The attack rate increase is fine but considering you spend a card and pay 2k wood for the tech it should give you 10 guard carbine cav and change existing goons into them as well.
3 Likes
Well i find thx to free buildings its not too hard to stop a rush and 1 to 2 lombards basilica and up by 830 with adv politician is a nice eco baseā¦open huss and it feels like most other semi ff cav opening tbh
Its just you hit age3 and whatā¦adv politician gives 3 extra musk or pavs. Wooooo. And your age3 shipments are either basic stuff, greed, and mercs with odd macro. So i find i have this great springboard of solid eco and decent mass for a semi and ā¦nothing. teching into pav goon sucks. Going musk huss is ok into say china but its musk huss. Or I go age4 which is solid but also concedes map and ability to stop a boom or opponent FI. Its like when they made the current civ for itsly they went
1- 17 or 16 vill age up
2- semi or greed age2 with res injections to make it to age3 safely
3- go to age3
4-???
5- finish it in age4 and profit
Thats been my experience in 1v1s
I agree with your assessment for the most part. I think they tried to force crossbows onto malta and italy, to their detriment. Unfortunately i dont see them shifting anything around in available ages. Maybe if a pavisier card also enabled them to shadowtech or something? Iām not exactly certain. They have some interesting melee options but arenāt given the speed bonuses needed to make heavy melee work, nor do thwy have the tempo to force melee engagements in small fights and snowball.
I would love for the Roman Tactics card to give deflection ability to Pavisiers, Pikeman, and Halberdiers. (only between archaic units)
2 Likes
That is pretty much the design of the civ, it isnāt really made to do 2 falc FF for example because its musk are as standard as they come. Italy like malta is designed to be defensive which is why they have royal guard culverin and can sit in base all day making free towers and tcās.
The problem with the pavisier is unlike maltas xbow its upgrades arenāt mostly shared with pikes, though italy do have 1 of the strongest halbs in the game that you could pair them with and mix in some papal guards. It is obviously a bit more annoying to macro than regular xbow/pike but all the lombard trickle cards give you a mix of resources so that helps.
Malta also struggles with the just hitting age 3 and then what? Even worse so than italy as they had no 2 falc shipment though now they have 1 falc and mortar.
I think with advanced politician you should get 2 settlers with the lombard wagon option as it was before, not as strong as an extra starting villager but just a small boost upon age up. Iād lower architect train time a little as well it is like 50% slower than it used to be and now they canāt make towers or anything and youāre limited by age.
crazy idea but how about a card that converts pavisier into skirms in age 3?
its effectively a card that gives you sorta a vet tech (italian skirms in age 3 are shadow teched to age 3 stats, so its not age # ## anything) and extra speed on your units that allows your very efficient eco to convert to a short term advantage that also means you can age to age 4 and get a massive shadow tech boost.
Lategame italians may also just needs more lombards I have seen them become extremely efficient with that in a treaty setting, something like 7-8 lombards (8 is probably a decent value), with the ursury card it is generating about the same extra gold as a factory (plus the benefit of smoothing out your eco) and meaning you can just have more vils on food in the lategame.
Iām genuinely just glad to see discussion about buffing italy now that the era of free towers is over
The free forts and free gatling gun spam was fun while it lasted.
as far as the european Dragoon goes Italy has the second best after ports due to the 10% RoF but with the insane wood cost thatās not really achievable in a 1v1 setting
1 Like
Third best since brits get +30% from their cav combat cards
Depends, italy get cav combat and cav attack as well as 10% faster fire rate, Iād personally take 10% faster rate of fire over 15% hp on a dragoon. If it were a hussar Iād take the extra HP.
