The ultimate Persian re-design thread

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
109

I hope devs just switch it up a bit, so it’s not that one-sided anymore.
BTW I just tried douching with some other civs that have interesting bonusses. Mayans is kinda interestinng as you have longer lasting food and +1 villager. It’s basically impossible to make work against opponents who know how to handle it. But there are still a lot of people who either completely overreact or are too greedy, thinking it would be a self-killer move.

I probably need to make a topic here "How to defend against a ######## explaining what’s the moves and options you have against persians and britons and what changes when facing all the other civs.

It’s so weird to see people completely ignorcing the ####### not even trying to get the wood they need to built a new TC and then have no idea what to do once their TC is down.

If you would have some experience you would know that kamandaran is currenly almost exclusively used to boost up their xbow play in the midgame.
As it looks like skirms still dominate trashbows in the super lategame.

That’s why the trashbows should receive a buff so they get used a bit more in these super lategame sitiuations.

It’s so weird so many people punching on Kamandaran here, though trashbow play is basically never seen in trashwars. Maybe that’s exactly the reason for it. It’s easy to punch on things that see basically no play.

And it’s really sad, cause trashbows are an amazing idea and would fit so well with the otherwise havy cav focussed army ot persians, especially eles.

111

I agree with most of your other posts in this thread, but another thing I’d like to add is that persians were originally a generalist (or pseudo-generalist, whatever people call it) cavalry civ with full stable.
So personally, I think that bringing back that part of them could be great. Like taking a different route, doubling down on how their cavalry gets small bonus damage against some units.

112

Give them Steppe Lancers! >:3

1 Like
113

I wasn’t saying Persians couldn’t make xbows, but why would they? Doesn’t really fit with their identity. Moving kamandaran to imp reinforces that cavalry identity.

Just because you’ve been forced to make trash units doesn’t necessarily mean your opponent is making exclusively halbs/hussars/skirms.

If your Persians and you’re up against Malay trash 2HS I think xbows is a good option. With their +2 pierce atk, faster ROF, they’d be far more potent.

I wasn’t saying you’d always make xbows in a trash war.

114

Good example.
As fat as i know Persians get completely owned by ######## ###### in Trash wars.
When there is enough eco to spam the trashmen like crazy, there’s little the trashbows can do to stop that.

Atm it’s almost never. That’s the point. Moving Kamadaran to Imp would be jet another nerf to Persians as Opposed to War Eles xbows actually see some play in the midgame for them.
And moving mahouts to castle age would add some additional investment to make War Eles work there already, whilst if it’s in imp there’s room to directly adress War Eles and bring them to a usable state in the midgame.

Therefore it makes absolutely no sense to move Kamandaran from castle age.

Idk if this is really a good idea. Giving their eco and limited other options doubling down on that would mean to give them the best Paladins in the game. And I don’t think we need to replace Franks for that role, do we?
I think Persians have interesting concepts, like both their CA and Trashbows would only need a mediocre buff to be a reliable option.
And tbh with sicilians, burgundians, lith, bulgarians and cumans we have a lot of cav powerhouses lately added which just do a lot of things better than persians. Persians could use some options. And these options are actually already designed in, they just need to be activated and worthwhile.

116

I get that currently xbows are viable for persians in the mid-game. I just don’t think that jives well with their identity.

It’s waaaaay up in the thread, but I was theorizing with some guys and we came up with these changes.

  1. Give persians free Bloodlines and/or Husbandry.
  2. roll mahouts into the war elephant (IDK if just elite or both. Old Royal heirs was added to elite shotel, but beserkergang was added to both berserk. I don’t have a strong opinion)
  3. move Kamandaran to imp.
  4. With our castle age UT slot, we buff the CA. The exact values could be argued, but something like +2 cav archer armor, +2 against pikes and monks.
  5. Give Persians Steppe Lancer.

Persians are a slower civ. They have no gather bonus and because of their increased TC work rate they actually burn through food faster. In the long run it’s a great bonus, but in the mid-game it might actually, possibly, be a indirect nerf. So this whole concept is based on doubling down on their cavalry identity while giving them some midgame options so they can make it to the late game.

Free Bloodlines and/or Husbandry effect the knight, war elephant, and the CA, giving you a cavalry power spike in early castle. Steppe lancer also gives them another option while again doubling down on their cavalry identity.

Bloodlines and husbandy help CA some, but aren’t as impactful as thumb ring. So while your early castle age CA are improved, they aren’t quite as improved as the knight and war elephant.

