Why not have -50% damage reduction vs cavalry as a civ bonus?
Now Bengalis are awesome. What a thoughtful fix.
To be honest I did like the idea of expanding the “reveal TC” bonus to also include castles. I feel that offers a pretty huge strategy advantage which kicks in in castle age which is typically when they start lacking in strength. I think combine that with the straggler tree bonus would be plenty good enough for them given their late game is already quite strong.
Mmmmm that would barely help once the castle is up. It would mostly be useful for knowing if the enemy is expanding across the map, but against castle drops is useless and against castles in the bases you would still need to scout the base, and they could surprise you with TCs
I’m not sure, I can’t help but think it would have a lot of practical benefits from stategy points of view. For example being able to tell which directions are safer to raid from, to see if the enemy has expanded to other strategic positions. Knowing where to treb, Knowing if you enemy has invested resources into stone rather than booming / army. Knowing that UUs might be on the way. Indeed its minor but I think it helps without being OP, I don’t think Vietnamese need huge buffs, just some gentle nudges. Combine that with the small eco wood buff to get their feudal age rolling faster I think they’d be in a good spot (out side of reworking elephants, but I just don’t think that’s going to happen)
Do you mean the first castle or any castle?
I think VN’s biggest issue is early eco. And lack of military bonuses to offset minimal early eco advantage. Possibly even more so with HC becoming even less popular now, meaning the wood savings kick in too late, while the 20% archer hp isn’t enough to make up for it, and most players probably can’t capitalise enough on the opposing TC location
Faster production is ALWAYS useful. You get a faster return on investment. And this includes faster tech as well, meaning you’re hitting powerspikes sooner. Do better research. On top of this numerous pros have pointed out how good this civ bonus is, nevermind how good conscription in general is.
I think there’s actually at least 2 videos explaining how cost effective this tech is. It’s extremely highly ranked.
At this point I’m beginning to think you’re trolling. You want VN to simply lame every single match? Why wouldn’t they lame if they had this? It’s like Brits not training archers.
This is just overkill. And again, makes me think you’re trolling. +100 hp, means no other civ can ever have BE buffed to viability. So we over-buff VN ?
80 posts in and you’re still suggesting a straight up better version of AZ? I don’t mind some overlap but to this extent?
I would bet big money it has very little to do with it. And more likely to do with general buffs to other civs, on top of VN having never performed well on the ladder/suffers from the xbow nerf/archer stutter bug.
That being said its remarkable that even at high elo VN have never done well, people only parrot pros when they say it’s a good civ, while even at 1800+ it’s almost never done well. Like an inverted sister of franks.
It is one of the only civs I’ve never known how to fix, specifically because pros value it, and suffers from a similar condition to Chinese (although their fix is pretty straightforward). But is one of the prime culprits that would benefit from the inevitable BE buff.
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I dont like it 100% either, but I am out of ideas. Remember when turks received +1 pierce armor for their light cavalry in feudal and indians has +1 in castle age for stable units? People said this was the same when they werent. Or bohemians having chemistry in castle age and turks for free. Or magyars scout discount from feudal and berberes stable discount from castle age. Some overlapping is almost necesary given the circunstances. But aztecs will still have the faster production after conscription while vietnamese would still have the same as now in imperial age.
I know it is not original, but I prefer that than the other option of making conscription available in castle age for research. That would be a good powerspike, but a castle would be needed, so I dont like it.
I have been thinking in other possibilities, like “unit upgrades are researched 100% faster”, but the overall effect is so small for pikes and crossbows that it isnt worth it.
Still, there is another way of buffing this bonus… Increase the cost of conscription. This would be a buff for vietnamese (although for imperial age).
Maybe developers were afraid of giving them an early eco bonus together the enemy position bonus. But after portuguese received the berry bonus, I think an early eco bonus is due.
What do you think about the suggested bonus related to solitary trees (faster gathering rate?).
