destroys the established pike bow vs musk huss age2 system otto and most civs were designed around.
You want to beat musk? You have 3 options. There is no need for this unit to ever be cost effective into a unit pikes are meant to die to, and even xbows need mass, when its supposed to kill other things. You revert changes to this unit and what, have to actually make 2 unit comps? Thats bad?
while azaps have more than 12 range (which makes them feel more like an xbow instead of a ranged musk) i feel that they need to have a negative multiplier in range vs all cav. they overperform with random attacks vs heavy cav at range.
The Azap needs to replace their ranged armor with melee armor at second age, and a range of 12. This makes them vulnerable to other ranged heavy infantry. In fact, when the unit was newly implemented in the game it had resistance to mele and this made it a little more vulnerable. Then, reaching his third age, he gains range and ranged armor.
I have a slightly separate suggestion. If the Azap is considered a melee unit with a shooting option, why doesn’t it have such a tag (Melee Unit)? The unit could also have cover mode in one of its formations. I think this would give more specialty to the unit. In this mode I could not shoot.
This suggestion also applies to Holcan warriors and other infantry that are basically melee units. I think this would differentiate them from the musketeers.
Imo there are 2 points in the game where Azaps are OP. Early game (before good skirms are consistently out) and late game (they’re cheap after the -20% cost, and they get like +35% HP and 50% attack from cards. Add to that the range of 20 and decent siege.).
Simplest solution is:
-Reduce the base range to 12, +2 range for Vet and Guard. Max of 16 range.
-Revert the RoF nerf (was fine for the early game but doesn’t fix the late game problem and the range nerf will compensate from it, solving the same problems better)
-Revert the most recent cost nerf.
-Replace ranged armor with melee armor.
The card kinda doesnt work like that, it enables a special attack stance that has different animation for the units that has different stats all together.
So it doesnt actually reduce ROF, its just that the ROF of the new attack stance is 1.5
Also I dont recommend buffing the cav archers any further unless you really want to see degenerate level akanci cav archers becoming meta (right now its in the level of annoying)
The card only works like that because it needs to change the attack to improve the windup and it uses the RoF of that new attack. But it’s effectively the same as improving the RoF by about 17%. You could achieve what I described by setting the new attack to have a RoF of 1.4, instead of directly altering the RoF like in Wind Horses or Fire Dragon Manual.
I just picked 10% because it’s a round number. But by setting the RoF like Azaps, it could be fine tuned a little bit more so they don’t get buffed too much. Maybe set both new attacks to a 1.4 RoF? That would only be ~7% RoF boost which would be almost exactly the same as +15% attack once all upgrades are in.
There is no real point to me to try and change that card
If anything making it an ROF boost is pretty risky since it stacks exponentially with things like wind horse or the drummer aura. (cant even remember whether wind horse is a base reduction or a net reduction, same with the drummer)
If you want to fine tune it, just change the atk boost to 10% or something
The problems with the azaps are elsewhere, there is no reason to change this part of the unit.
The current change is early game nerf while keeping it the same in the lategame, we can just reduce the base damage to 7 and sort of fine.
Flight Archery