Again, I’m not sure why people expect to play a civ without using their bonuses. Any comparison that doesn’t account for their free militia line upgrades is pretty pointless.
In practice, combining what ever sort of militia rush you do, plus whatever you add on top, plus the ability to get your blacksmith upgrades far earlier and with almost perfect timing, you can virtually guarantee that your feudal age fights are going to be favorable.
This allows you the leeway you need in the early castle age to progress into early kreposts.
For comparison, in the 1st second of Feudal age Franks save 150 on horse collar and 250 on bloodlines and have a foraging bonus to collect more food.
Probably because Bulgarians don’t have an eco-bonus and thus cannot dictate the pace of the game. Also, pros just quick-wall MAA mostly so they don’t really get much value.
If you go MAA every game, you’re predictable and pros will counter it (possibly by just going straight archers for example) and then leave Bulgarians further behind. Bulgarians could be more unpredictable if they had xbow, but everyone hates the idea of giving them xbow.
Yeah, I wasn’t comparing the Bulgarians to a civ with a good eco bonus for a reason. I wasn’t trying to make the case the Bulgarians had an eco bonus. I was saying that their only eco bonuses are at best, comparable to objectively bad eco bonuses, and you have to work for it to make it so.
Not really any argument to be made against any civ that does actually have a decent eco bonus that they aren’t going to be way ahead of the Bulgarians before any sort of Krepost play, which is basically my initial point. I’d already made that point though, so no need to double back onto it.
Worse yet, if your opponent goes into archers it makes the Konnik play even weaker, as an archer mass that holds until castle age is worst case scenario for the Krepost play. Konniks are bad into archers. But that points back to “but they have siege” which then points back to me saying “Bulgaria doesn’t make konnik because reasons” and we’re back at the start where I say the konnik is underwhelming and point to the archer problem.
That’s the great thing about the MAA rush; it comes early enough it’s very difficult to counter even if you know it’s coming. You see plenty of them even on civs without particularly notable bonuses specifically to MAA, bulgarians just have far more reason than most. There’s a reason it’s got a 53-57% win rate at 1200 and 1900.
All the more reason to go Kreposts. Kreposts hard counter archers in their range for the entirety of castle age.
Are you claiming you’re going forward with the Krepost to control the map against an established archer mass in early castle age, or is that going to be somewhat irrelevant since the krepost is going to be needed to defend your resources?
I wouldn’t recommend the forward, because Imperial → rubble is a thing. I will grant that your assertion would make a lot more sense if they could go bombards to fend off imp trebs… but they don’t have them, so you’re later to imp, slower to the castle, behind to trebs. It’s just a vicious cycle of losing time, and each chunk of commitment is worse than the last.
And for the record… I’m so on board with giving Bulgarians BBC. It’d actually be kinda awesome. They’d have an absolutely badass siege tree and a good actual justification to go Krepost. Right now… No, not at all, in fact it’s objectively a losing option in every way.
Nah, the krepost drop into GG strat works sometimes but it usually fails.
Defensive kreposts are the simplest way I’ve found to work. They have all the defensive power, without the whole ‘getting trebbed 15 seconds into imp’ problem.
That said, I really want to try using kreposts to hold neutral resources. My last game I wanted to try stealing the neutral stone, since each one would give me the stone for the first krepost and two more - but my enemy spawned with both of them on the other side of his base, so so much for that >_>
No, actually this deserves it’s own post. Give Bulgarians Bombard Cannons.
It’s so obvious. It’d do everything they need. They’d be able to go up fast with Krepost, defend them with the cannons, and actually have an edge. It’s awesome. I want to play that Civ.
Give Bulgarians Bombard Cannons
Give Bulgarians Bombard Cannons
Give Bulgarians Bombard Cannons
Do it. DO IT.
Edit: It’s now it’s own goddamn thread. It’s gotta happen. I want to play it.
If they don’t do it, I’m gonna datamod it myself for my enjoyment.
See “No economy bonus.” Obviously their paladins would be absolutely busted, but I don’t think it’s reasonable in a 1v1. I think they’d be absolutely straight-up busted in teamgames though, and we should avoid stirrup paladin.
A point you are missing when evaluating the blacksmith bonus is that when you have so few units, production is more valuable than blacksmith upgrades. Forging gives +1 attack but an extra scout gives 5. You would rather be Franks using your extra berry food to make an extra scout than be Bulgarians paying 50 food to get Forging. Blacksmith bonus is good, but not that good.