It’s an extremely good tech, it’s just not specifically good for Vietnamese, OR as a bonus.
Specifically for Vietnamese, basically their best way to use it is to spam their light cavalry, but lacking Hussar AND Blast Furnace, their light cav are extremely mediocre. It doesn’t really matter for any of their archers or for battle elephants, and they lack other good melee options to effectively spam.
And on top of that, it’s a terrible free tech. Why? Compare it to free Thumb Ring, for example. Thumb Ring hits in Castle Age instead of Imperial Age, it costs MORE, it instantly impacts all your existing army, and it boosts the DPS of some units by like 50%. It’s insane. Conscription, by contrast, takes time to come into effect, costs like 50% less despite coming in an age later, and since it’s a guaranteed pickup, the long-term benefit it provides is minimal at best. Compare this to civ bonuses like faster archery ranges for britons and there’s just no comparison, because they’re better for the entire game, not just for ~5 minutes in early imperial age.
The only real power spike it provides is letting you get up one treb in a treb war, IF you both hit imp at the same exact time AND you have the means to defend your trebs. But for archer civs especially, it’s EXTREMELY easy to lose your trebs, especially early on. I just recently watched Hera throw out 2 trebs and instantly lose them to about 10 cavaliers because his archers were half a screen too far away. And then your entire advantage is gone.
That’s an incredibly tiny power spike, for a civ that can barely use it in the first place. Almost any other civ would do better with free conscription. I would far rather that bonus be removed and they be given a bonus that is actually tailored to them specifically.
Why wouldn’t they lame NOW? If you know where your enemy is, you have a good idea exactly where their sheep are, too. The main place this would help is in finding your own sheep immediately and getting a bit of map info.
Even with +100, the vietnamese still have basically the worst BEs in the game, so making them have an actual power spike in early castle age would be just fine. It’s not like early elephants are exactly a typical strategy anyway.
The main advantage of free conscription is the research time (60s) and that you don’t need a castle for it.
But I agree it is so cheap that if the enemy reaches imperial age with a castle, you can tell he is going to research it unless he wants a trebuchet (50s of training time).
Another thing that annoys me a bit is why developers gave free conscription to Vietnamese… I think there is no particular historical reason for that. Instead, I think that is the lack of architecture and masonry the reason behind that. Lacking upgrades in AOE2 usually is compensated with cheaper prices or other bonuses. Aztecs, which also lack architecture and masonry (and hoardings!) have the extra production speed as a bonus to compensate for that. Their buildings are weak, but produce more. For vietnamese, I believe they decided to give them free conscruption because of this, but the thing is that it is only a early imperial age power spike.
And why didn’t they give them free sappers? I know that sappers is a niche tech compared to conscription, but vietnamese are famous for their guerrilla tactics and stake traps (even in middle ages), so free sappers fits them a lot!
It has been suggested to move conscription to castle age for Vietnamese even if this means needing a castle for it. In that case, I would move all castle techs to (ahem…) castle age . Conscription in late castle age is always good for that little price. Sappers in castle age could be useful against forward bases, or for using your villagers after building a forward base/castle drop. Hoardings, however, is too expensive for castle age, but can be used to defend your castle a bit if your enemy reaches imperial age while you are still ageing up.
Besides this silly idea, I agree with most of you that the dark age eco bonus is needed the most. Here I summarize the most accepted and easible ideas for them in this thread, IMHO.
- A dark age eco bonus, like extra wood gathering rate in solitary trees, or the first TC spawning extra solitary trees, or longer lasting trees, etc. This kind of buff has been done before for some civs (even vietnamese)
- Swapping chattras and paper money. This has been done for some civs as well. While chattras in castle age is extremely useful if your opponent cannot defend against elephants, it is too much niche and most of the times it is researched in imperial age. In contrast, paper money needs to be researched earlier to be more profitable.
- Conscription in castle age.
other things discussed across the thread:
- making imperial skirm a regional unit and giving them a new team bonus.
