Hello everybody!
In the last few weeks I’ve noticed a lot of discussion around potential balance changes. Of course, many of them have been addressing Mongol and Rus, but I’ve also seen a lot of discussion around China and the siege meta in general. Now, for some context, I’m an around 1400 elo player who’s played about 500 games, all of which have been only with Chinese. So I think I know a decent amount about how the civ works.
The following are some balance suggestions to Chinese, along with a few general changes to address the siege meta. I know there have been a lot of complains of the strength of Chinese clocktower siege. However, I contend that Chinese isn’t overpowered in general, it’s just polarized. From a pure 1v1 winrate standpoint, it’s quite balanced, with a winrate of around 47-48% in the higher elos (above 1200), and hovering around the 4th to 6th highest winrate civ. So the point of these suggestions isn’t to nerf China but rather to redistribute some of its power to other areas. (I originally came up with these ideas before the fire lancer nerf, so these changes are also made to compensate somewhat for that nerf)
Without Further Ado,
Chinese:
Astronomical Clocktower: HP bonus reduced from 50% to 25%
Mainly to reward players for getting on top of Chinese siege. I don’t think further changes are necessary to bees or bombards, (besides fixing the bees’ bugs), when my general siege changes are also applied.
Dynasty landmark costs are reduced by 25%
The main buff to compensate for the above nerfs. Right now, getting dynasties feels so clunky, and slows you down so much. I originally wanted to suggest 50%, but I feel 25% is a good place to start with.
Imperial Continuity: If all 7 Chinese landmarks are constructed, gain access to all four dynasty effects. This bonus will go away if any of the landmarks are destroyed, but will return once destroyed landmarks are fully repair
This buff is more a “This would be really cool” idea. Flavorwise, it represents Imperial China being the longest lasting political order in the world. In terms of gameplay, it’s designed to allow China to maintain its position as a top lategame civ, but is a lot harder to get to than the previous China wincon of bombard spam. I don’t believe this buff by itself would significantly affect China’s powerlevel, as even with a discount Yuan and Ming are extraordinarily expensive to reach, and there is clear counterplay in blowing up one of China’s landmarks (with the Barbican, Imperial Palace, and Great Wall Gatehouse often being in more exposed positions)
Changes for the Siege Meta
Mangonel reload speed reverted to its release value
A lot of people complain about Mangos being too strong, and I feel like they were perfect on release, just held down by the Springald meta
All siege pack/unpack time increased by 50%
Mainly to address complaints of siege running away too quickly. I don’t think they should reduce siege’s movements speed in general, because it already takes them forever to move across the map, especially in team games
Horsemen and Knights/Lancers gain an additional+10 bonus torch damage vs siege. Torch range of all units is increased by 0.5
This lets castle age horsemen and knights now do 40 damage vs siege, up from 30 (Imperial age gets a similar buff). I think cav should be the non-siege counter to siege, and these changes should help them with that. The range buff should also help when chasing siege.
Horsemen and Knights/Lancers will now move at their full speed when attacking moving siege
I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but when cav is torching a moving unit, it will move at a really slow speed. I think this is because it’s using the same code as when cav are moving with other units - they’ll move at the same speed as the other units. I’m not sure how complicated this would be to implement, but if it can be done, I think it should
So those are my thoughts. Thanks for reading, and hey, maybe someone from Relic will see this.