This is where their castle UT comes in. While it won’t kick in immediately, by late castle age your CA is pretty strong though mostly as a compliment to your other cavalry. However this design is a little extra good imo, as Persians are good in team game imp and don’t really need a late team game buff. Because they lack bracer, their HCA fall off a bit ending up -1 range and +1 atk vs halbs and monks, but because or their CA armor buff are still a bit more resistant to their counters.

If somehow, someway, you do all of this and the Persians are still not buffed enough, then Kamandaran can effect CA too, but re-write the effect to change only 45 gold cost to wood. So you’d still get your trashbows, but CA would still cost 15 gold, so better but not trash.

The only thing I’m not SUPER crazy about with this is that it’s odd that a cavalry civ has two UTs that buff archers. I think it works in context, but on paper that’s admittedly weird.

117

I don’t want to make the Persian douche better, but I also don’t want to get rid of it. I think it’s an interesting strategy that makes people play in unique ways.

No, what I want is something to encourage Persian players to use their Town centers in other aggressive ways. Right now, the HP bonus is largely ignored once the possibility of douching is past.

118

I disagree. All I see is a meme strat to try and end the game in the first few minutes.

The first time I encountered it, I had to restrain myself from not putting a villager in each corner of the map and building walls. Something I have never done before.

119

Yes, and now you know how to counter it! In fact, it probably makes you approach the entire game differently when you play against the Persians.

I think that’s delightful. The early parts of the game are too standardized on the whole; something that changes it up every once in a while is great, especially when it’s something so eminently counterable.

I wouldn’t want to make it any stronger, but it would be good to see more uses for the TC HP bonus, especially later in the game.

120

Eh…?

You think it’s a good thing to have a strategy so annoying that it makes people contemplate stalling the game out to punish the opponent?

Ok I think we know what to do with this. Please devs, just bin the double HP.

121

I imagine you only did that once, yeah? After you figured out how to counter them, it makes the early game exciting. Just because a strategy makes you frustrated when you first encounter it doesn’t make it bad; how many times on reddit have people seen people complain and/or stall because someone used a strategy they didn’t like?

Just recently, Viper was Douched, managed to win, and had a great time!

No, Persian Douching is a time-honored tradition and should never go away.

122

Regarding the double HP of TCs and the Persian Douche strat, I don’t think the devs need to remove the double HP of TCs, this is a strong part of the Persian identity and should be left as is, but I admit things need to be done to discourage aggressive play with buildings including the Persian doucche. But there are other ways that can be addressed, here are some ideas:

  • Significantly reduce the damage arrows from buildings can do to other buildings. This is a no brainer and could help clean up a lot of cheesy strategies from the game like tower rushing and forward TC dropping etc… Sure it wouldn’t completely make it impossible but it’ll make it not worth it. If the victim of the TC drop can just shrug off the damage from the arrows until they hit feudal and castle age, they can pretty much go on to win the game from there. Incidentally this will also make castle drops in Arena games less potent and I think that is also a good thing. It will also help reinforce the idea that arrow fire from buildings are supposed to be used as a defensive tool not an offensive one.

  • Remove the ability to rebuild TCs in the dark and feudal ages. This also makes sense. Normally you wouldn’t be able to build a TC until the castle age so it makes sense to not be able to build one earlier even if you lose your starting TC and lets face it if you lose your starting TC in the dark age or feudal age by some miracle then you have really already lost the game. So outside of self-deleting your TC and dropping an agressive forward replacement TC there really isn’t any other realistic reasons for rebuilding TCs before the castle age.

  • If the above is too extreme, then just make TCs built in the earlier ages far more expensive than they are later so that there is an additional penalty for deleting and rebuilding your starting TC. The Cumans already get a version of this with their Feudal age TC being far slower to build. This could be made standard for all civs who are building TCs for whatever reason in the earlier stages of the game (nomad starts not affected obviously).

  • A variation of the above suggestions could be to just make it impossible to delete your own TCs in effect stopping you from being able to do aggressive TC drops. But if you somehow do lose your TC say for example in the Feudal age because you were pushed by a player in the castle age then you should be able to rebuild your TC. This will mostly be relevant in low ELO/casual games because obviously in any game that is actually competitive a feudal player who loses their TC to a player in the castle age again has pretty much already lost the game but I guess implemented this way at least you can have a “theoretical” way of getting back in the game even if realistically it will never happen…

  • A more controvertial idea which admitedly would completely shake up the game’s core mechanics which I actually would like to see but don’t know if its even possible would be to create an area of denial effect around TCs which would prohibit other enemy players from building fortifications and TCs within the affected area. I know this really goes against the whole design philosophy of this game which allows people to build whatever they want anywhere, but this sort of mechanism is not unheard of in other RTS games where players are restricted from building too close to their enemy’s bases and honestly I think a very limited application of this idea in AOE2 wouldn’t be a bad thing.

