I support this thread.
Persians lack a stronger power spike in imperial age. Something just like trash xbows are a nice power spike in castle age. So I agree with elephants getting more speed automatically in favor a new UT. This new UT should be something that boosts knights or makes elephants more usable.
Off the top of my head, making knights cost -60% food could synergize well with their trash xbows. And make easier to research the paladin upgrade at the same time.
About elephants, not another stat increase or more tankiness, however something that keeps their current power but also gives them an edge. Now I donât want to sound crazy but how about we give them an ability like the new unique units from the recent dlcs. How about elephants restore 10% hit points after defeating a unit. Itâs codable in aom and aoe3, but Iâm not sure if itâs possible to code it in this game.
Is it though? Seems to me that plenty of strong units exist behind production/tech barriers that are similar, and without such barriers, they would lose a major factor in balancing these units (the only other 2 that are relevant are counters and cost (including time costs). The handcanoneer is locked behind the chemistry tech (an extra cost) in Imp, even though the tech itself benefits archers but not HCs (not that long ago, the cannon galleon was locked behind its own tech after chemistry). Other units, like cav archers, need a mass before theyâre particularly strong, and others, like Konniks, need a ton of upgrades before they reach their full potential. Per unit pop, a mass of war elephants is probably the hardest thing to stop, so of course itâs not going to be easy to get there.
Yep, itâs an Imp (and mainly TG) power unit, so the question keeps coming up: how would you âfix itâ for Castle Age 1v1 use without making it virtually uncounterable in situations where players have the time/res to mass it much more easily? It would require such a fundamental redesign that whatever came out on the other side might as well be a different unit. Iâm all for reasonable buffs to make UUs more valuable, but seriously, what are you actually going to do thatâs going to make WEs a good idea in Castle Age? The nature and design of the unit pigeonhole it unto a high res, mid-late Imp unit. I understand the desire to have them viable in Castle Age, since theyâre available, but to some degree, you have to make peace with their availability being limited due to their power (or vice-versa).
âŠwhy do Persians need a Polish knock-off tech? If anything, this would make elephants be seen even less because theyâd be competing with another strong cav unit that costs around 1/5th of the food. Also keep in mind that none of the civs with a knight line discount (Portuguese, Berbers, Poles) get Paladin. Thereâs a reason for that.
I donât know that crazy is the word, but this seems like an ability that would come from a fantasy game. Where is the tie-in to any kind of reality or logical basis for this? So this vampire-elephant kills 4 units at a time with splash damage and gets 248 HP back? Haaaaaaillll no
I will insist in a kind of stomp special attack. Something like a huge area attack like a petard for units with potentaial of not being one-use unit if you use it correctly and take care of it.
needing an upgrade to get access to a unit, like hand cannoner or a standard upgrade like arbalester and cavalier, is different than having to get a tech later to make that unit viable. a unit should be viable by default when accessible, and an added tech should be a plus, since otherwise you are paying a premium.
itâs a similar situation for CA where thumb ring is kind of needed to make them good, but itâs not like they are trash until you get it, and thumb ring does more then just buffing CA, unlike mahouts that merely buffs elephant and is only a premium cost for something that could be easily built in.
like for real who thinks that buffing their speed to 0.8 and then change mahouts into something else is going to drastically change the persian? it is seriously going to change nothing for war elephants, they will still be used where they were used and not used where they were not used. the difference being that now you have a UT slot free to spice up a civ that is very flat atm and that is not really that strong to not need something cool
i would simply accept the fact that they are not a castle age unit, like any other elephant except maybe malay one. so you would have the same effect, elephants would be exactly the same, just saving to research mahouts and clearing space for a new UT, that could be âwar elephants are trained 100% fasterâ or something that buffs their cavalry play a bit, or literally anithing interesting
In general, I agree, but the WEâs combination of attributes just make this extremely difficult due to Castle Age economics/counters. I donât know that thereâs even a strict strategic/balance necessity of having every civ have their UU available in Castle Age (really just a convention, which units like the Dravidian Thirisadai go against). I see its Castle Age availability as something that helps you get a mass started as youâre going Imp rather than âthis unit is technically available now, so that means its a good idea to make itâ in Castle. It occupies a weird place, to be sure, but I donât know that it should be otherwise.
Sure, which is why I think Mahouts should do more (and possibly a small base speed increase, but not a Free Mahouts + Fully new UT).
Very possibly, but this kinda kills the argument of trying to make them more viable via a buff.
