Mongols are fine imo. Mangudais are strong, I agree, but the fact that early agression can stop them from building a castle and massing mangudais, puts the civ in a fine spot.
Yet I would go for a mangudai nerf not for balance reasons but for a gameplay reason (coudn’t find a better term). What I feel is so sick about playing against mongols is that the civ is so reliant on mangudais that it gets extremely predictable and boring. It’s still challenging, yes, but a game that consists of surviving waves of the same unit no matter what strategy you go for, no matter your army composition makes the game so… linear. Tell me: if you go with an army consisting of pikes, skirms and onagers, what is your mongol enemy going to do? Mangudais, of course, even when those are the supposed counters. Just mix some light cavalry and you’re good to go. Some people here say that it’s fine for a civ to depend on their unique unit. Well, I agree, like Huskarl, Janissaries, or Organ gun level of dependance, where they don’t make the core of your army when their counters are in the opposite side.
So. Are mongol balanced? Yes, they’re a bit strong, but nothing broken at all. Meta pick for competitive.
Are they fun to play? Those mangos are extremely fun to micro.
Are they at least intresting to play against? In my opinion, no. Not at all. The reasons, I’ve already exposed them.
The point of a mangudai nerf and a buff in other areas would make the mongol playstyle more dinamic. They’re already a versatile civ with an open tech tree. It should not be difficult to diversify their options with some simple tweaks.
I agree with you, while Mongols are balanced overall as a civ (except hunt heavy maps), the mangudai is just a do-it-all unit. It doesn’t fill a roll, it just straight up does everything a CA does and much more.
Mangudai should be toned down a bit, I think a reduction of their bonus against some of the siege would be fine.
If you tone down Mangudai, what do you give Mongols in return?
They don’t have good heavy cavalry. They don’t have great archers, or even great CA late-game since they miss Ring Archer Armor. They need Mangudai as their strongest option. There are plenty of ways to deny Mongols this in Feudal and Castle Age, if they beeline for Mangudai (which isn’t smart, especially on open maps).
Mongols need to take an advantage in Dark/Feudal Age in order to allow them to get to Mangudai. If they don’t, then they’re going to lose before they get the Castle up.
If you give them these missing techs just to justify changing Mangudai, then why even change Mangudai? You’re completely changing the civ at that point just for the sake of changing it.
They are fine as is. You can even fight the mass in Castle Age - a good example is massing your own Cavalry Archers out of multiple ranges, forcing fights. It tends to be quite effective against Mangudai because they don’t have numbers, or the especially strong Imp upgrades. They also won’t have a Light Cav meatshield at this point.
There are plenty of ways to counter them before they get to the deathball.
I’m “changing” the civ because it’s boring to play against them (I’ve already explained it in detail before). And that is actually a serious issue since we’re talking about a game meant to be fun, except maybe if you’re part of the elite playing for money.
I understand changing classic civs is a delicate subject and comes with great risks. There would be no way to please everyone and there’s no garantee the results are gonna be good.
That’s why I think any change to mongols is to be done far away in the future, once we have an almost perfect balanced game where italians can be played on land, turks can deal with archers and steppe lancers have a role. Then we can allow ourselves the luxury of changes and tweaks not because something is bad but because it could be a bit better.
It is not changing for sake of changing, it is changing to keep up with the times. Whether you like it or not, the game has change a lot since AoK, and not only in terms of additions and balance, but also mechanically. Microing like today was not impossible 20 years ago. The design of the mangudais was good when it was first introduced, now it is just outdated. Mangudai siege bonus has gotten ridiculous with todays micro. I have seen Hera sniping 4-5 celt mangonels with a few castle age mangudai against other pro players, with basically no losses. And yes, he has excellent micro, but not even him should get away with this stuff.
Same can be said for the hunt bonus: it is either too strong on maps like valley or useless in most others. It should be reworked to be somewhat more consistent. One way for example is to change the food collection speed bonus to something like “food from hunt is immediately collected” like khmer food bonus. Needing no mill would be less strong on hunt heavy maps and more consistent in maps with just a deer patch.
Yet Mongols remain balanced. If they become anything else than Mangudai + Siege spammers, they will just become the Tatars or the Huns. At the moment they actually have an unique play style along other Steppe civs. If you change it, they will cease to have any difference.
Mangudai are not so strong they need nerfs. They are actually quite balanced with the rest of the Mongols roster.
Paladins literally are the do-it-all unit and don’t require any skill to use. Once fully upgraded, halberdiers are not that useful a counter against them. Plus they can just outrun halberdiers when doing base raids.
Now I don’t have experience with multiplayer AoC but I think I can safely say 0 frame delay is huge and the internet difference isn’t as big as you claim
Well, you should have specified you were talking about 1v1 games…I am talking about team games…
I have literally no idea what paladins are like in 1v1.
However, if you are bad enough to let the enemy fully upgrade their Mangudai, I imagine they are very powerful in 1v1, but it’s your fault for not stopping them earlier.
Do you play League of Legends? Mangudai remind me of Kassadin. Useless early, then he gets his R ultimate so he’s bit more useful, then his mana pool increases over the game with items as well as his scaling. Finally if you are stupid enough to let Kassadin afk farm all game, he will turn into an unstoppable monster late game. Mangudai is the same I imagine in 1v1.
In team games however, paladins are beyond obnoxious, and no halberdiers are really not that good against them. If anything camels are better.
Wait, how on earth can you say paladins are a huge investment, when Mangudai require FAR MORE investment to be as good as they are when they beat you that leads to complaining?
Mangudai benefit from all the archer line upgrades AS WELL as the cavalry line upgrades, and you also have to spec into chemistry AND parthian tactics in imperial too.
Look:
Paladin:
All cavalry line attack upgrades
All cavalry line armor upgrades
Bloodlines
Husbandry
Knight → Cavalier
Cavalier → Paladin
That’s literally it…
Mangudai on the other hand:
Thumb Ring
Parthian Tactics
Ballistics
Chemistry
Bloodlines
Husbandry
All archer attack upgrades
All archer armor upgrades
Elite Mangudai upgrade
PLUS, you can only build Mangudai from stables…
How on earth can you say Paladin require huge investment when compared to Mangudai???
And as someone who has played Mangudai ALOT, the way to counter them is not to just skirmishers, but to use skirmishers AND hussars. If you put hussars and skirmishers on the Mangudai, they HAVE to run away to survive. If they are running, but not dieing, you are still winning, since the only way the player with the Mangudai can succeed in that scenario is to micro them very well, which means their attention can’t be directed elsewhere. Meanwhile you don’t need to micro skirms/hussars against them…
If you played mongols as much as you claim, you would know that the most basic for mongols late game is hussar spam + mangudai in the back (plus siege for other things, but that doesn’t matter here). So, while hussars act as a meatshield as soak up the damage, mangudais will deal damage from safety. I know, it does not work 100% of the time depending on enemy civ and composition, but for the vast majority of the times this mongol composition is very, very effective.
This allows you to preserve your mangudai number, which limits the actual cost of mantaining a constant number of those units.
Meanwhile paladins have no choice but to engage in melee, as such they get a lot more damage from units such as halbs and camels. Which implies that you have to spend a lot of res to mantain a decent number.
Perhaps then you should not talk about things you don’t understand.
Which is literally what you’ve been doing in the entire post.
You argument about mangudai applies equally to paladins. Just make cavalry archers to pick off halberdiers.
And no, if you were truly experienced at mongols you would know that hussar limits mangudai maximum efficiency and is only used by people who don’t know how to play mangudai properly.