Faster cavalry production has too much overlap with Franks.
Mahouts is often useful without the Elite upgrade. Locking it behind the Elite upgrade, basically renders the normal WE even more useless, while making the Elite upgrade more overpowered for closed and team games. It needs help in the early game, not in the lategame.
This tech would be pretty broken. Persians could gain profit by just buying and selling repeatedly. Also too much overlap with Saracens.
Persians need to have early-game specific buffs to the War Elephant, and an economy bonus that actually help them rather than pigeonholing them into booming. Teuton cheaper farms, for example, mean Teutons can either boom more OR redirect those resources into more units. By contrast, Persians MUST build more villagers or their bonus is useless, which means they’re essentially forced to boom, and the less they boom, the less they benefit. The best-case scenario is going 2tc instead of 3tc, saving them a grand total of about 175 wood and 100 stone over the course of the game, which is quite pathetic.
As pointed out, this will be OP in water maps. If you still insist on buffing this particular bonus, 15%/20%/25% is the way to go. I’d personally make +1/+1 armor free for archer line. Then reduce cost of Pavise and Elite Genoese Xbow. Imperial Age UT should also be replaced or reworked. But for now, I won’t ask too many changes.
Man belittles balance team, while simultaneously proposing actual boring changes, nevermind extremely imbalanced and/ or unnecessary
I would like to see tweaks to Italians, Koreans, Persians, Viet and possibly sicilians
But your ideas are quite bad.
To cherry pick some of the worst:
Therefore you propose the most boring change possible, while making them stronger where they’re already decent (fast imp) and not necessarily helping them where they need it.
Drav specifically lack husbandry partly because of their machine gun elephant archers, and now you want to make them faster than baseline?
Bombard cannon is vital for vietnamese to counter enemy siege that endangers their archers (their light cav or cavaliers lack one upgrade and elephants dony counter siege).
Cheaper petards and trebs sound cool, but wont compensate for the loss of BBC.
Instead of cheaper units (if you are afraid of overbuff), you can give them cheaper castle techs (with free conscription). Cheaper hoardings or sappers might have their uses.
(I am not considering unic units or techs as part of these bonuses)
However, both cheaper castle units or techs dont help vietnamese in castle age, which is their main flaw
I call it the way I see it. For Portuguese, I did not say the whole civ needed rework. The last bonus on berries was just a poor band aid fix for their early age weakness. So I proposed a solution to have town center technologies excluding age up become cheaper. With the faster research team bonus, Portugese can defend extremely well and boom better to reach a stage where their later age bonuses can kick in. The berry bonus only lead to castle drop on arenas.
If u want to dispute my idea, then objectively put some numbers and point them out. Don’t say they are boring. A fretoria is a boring building. But they won a lot of games for Portuguese even when they were behind.
Unless you see a unit like this, don’t call them machine gun archers.
Elephant archers irrespective of the Indian civ only win games when its on a closed map like black forest or hideout where the faster firing is not of much use.
NEWSFLASH for u, bengali elephant archers are the best of the bunch. Dravidian elepaht archers are not a value play either like gujjaras. Moving faster than Bengali archer will not make them better at absorbing damage better especially since medical corps has been removed. Without an amazing food economy and damage reduction like Bengalis and food discount as Gujjaras, Dravidians should have a better tech than Medical corps which has been panned unanimously.
With Strike Corps, elephant archers just have the choice to back away from pikeman and skirms better. Battle elephants will match Khmer elephants max speed. So that is not OP either. Siege elephants were nerfed in feb patch. Dravidians were never compensated for that. Siege elephants being faster than other Indian civ siege elephants is also not OP since Gujjaras has higher damage output and Bengalis soak damage better. Besides, Persian war elephants can be faster with mahuts. But they are not considered OP or game breaking.
Yup! But Since Dravidians have to make do with a bad copy-paste of Viking tech tree minus Knights. Its better to buff them with a castle age unique tech.
20% discount only on military buildings is an apt bonus. If you look at Malians, they get a 15% discount on all buildings. Incas get a 15% stone discount on all buildings. These civs can boom, play aggressive or both. They can be good on both closed and open maps. Dravidians are not designed that way. The dev intent was to design a rush civ. So Dravidians need a better version of these bonuses. But only for military buildings. Given that the ceiling on castle discount is set by Frank castles at 25%. So 20% discount is balanced.
