I mean, last time it happened was on a hybrid map and my opponent used a transport ship to drop them all off right on my shoreline. But sure, not scouting the land & sea in Dark Age while trying to keep a smooth eco when I am not that good a player is totally my fault…
Ok Mr Gatekeeper. I think we are done here.
So compensate once they drop the TC? It’s hardly impossible. Just move your eco a little ways away, keep producing villagers, and rebuild your TC once it goes down. They have zero eco, so it’s not like you need to beat their TC, you just survive and you win. There’s a reason the Persian Douche is a meme, it’s easily counterable once you know how.
I don’t think expecting players to maintain a good eco and scout at the same time is that big of an ask?
Oh for the love of…I am going to spell it out. I do not care that it is counterable.
It’s not fun from the non-douching end. I don’t want to play against it.
I’ve been through this merry-go-round before in other games where there were unfun strategies. They may have also been counterable, but they were not enjoyed by a lot of players and got removed.
Again, if you don’t like early aggression, the game provides maps for you where that is not an issue. TC drops are not the only form of early aggression.
In my opinion, we tend to enjoy things we are good at. I think your best approach would be to learn how to effectively counter TC drops, and then you might begin to enjoy it more.
Personally, I love the adrenaline rush of getting an unexpected attack like that. Things that change up the relatively stagnant dark age are great in my mind, and I would like to see more of them, not less.
Franks scouts get +9 hp, Bloodlines is +20hp. And I think people feel franks scouts oppressive early feudal, as they immediately win scout wars (also fights between starting scouts).
Franks berry bonus is bringing around +50f at minute 10 and -50f+100w at minute 15. Persians start with +50f+50w. (Franks also get fatm upgraded and persian get faster TC).
Franks are an early to mid game civ in term of power spike whereas Persians are a mid to late game civ. Once in castle age (~20 minutes), Franks have a total bonus of 350f/300w/100g for berries/hpbonus/farmupgrades, which is a lot compared to most civs, while Persians got 2.5vils/50f/125w + 1 farm lasting 2 more minutes (+150f already invested into the 2.5 villagers).
Free BL + Husbandry is in total 300f/100g, which is massive and nearly makes up for the bonus of a whole civ (maybe 100 resources are missing). We shouldnt give that much to a civ that has a villager lead and ~200 extra resources at castle age already.
I like husbandry because it compensate for Persian being weaker than most civs early castle age (it s their power hole). I feel like bloodline is a too early bonus, I wouldnt mind so much free BL (without free husbandry) if BL were a castle age tech.
I was also including the 5 blacksmith an 2 university techs.
I would be fine with that as well.
IDK why but I’ve been thinking this whole time bloodlines was in the castle age not feudal age.
I’m a big ol dumb lol. Yeah that would give Persians a feudal spike with free bloodlines. Not what I was going for.
I suppose there’s nothing stopping the devs from giving the tech for free when you reach castle. If you want it earlier you pay for it. But yeah that doesn’t make as much sense as I thought.
However with cheaper and faster researching techs, most of the benefit (by number of techs) comes in castle age.
Not a super big fan of adding the blacksmith techs. I feel that’s a better bonus for an archer/CA civ.
Ballistics makes sense, but I liked the four I picked. It felt like it had a really good balance between cavalry and CA. I don’t think chemistry needs to be added. Not trying to buff Persians in imp.
I have some external projects which involve Sassanids, and these pictures are really useful for me. Thank you for posting them 
What about give persians bracer, but remove crossbow upgrade?
I can totally understand that. As said, with Persian I sometimes go for knights and sometimes go for xbows. Adding the blacksmith allow me to have some bonus when going xbows, at the cost of some bonus toward knights.
If you think Persians do not need buff toward xbows/skirms because they are a cavalry civ, it is fine.
Then they become worse Spanish (who got better monks, champions, BBT, BBC, HC, UU).