- wood discount in archery range techs (thumbring, skirm upgrades)
- extra research speed for eco bonuses
- buffIing rattan archer frame delay A TINY BIT.
- buffing elephants overall
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Can it be only for Archery Range or more specifically archer line only? Less overlap with Aztecs. Free conscription replaced with archer line trains 25% faster.
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The problem with that is than now overlaps with britons team bonus! overlapping is inevitable…
Although I would prefer such this bonus to affect all units, 25% faster trained cav archers sounds tempting, though.
Not more than Magyars vs Berbers.
I have some original idea which even myself hate. But they are better than nothing.
- TC spawns 1/2/3 Archer reaching Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age (max 1 TC)
- Each Archery Range trains the 1st Archer immediately.
- Get 1 free Archer after building an Archery Range (Max 2 in one age).
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I’m inclined to think just having the straggler wood trees would make a big enough difference. Not sure on numbers but there’s what 4*100 wood in straggler trees, a 100% collection rate bonus would give ~150 wood advantage (after accounting for inefficiencies) it’s basically a free range/blacksmith. Would allow for a much smoother start getting initial archers out.
I do think a good military bonus would be x% speed buff for range units. Though would need to be refined as to not be OP.
I think it will be higher. Also you will skip Lumbercamp. That’s another 100 wood.
If I am not mistaked, solitary trees have 125 wood. (Can someone chek it in game?)
Skipping the lumbercamp is perfect for a bit extra early drush and making use of their knowledge of enemy position. Pre-lumbercamp drush?
Now the winrate has climbed again (in some cases to their usual 44%) but they still remain at the bottom.
So I made a small test.
Collection rate from straggler trees vary rapidly with distance. Also number of villagers per straggler impacts significantly. I have found 2 villagers per straggler is the maximum to have a good efficiency. This is the collection rate for 2 villagers per stragglers with distance from TC -
2 tiles = 19.6 wood/min.
3 tiles = 18.87 wood/min.
4 tiles = 18.29 wood/min.
5 tiles = 16.67 wood/min.
Arabia gives 5 stragglers - 2 in 2 tiles, 1 in 3, 4, 5 tiles each. On average that is 18.60. With 100% faster, that will be 37.20 wood/min. Regular lumberjack works 21.20 wood/min. Vietnamese will be 75% faster.
Since Vietnamese will skip lumbercamp, they will have 600 wood. On the other hand generic civ will gather only around 285 wood. Vietnamese will be ahead of 315 wood which is broken. Even 50% faster will result in 220 more wood than generic which is even more than Dravidians as well as coming way earlier.
It is 100 wood. Some trees in scenario editor has 125 wood.
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They do lame now. In fact if you watched Hera’s video “One tip vs. every civ” that was his only tip when you’re playing against Vietnamese. Guard against the lame.
The question here is in how much time do they gather those 500 wood. For calculatimg the time, we need to know the number of villagers chopping wood which varies across time and between build orders.
Also, they would have to build the second lumbercamp eventually. Some build orders do that after feudal age (villager # 22 or so?).
With a gathering rate of 37.2, they would gather all the straggler trees in 806,45 seconds. With a scout rush build order (3 villagers on wood), that would happen before the villager 18, so they would have to build the lumbercamp in dark age (although they would be ahead on wood). If that is their second building (after a mill), they could probably be able to tweak the build order to age up in that moment.
So yes, 100% faster gathering speed sounds broken. I would try 30%.
Or maybe it is enough if they spawn 2 trees in their TC, like gurjara berries. That would be 200 extra wood without lumbercamp. Although in the end that would be slightly more effective than longer lasting trees.
You can calculate by using my numbers.
500/18.60 = 26 min 53 sec.
4 is the standard number unless you go scout. In that case you will put 3 on wood.
Sounds too small to me. Only 162 wood. And after building a lumbercamp only 62 wood. Try 40%. That’s 193 or 93 wood.