What balance change by DE (or before DE) devs you want to revert

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

I think devs are generally doing great job. but not all balance change is good. I don’t like some change introduced by dev which change civ’s playstyle or nerfing some civ that doesn’t deserve nerf.

For my list (not all but 2 most obvious list)

  1. Saracens Cav Archer building bonus damage to building should be reverted. It is strangely removed even though there is no evidence that this is overpowered. We lose one of the civ that have bonus in Cav archer with this change (and clearly that bonus is not that powerful as some other civ like Magyars/Turks/Tatars).

  2. Several nerf War Wagon in the last few patches makes no sense at all. Koreans even performing below average at closed map such as Arena and there is no evidence that WW is overpowered but it was just nerfed.
    Just some vocal minority group at forum who refuse to train monks, which perfectly counter WW, cried for nerfing them.

I also have other list but it can be subjective. What is your list?

4 Likes
2

scouts getting +2 attack in the Feudal Age. This was added in the last balance patch that the original development team ever released, patch 1.0b the conquerors, it was a last ditch effort to make scout cav viable in feudal age (earlier they had added the feudal tech bloodlines but that hadn’t helped).

This was a change that was added 1 month before support was pulled from the game. At the time, it threw balance out of the window and made Swordsmen obsolete, suddenly you could build a unit that didn’t require gold to kill villagers in feudal. It was only tested in a private beta between the developers, and the new development teams have spent the last 10 years balancing this, and scouts still have the highest winrate in game.

Scouts needed a buff, but this was such a bootleg way to go about it, if this hadn’t been added in an official patch 12 years before development restarted, there is no way this wouldn’t have been changed.

7 Likes
3

  • Koreans getting free archer armor. This forcefully turned them into an archer civ but they were supposed to be a defensive one.

  • Bulgarians getting 50% food discount on both blacksmith and SW techs. It was an overbufff done in one patch.

  • Similarly Teutons getting even cheeaper farm on the same patch they got 2 free MA on both barracks and stable units. I’d revert cheaper farms to 33%.

  • Vikings new UT that gives +1 attack to their archer line. This tech should be reserved for a new Archer civ.

4 Likes
4

Teutons getting a new meele armor bonus for infantry, cavalry and their farm discount Was buffed too. I think it was too much. Teutons has been a top civ ever since I think overlooked by many how powerfull actually it is.
If I could, I would make the civ bonus +2/+4 meele amee on siege in csstel and imp.
Then I would make the castle age UT ironclad instead give +1 armor to cav and infantry.

Alternatovrly, I would revert the farm bonus to it’s for it’s original - 33% discount instead of the current - 40%.

War elefants cost has been lowered alot. Maybe a good change for competitive games. But that honestly doesn’t matter at all. This unit is relevant in desmthmatch, and noob games. With the cheap cost, you can solo win any desmthmatch michi teamgame. Yes it’s a noob game mode, but it’s ruined by the reduced cost. Even against full siege onager/heavy scorpions + halbs civs you just steamroll trough anything as they are cheaper.
Reverting would not just fix everything, but the current units state is not good at all

2 Likes
5

For me, it’s not one specific change, but a combination of these three:

  • Shinkichon: +2 range reduced to +1 range.
  • Koreans’ team bonus: Mangonels +1 range changed to Mangonels -1 minimum range.
  • Eupseong: civ bonus converted to unique tech.

The combined result is that both Korean unique techs used to be free as civ bonuses. I understand the gameplay justification, but it just feels unsatisfactory to me. Paying for something that used to be free inevitably feels bad.

This 100%. Both the (admittedly tiny) cost increase and the -1 cavalry archer armour were unnecessary. I also dislike the War Wagon range nerf from way back, but I can understand the reasoning behind that.

I think it was a combination of this and the fact that the devs just ##### #### ######## At least, I get that impression from the way they’ve gradually nerfed everything they specialise in.

EDIT: just realised this got censored. I said it seems like the devs dislike this civ. Hopefully that won’t get censored too.

This change I’m less bothered by, but I can understand where you’re coming from. Any ideas about what you’d replace it with?

5 Likes
7

Answer may divert the thread. Replied in on going Koreans balance thread.

8

The BE trample damage nerf, was just made because of how OP Khmer eles were in the past, now BEs are kind of worthless.

8 Likes
9

I honestly would like to see Celts dark age infantry speed back to menu. Also Arambai.

3 Likes
10

This one useless and so bad. It is better to have CA created faster bonus instead of this one

1 Like
11

Obsidian Arrows for Mayans :smiling_face_with_tear:

3 Likes
12

All the archery units anti-building bonus damage getting removed (Saracens, Mayans, perhaps I forget someone)

13

  1. Mangonel delete trick: Was real fun to watch, and generated a lot of excitement when it was mango vs. xbow. I understand why it was removed, but I wish the devs would reintroduce it in a more balanced way.

  2. Inca vil armor in feudal: Real fun to watch inca trush, took players a long time to realize this could be done and you could survive it if you learned how. But, devs have been nerfing trushes for all civs since then.

  3. Berber vil speed: Berber vil rush is not even that good. Why was this nerfed? I used to use the speed for walling and luring boars more easily. Now, I cannot do that.

2 Likes
14

Koreans sucked lol. And whenever Korean defmses were buffed the playerbase hated it

Hard disagree. Bulgarians only are good on very few maps already

1 Like
15

I don’t know what the dev reasoning was, but at least laming (and vill fights) on black Forest are a tad easier to stop.

1 Like
16

Exactly! The difference is tiny, and Berbers have nothing else till Castle age and also no Paladin. It is far from needing a nerf. It was fun having 1 civ that could play differently to gain an advantage. Meanwhile Franks still not nerfed.

1 Like
17

ah i remeber one that bothered me for a logn time.

The seemingly extiction of wolves. there used to be alot more around. now they are so rare it barely matters. remeber old arabia. going forwards with a single vill was unthinkable

can we repopulate the wolves?

6 Likes
18

Point is it was a massive buff done in one patch. Back then balance change used to be bigger though.

1 Like
19

Can we get 1.0c koreans back please i don’t even care if the civ sucks in most maps and only had trush going for it (except DM/BF)

1 Like
20

Well… HD Edition has the option for 1.0c balance but that also makes the HD DLC civs and maps unavailable to play.

1 Like
21

Revert Bombard Towers to deal melee damage.

3 Likes