Update December PUP as at 2023-12-08

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
43

I’m of two minds on the subject. I appreciate your points. But on the other hand, these look to be fairly low budget graphics - if people want to pay for them, fine by me. It doesn’t affect gameplay and if it helps fund other aspects of the game, all the better. DE apologists always suggest that budget is a huge constraint and that devs don’t have the resources to do a fraction of what players request. So if this isn’t just a cash grab and is used to generate revenue that’s reinvested into the game, I think that’s a good thing. But that’s kind of a big “if”.

Honestly it’s not much better if it ends up free anyways - it’ll be just another instance of silly icons or limited use graphics instead of adding more substantial assets. I do like the Joan of Flames, Stained Glass Monk, Samurette, and This is Fine Knight, but wouldn’t pay for them. Some of the others have uncanny valley vibes and/or appear to be slamming PEDs (looking at you, Lumberjacked).

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44

How do you think he got so lumberjacked lol?

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45

So when is this patch going to be released again?

I’m very curious to see how the new and “improved” pathing will look. Trying to stay optimistic!

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46

I’d happily pay $1/mo for matchmaking. It might even help reducing smurf.

I agree. Many existing event icons look better than these.

47

Let see the price and what will come with these icons. Glad I saved some money from last 2 DLCs.

48

Am I the only one thinking that mangonel line projectiles will be same as upcoming Dromon projectiles in the future?

That will be a horrible change btw.

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49

I dont think they will change something that old

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50

What do you mean exactly?

51

RIP the cavalry gold bonus, now Persian are just generic boring like they used to be, except for sarva. Their cavalry archer is back to being useless in imp without that gold bonus to make them appealing. idk, like maybe remove it for melee cavalry but at least keep it for the cav archer???

52

I’m referring to this.

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53

Now, why do you think it will be a same to do this on the mangonel projectiles?
It would be more realistic and could be a good change (IMO)

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54

At first glance it does seem like that change makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately when you crunch the numbers you realize that 5x the damage is being blocked by armor.

Originally the dromon did 50 dmg, same damage as an onager. assuming a direct hit an Elite Teutonic Knight takes 37 dmg and a fully upgraded cavalier takes 45 dmg.

Well the dromon is now being nerfed to do 5x8 dmg. ok that’s the same 40 as a mangonel, so let’s compare to the mangonel. Assuming a direct hit from a mangonel an Elite Teutonic Knight took 27 dmg and a fully upgraded cavalier takes 35 dmg.

So since the dromon is just a mangonel on the water, one would assume it’d perform similarly to a mangonel. This is NOT what WILL happen if the dmg is split.

Assuming every projectile is a direct hit (an unrealistic but helpful simplifying assumption) An Elite Teutonic Knights 10+3 melee armor completely overpowers those 8dmg projectiles, thus they do the minimum 1 dmg, so whereas the mangonel does 27 dmg, the dromon does 5.

But of course that’s the extreme example of an Elite Teutonic Knight. What about the not extreme fully upgraded cavalier? Well they’re 2+3 armor negates most of the 8dmg, so it’s taking only 5x3 dmg, so 15 dmg compared to the 35 from the mangonel.

These are completely un-intuitive results. Why should I spend more resources to train a unit, that visually looks like there is a mangonel, whose attack looks like a mangonel, is presumably stronger since it has +5 range, and yet starts to perform waaaaaaaay worse against just a moderate amount of melee armor.

Some people have suggested that it’s too good vs units compared to the CG and that’s why it’s being changed. If that was the only reason then IDK why they didn’t match CG dps, reduce blast radius and tighten projectile spread.

It seems like they want to be able to have the armenian extra projectile for galleons bonus also apply to dromons and result in an approximately 20% buff, which is where the armenian demo bonus is getting nerfed to as well.

So you split the dmg amongst the five existing projectiles, add another, that’s 20%, you call it a day. unfortunately that implementation is fraught with the presumably un-intended consequence illustrated above.

