Following the 13.27885 patch (with great changes overall), United States was nerfed HARD (full changes below). The State Militia is now potentially the worst skirm in the game, and the 85 vil cap is hobbling; it makes USA even more dependent on immigrant cards, with French Immigrant and German immigrant now must sends, just to get your equivalent vils up to 99. This is going to force USA into almost exclusively Age 3 Regular/Gatling play and increasing the dependency on immigrant cards removes the civ’s flexibility in choosing dynamic cards. The removal of the two infinite artillery cards restricts the artillery options. For a civ that is supposed to be focused on dynamic shipments, artillery, and infantry, it no longer does any of these anymore.
While many changes were good (the mammoth improvement act and marines changes were needed), but there is nothing to compensate for the losses. The CDB from French immigrants can’t even be retrained! And USA only has only one Royal Guard unit, and it’s the State Militia, which is probably the worst skirm in game!
The changes included: Starting Conditions: 400f (up from 300f) State Militia:
* Ranged damage reduced to 13 (from 14)
* Ranged resistance reduced to 25% (from 30%)
* Group bonus cap reduced to 20 units (down from 29)
* Moultri’s Militia:** Inspiring Flag damage bonus for State Milita reduced to 7% (from 9%)
* Imperial Volunteers: Now grants +40% attack and hitpoints for State Militia (down from 50%) Settler: Build limit decreased to 85 (from 99) Sharpshooter: Attack range and Line-of-sight reduced to 21 and 27 (down from 22 and 28) State Capitol Wagons: Now take 5 seconds to train (up from 2.5) French Immigrants: Cost increased to 250w (from 200w) Hamiltonian Economics (II): No longer improves the Market buy factor, but now refunds the cost of any Market technologies that were researched prior to sending the card
Improved Buildings:** Removed from homecity Hire Scottish Highlanders (III): Removed from homecity swapped for [NEW] Scottish Immigrants (II, 350c): Costs 350c, Ships 1 Highlander, gain +1 Highlander for each Saloon, Meeting House and Trading Post (up to 10) New Jersey Seaports (IV, New Jersey): Now only adds +300 resources to resource shipments which can be sent infinite times (down from +400) Indiana Mammoth Improvement Act(Indiana, III): Fixed an error in the calculation of Age-up research points that allowed players to advance to the next age faster than intended with the Statehood State Capitol technology researched prior to sending this federal card. Kentucky Hunters (Kentucky, IV): Ships 1 Sharpshooter per shipment sent in the game (down from 2); resource costs removed Texan Forts (Texas, V): Spawn rate for free units from Forts is now +15% slower The Alamo (Texas, V):
* Destroyed buildings now spawn 25% less Minutemen
* This card no longer affects destroyed walls United States Marines (III): Will now add a XP bounty of 14 to Marines European Cannons (II): Now correctly affects the Steamer and Sloop INF 2 Horse Artillery (IV): This card is no longer infinite INF 2 Culverins (IV): Removed from homecity
I play a lot of usa and most of these changes seem to be aimed at treaty. Most of these will have little effect on my game. french immigrants costing 250w just means a little extra chopping at the start which is offset by the extra 100 starting food.
Kentucky hunters change is good because that got quite crazy in long games.
Texas cards and infinity age 4 arty cards are again treaty changes. Same with new jersey seaports.
Hamiltonian economics change I like, now I can get hunting dogs instead of sitting there waiting for the card to arrive. 1 less range on my sharpshooters I can live with, they get more range as the game goes on with later upgrades anyway.
in sup for state militia you’re looking at 1 less damage, 5% less RR and +20 HP in a mass instead of +29. You’re unlikely to send the card that boosts them more under the flag or get imperial upgrade so again those are treaty changes. They do seem a bit excessive though, all of these small nerfs together is going to make quite a difference in imperial age treaty games. For me personally next to no difference because I use mostly regulars and sharpshooters as state militia require too many cards to become strong.
Lowering the vill cap to 85 could be too much of a change, perhaps down to 90 was ok. You can get 6 cdb from the cree card, 5 settler wagons, a bank, a large coin trickle etc etc. Though many civs have similar benefits and trickles.
This issue is you are now forced to. You have to send these cards just to be competitive, whereas your opponent can send the same trickles and out-eco you, and you have few cards to allocate. There is nothing compensating for the hits.
I only ever play supremacy 1v1 but I know a lot of people always said in treaty USA was S+ tier and they often banned it. Their must be a reason so many people said that so I assume most of the changes were needed to bring them down a bit if they were that strong late game.
The change to vill count seems odd though because I don’t think USA had a crazy eco, the issue was that with the flag their units just traded really well and they never drained of resources, mostly down to state militia.
the Sharpshooters’ hardly needed the nerf. They basically lose in a skim war against every other light infantry (except for maybe the German skirm).
the cap is 5 cree CDB.
but now it feels like the USA needs to go Penn age 2 if they want to compete late game. Maybe the USA should get a “native alliance” card like the German and their German royal house?
They didn’t need a nerf at all, it was surprising. They do lose to other skirms but they do better vs the units they actually should counter like heavy inf and light cav, and as usa you don’t really need to fight a skirm war when you have gatlings.
Well you are basically forced into going penn and having german immigrants in deck if you want to match a 99 vill eco now yeah. It’s an underrated age up anyway imo, virginia is good but way overused and not even necessary for the fast age anymore. So might be a good thing if people try a new way to play.
In 1v1 it will have little effect though, very rarely do you ever get that late in the game.
Like mentioned above, I think the villager reduction was about making them less crazy op in treaty. Their eco in supremacy isn’t even anything special because players don’t usually include the cards or use the eco age ups. Anyway, supremacy games rarely get to the stage of having over 85 vills so can’t see it being much of an issue.
I agree, the changes were a bit severe. I can only explain them as overtuned nerfs to change the tierlist in treaty (bringing them from S-tier to D-tier) in order to shake up the treaty META. I hope they’ll reverse some of the changes, but most likely in future balancing patches they’ll get small incremental buffs. At least this is my hopium
State Militia is weak.I only use them for a few times,but gatling is powerful and can kill almost every unit.I can’t understand what they are thinking at all!
All USA had to do was training volunteers and militars plus flag.
Volunteers can build with a card; and capitol spamming wagons is laming af.
Everything without running out of eco while they get more resources and faster from crates. Ahh yeah and infinite zouaves by just 1000coin. They had to be nerfed YES OR YES