So, the other day I compared the effect of the italians pavise tech to the effect of the viets archer bonus.
On paper, pavise give +1/1 armor, and the viets bonus give them +20%HP, in reality, they have the same effect. Both xbows/arbs take the same amout of hits from other standard units (archers, skirms, knight-line), with just the excetpion of xbow vs knight in castle (viets can take 1 more hit), I won’t report here the math, but it’s actually pretty simple.
So pavise have the same practical effect on xbows, but it’s worse in general since when you compare with viets bonus you see that it’s much beeter:
- It’s free, while pavise require a castle (650s) and 300f-150g.
- It affect the archers since you hit feudal age, while pavise comes in play in late castle.
- It affect all AR units (archer, skirm, CA) while pavise affect only xbows and GC.
Now when I look at other civs that have similar tech-bonus, usually the tech is always more poerful than the bonus, to compensate the downside that you have to pay and research it at a castle.
An example is the burmese bonus and the aztec garland wars, the first one start in feudal and it’s free, the second one give one more attack, so it’s strongher in a absolute value.
Other examble could be the saracen free archer-anti-building bonus and the mayans obsidian arrows, or again, the viets HP bonus on AR and the turks sipahi tech.
Considering that on top of that, italians don’t have any archer bonus or crazy eco bonus, my question is as follow: Should the pavise effect be buffed? Like give +2/2, or even just +1/2? Should it affect other units as well (it once affect skirms, now they don’t anymore).
I know that on other topic we already discussed on how to buff italians or the GC, but here I wan’t to talk only about pavise, and maily how it affect the main archer line.
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In Theory, yeah, Pavise should be buffed. In practice, no, you don’t want GC with more pierce armor. Otherwise they couldbe really OP
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Well, it could have 2 different effects, for GC it would remain +1/1, for xbow it could be buffed.
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It is good idea to buff this tech, but i think buffing its effect can be too strong. Better idea will be extend the effect of tech to all foot range units (including HC) and Condos.
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So xbows, skirms, HC, condos, pikes and champions?
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Foot range units.
Xbows, GC, Skirms, HC.
And Condos additionaly.
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Ah ok. Thought, they already added and then removed the +1/1 on skirms.
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But now, when we have thigs like Viets and Lithuanians, i dont see the reason why Italians have to be worse.
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Well, lithuanians pay for their +2PA, so it’s ok, but viets get the same bonus of the Italians for free.
I think the reason why they removed the +1/1 on Italians skirms was because overall their arbs-GC-skirms was too good on counter everything from range. Though you are right, viets came in later, so maybe that’s why they could buff it back.
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Onestly, I don’t really have a personal opinion about it, I’m not certain if it should be buffed or not (the Italians should be buffed but not necessarily pavise).
I just saw that this tech goes against the general trend with no reason and I wondered why.
Well then there’s the ongoing problem of the need to make genoese xbows and your solution would further increase that. I think a legitimate buff for genoese xbows would be giving them 7 attack instead of current 6. All other archer UUs have more than 6 attack except plumes I think and plumes have other great qualities. Considering gen xbows already lack 1 range and are pretty expensive, it’d make them more viable
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No ok, I know that GC need a buff (in my opinion it should be a decrease of the TT, so that you can mass them more easily).
My point here is just about pavise, since all tech with similar effects to civs bonus are strongher, but pavise is different, it has the same effect and in general it’s worse.
Also, I was in general more focused on the effects on the xbows line.
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How about changing it to +2/+1 instead? I think it would fit well with the civ identity to get more melee armor on archers and I don’t think arbs will become OP due to this.
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yeah 19 (17 for Elite) is good enough TT buff. And I think 7 attack gen xbows should definitely happen considering there’s no reason to make them vs mesos and non cavalry civs. The extra HP and armor is completely negated by arbs having that crucial extra range, arbs also have lesser frame delay I believe
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Wouldn’t make that big of a difference, it would still have the same effect of +20HP when taking hits from cavaliers/paladins, which is nothing (always 3-4 hits, depending of if the unit have a full health or not). While +1/2 would mean more taking more hits form other arbs/skirms. Similar thing in castle.