I have a very little knowledge on history. If Persians, by any chance get a split, what civs potentially can be added other than Sogdians? Most of the civs from that region seems Turkic to me. Who else are Iranian?
Your welcome my friend
Glad they were useful 
What would be the problem? If Persians get better CA and already have better cavalry and eco than spanish?
THe difference between kamandaran archer with bracer and nowadays kamandaran crossbow without bracer would be just 5 hp and 8 TT secs (not taking in count accuracy because of thumb ring)
It would be good to have Persians at different stages like with Romans, Italians, byzantines etc. So for example Sassanids, ghaznavids and safavids (this last to complete the gunpowder empires trio). Hindustanis partially covered that. Caravanserai could become a regional building as well.
Otherwise it would be a great occasion to finally add Armenians and Georgians and give byzantines a proper architecture set maybe to share with Caucasian civs (but with different castles cause they were not the exact same of course). Mediterranean set is too overcrowded and with Romans as well you could get a late Roman or early Byzantine set. I’d give them to goths and maybe Huns too but that’s for another DLC.
Another option for a Persian DLC could be revolving around the Sassanids (since it seems to be what they represent the most) and the Bukhara battle. Give them a khosrow campaign and add hepthalites and gokturks, two very important early central Asian civs, specially the latter.
And all of this I guess comes with finally giving Persians the central Asian set lol.
I think we should save the Armenians and Georgians for a dedicated Caucasus expansion, and add the Alans to the set. That way, we can make the set strictly based on Caucasus stuff, and not have to incorporate Byzantine elements into it. We can always make a separate Balkan set for the Byzantines and Bulgarians.
First nobody would make Kamandaran Archers in Castle age as they would be awful.
Ofc we could talk about just giving Bracer to make their Trashbows and CA worthwhile. Possibly adjusting the cost for the gained extra power in Imp.
But there is one big issue why Persians shouldn’t get Bracer.
Bracer affects a lot of different stuff, not only archers and CA. Just have a look on TCs. TCs with Bracer deal 2 damage to a Paladin, without it’s 1. Civs without Bracer lack a lot of defensive prowess in the lategame, which allows for different compensations for these civs. Like Malians have Tigui for example. If they also had Bracer, their TCs would be absolutely broken at that stage.
Persians TCs already have double HP and work faster, which allows for easier rebooms.
And whilst Bracer would definitely “fix” a lot of the Issues Persians have in the lategame, it would just make the civ even more “bland”. So whilst solving one of like 3 issues Persians have, they would be even more manifested in that bland identity role.
And I don’t see why we discuss about a rework if this doesn’t try to give any more incentive to try Persians.
Yeah we could give Persians Bracer… Lategame problem solved. Nobody cares.
I’ve othing against a Persian split or a caucasus expansion. But I think that’s more something for a DLC than a standard patch, no?
They really aren’t that terrible. They do cost a little less in total resources. If that technology gave some other immediate bonus, I could see people doing it earlier.
I didn’t realize we weren’t talking about DLC…
That’s not how civs work in the game. They cover ethnic and cultural groups, not specific empires.
Persians are fine as one civ. They don’t need splitting.
I do agree that they should have the Central Asian set though.
The TC does need to be rebuildable, unless you plan to make another way for players to age up. There are situations where even a high-level player could lose their TC before castle age and still have a reasonable shot at winning - FFAs can easily have such situations, and team games reasonably so (especially on maps that encourage messy gameplay). So I don’t think it would be wise to hinder the reconstruction of TCs.
Reducing damage arrows from buildings do to other buildings may help, but I think a good amount of damage buildings do to each other is due to either bonus damage or the fact that buildings fire multiple arrows. Castles only deal 1 damage/arrow to other castles until they have at least 2 ranged attack upgrades, but have +11 damage against stone defenses. Town Centers have 5 PA in dark age, which is the exact amount done by TC fire. Though TCs also deal 5 bonus damage against buildings (which include other TCs)