123

Sounds like a lot of effort to fix a non-issue. TC drops are extremely counterable once you know how. They are no less valid a strategy than a tower drop.

Leave it be. It’s been just fine for a decade, and it’ll be just fine for another decade more.

124

It seems for whatever reason its a very divisive strat. Some people absolutely hate it and others think its the spice of life. I personally don’t care so much but generally am not a fan of cheesy strats so if they were somehow nerfed massively I wouldn’t complain…

3 Likes
125

I forgot whether I replied to that:

  • free Bloodlines sounds too strong/oppressive. Free Husbandry sounds very nice.
  • good
  • i dont mind
  • sounds fine
  • i dont mind

But since I also like playing xbows, I would replace free husbandry with something like “techs affecting cav archers are 15% cheaper”.

I am not really for or against TC drops, but I agree on the fact that having a special tactics forcing the opponent to play differently is nice. Not necessarily about Persians TCs, we also have/could have Lituanians relics, Goths laming, Byzantines trash (strength vs monocomp), Britons xbows (strength vs xbows), Chinese weakness to boar laming,…

I personaly would be happy about renaming the current Persians to something else (like Kurds), and make a brand new knights/cavarchers civ called Persians.

1 Like
126

Franks basically get free bloodlines. Franks are a strong (maybe more accurate to say streamlined) knight civ, but I don’t think people think they’re oppressive. And franks also have faster working stables and a food bonus with their berries. Persian don’t have anything like that.

Giving Persians both techs could be OP tho. It’s hard to say. I think either is definitely fine. Both IDK. I think it’s worth trying but I wouldn’t be surprised if it overshoots the mark.

There is some merit to revamping the bonus like how you proposed though. I think the wording is a bit vague, but what I’m imagining (and perhaps I’m not imagining what you’re imaging) is bloodlines, husbandry, thumb ring, and parthian tactics. I think you could also add that they’d research faster. Approaching the bonus like this levels out the improvement to cavalry and cavalry archers AND is far more balance-able. There is a huge range and combination of discounts and faster research times that could be used. There is almost certainly a good bonus balance-wise somewhere in there which might not necessarily be true just getting them for free. Also you don’t have to worry about the immediate power spike that might be off-putting to people playing against them, and there isn’t an inherent delay from when your cavalry is Fully upgraded (minus blacksmith techs) and when you CA is fully upgraded (minus blacksmith techs).

Overall I think this is an improvement.

I change my suggestion for that bonus to be those four techs research at a …30% discount and 30% faster. That might be way too much or too little. IDK. Obviously the phrasing could be word-smithed a lot but yeah.

127

No, I don’t find it exciting. I find it annoying. I am opposed to it on a conceptual level.

Next time I play against it I am just going to turn the game off.

I’m not good enough at the game to be able to multi-task very well, so I have to concentrate a lot on making my Dark Age as smooth as possible. Being douched stresses me the hell out. And if something I should be having fun with is stressing me out, I don’t see a point in continuing.

128

Fair enough I suppose, but if you don’t like early aggression, why play open maps at all?

Open maps like Arabia are designed to allow early aggression, and TC drops are hardly the only thing that can throw your early game into disarray. If you like a nice easy early game, stick to Arena or Black Forest.

129

Because at least I can get to feudal age and start actually making units. By Feudal, unless you’re way behind, you can start engaging in some back & forth. Not to mention that deleting a town centre and re-building it feels weird. At least military units attacking you feels more in-spirit of the game, like you’re being raided by bandits or something.

I also see douching as one player trying to disrespect the other. And if I am in a game where my opponent is trying to do that, I do not see a point in continuing.

130

Not really. Drushes exist, for example. TC drops aren’t the only thing that can throw your dark age into disarray. There’s no reason to expect every single dark age in every single game should play out exactly the same, or dark age might as well not exist at all and we should all be playing Empire Wars.

I see no reason to think of douching as disrespectful. They are trying to win the game, same as you. If you don’t want to be douched, there are ways to plan around it; scout their base, see if they’re sending villagers forward, wall up early, build an outpost; there are many options available.

Honestly, I think that most people who are bothered by douching just aren’t playing the game properly. You can complain that lategame Goths infantry spam is OP and terrible, or you can play around it and win. You can complain that tower rushes are OP and terrible, or you can play around them and win. And you can complain that TC drops are OP and terrible, or you can play around them and win.

I choose to enjoy the game as it is, rather than be fruitlessly annoyed by it.