Hello everyone! I understand this has been discussed already, but if I may, i’d love to present some other perspective for the new civilizations we got and for the ones we are yet to get.
But first - I’d like to thank to developers for all the effort they are putting into the game → new civilizations, campaigns, events, game modes, balance changes, fixes and updates! As a fellow developer (not a game developer though), i know how tricky some things might be, and how ungrateful some users/members can be:)
Now, to the point - there are a lot of “unique” aspects to the game that indeed work! Portuguese Feitoriae, Bulgarian Kreposts, Cuman early TC/Siege bonus and so on! However, some things are way too unique to be unique → in other words, they push the civs way too far from the rest.
1) Burgundians
Their coustillier is actually a good idea for making the civilization unique - some people might find it exaggerated, but with correct balance, there should be nothing wrong with the recharge. However, the problems start to arise with their unique technologies. Burgundian vineyards taking all the food away might be too harsh - why not simplify it a little? The idea is there! Instead of changing the food to gold, keep the “farms generate gold” bonus, but enhance it a bit! This change would be a perfectly normal example of a unique technology!
Same goes for Flemish revolution - the idea is also there, but instead of transforming ALL the villagers into flemish militia, transform only IDLE villagers and allow the flemish militia to be created:) Alternatively, this technology might (also) increase the recharge speed of coustilliers and/or increase the charge attack by 5/10, just so that they could snipe villagers:)
The bonus food of relics could also be increased, or even doubled, as a team bonus:)
2) Sicilians
They are quite similar to the Burgundians → Serjeans available in feudal age, able to build Donjons, while being slow-moving mid hp, mid attack, high armor unit → why not? Seems nice, unique and not especially game breaking - perfect!
But again, unique technologies are the ones that push this civilization beyond the “unique, but alright” boundary. The main issue of Sicilians is probably their lack of strong units later in the game First crusade could be a potential fix! Instead of simply spawning 7 serjeants per TC, why not upgrade them like Serjeants +30% HP, +10% speed - or something similar? the idea of UQ centered towards serjeans is indeed there! We see unique technologies aimed at unique units quite freqntly - Mahouts increasing the speed of war elephants, Logistica making Cataphracts do splash damage or Rocketry increasing Chu-ko-nu attack!
Scutage is also a bit weird - instead of getting money for units, why not make something more “permanent”, like Galley and Fire galley line are 20% cheaper (or cost 30% less gold), hell even ships might return some of their original cost after they get destroyed! → the real numbers don’t really matter that much now, but the idea of not making unique technologies “1 time only” is the big deal.
The very very same goes for all the future civilizations - it does not really matter what bonuses they get or if something similar has already been used, but the 1 time only technologies are “not age like”. It would also be nice to change the Paper money to something a bit different, same goes for Cuman mercenaries - but i might be a bit too critical now, sorry:)
Additionally, I have seen Ornlu’s video about “civ completion tier” where he stated that Lithuanian relic bonus might be too strong/snowbally, so maybe changing Lithuanians a bit might be nice, too - e.g:
- every odd relic gives +1 attack
- remove paladin
- remove relic bonus, but bring back leitis armor and add 1 attack for knight/leitis line in imp:)
Similar thing might even go to Indians (based on the Ornlu’s video) → like adding a second archer for the Elephant archer unit (in other words, shoot 2 arrows), bringing back plate boarding armor, but removing the bonus pierce armor for their cavalry and even removing the “imperial camel” (instead, keep the unit for some future civ from middle east, maybe?) and maybe increasing the accuracy of hand cannons instead:)
Thank you all who managed to read it, and i’d be delighted to see other ideas/replies on this topic