Instead they should leave the dmg unsplit, and the projectile added by the bonus should carry enough dmg that after target armor yields an approximately 20% increase in DPS. Not counting bonus dmg, that projectile should have 11 or 12 melee dmg.

55

Somehow the patch notes made this an even more bitter pill to swallow. They explicitly stated their goal was to reduce damage by about 20%, which is only true vs units with 0 TOTAL melee armor. Everything else the dmg reduction is far higher.

I’d test it out to prove my case but naturally the scenario editor is bugged ATM.

56

Overall a good patch

Omg yes. AHHHH

This is fine. Decent changes.

Bohemians had pretty high winrates after their last buff. So they needed some sort of nerf. True. The only thing that I don’t like is the nerf to their wagons’ hp. It kinda rubs me the wrong way. The nerf to the projectile damage and the nerf to the training time should be enough for most civs to get a window to fight back against bohemians. But I see no direct justification for the hp nerf except for being an attempt to reduce bohemians’ hard counter potential against armenians and georgians.

I’d rather have preferred they buffed armenians and georgians first (against gunpowder/anti-infantry and fast enemy infantry switches) so they both can hold on their own; then see how they fared in battle. Instead of doing something drastic like -20 hp lol.

Called it a long time ago.

They had the full vill discount before and it was never a problem. It became a problem after the rework and all the other changes. They should go back to the original discount and nerf ghulams tech switching (nerfing their hp, training time, or cost, etc. Idk I’m just tossing ideas) and increase the cost of their UTs just a little bit. Both.

This is fine. Decent changes.

My only concern is that before the dlc they had 50-52% winrate in all relevant elo brackets. The same as before the blacksmith nerf. So it was okeish (except in patch 83607 where they had 54.51% at 1900+). But now in the dlc patch, they had 52-53% in all relevant elo brackets. Which matches a wooping inflation of 62.67% winrate against armenians, and 62.55% against georgians at 1200+. While they also have 66.40% vs armenians and 65.71% vs georgians at 1700+.

Once again, I’d have preferred they buffed armenians and georgians properly so they could face their counters, and see how they developed at least in a couple of months. Instead of nerfing their hard counters like bohemians, incas, portuguese, etc while giving them small buffs (armenians) in the same patch.

Ok I guess. I knew this was going to happen.

But instead of removing the gold bonus completely, I was thinking in delaying the effect a lot. Like switching it with their UT kamandaran.
Something like the civ bonus being “crossbowmen gold-cost replaced by additional wood cost” So the effect only kicks in after the player pays for the upgrade and waits until it’s researched. You know, like the mongol light cav bonus. While the new UT would be something like “knights, cavalry archers and elephants get +5 gold for each military kill” and make it a little bit expensive compared to other silver UTs, so the tech would most likely be researched during late castle-early imperial age.

I don’t see why. They are obviously trying to help armenians and georgians as much as they can by nerfing their hard counters.
I’d find it more fun if they overbuffed armenians and georgians and then try to tone them down from there instead of nerfing other civs.

Btw is nobody going to talk about slavs and how dominant they are with their +15%??? Imo the bonus itself is fine. My problem is all the other buffs they previously received. Surely I’m not the only one bothered by 2 front castles, boyar spams with their new farmers, and speedy monks counters in every match. I mean they jumped to 54-56% through the last patch between 1700+ and 1900+ over the last weeks for fs sake. Just look: they are sitting at 54.14% right now (1900+) according to aoestats.

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57

Before DE Slavs were sitting at 58% WR and that was without any of the buffs done in DE, give them more time and they will start to be a top pick/ban in tournaments too.

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58

image
I think someone forgot to edit the hand color…

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59

They seem fine so far. Comparing pre DE is not always accurate btw as all the pre-DE civs except Franks, Mayans, Aztecs, Huns got buffed as well.

60

This is a testament to how much care they spend on their patches… How embarrassing

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61

Or maybe the king ran out of tanning spray.

1 Like