Making the imperial skirms a generic unit would be a great change, though I’d keep it fairly exclusive. Maybe give it to 5 civs or so.
You could double down on the extra archer hp increasing it to 25% or 30%, but they might just need a new bonus.
I hope they get a generic buff, and not something that makes them better vs archers. They’re already pretty good vs Britons, and I don’t like civ wins.
5 seems a bit restrictive. Over half of civs get the hussar (not inlcuding poles and lithuanians that get the winged hussar), and most civs get halberdiers.
But I agree that I’d like to see imperial skirmishers become a generic unit and then give the vietnamese some other bonus. Seems weird the spear and scout cavalry lines have two upgrades and the skirmisher only has one.
There’s good gameplay reasons most civs don’t get Imp Skirm. ESkirms do fine against arbs, whilst pikes wouldn’t cut it vs Paladin.
I think it’d be better to compare ImpSkirm to Winged Hussar or Elephant Archer - some units are exclusive and that’s fine
Vietname on top of my most boring civs list 11. Their tech tree and bonuses does not combine.
There is room for several changes. Devs have introduced aura effects. Plenty of options.
Also, as Malians now have a bonus similar to turks, there are all the other resources. Even if I see it as korean buff over the wood discount, getting 8-10% extra wood would fix Vietnamese
Revealing enemy castles would be a cool + very useful bonus.
I was also mentally toying with the suggestion of giving vietnamese a unique anti-building bonus damage to their elephants. Would actually make them useful in castle age to try and break through defences. At least as a unique bonus it stops elephants from being broken again in TG.
But monks can counter BEs at castle age and cost of BE to much so it will damage their boom but extra bonus againts buildind in imperial age can be usefull.
Yes, as it is now, Chatras is available either too early or too late, depending on how you look at it.
Yes, I felt very wary about typing “requires a castle”.
I think the numbers of games are too small to draw much of a conclusion here.
I wondered about that too. Alternatively, their archers could have extra melee armour, like the Lac Viet ones – that would help them against basically everything except archers, which they already have good counters to.
They are stronger against civs with no strong feudal bonus towards cavalry.
Mayans, koreans, bizantines have good archers and antiarcher options but cannot push with good knights. Same as hindustanis (they have no knights and their eco bonus is just not strong enough until castle age)
Berbers, on the flip side, have good knights but no bonus until castle age.
Bulgarians, spanish, teutons and tatars have an eco bonus comparable with the vietnamese one but stronger militar knights or cavalry. Or stronger feudal bonuses. They can adapt to whatever vietnamese want. In case of ethiopians, I bet that their archer army is stronger than the antiarcher skills of vietnamese
The bonus HP on archers is indeed pointless as people usually manually focus fire during archer fights anyway leading to overkill shot. The only unit that benefit from the bonus is the CA. I think giving them movement speed is better.
Paper money is still a useless tech, it would better to make the tech more historically relevant by reducing gold price on gun powder units.
Also, please give them hand cannoneers. They are completely hopeless against eagle spam and huskarl spam in imp
Move the revealed enemy TCs to team bonus in addition to Imperial Skirmishers.
Replace the empty space with Archery Range techs costing 33% less.
In addtion to the woodless eco techs, make those to be researched 100% faster.
Well, is about time. Vietnamese gave the game a jolt with something amazing.
It is already a TB anyway.
Too much buff that not needed. Just apply the 100% faster eco techs and they will be fine.
What about give them Elephant Archers? It would fit their geographical theme, and they would have:
+20% HP due to their bonus
+100HP due to Chatras (making the effect avaible to every Elephant Unit)
They would end up with 480HP Elite Archer Elephant, pratically a mobile tower.
That is a very strong buff (which might be needed)
Portuguese now research ant tech 25% faster (even a bit more before). That meant one extra villaver after wheelbarrow.
With the double resesrch soeed, they would have half a villager after loom and two extra villagerd after wheelbarrow, with some saved resources from the techs and a good eco.
This buff would push them towards an eco strategy trying to outproduce the rivals. This approach combines well with their free conscription and paper money. That would be a great bonus for closed maps.
I agree they need something. Rattan archers are cool, but they are very expensive (double the wood of archer line), and they still die hard to enemy cavalry (possibly because their frame delay negatively impacts stop micro).
Imperial Skirmishers would be a great regional unit. However Vietnamese should have a unique bonus for them. Maybe something like +1/2/3 melee armor per age on Skirmishers. This would allow them to function as a more effective meat shield/distraction in all ages, without making Vietnamese any stronger against other archer civs. AFAIK no civ has this bonus, but it is debatable if it would be useful in most games.
20% extra HP.
The problem of that is losing cav archer which is usedul for them. I would see this bonus for burmese, because they dont use cav archer at all, and howdah compensates for the lack of armor upgrades.
I opposed to buff their frame delay before, but this could be needed as well. However, I would try not to make them a “rattan” civ just as koreans became a “war wagon” civ for a while
Age of Statistics hasn’t been updated in a while, but look at let’s look at their win rates by game length. link
It’s a U curve. They have a decent start and end, but struggle in the middle. Now, we can cross-check this with AoE stats, or aoe pulse. We see that the other civs with the same structure are: Dravidians, Goths, Incas, and Japanese. You can check it here
The spike at the end shows that once the civ is fully realized, they’ll do fine. What’s interesting is the spike at the start. This curve shapes and forms the identity of all these civs. That is to say, these are all aggressive civs. Their play style is defined by that. And that should be what we reinforce.
All this is to say that a lot of people are taking the approach of strengthening their castle age. I used to think this too, but there is a better way. Vietnamese can see enemy TC locations already. Let’s enable them to exploit that better.
As some have suggested, cheaper archery ranges could be a good bonus. Other options could be, archer-related blacksmith techs cost half, foot archers move 15% faster instead of their 20% extra HP, or Barracks not necessary as a prerequisite for archery range.
This way, the Vietnamese player can use their early bonus of being able to see enemy TCs in Feudal Age, and do damage quickly. Then, they wall up, and get to imperial for the next power spike.
Paper money is garbage. I don’t know why the devs love it so much, but it feels so much worse on such a weak civ.
Agree. There is also one hint in their tech trew that underscores that supposed aggresive style by design. Vietnamese are the only civ besides aztecs that lack masonry and architecture. (Aztecs also lack hoardings). Aztecs make up for this inconvenience with their extra training speed bonus, while vietnamese do something similar with their free conscription although much later. This is the reason behind mi idea of splitting conscription across ages.
In fact, their bombard tower is a bit lackluster due to this! They have the worst bombard tower of all!
So some parts seem to be designed for early aggresion (TC bonus, archers HP), while others for late games (elephants, bombard cannons, paper money snd imp skirm) with a huge disconection in the middle. The only one bonus that connect both parts is thenwood discount, allowing for some aggression while focusing in their eco.
Even worse: remember that, when they were released, they had no wood bonus at all because they were supposed to lame or start early aggression and take advantage of that for the rest of the game, but that proved to be not enough for them. They were sitting in winrates below 40% before the wood discount was implemented. Now, 3 years later, they are back at the bottom. So maybe it is the moment to buff their early game.
Is loom an eco tech? I don’t think so. Either way I don’t want this to be researched faster. That’s Goths territory.
So one and half villager lead from late Feudal after wheelbarrow and another one after hand cart. A total of two and half villagers lead. Not that big to go for a boom game imo.
Then 100% faster eco techs is the perfect bonus for them. They will be able to hold their own in the mid game with two extra villagers.
That will be broken.