Been seeing a lot of threads lately about civs having OP units and wanted to show some hard stats about which civs actually have the top tier builds.
Civ: Vikings
Winrate: 52.7%
Vikings have been solid from release thanks to their free wheelbarrow. However, I suspect this is also due to the subtle buffs they’ve received over the past two or so years such as bogsveigar, better healing on Castle age berserk, and imp unique tech becoming cheaper.
Civ: Malay
Winrate: 53.1%
My thinking for this one being so dominant is the faster age up but also ever since they’ve gotten free infantry armor they’ve been a nightmare to balance.
Romans
Winrate: 54.2%
Pretty obvious stuff here. Just a ton of bonuses with a great economy. With Romans you can make cav, dirt cheap scorpions, and insane infantry. If they nerf this civ I don’t want it to be their economy but their military options.
Wu
Winrate: 54.3%
People will say this is all due to their Jian Swordsmen but the Wu of the 3k civs are the best designed. They have no quirks like bleed damage or reflection damage and I actually enjoy playing them more than Khitans.
Civ: Shu
Winrate: 54.4%
Number 1 kind of surprised me but it was the Shu. This is not only in due to their fast castle chariot strategy I think, but also because of their archer bonus synchronizing a bit too well with their eco bonus.
Stats are pulled from 1v1 all elos on:
So before posting a thread saying that a civ or unit is OP, I recommend looking at the civ’s Winrate.
For the Romans : replace their regular scorpion with a new Roman Scorpion : a lighter, weaker scorpion but cheaper than the normal, and that looks like an actual scorpion.
With 1200+, the top 5 civs are Shu, Romans, Wu, Hindustanis, and Malay. However, only Shu are over 55% win rate, and this is technically previous patch (so before the small nerf to their lumberjacks generating food)
1900+ is Shu, Celts, Chinese, Wu, and Mayans, but the confidence intervals are wider at this level.
Team games, top 5 for all ELOs are Wu, Cumans, Dravidians, Khitans, and Romans. 1200+ in team games are Cumans, Wu, Romans, Spanish, Shu.
Overall, pretty strong performance for the Shu, the Wu, and the Romans. But this data is from previous patch, and all three of them got a small nerf of some kind.
I think they will take avai about 1 % of SHu and Romans. Wu might be even more.
Bringing all 3 civs to about 53 % which was the standard “S-Tier” we had before the romans release.
Shu is indeed an interesting case. It’s one of these “sleeper OP” civs. It doesn’t look like “wow, what a civ”!
But the bonusses are just enhancing the general archer metaplay. I am not surprised they took the top spot from the nerfed Khitans.
Pathing might have a huge influence on the new balance actually. For me it seems that the prognosed new melee meta is actually NOT coming. And it feels like for me they changed up stuff a lot from the PUP to the actual patch.
BTW: I now have to admit that I underestimated how much Pathing can influence gameplay and balance. There were times when CA were unplayable because of that, then we even had CA NERFED because they were present all the time. We need to respect this for the future. Funnily, the times when CA were unplayable a lot of people claimed in the forums that the pathing was bad for nights. Damn were they proven wrong when the regrouping bug was finally fixed…
And also: The pathing in general is now way, way better in my opinion. Good job devs! Though for some reason I have to say it feels way smoother in the PUP to surround enemy rangerd units. Now they just squeeese out anyways. But this might also just be a skill adaption that wasn’t present in the PUP.
Wei could now have the best eco, potentially getting an extra 11 villagers. Plus another eco bonus in the Castle Age. The new pathing will also work in their favor.
Their tech tree is kinda lackluster, but good eco often beats a good tech tree. We’ll see how it turns out.
Shu changes are huge. 15 food extra cost per chariot will nerf their win rate quite a lot. Same with Wu’s UU nerf. Poles should have been a lot better but the new bug will probably keep them at the same. So I will expect big jump on these 3 civs.
I will give you the Shu, I didn’t think about that one. However, the Wu are still gonna be busted. Having their melee armor reduced by 1 (and shock infantry armor moved to 0) isn’t going to change the fact that they destroy archers and take decent melee engagements.
Also Poles should be fine if we only put male villagers on stone. ROFL cuz some people already do this.
I can’t see why Vikings shouldn’t have strong archers when other infantry civs have more going on besides just infantry. And Bogsveigar is an expensive tech anyway.
I disagree. With 10 less food per building means you can’t afford Jian Swords spam as much.
Everyone should do this. Why will you let a bug weaken your game when you can manually avoid it. Need to have an on Poles. If they jump despite the bug, their should have been some nerf in other area.
Shu were doing well even when the war chariots were bugged to the point of uselessness. So I think that they’ll still do fairly well, with the more serious pain point being the nerf to their eco bonus (which was a small nerf). I think Shu will still be a top civ, but I think they’ll still drop a bit (and I expect them to drop below Romans)
Vikings I believe had archers historically, so it’s actually accurate for them to have strong archers. Romans represent the Romans near the end of their empire, at a time period when they did use cavalry (justifying strong knights).
Jian Swordsmen, War chariots, Xianbei raiders, and grenadiers are comparable to Inca slingers: a castle age unit without an elite upgrade (but all of them are affected by a UT, except Jian swordsmen who receive a small bonus upon hitting imperial age)
Everyone had Archers since the Stone Age. The Vikings weren’t famous for having good Archers.
In AoM they are the only civ that can’t train any Archer units for a reason.
They did start using more cavalry but their armies were still Infantry focused.
There are more then enough civs with strong Knights already. Also they sill have a cavalry unique unit anyway so that focus is still clearly there.
Only the Grenadiers are really comparable to the Slinger.
I think missing Elite upgrade doesn’t work well with Jian Swordsman and War Chariots since they are very different kinds of units.
Jian Swordsman only get +2 attack in Imperial Age (besides the generic upgrades every unit gets) so they are significantly weaker.
Not having an Elite Upgrade really doesn’t work well for a melee unit.
