To be totally fair, Organ Guns as a unit work basically like that. Massive base damage with penalties vs almost everything (except Infantry). Also, Gatling guns are just a reskinned Organ Gun, always have been. I don’t think such a modification to Grape Shot would actually go against the design of the unit at all. Grape Shot (more AoE and slightly better rate of fire + the speed boost) all play towards it being an anti infantry boost.
Another option to nerf the OG would be replacing Artillery HP with something with more flavor that buffs more units, but not organ guns (ie a slight buff for an underperforming civ while nerfing massed OGs). Such a change would prevent OGs being able to tank a second culv shot for much of the game while having no significant impact on 1v1.
I’m not against some nerfs to OGs, I’ve suggested several, but 5 pop is too much. Portugal is pretty average late game, and that’s despite having by far the worst age 2 and an age three that is outshined by multiple other civs (ie a small late game buff wouldn’t be unreasonable).
I’m saying making the Grapeshot card increase their cavalry malus is stupidly convoluted, not that giving them a cavalry malus in general is dumb.
If you want to target the Grapeshot card specifically, I’d change its affect to be as follows:
+0.5 AoE to all artillery except Culverins
+0.25 infantry multiplier to Organ Guns
No effect on packing animation
That along with nerfing the Organ Gun cav multiplier from x0.5 to x0.4 would probably be enough to leave it at 4 pop. It would also make more sense since grapeshot is not anything unique to Organ Guns and making it also benefit other artillery would make the card slightly more valuable.
I get the sentiment, but I think the complaining about the potential early game impact is exaggerated. Proportionally, adding 1 pop to a 4 pop unit is a much smaller impact than some of the outlaw tweaks that have been done. And in this case if would be quite effective in balancing the late game issues while not hurting the early game as much. But that being said tackling the Grapeshot card could also be a solution since it is what tipped them over the edge of being OP.
How about this?
Grapeshot
Current Effect
+0.5 AoE to Organ Guns
-0.5 RoF to Organ Guns
Removes packing animation
New Effect
+0.5 AoE to all artillery except Culverins
+0.25 infantry multiplier to Organ Guns (for a total of x1.25)
No effect on packing animation
That would broaden the effect to other units to make it a little more useful and also make it more realistic and balanced since affecting movement and reloading has nothing to do with grapeshot. Then you can keep 4 pop Organ Guns and potentially only need to tweak their cav multiplier.
if a card makes a unit too strong, the card should be adjusted. Refusing to fix cards and reworking entire units instead is why haud infantry keeps getting nerfed and why aztec is such a raging dumpster fire right now.
To be honest, it feels like too much of a nerf. Portuguese is considered pretty average in treaty, even with OGs as they are, and you’re asking for pretty major nerfs.
I do think Organ Guns with Grapeshot are a bit too good at the moment, but something smaller can be done because it only effects Portugal and they aren’t op even now.
How about this:
Grape Shot:
Current effects stay in place.
Adds -5% or -10% Organ Gun Speed.
Artillery HP:
Card replaced with something that effects a wider array of Portuguese units, but no longer effects Organ Gun.
Oh hell no, that solves absolutely nothing. The problem is that with a critical mass they can lay down continuous fire so that cavalry can’t close with them. It’s even worse without the packup animation since they can kite very effectively. To stop this you either need to make it so a critical mass can’t be reached (increase pop cost) or have a big enough gap between volleys. Slightly reducing speed does nothing and makes no sense.
Grapeshot eliminating the packup animation and speeding up rate of fire is what makes OG broken. It also doesn’t even make sense with what grapeshot is. Grapeshot is just firing a kind of shrapnel so increasing AoE and infantry multiplier actually makes sense. It’s also not at all unique to OG, so making it improve the AoE of other artillery makes the card a little more valuable in general.
It also gives Grens +30% health in addition to +15% to all artillery. That’s pretty general already. Changing it would also have a minimal impact on the OG issue since the problem is that they kill cavalry before they even get to them.
Firstly, I’d hardly count +30% gren hp as “general” when Portugal only gets Grens via the Grenade Launchers card. It’s not a base unit. So unless I’m spending another card to get them, I never use that (not to mention that Grens aren’t really worth using anyway and definitely aren’t worth two age 3 as Ports). When was the last time you saw Portuguese Grenadiers? Secondly, you were the one complaining about culvs not doing well enough, I’ve suggested multiple things (nerfing them vs artillery after grapeshot and removing a +15% hp that allows them to double their effective hp vs culvs).
Emphasis add
While complaining about their ability to kite you say reducing their speed won’t do anything…
I agree the card is poorly named.
The logical reason to reduce their RoF and amplify the negatives against Cavalry and Artillery with grapeshot is because it’s a better way to help them vs infantry. Less overkill on infantry is good because a lot of infantry is low hp. I’d be fine if Grapeshot changed their multiplers vs Cav and Artillery to 0.4 from 0.5. That’s a greater DPS reduction than the amount of increase from the RoF improvement. Obviously, in exchange they’re getting better vs buildings and infantry (already there, not a further buff).