It could even be 18s for castle, considering that it would be on pair with others archer UU.
Well, GC are supposed to be good only vs cavalry, and generic vs infantry (wich isn’t a bad thing at all, and they already have +1 attack in castle). So the idea is that you made GC only vs cavarly, but right now it isn’t worth it even in that case.
I think that the general idea was to give them GC vs cavarly, and standard arbs vs infantry, so you are forced to make a choise.
Problem is, their xbow aren’t that special, I would pick any other civs with good arbs that have a strong eco bonus over pavise, and that without counting civs with actual bonus on their archers (like brits, viets, mayans…).
So that’s when I notice that the viets bonus was baiscally the same as pavise, and how it goes against the trand.
I mean, yes if you find yourself to play as italians there is no reason to do not pick it up, it’s cheap and it has an decent impact, but when you look at the viets (or even other civs) in a more general view, how can you say that it’s balanced?
Pavise is fine per se, but the vietmamese bonus is much better.
I love viets, my favorite civ, so I like pavise since it makes Italians slightly close to vietmamese.
There is the problem that Italians are very weak on land, and that GC is pretty underwhelming especially if you consider the TT.
Imo the problem is the civ, not just the UT. GC is more expensive than a ckn and much worse in almost every scenario. If you add some skirms to palas, probably ckn is still better even if gc should counter cav. Condos are dead after the nerf they got. I would say that Italians have the worst UUs in the game, considering that civs with two UUs have at least one good (EA is bad but imperial camel is good).
Several people are proposing buffs for Italians, the best proposal I heard is free archer armors, which follows the identity of the civ… this will leave them weak, but at least with some sort of land identity.
For pavise buff, the first thing I would like to see is an additional effect on the reduction of the TT. So after pavise, GC and arbalest can be produced, say 30-35% faster. This fixes one of the several problems of GC.
However, assuming that we accept that GCs train slowly as cataphracts, extending the effect of pavise to more units can work. The old implementation, working on skirms, would be good.
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Yeah, I know several people propose buff for itas on land, I was among the first of them and I alwais sostain a buff in their favor.
Point is, compared to other similar situations (viets CA-sipahi, saracen archers-obsidian arrows, burmese infantry-garland wars), why pavise is so much different.
I know that itas and GC need a buff (not dependent of pavise though), if they’ll ever consider it… but looking at the general balance, compared to other bonus-tech relationships, it doesn’t seem balanced.
I mean, I’m not here to complain about italians, I alredy stated my opinions several times, and I think that most people here know what I think about it.
I came here just asking if someone could explain to me if there is a reason for it to be so much against the general trend, maybe there was something that I missed.
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Let us say that pavise fits with the civ… it is underwhelming 
Overall, I would say:
- first you buff the civ, since the civ is very bad. Free archer armors is really higher priority. But I see that people agree on this point
- then a way to fix the embarrassing GC should be proposed. The most important thing is the TT. One option is decreasing the TT as additional effect of Pavise. This way pavise has a real reason to exist. It would also affect arbalests.
- last point is extending pavise to more units. Skirms are the first option as in the past. I would be happy to see the old pavise, but this is the less important point.
So I think pavise should be buffed, preferably acting on the TT since this is a real issue for the GC. If you add free archer armors, italians will start to be a fine civ on land!
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Yes, on that I agree, I like pavise, my point was another one.
You could reverse the question if you like it, why isn’t the viets bonus less strong than pavise? Let’s be clear, I’m not suggesting a viets nerf, just saying that they are the same bonus but one is for free, the other not.
Ok but that’s not the point, even if you do that, basically, italians and viets would still have the same effect. Look at post imp, the effect would be the same, but italians would still have to reserch pavise. Viets bonus would still be better on all sides (free, from feudal, affecting more units, while making the arbs on the same level of pavise ones).
In that case, it should be a huge decrease in TT, not just 4s, since it would delay even further the training of GC (you would have to idle your castle, right now I raserch pavise when going for GC only when I have a second castle).