What do you think makes a balanced civ?

You disagree with what?

A lot of civs? What would the Mongols’ weak stage be according to you?

I disagree at it being a problem.

Castle age. Easily.

LOL no. What makes you think that?

They can do like nearly everything in Castle Age. Guess there aren’t many civs with a truly “weak age” after all, which is a good thing though.

Until you get to Mangudai, Mongols are kind of just bad on castle age with no major eco nor military bonus.

You could make cav archers work but since pros rarely use them I doubt its as good of an option (or maybe the meta is wrong, idk)

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What do you even mean? Your Cavalry Archers fire faster, you have fast moving Siege, 30%+ hit-points on Light Cavalry with great LOS and faster working Hunters since the start - giving you an early economy boost which is when it matters most.

On top of that access to basically all technologies and unit types especially in Castle Age. Mangudai are the cherry on top.

Basically, the Mongol Castle Age can be very weak if you did not manage to get a good snowball/advantage from your fast Feudal into early aggro, because in that particular point of time and situation, you don’t have much bonuses in your favour. Mangudai are strong even in Castle Age, but you need a Castle and also numbers.

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That was kind of the reason Mongols werent having their best days on arabia until it became as open as it is rn.

Yes, but you will rarely be hunting on castle age or using light cav on castle age and cav archers arent very used and I imagine thats because they are hard to use in practice (either way idk, the meta may just change around it)

And a good tech tree is nice but its not really a replacement for a long term eco bonus or a military bonus to a more meta unut

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You don’t hunt in Castle Age but your economy is already given a headstart that lets you tech into whatever army composition and snowball from there.

Not sure what this means but keep in mind the title says “what do you think makes a balanced civ”. This isn’t about “meta” or top tier civs.

Of course you can’t pursue two separate strategies at the same time or keep switching between them, that’s not how games are won.
You either go for early Feudal aggression or try to fast-Castle into Mangudai or Knights. Both usually works well with Mongols.

Again, I’m not saying civs cannot have a weaker age than another, but being unviable at a certain age is a whole different thing and only the case for a few civs afaik.

In some ways, I don’t actually think Mongols are not the best example, because once they get to Mangudai and keep the Mangudai numbers up, their Castles are obnoxious, very hard to push, since they can snipe Siege for nearly free. But Mongols do kind of taper off in post-imperial too. Missing a couple of blacksmith techs, plus no halb will hurt them when it comes to full trash vs trash

I think what @TungstenBoar meant, is for example, consider that you’re going scouts in Feudal. (Would be a sensible way to use the hunt bonus right) If you don’t manage to do a lot of damage with the Scouts, then you don’t capitalize on your early power-spike, and as you enter into Castle Age, you’ve already used up your bonus and got nothing for it. So at that point, you probably also won’t have the number of Scouts to justify an upgrade to Light Cav, so you’re pretty weak at that point in time. Of course, if you manage to keep a bunch of scouts alive, let’s say 10, and then you upgrade to LC, you’ll ofc have a strong Castle Age, but that’s just because you managed to capitalize on your power spike in Feudal, not because your Castle Age is inherently good.

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Okay but this rather sounds like going for a wrong strategy or not executing the Feudal Rush dedicated enough than a techtree-related issue.

Using up all your resources too early but not being able to finish the game - could literally happen with any civ.

Yes. But that can happen often enough in practice :slight_smile: Especially considering that some of the most popular civs will do pretty well against Scouts.

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I’d say Scout rushes can turn out either way.

If you think what I wrote has no informational value it means you’re taking a lot of things for granted and generally not being very analytical about the question at hand.

IMO you have to separate balance from execution details. No one can really know exactly what kinds of strategies or tactical choices will never be competitive given that you can engineer all sorts of bonuses for a civ which make unviable things viable and viable things unviable. This is why the framework has to be sufficiently general but specific enough to inform what you are looking for. I.e. you are looking for players to generate strategies that can beat other strategies, but you are placing no other restrictions on the analysis. Strategies can be defined by whatever metric you want as long as the definition is coherent and identifiable.