The mobility is very fun. Portugal is undoubtedly good in team, but far from the biggest offender. They have a horrible age 2 and are built around being good late game. I’ve suggested several nerfs to an overly strong late game unit in my main civ that, from my understanding, hasn’t managed to make it op (even from a treaty perspective where Portugal is considered to be very average).
I don’t think the nerfs I’ve suggested are all that unreasonable.
Even ignoring Grenadiers it is general because it gives all artillery a boost. This card is not the issue. It was completely fine before the Grapeshot buffs. Even if Culvs could one shot them, they still can’t get off a second shot before dying and can’t trade cost effectively. This amount of health also makes almost no difference for cav because they die before reaching OG.
Having no pack up is what allows them to kite. Keep the packing animation and that’s 1.5 seconds of not moving or shooting. -10% speed has no impact on their firing rate so cav still dies. Culvs take 6 seconds to reload so even with -10% is speed OG are still going to be on top of them before a second shot is fired.
That’s an ass backwards way to do it. The RoF reduction is also more like +14% DPS so -0.1 cav multi does not offset it. And the pause in firing rate is the main thing that allows cavalry to actually close the distance so not messing with RoF is a much better approach.
Conceptually, why would a more effective ammunition reduce the effectiveness vs cavalry? That just makes it feel like a trade off rather than an upgrade. If it is meant to be focused on infantry what’s wrong with boosting the infantry multiplier as I suggested?
If you’re not going to target the busted parts of the card then more drastic measures like increasing OG to 5 pop is going to be necessary.
If you have other units (like cav) guarding your culvs a second shot should be significantly easy with 10% less speed. Additionally, the further damage reduction is going to make them less effective against artillery anyway. If you’re going to say your math was wrong, than go to 0.35 or something. I highly doubt the devs are going to revert the ability to remove the pack up animation.
Sorry I should be more clear, I just meant it wouldn’t perfectly cancel out. It’s not easy to qualify that since the packing delay also effects fire delay so you’re always going to be under correcting or over correcting.
If you just way overcorrect to like x0.35 then that’s an off-putting way to do that because now the “upgrade” makes it worse in some respects. And it still doesn’t even fix the issue of continuous fire that doesn’t leave an opportunity for cav to approach.
Screening only helps against melee units. Trying to body block a 26 range unit that deals siege damage is useless.
It is the main source of all the OG balance problems and thematically makes no sense so I hope you’re wrong.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a bit of a redesign on the unit to make the no pack up a core element of the unit. It’d probably look something like this:
Cost: 100w, 300c, 4pop
Hp 150
4 speed (no pack up)
Siege attack: 20 (6), 2 AOE, 24 range (+2 in age 4), 1.75x vs infantry, 1.25x vs buildings, 0.5x vs Cavalry, 0.5x vs artillery, 0.75x vs Ships, 0.6x vs shock infantry, 4 RoF.
As you’ll notice, it does substantially less damage to cavalry and artillery, similar damage to ships and buildings, and slightly more damage to infantry. Obviously it would no longer have to pack up, making it a “high micro” anti infantry specialist. This would also set it apart from the Gatling Guns.
I enjoy the speedy Organ Guns, but they really basically exist to compliment my Dragoons or musketeers by killing infantry and kinda buildings, not really much else.
Edit: reworking it around the speed would make balancing it a bit easier I think. Adding it part a though makes things unnecessarily complicated to balance. Obviously, the stats could be modified slightly if necessary.
I do kinda disagree with this. If you have culvs and have hand cav then it can force you to sack the Organ Guns to kill the culvs, or run them away. Though admittedly I have mostly seen such a situation in extremely late game encounters, it’s likely worse in early age 4.
But that’s coming back to drastically reworking the unit to solve a problem that is due to a single card which is what everyone else is against. Maybe there’s some wiggle room to slightly shorten the packing animation from 1.5 seconds to 1.25 seconds or something like that. But eliminating it entirely is way too problematic.
Ah, I mean, Portugal did need something. I think stats like what I suggested could work. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be inclined towards reworking much of anything with Portugal. Speedy Organ Guns are very fun and really are only problematic when they beat cavalry or artillery too well. But even in their current state they haven’t managed to make Portugal really anything more than average in treaty.
Those stats would probably be fine, but if they’re going to do a major overhaul they should just get rid of Organ Guns entirely and give them Bercos instead (the old Organ Guns could be retained as a Ribauldequin mercenary). Do a proper rework with things like replacing Town Centers with Feitorias, and giving them some new unique units like Carracks.
But if all they’re going to get is little tweaks then they should focus on fixing busted cards like Grapeshot and useless new cards like Carracks and Naval Infantry
Agree, the organ gun, humbaraci(ulufeli) and giant granadiers are desbalanced, pls nerf at least the organ guns its ridiculous being unable to defeat them with cavarly and culebrinas.
As I’ve mentioned in a thread many moons ago, make the Organ Gun a Merc unit, call it the ’ Organкі’’ and give it the Winged Hussar voice lines.
The Polish (and Ukrainian Cossacks) used the Organ Guns throughout the 17th century - significantly later than the west. A little info on the Poles use of it.. This ties in well with it being a Merc unit.
In lieu of the Organ Gun - the Ports should get the oft-requested Bercos.
Grapeshot