Dude, Medical corps has been panned by everyone from less than 850 ELO to Hera with even T90 quipping the same in one of his videos. It has to go. Even if Dravidians don’t get any elephant bonuses. Its fine. But this tech has to go. Even Khmer battle elephants with husbandry will not give any power spike with medical corps. it makes sense to replace it completely. Maybe name it as “immortals” tech and give it to Persians like someone mentioned in another thread.
If needed, we can remove elephants completely from Strike corps and replace them with infantry. For balance, we can remove “Squires”. Lithuanian halbs are just as fast. So its not broken in any way.
Dravidian ships are plain vanilla ships now with no discounts or specialties. They don’t get dock tech discounts either. This will be an interesting unique tech to spice up water meta. Currently ‘Dry Dock’ is locked behind imperial age and ‘Careening’, Dravidians don’t have a great economy to sustain castle age production after initial 200 wood. With our change, the initial 200 wood is also gone. So with strike corps, without researching careening, running away is an interesting play. Landing is also more feasible. It is designed as a come back tech when you are low on resources and need time to mass ships. The drawbacks are that Dravidian player has to spend resources on a castle in an islands game as well. But it is offset by the fact that the tech can be made cheaper in castle age. Thirisadai speed may need to be reworked as well. But I believe its a worthwhile endeavor.
There is a historical precendent too. Maybe we’ll make a thread about modifying the existing last campaign around this tech and dock tech modifications.
When Malians and Japanese with better bonuses for buildings get redemption, there is no reason Dravidians should be denied the same. One of the 2 achiles heel of Dravidians is a scout+mangonel push by any tom, #### or harry civ. The opponent usually uses this after a push back of Dravidian economy with a cavalry raid. A few knights would have forced Dravidian player to create monks. Dravidian monks are hapless against scouts and siege. With no fervor, Monks can’t even hope to dodge any mangonel shots. The combo is relatively resource efficient too. So it decimates Dravidian economy while the opponent goes faster to imp. So Redemption is a must even at the cost of almost 500 Gold, losing block printing and any hope of imping for the next 5 minutes. Historically too, printing was a European thing.
Dude, we don’t need to be apologetic when suggesting buffs. The idea was to give a specific buff to Dravidians which will allow them to apply early military pressure than other civs. The current wood bonus does not scale. I calculated to match Italians 20% bonus in total resources. But you have a point with better building discounts, we can tone it down to 20% food discount to all TC techs.
I say the 200 wood is a lazy bonus because it does not require any further thoughts about the next age let alone imp. There is an another reason. In the initial versions, AOE2 hardest AI would not play fair. It would auto create resources without the necessary villagers. So even if you raid and snipe vills. You are not guaranteed to have a lead. Dravidians get a worse version of this hack.
The food bonus is a cast off version of Indian fishing bonus. Initially Indians had Vills that collect +15 faster and +15 carry capacity. They nerfed it to the faster collection alone. Then when they split Indian civs, some very wise guy decided to re-use that cast off part of the faster fishing bonus. This could have been a ‘team bonus’. But not a civ bonus. Devs could take the effort to put in some effort when they think of new bonuses for civs.
I think that these are good general design principles, if I were to create a full redesign of this game. I have a few disagreements about the specific numbers, but if devs adhered to a list like this from the beginning, the game would’ve been a lot smoother and cleaner.
However, the game is too old and set in its ways in some areas. More importantly, an overhaul like this for all civs would be far too difficult. Balancing it would take an amount of resources which is impossible to get at the moment.
Now, about the numbers, I think that Resource bonuses on age up should depend on the age. 200 gold given in early feudal age is a huge bonus, but 200 wood on imperial is basically nothing. Moreover, this is an unusual way to balance resources. Dravidians get 200 wood on advancing to castle age, but I’d argue that briton TCs costing half as much wood is a much stronger bonus.
About resource trickle, 20% bonus is 1 for 5. I wouldn’t mind 25%, or 1 for 4. Current rate of 33% (or 1 for 3) does seem like a bit much. But I will need to look at the numbers more to have a strong opinion.
There are two points I strongly agree with.
I don’t play much Persians, or Koreans. So, I’ll limit my opinions to civs I play and know.
Malians: It is extremely likely that the gold bonus is OP and needs a nerf. This is effectively 3 bonuses in one. The latest SotL video confirms this. Still, waiting for a month or two for the numbers is a good idea. But I think that the devs will lower it in the next big patch.