Maybe? While I canât go so far as to say âthis is wrong, thereâs absolutely no reason to do this,â I donât find the idea of buffing a civ âjust to spice it upâ very compelling in isolation, and if you can make that argument about the Persians, you can make it about more than half the civs in the game that have similar or lesser power levels or less dimensionality. Novelty/âspiceâ combined with other needs can form the basis of a good reason for change, but itâs far from enough by itself. And when thinking in terms of âslots that can be filled,â itâs easy to lose sight of the civâs strengths as a whole and chase after some shiny new bonus which may not be warranted. Like people clamoring for the Nomads tech to be reworked since itâs not very useful, but Mongols really donât need any kind of buff. Rather than filling an important role for the civ, they were given that tech âjust to fill a slot,â since every civ now had 2 UTs
Exactly.
Again, why does the tech have to be scrapped to do this? We could bump up the base speed a little, then have Mahouts give something like a 20% movement speed boost and a 60% training speed boost, both of which would be appropriate since Mahouts trained elephants.
This by definition implies that there is 0 causal effect of speed on elephant usage. Like the definition of causality almost always is expressed as something like âan exogenous change in x yields a change in yâ (at least locally) and âan exogenous change in x which does not yield a change in y implies no causalityâ (again at least locally).
It seems incredibly unlikely for this to hold true. 0.8 speed would have some impact on when the unit is used ceteris paribus, the question is what is that relationship?
I would say that 0.8 speed in castle age is unlikely to be OP and could be implemented. But at the same time full castle age upgrades (FCAU) war elephants are very strong units and unforeseen creativity from players is a possibility. Things like identifying that some civs canât stop a Persian castle age all-in because FCAU elephants with 0.88 speed can potentially be difficult to stop when appropriately supported. After all if the opponent has to go up to imp and buy upgrades while the Persians donât thatâs like a 3k-5k resource advantage.
So an appropriate backup plan like a civ bonus to the war elephant speed in imp (to avoid the need for a UT) should still be there.
Plus there is still the consideration that buffs other than speed are possible and potentially more important. If the unit canât be used until imp because of speed then that opens up the ability to buff the regular version in other ways. Things like 10 building damage and 1 more attack.
new UT could also not buff war elephants at all, thatâs the fun. it could be used to spice up the civ which atm is flat and boring, at least for me
they would be buffed by not needing mahout anymore, making them cheaper to upgrade and thus more viable
persian atm are not a strong civ, are probably below average in most maps, and have very few bonuses and none of them stands out as incredibly interesting. sure faster working TC is great, but it also has the double edge sword of needing more to sustain production, and itâs surely not âflashyâ. their UU is underwhelming at best, and their âcavalryâ identity is only rapresented by their team bonus. besides that, lack of bracer and other important staff, and even THS upgrade, make them a on-dimensional civ, and not that interesting even in that. this is what i mean when i say the civ could use a âspice upâ.
ans yeah itâs true that this argument could be made for many civs, but it is also what i do. not long ago, i posted a discussion about celts in regard of changing stronghold UT for something more interesting for their infantry. so i think when a civ is not overperforming or is even a bit weak, is one-dimensional, and could be helped by a new UT, that chance should be taken.
look at slavs. altought they were never weak as a civ, they were pretty boring and flat, and now Detinets bringed fresh air and made play them much more interesting.
Because there is something called balance thatâs more important than repeating a bonus category and realism. Persians donât have any main bonus or discount for their power units in the âusableâ deparment right now. And those civs you mentioned have such discounts PLUS military support buildings/technologies/bonus: feitoras, kasbah and maghrebi camels, folwarks and healing vills, etc. Persians only have kamandaran that boosts xbows that are not their power unit.
You must be against all uu abilities except maybe coustillier since itâs the closest thing to a cavalry charge formation mechanic then. Not to mention stuff like TKs, mamluks throwing scimitars, japanese units attacking faster, elephants and ships regenerating on their own from the last dlc, etc. Which all, outside of the concept behind them, are pure fantasy.
idk, Persians are very âuninspiringâ to play, with no true power spikes across the ages, but also no particular weaknesses. Only in Imperial Age do they get a bit awkward and even there they have an acceptable tech tree (Handcannons, BBC, trashbow or +4 armor Skirms). Hera in his tier list video said it best imo, Persians feel nice when they are unharassed throughout most of Castle age, but any disturbance causes them bit trouble. It is possible to be unharassed in Castle, in which case you do enter Imp on good terms, generally with the advantage. This aside from hybrid maps where they are top tier.
I admit ultimately, Persians are toward the lower end of the tierlist on open maps, but I also see no way of buffing them in a sensible way. Itâs just that on Arabia-like maps, many games these days revolve around âwho gets the first Scout outâ or who gets the extra Archer.