You also have to specify what type of player is qualified to generate data for a civ. Many pros would consider themselves “Expert Mayan players” because the tech tree is pretty narrow and there’s only so much you can try out. But I doubt many pros would consider themselves “Expert Burmese Players” as they probably realize they could improve a lot with the civ. This has important ramifications for identification of balance, which is separate from defining balance.

You also must separate the civ’s design from it’s balance. Design has many other considerations while balance is relatively narrow in scope. Things like “Synergy between the tech tree and civ bonuses” is meaningless for balance as you can have synergy which is underpowered or overpowered. So while synergy can be good for design, it’s more or less irrelevant for balance. This also goes for a ton of other criteria like powerspikes, age-specific strengths, etc. They are all only tangentially related to balance.

You can hand-wave all these things off as unnecessary but I’ve found them to be extremely helpful for distilling exactly what you’re after and how to identify it.

mongols, like Lithuanians, are weak from about the start of castle age until mid to late castle age.

but suck without thumb ring, and that isn’t something you get right away, also, xbows are better then cav archers until cav archers get a critical mass,

in castle age? no you don’t, they get faster moving siege with DRILL, which is a Imp unique tech,

and how good are light cav honestly in castle age beyond being a meat shield and picking off monks? they aren’t going to hold up well to the likes of Knights and Xbows.

yeah - but by the time you’re in castle age that bonus is done.

except by the time you hit castle age that bonus has run its course, meanwhile civs like Franks, Aztecs, Vikings, and others are all hitting there stride.

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You have no eco bonus at that point and usually you wanna boom up to mangudai which won’t really work that easy if you’re going ca. Mid game is mongols weakest point and also why people don’t consider them a top civ. You have strong early feudal and strong late imp but between these stages they are kinda worse than most civs. That’s precisely what makes them balanced.

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Balance is the abstract term that players use to define the power relationships between civilizations in relationship to one another in light of their technologies, civilizations bonuses, and how they play out on various maps, and among various skill levels of players. Different types, or maps of gameplay will yield different opinions on whether a civilization is balanced. Some advantages are more difficult for some members of the community to exploit than others, creating some division. Civilizations may have various realms of strengths, and weaknesses. One should not assume that a proper balance rejects strong bonuses, or even tech trees. Some considerations are that Civilizations may have various forms of power spikes, and times of decline.
Typically the starting point for this analysis starts with the civilization’s natural macro, or its ability to combine any of its bonuses with its tech trees to gain the momentum necessary to exploit its advantages, given a player’s skill, and potential adversaries. A bonus in and of itself may be what is called Broken, yet in the greater picture of things, such a strong bonus may be necessary for said civilization to be competitive when viewing the bigger picture. A civilization may require many strong bonuses to accomplish what another does through a few weaker ones in light of its bigger picture.
Players tend to view these things in light of builds, or models of play which try to apply optimal efficiency in building an appropriate economy to support a certain sort of action, be in an Archer Rush, or a Castle Drop. Builds are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and some are specifically meant to transition into another form. When a civilization does not fit neatly into a few common builds, players may be uncomfortable with it, and think it weak. The Franks are popular because their berry eco bonus neatly enables them to build into a strong Scout Cavalry rush as they neither have nor need Bloodlines, and then into Knights. Their cheaper castles can be crucial to gaining, and maintaining momentum. Their unique unit is quite handy. The problem the Franks have is that their general strategy is somewhat predictable, because it is reliable.
The Bohemians are less known, but many players feel uncomfortable because the realize precisely how powerful the mining bonus is. They have the same sense concerning the spear bonus damage. Their Monk unique technology is recognized for its potential, but is not necessarily seen as breaking the game’s balance. Lastly, Sanctity and Fervor affecting villagers, which offers added protection against raiders, in addition to economic benefits from faster movement, makes people nervous. In turn, the Bohemians have remarkably poor cavalry, since they lack the Imperial Age upgrade trifecta of Bloodlines, Hussar, and the last cavalry armor upgrade. This stands out, because they are at the height of their power in the Castle-Imperial Age timeline. This means that they are largely stuck with slower units, like the spear line or foot archers, for raiding. Effective raiding can turn a losing game around, meaning that the cavalry weakness is quite painful. The Britons get the last armor upgrade, making their Light Cavalry somewhat usable if you reach the Imperial Age. This is compounded by the fact that the Bohemians completely lack Cavalry Archer capabilities, and their Skirmishers cannot get thumb ring, putting them at a further disadvantage in trash wars. They do get an upgraded Bombard Cannon, which is quite helpful in maintaining momentum for a Post Imperial advance, if you can keep it. Their enhanced stone mining aids in building forward castles to maintain momentum. They add an interesting dimension to gunpowder civilizations by their improved speed, and the ability to amass Hand Cannoneers earlier. The Bohemians are all about carefully maintaining momentum. Their monastery, and related unique tech is a beautiful thing, granting them options that all can benefit from, but are even more accessible to players with heightened skills in micromanagement. In time, I hope that interest in this technology will improve interest in such micromanagement from some corners of the community who prefer to simply send masses. This is also quite pertinent for them to maintain momentum. Stealing military structures, Paladins, other monks, or Siege Rams, or an assortment of enemies can be quite fun. Their navy is limited, but more playable than that of the Aztecs. As to the question of if they are balanced, you will find a variety of answers in the community, but I am quite impressed with their design, and find them quite the delight to play.

