Hello players.
Today, I wanted to point out that the balance on Treaty 40 Min is really hurt by some choices in the map pool and in general, some balance issues between civs.
In an effort to keep things simple, I will use a some concrete exemple using one of the most played map in Treaty (both in casual and in ranked, as this map is duplicated in that pool): Andes - Upper. This is a map where the issue is even more significant.
That map is well liked because of one particular tech included in the Inca Natives tree: Incan Chasquis Messengers (this reduce training time of both cavalry and infantry by 15%).
Combined with Immigrants (-10%), Standing Army (-25%)/Mass Cavalry (-35%) and Fencing School/Riding School (-40%), this combine for a massive 90% reduction for infantry and 100% for cavalry.
This does mean that all Europeans civs have instant cavalry and a huge reduction on infantry training time (exception for Ottomans who lack Fencing School).
Now, lets talk about a non-European civ: Indians. They have access to everything except a Church (or Dutch ally in consulate to send a wagon), so they end up with -65% training time for infantry and -80% for elephant (they have a card and a tech in the monastery) or -70% for camels (not affected by the card).
Its obvious that even with that pretty good reduction to cavalry training time, training at instant speed is leagues better… But what about infantry? Is that difference really huge? Let’s do some math…
A Musketeer takes 30 seconds to be created. 10% of this is 3 seconds, as they have a 90% time reduction.
A Sepoy that needs 35% of his 34 seconds training time takes… 11.9 seconds to be created.
This means that a single Barrack can create 20 Musketeers in roughly the same amount of time it takes to do 5 Sepoys!
Now you could argue that the Indian player could simply create 4 time the amount of military building as his opponent. Hardly fair if you ask me, but this is not the issue. The main issue is how quick some civilisations are to adapt. If you play treaty you know how crucial reacting fast to your opponent strategy is. No number of military building will help you there.
There are many other balance issues in Treaty (many civs have weak late game economies or armies), and those do not only affect this specific map, but I wanted to take the time to address the training time differences, as I feel this can be corrected by giving some extra techs or cards to certains civs.
So, what do you think? Am I right or do I simply need to learn to play differently when using a civ that train its base unit way slower than the opponent?