Currently the English have the Council Hall, and landmarks that double as a keep or TC. As a pro player mentioned in another thread, the Council Hall dictates the rest of the matchup.
When properly scouted, the LB rush can be countered. However, to make the English more interesting as a civ, I suggest the English should not be able to build TCs (and/or Keeps) and only through their landmark mechanic:
Feudal Landmarks: Council Hall/TC
Castle Landmarks: TC/Keep
Imperial Landmarks: TC/Keep
During the stress test, almost every English player went Council Hall (Why wouldn’t you? There’s no downside). By being forced to choose between the Council Hall and a TC at Feudal Age (instead of the healing landmark), the English players’ strategy has to be more carefully considered knowing they are not able to construct a TC until building a landmark for the next age.
As of the stress test, the English LB rush can get countered and still have incredible flexibility in strategic options as they age up.
Your proposed solution is a terrible design choice. You solve a smallish and not thoroughly tested issue by forcing English into a bizarre and uniquely limited playstyle.
They can’t be countered, not even when properly scouted. Because there is no counter-unit.
The only thing you can do against the longbow rush is try to survive with outposts and hope for the english player to make some mistake. Horsemen, the unit that is suppose to be the counter unit to archers die pathetically to them before reaching them. Armored units come too late in game to proper counter the archers, and they came even later when you are forced to sunk resources building and improving outposts to survive feudal.
I do like your proposed changes, but those need to be on top of a huge nerf to archers in general and specially to longbows.
From my experince, double stable horsemen will beat a longbow rush but it’s slightly harder to execute so people feel like the longbow rush has no counter. Longbows might need to be rebalanced so they don’t work quite as well as a pub-stomp unit but otherwise the English don’t seem uniquely unbalanced. It would be better to fine tune them once the Chinese get rebalanced to accommodate the nest of bees nerf and the HRE early eco gets looked at.
It’s not bows that need nerfing, but horses that need buffing. The horses in this game even take time to kill villagers, they stop to attack, that’s bad. A small damage and health boost would solve the problem, not only with archers but also with man-at-arms.
Tl;DR: English is the beginner civ thats easy to play but also overpowered due to them being able to do anything. Rush/Economy/Tech all at once.
They are the vanilla faction and introduced in the tutorial. They are made easy to learn and to play by design, however they are also one of - if not the strongest faction in the game. They have so many things going for them it doesn’t really matter what you do, you are going to win most of the time.
The Age 2 Landmark allows you to dicate the game as it functions as > 300 wood worth of archery ranges and saving villager walking and building time. Age 3 Landmark is a free Town Center so you don’t even have to decide between economy or tech - you get both. Age 4 Landmark is overpowered and wins you the game by itself. Just keep clicking the Wynguard army button and you get units + siege for a reduced price.
Oh and you cannot raid them either: Their villagers deal 7 ranged damage - just like a regular archer and they also benefit from 25% attack speed bonus whenever an enemy comes in range. If you try to raid them with horsemen, the villagers just turn around and shoot you.
This post reads like a new dota player pronouncing hero x is broken op because they keep dying to it.
Yes English are strong, but all the civs have multiple strengths.
Every civ can do anything. Every civ can archer rush, although it’s not overpowered against a competent defender.
The civs aren’t that different and the general public have not even tried four of them. Ive tried six and they all have strengths they can leverage to win. They all have strategic options.
Maybe people should play all the civs on all the maps and learn the game a bit before confidently proclaiming balance needs a hatchet taken to it.
Horseman crush longbowman at equal cost, by the way. Towers and TCs also do well against archers. Most people are just bad or being greedy and skimping on military.
England are relatively easy for new players to grasp and that’s a good thing.
@sailingship17@WitchyBobcat029 I agree that a hard horseman counter is tricky to pull off (and you have to really commit, the other logical counters aren’t available depending on civ), and that the English are not uniquely unbalanced (a lot of civs in the stress test could use balancing).
@Bork86 I agree with this as well. Limiting the English to use Landmark TCs as their only way to expand economically would be a small, but significant, change that has not been tested enough and would likely add to many existing balancing issues. As we are 1 month until release, this is more of a thought exercise. To elaborate:
When playing English, you are just going to get longbow’ed, which is just so incredibly boring to play as and play against. If LBs are countered, then you can still switch strategies relatively easily with almost no problem. However, if you remove the ability to build TC, except when using the landmarks, playing as and against the English becomes a bit less predictable and a bit more dynamic: are you going to LB rush? Are you going to boom?
bows need nerfing so they also don’t kill villagers so fast without giving the opponent time to react. I think the best solution is to remove the homing missiles they shoot and give them actual arrows. The second best solution is to reduce the accuracy so they don’t always hit target. The third best solution is to reduce their attack speed and damage.
Maybe they should introduce units and buildings that counter bows. Maybe a guy on horse with a spear. Perhaps buildings for villagers to seek refuge in. Maybe some armored troops with shields that block arrows.
I don’t think them being able to kill unprotected villagers easily makes them deserving of a nerf. Horsemen similarly are able to exploit players that don’t use scouts or outposts for vision to get easy vil kills.
They don’t.
8 horseman die to 8 longbows and the horseman cost more. 2 horseman die before reaching the archers, 2 more usually die to the palings or die to arrows while trying to maneuver to avoid the palings. the remaining 4 horseman will die to kitting. 5 or 6 archers survive. And again, the horseman cost more! The only way the horseman wins is if the archer player is distracted don’t use the palings and forget to hit and run.
Horseman have to put themselves in danger to do so and villagers can fight back. But archers can harass from a distance without risks. Curious thing the only villagers that can fight back to archers are the english ones.
This only occured in your dreams. There is zero chance for 8 longbowman to beat 8 horseman. This is particularly true on defense when you can easily flank the longbowman. Longbowman might be the slowest unit in the game.
I wish I could test this situation right now and make a video. But I played and watched many games and never saw anything close to what you described.
Longbowman are slow and horse are fast. It’s not zero risk. I’ve definitely killed archer rushes decisively with none escaping. Also villagers can go in a tower or tc.
Yeah, spam Wynguard, if you wanna fill your limited pop space with weak units like trebs and spearmen in imperial, while the other guy is willing to spend some money on more bombards and mangs and handcannons. If you’re both capped, your army just loses, and badly. Let’s see how much money you saved then.