Aok civs were following a civ design based on a basic principle, for all the units you gave to the civ it has to have own counters for its special units, also economic bonuses were given at a high sacrifice in the tec tree, ever since rise of rajas latest civs have absurd tec trees with options to anything.

Now if you analyze any civ after age of kings, they don’t follow such design, for example poles can’t counter its own UU, koreans can’t counter their own WW unless mass SO(Heavy siege isn’t a counter for UU’s), sicilians can’t counter their own UU aswell, portugueses and burmese are about the same thing, if you pay attention to only those details you will find imbalance and units that can be massed and avoid normal counters cause they need stronger units to beat them or heavy siege, vikings with chieftains broke the unit design so bad, zeker is the unit that can counter trash, militia line, archers and even heavy cavalry, those things are so wrong, zeker isn’t abused that much cause of the high upgrade price and cause its easier to mass archers but still the civ is top 5 since aoc days.

Anyway now talking about eco bonuses, vikings were top 1 civ at pure boom muscle and water, but they could be easily crushed by any civ with bloodlines and cavalier and totally obliterated by paladin+bbc civs on land maps, also normal onagers couldn’t cut trees so vikings were limited back then, but not now, so virtually vikings are top 1 civ across most maps with really few exceptions like fourlakes or hillfort, but still they can perform above most civs even at those maps, vikings is just one example of how to make a civ already strong into one stronger.

There are now several imbalance aberrations, including long tec trees, eco bonuses, UU’s quite powerful at a relative low cost, everything is wrong compared to the old perspective, but now it seems like that is the way the game should be, so buffing civs will never end following current civ design.

Chinese and franks are now considered top civs, but in aoc they weren’t that powerful in 1x1 not even top 10 civs, but the devs touched them and boosted them in a way to remove their only weakness, so that ruined them and now they need to lose more things…persian were top 1 civ at DE release, so you figure how good is current balance.

I don’t like current civ design cause newer civs are designed to be strong at one thing and versatile at others, giving them more options, also newer civs gets almost full eco upgrades, despite having already early eco bonuses, its insane but well, some people like the current balance just like some player enjoy winning games with cobra cars.

Hmm, I dont think Vikings are no.1 on a lot of maps on RM. They kinda suck at super open maps and super closed maps.

Take it easy, it was just a joke because you were very analitical, but it is fine