Portugese: It’s far too soon to completely change a bonus. We should first change the numbers and see if it works. Repeatedly changing a civ in a short period of time can make it feel unstable.
Dravidians: We’ll need to see if the first bonus is too strong, but it can #####bly work. The best aspect of this I see is the cheaper “town watch” and “town patrol”. Dravs are an extremely offensive civ in feudal age, and an extremely defensive one in castle age. Town watch and town patrol can help in that castle age defensive play. The second bonus you’ve proposed has too much in common with the malian bonus.
Dravidians are a naval civ, but has nothing to show for it in castle age. They are weak on land, but also weak on water in castle age. So, I think the replacement for Medical corps is a good one. So is replacing block printing with redemption. That change will make monks more viable in castle age without making them too strong in imperial age. I don’t have strong opinions on the last two, but they might not be necessary. At least, they are low priority.
Vietnamese: I think that their current bonus of +100HP on Battle Eles is stronger than -50% bonus damage in areas that matter. What I mean is, the counter units to battle elephants are halbs and camels. Both of those units are weak to archers, and vietnamese have excellent archers. However, archers are weak to power units and siege like onagers and paladins. But those units have no bonus damage against elephants. So, that extra HP on elephants makes them strong against onagers and paladins, which are vietnamese’s weakness.
The best change in your list is “Receive 100 Wood and 100 stone arriving at the next age.”. Vietnamese have a similar weakness to dravidians imo. They don’t have anything in early castle age. This bonus will help them put down an early castle, or multiple towers to defend themselves. The discount on castle units is good as well, it’ll allow them to push a bit earlier in late castle or early imperial age.
I don’t think this is even remotely true. Dravidian Ele archers are the strongest in castle age, where they are almost impossible to mass. Ele archers aren’t like knights, where you can make like 3 of them and they will be good. You need a mass of 10-15 before they are any good. So they are only functional in imperial age. However, Bengali Elephant archers are far harder to kill in imperial age, and they get husbandry, bloodlines, and parthian tactics.
Remember, the whole point of ele archers is survivability, not DPS. You get far more DPS with the same resources with arbs.
No, that just has to do with the whole “Dravidians have terrible stables” idea. There’s nothing more to it.
Yup! its not high priority. I’ll remove it from index. But Tirisadai is just too big to not be used for a luxury cruise by the King.
The ship’s size just gets in its own way. When I played “Slaying the Virata”, I realized how well tirisadai ship and fast fire ships could have been used to mimic the real historical battles. Currently the campaign seems so plain and Vanila. So I suggested this change which could be used to modify the campaign.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with this premise. No player will engage battle elephants with cavalry even to protect his imp TC. They’ll make pikes and later halbs. For pushing before imp, I don’t think even very tanky elephants are useful, including war elephants. Monks will make short work of them. If Archers are accompanying them, then a Knight+Pike comp will be used. Pike will clash into elephants and Knights will swoop in on archers. Knight will take out archers even rattan archers in 5 hits. Elephants will take 10+ hits to take out Knights. So Knights will run away after killing archers. Current tech is only giving 1/3 more HP. Its easy to make 4 elephants rather than research a unique tech especially with conscription. So the tech is a waste of resources.
Elephants are useful in castle age only for defending own base against a Pike + mangonel push or another siege combination in absence of monks. That’s the reason for inclusion of spearmen line in the bonus. Spearmen with squires can almost match rattan archers in speed. They can protect the archers from cavalry better than elephants using their bonus damage. They can kill Knights in 5 hits compared to elephant’s 10+ hits. But they need to be protected against a skirm+Knight combo. Hence the bonus works against skirms for spearmen.
In order to fix the problem of a very high bonus damage reduction, the bonuses can be re-worked.
* [REMOVE "Chatras" 100+ HP] Replacement: Castle Units and Galley line 25% cheaper.
* [Change] : Archery range units except skirms 20% more HP.
* [Change] Battle Elephants, Rams and Siege Towers +50 HP.
This will make chatras useful since you need a castle to research “chatras” and it automatically makes trebs, rattan archers and Petards cheaper.
The cosmetic highest HP elephants idea has been preserved as a civ bonus with a reduced HP. But shared with other similar units the Rams and Siege towers.
Vietnamese:
* [RETAIN] Reveal enemy initial Town Centers location at the start of the game.