Yes, because the enemy does not expect it when a civ does not have a bonus for it. If that is what Bulgarians ALWAYS have to do, then it will be expected and countered.
Not really, you are still going to get trebbed, just in a different spot on the map. If you go defensive, enemy will make TCs to get a vill advantage and use knights and monks to defend until he gets to Imp. Deleting the Konnik’s horse is not a solution to monks as the dismounted Konniks are slow and are killed by knights. Some players will even use pure monk micro and TC fire to stop Konniks.
I don’t think much because Bulgarians would still lose in Castle age. Also, TG players would complain if they got paladin.
All I take away from this is that drush is their best opening out of all their options, not that it results in a good win rate overall or that it is guaranteed to work if they use it more often. They are still at only 44% win rate. Also, pros play at a higher level than 1900+ and things that work against 1900+ don’t always work against pros.
The sample size for this is really small, so we could also be looking at noise. The confidence intervals are huge and it is hard to draw conclusions from this.
I just think that they’re currently not being played to their strengths, and if people did so more often, they would have more success with them.
That said, they are a one trick pony atm. I do wanna reiterate here that I don’t think the bulgarians are acceptable as they are, since that might have gotten lost in the hubbub. I think they should get 20 stone per technology researched.
The main priority is making more stable while age up to have the knight number. Waiting for Krepost only means you will be behind in Knight number than adding stable during Feudal.
Same reply as previous. It is locked in Castle Age with 150 seconds construction time.
Because as Bulgarians, you can’t. This is exactly why they are left in recent tournaments. You don’t have a strategy from their bonuses. You need to pick and choose. I didn’t touch this topic when I said I find Bulgarians “Contradictory”.
Not really. And I’ll tell you why.
If you want to take the advantage of free MAA upgrade, you will go for MAA. And MAA works if you have at least 3. 2 MAA doesn’t do anything tbh. What follows an MAA rush? Archer. Because you don’t have any more food to have a scout follow up. Now you add Fletching and save 50 food. Then instead of continuing archer, you have to add Stable and scout after sometime as archer is dead end. Other civ doesn’t need to switch this much in Feudal.
If you directly go to scout, you’re not using the free MAA bonus. And direct scout → archer/skirmisher is not worse than most civs as eco bonuses give you better flexibility and timing advantage. You need sufficient number before upgrade. For example 4 scouts without any upgrade is better than 3 with Forging. The closest civ, the Magyars, can have both the number and timing advantage. With always the option of adding archer without a headache.
And? It takes the same time to build as a stable and 4 houses, while giving you the defensive bonuses for free, and a superpowered unique unit, one that beats knights 1v1 without getting unhorsed.
So instead of building 5 buildings with 5 villagers and getting 4 houses and a stable in 50 seconds, build 1 krepost with 5 villagers and get 4 houses and 1.5 stables in 60 seconds.
While making that part of your base functionally indestructible throughout castle age.
Well, Franks have an amazing eco and one of the strongest civ in open maps. Comparing them with Bulgarians is too much. I think Magyars and Lithuanians make most sense. And maybe Georgians now.
Exactly.
Only 177 matches in 5+ months. Not a big sample size. And we’re or at least me opened the thread specifically for pro players stage. See MAA opening at 1900+ elo. Only 19 match.
Seems like you’re just obsessed with an impractical feat.
While I generally support game balance over historical accuracy, giving gunpowder to a civ that was denied gunpowder units and buildingson historical grounds still seems a step too far.
1200+ is too low for this discussion. At that elo, they have a 47% win rate and don’t really need a buff, considering there are worse civs that could use the attention.
20 food/tech would be more appropriate since Bulgarians get a food discount on blacksmith techs in the same way that the Spanish get extra gold and gold discount for blacksmith techs. Also, extra food would be a lot more useable for Bulgarians as 20 stone doesn’t really do much in most games until Castle age.
Either way, it seems strange to give this kind of bonus to Bulgarians. The Spanish get it because they used their technological superiority against the Aztecs. Were Bulgarians ever known for their technological superiority?
20 food per technology doesn’t really synergize with their bonuses. The objective here should be to get them as many kreposts as possible, as quickly as possible.
Get them even 1 for free at the start of castle age and it handily solves their weakness at that stage.