1 Like
yeah, agree. Italy needs some buffs, especially in treaty, now the civ is dogshit in that modality being the worst civ by far. It is a civ that suffers from a fairly weak army and economy. The problem with its army is infantry, is ridiculously weak and expensive. His musketeer is bad, probably the worst European musketeer in the game, as a unit he is absolutely useless. The bersagliere is expensive and is countered by almost all skirmisher units in the game, which causes Italy to lose most of the treaty battles if we are talking about units. Here I leave some evidence of how poorly the bersagliere performs in these types of circumstances.
The solution for this is simple an additional 15% hp for the rifle units either on the Garibaldini card or as part of the redshirt basilica card would at least make the bersagliere a decent unit. Perhaps the other two problems have already been addressed but they are still worth highlighting, the papal bombard is by far the worst heavy artillery unit in the game, too slow in movement and rate of fire, costs 8 pop, and does little damage to infantry compared to other artillery units, this makes it an insurmountable unit in artillery wars since the culverins reach it easily. The Lombards obviously do not compensate for the absence of a second factory and I also donāt know why they mean that even with the majority of the villagers in coins, they are consumed very quickly. Finally, we have to use his papal units, in the treaty no one uses them because they interfere with shipments and arrive slowly, costing 900 resources.
2 Likes
I dont see how that can be true when the french musketeers exists
Thank you everyone. I am glad to see the community is pretty much united on buffing Italy. I was thinking and what about combining advanced Lombards with Monte Di Pieta card. It makes investments trickle twice as fast but would give it a free lombard wagon with a small deposit. Combine this with some perm. lombard resource cards (I think theyd have to be smaller investments though than standard ones) could give them a huge buff.
I also would like to perhaps see Italy get a buff in the anti Goon department. Right now there is literally nothing they can do vs a good German FF since Warwagons are such a strong counter to their roster. The Pavs just do not live up being a proper counter.
What about having Pav upgrades also influence Age 4 skirms? We can have the Lombards do a trickle and have advanced Lombards improve the trickle. This makes them beneficial to build and would basically give them a reason to see some use. Have 5 of them with advanced lombard equitable to a factory in trickle passives.
1 Like
An infinite berg card in age 3 could be fun. 7 vet bergs before you can train them could be useful and could allow you to keep sending it indefinitely in a long age 3 game.
1 Like
half of this would be solved if the devs rolled back the nerfs pavs got. their animation sucks so that extra 15hp base isnt as good as it sounds since you are always getting more shots into you. they were solid a few patches ago with +1 range on vet and 120hp base. the hvy pav card was always more for niche and roman tactics isā¦i dunno probably between busted and not. Anyways with Lombards it wasnt too hard to goon skirm with range 19 (steelbolts) pavs since they would beat skirms in a shootout but take incoming fire and with better goons i think it would help a bit. Also, that plus 5 helped a bit vs splash damage so the extra from adv politician, the 11 shipment mean you could actually do ok into a falc push with vet. That to me is a no brainer approach but they are afraid of imperial pavs or something so nef imp by 10% or w/e.
1 Like
i like this too, lean into the economic aspects so its flexible roster isnt just shatted on by superior comps with civs that have equal eco. i donāt want more moba-esque uber units so im not for carabini being easily accessible i think if we boost their eco a bit and reduce the free building dps they can do its a better direction
2 Likes
There is this card in the gamefiles:
Enabled here through the power of modding.
In the files the card is named: āDEHCInfantryCombatItalianā
It was probably removed for being too strong, but what if the Italians got it now? Too much?
3 Likes
Probably not too much though perhaps make it ranged infantry combat so youāre not buffing the halbs and papal guard too much. Bersaglieri are actually quite a weak skirm in skirm wars they lose to pretty much everything cost effectively so buffing them thereās no issue, you could lower the HP/attack a little in another of the pavisiers cards so they donāt become too strong.
2 Likes
This civilization is currently so bad in late game
ā Lack of 2nd 
ā Good units in Basilica but we canāt train them normally
ā Palal bombard is so bad
ā Lack of economic theory card
ā weak & expensive Skirmisher
ā ā¦
4 Likes