* [REMOVE] Economic upgrades cost no wood.
[REPLACE] Blacksmith attack upgrades 50% cheaper
* [CHANGE] : Archery range units except skirms 20% more HP.
* [NEW] Battle Elephants, Rams and Siege Towers +50 HP.
* [RETAIN] Conscription is free.
* [REMOVE "Chatras" 100+ HP]
Replacement: Castle Units and Galley line 25% cheaper.
[REMOVE "Team Bonus" ]
Replacement team bonus: Fishermen and Fishing ship carry +10.
[BUFF] Imperial Skirmisher is made a regional unit of 'Rise of the Rajas' civs
This blacksmith bonus should make flechin, Bodkin arrow, bracer, forging and iron casting 50% cheaper. This should help give the early leg up Vietnamese currently lack.
The only buff I’d like to see its that gameson and supplies applies to all infantry, just like BL or TR for horses and archers. But supplies may need to be change to a 20% reductions intead of -15f, otherwise eagles would be almost food free
Civ bonus like free food, wood, gold on age up should not exceed 100 for a single resource any instance.
Why 100? Also 100 food != 100 wood != 100 stone != 100 gold
Every civ should get atleast 2 eco civ bonuses applicable on all popular maps like Arabia, Arena and islands. Both should not be for the same resource.
That is extremely boring. I want all in civs as well as all eco civs, not everything in-between eco and military.
Every civ should get 1 unit that can raid.
What do you mean by raid?
And I disagree with your direction to remove unique identity of civs and in general - able to pick up any civ and play them similarly. That is utterly boring to me, as a PVP player that I only got maybe 2 or 3 variations of civs with your proposal. (xbow, knight, faster up eco)
At least for now the civs play differently enough that I can have a fresh experience each time.
I’m sorry. Its hard to read. But that is the only text formatting and highlighting available in the editor. The italics and Bold formatting feel like an eyesore. I’ll try to reduce horizontal page scrolling. I’ll space every line one below the other. Please let me know which of the formatting below is better.
Goths:
* [CHANGE] - Loom, Town watch and Town patrol are researched instantly.
Goths:
[CHANGE] - Loom, Town watch and Town patrol are researched instantly.
Goth lack of stone walls is still a problem. Having Town watch and Town patrol will mitigate the problem of having no stone walls. This change can enable that.
AOE2 is more popular than AOE3 and AOE4 because of the simplicity and commonality of multiple civs. Most people come back to AOE2 after long breaks because the mechanics are not too different from AOE2 age of kings. But if we have more civs like Poles with new buildings and free gold. It becomes a different game.
These look like really simple and elegant conditions at a first glance, but there are a few problems with this. It is quite tricky, and that thread on Vietnamese is what clued me in. For now, I’ll ignore the first criteria because it’s highly personal and difficult to interpret.
So, consider a game with 3 civs. Let’s call them rock, paper, and scissors. You can see where this is going
Rock beat scissors a 100% of times, paper beat rock 100% of times, and scissors beat papers 100% of times. Assuming all these are played roughly at the same rate, you get 50% win rate for all three. Of course, this is an extreme hypothetical, but it illustrates my point. I think you’d agree that this would be bad civ design for AoE2
The solution would be to say that each civ matchup has a win rate between 45% and 55%, but I don’t think that’s possible to attain. No civ in AoE2 currently matches that criteria. Not on arabia, and not on any other map.
Obviously. Because AOE civs are not just rock-paper-scissor. In an hypothetical situation a civ may have only one military unit - Huskarl with slight better stats at melee combat and it replaces militia line. So they will have something like 85% w/r against archer civs and 10% against rest. Which will probably give a rough average of 45%. Fortunately no aoe2 civ is like this.
I think that is close to impossible if not totally impossible. So I’ll be okay with average w/r being 45%-55% in Arabia and less 55% for other maps.
Yes, but you can’t set criteria and not take extremes into consideration. There are no websites for good civ vs civ matchups right now, where you can add up data over multiple patches. But I do recall there being civs with extremely low win rates in certain cases, but around 50% win rate overall.
If you are okay with that, it’s fine. But I don’t think I am. My criteria, similar to yours, would be:
For all popular map categories (open, semi-open, closed, hybrid, and water):
Each civ vs civ matchup should have win rates between 40% and 60%
All civs should have win rates between 45% and 55%