Paladins are still Paladins and itâs possible to get to them in 1v1s also.
Thatâs a fair perspective. On the flip side, Iâm old enough to remember when people were freaking about Kamandaran possibly being OP, and I think that tech did a lot to âspice upâ Persians, and give them more counters vs. spearline (before hand cannons). Maybe they could use a buff, but thatâs a lot more persuasive in the context of lots of other âflatâ civs also getting a little something something. Iâd be wary of something that isnât a cavalry buff though, or anything that significantly ups their power level.
I wouldnât exactly rave about Berberâs supposedly amazing synergistic techs or bonuses in this context. They have no eco bonus (you could argue faster vills, but thatâs pretty marginal). Persians have a very strong land eco and a potential for the same where water is involved. Yeah Kasbahâs nice to get camel archers out a little faster but it has no where near the power level that majorly discounting FU paladins would have. If you think this is a good idea, put up a poll; see how many people think that giving Persians such a tech would be fair and reasonable, and see how many think it would be ridiculous. Also Iâd be wary of trying to use the Poles as a gold standard for how powerful every civ should be; itâs a common viewpoint that they are OP, between their dual strong eco bonuses, cheaper knightline, and powerful but inexpensive UU (thereâs a thread about this near the top just now).
I wouldnât recommend a career in mind reading; initial results are not encouraging.
Some of those are a little silly, sure, and the ârule of coolâ trumps reality sometimes. Even so, most of these things were anchored in some kind of historical basis or paid homage to real events, and their in-game depiction is typically more a matter of convenience and abbreviation than a ex-asino fairy-tale take on medieval warfare (except perhaps the Samurai mythos that has become popular in the West, but even that had some basis in reality). No matter how much you stretch it, thereâs no shred of historical/logical analog to units that healed themselves by killing enemies, much less randomly assigning this ability to War Elephants, for which existing mechanics (trample, or charge, as you astutely pointed out) would be far more apt. Yes, this seems like a fantasy ability, but feel free to make your case for why itâs not. Perhaps a great idea for liches and vampires in another game. But this is not Age of Mythology.
First of all, most 1vs1 ranked matches end in late castle age~early imperial. Itâs locked behind an imperial age tech that requires a castle. As the imperial age tech that it is, it comes into play too late to snowball their eco. Cavalier production is still limited by the same gold cost. During mid imperial and beyond, you should be running out of gold. If the players put enough raiding pressure, the saved food should give them a window of 5~10 mins to research the paladin upgrade, or invest that food on something else like elephants within that timeframe. Thatâs a power spike that doesnât rely on giving more stats or affects trash wars. For the record, those were two ideas I had in the moment. The food discount could be lower or the tech more expensive. In any case, the main point was that the imperial ut should be a power spike only for knights or elephants.
Dude, we literally have prayers healing chopped and slashed soldiers, magic bullets, plasma shields on steroids (absorb more damage, regen faster, and regen while in combat), 2 spears being thrown at the same time, sonic kings, etc. If you want justifications for restoring health mechanics, you may as well think the animal in question was rewarded after the battle with food, and that boosted its morale and will to fight -food rewards are something they actually did for trained elephants. Ay lmao. Besides, this is just dravidian elephants with more steps. And as I said before, itâs just an idea off the top of my head. Iâm not pushing that mechanic on you or something.
If you take everything in the game entirely literalistically, then a lot of things look pretty silly. The way I see most of the mechanics in the game is a low-resolution, convenient approximation of historical things that work within the context of the game. Stuff like monks healing looks silly if you hyper-focus on them as exact representations, e.g. âholy man waves stick, people magically gain back lost blood/limbsâ rather than seeing monks as a stand in for medical units, or as religious leaders motivating soldiers to fight better, or healing itself as somewhat of a substitute for the lack of any kind of âmorale systemâ in AoE2. Nobody complains about the supposed lack of âhistorical realismâ of kingdoms and empires being represented by only 200-250 pop, because they understand that thatâs a good logistical substitute for having to control 10s to 100s of thousands of units (and in the AoE series and similar RTS, units arguably represent a fighting cohort, not an individual). That said, some mechanics are more of a stretch than others, and the fewer logical acrobatics you can do for why a unit should have a certain bonus, the more likely it is to be accepted. Stuff like the Shrivamsha shield is quite a stretch IMO, and I think thatâs one case where they went too far.
Sure, and especially when you think of military units as representing more than one individual (âŠlike today, âmilitary unitâ literally means a group that fights as one). The Hulâche tech is just something that increases the firepower of the group, which is effectively what the weapon did.