Hi all!
As y’all may know, last week the devs posted a balance patch to the PUP. Unfortunately, the PUP ended yesterday, so we didn’t have much testing time. In that patch they nerfed the NOB, nerfed the Fire Lancer, and nerfed the Palace Guard. Now, as a China main who tries to mitigate his own bias, I’m quite fine with the first two changes. Both the NOB and the FL can be strong and oppressive. But I have to say that the Palace Guard nerf is wrong, and that there’s a better way to nerf.
In the patch they increased the PG gold cost by 5, from 100f/20g to 100f/25g. For a frontline unit you’re supposed to spam, this is massive. 20 palace guards are going to cost 100 more gold compared to before, and that adds up. Palace guard already trade unfavorably vs MAA because of their lower armor, which is to compensate for their higher movespeed.
Some players (including pros like beasty) have said that this change is necessary because each palace guard produces 8 gold in taxes when produced. But this misunderstands the mechanic. Taxes do not go directly into your gold bank. Rather, they need to be collected by an IO. So the tax income rate is more tied to how often an IO can collect and drop off the taxes. Saying that each PG is 8 gold cheaper because of taxes then assumes that an IO is always able to collect all the tax gold, far from a certainty. Furthermore, having an IO on tax collection has the opportunity cost of forgoing supervising a resource or production building. This is a real disincentive from having an IO dedicated to tax collection, instead of getting 20% more food/wood/gold/stone or pushing out a bunch of Palace Guard.
Rather, the real problem with palace guard is not when they first get unlocked in castle, but rather when Yuan Dynasty kicks in and they become Knights on two legs. This is when they can feel oppressive and unfair. But this is moreso to do with Yuan than PG. Yuan is super, super good. Not only does it speed up your military but also your villagers, which both boosts your income and also makes running vills away from harassment much easier. Yuan is the reason why PG can be an issue.
So I propose, instead of nerfing palace guard, nerf Yuan dynasty by reducing the speed bonus from 15% to 10%. This has the additional benefit of making Fire Lancers less strong, so maybe we don’t need to nerf the Fire Lancer either.
PS: Possibly consider buffing Ming to also affect villagers, just like how yuan does. This makes going from Yuan to Ming feel less bad than it currently does
