Portuguese and Koreans were recently buffed by increasing their discount for gold/wood to 20%. According to the data both civilisations are still a bottom tier and might benefit from buffs. I know there are different ideas around such as allowing Portuguese to build one Feitoria in Castle Age which could also be interesting, however what about the idea to apply the discount to technolgies?
You can check the change in cost in the table down below. I included discounts for 10% / 15% / 20% as there are significantly more gold techs than wood techs, so adjustments for the total discount might be necessary. What do you think? Is this viable or overpowered? The way I see it is that Portuguese would get a stronger military focus while Koreans would benefit more from economy upgrades.
I see where youâre coming from, but in my opinion it makes the bonuses too similar to the Chinese research bonus and I donât like that they are generic discounts. They donât add anything to the unique nature of the civs.
There have been various other suggestions on how to buff âweakerâ civs, including:
Buff hand cannoneers (which would benefit Koreans and especially Portuguese)
Make Genitours a non-unique unit and give it to Turks, Portuguese and possibly Spanish.
Another âeasyâ way to buff the Portuguese is to increase the Feitoria resource rate or decrease its population space, although that is only a late-game buff.
I think itâs an illusion to make every civ 100% balanced across all map types, including 1v1 Arabia, which most people are interested in. Koreans and Portuguese are actually fine on closed and water maps, but those map types are played less often.
To me, it would make the bonus too similar to Celts/Turks.
If ports need an eco buff, it would be more natural to increase the unit discount even further, to 25%. For Koreans it would be more natural to extend the unit discount to siege.
Of course, unit strength buffs could be another way to go.
I think if portuguese keep receiving buffs at this rate they might enter into powercreep territory, and might become too good at some settings. They donât need this 20% less on techs, thats too good of a bonus for such a civ. They need some unique bonus that helps them find their niche. Currently Portuguese feel like a civ that can do pretty much anything but nothing really special, except the discount.
I also think the 20% wood or gold discount on all units is one of the most boring and bland bonuses ever introduced to the game. Sure they are useful, but they make kind of a bad effect on the civâs playstyle in my opinion, turning the civ into a wannabe Malians/Chinese. since the effect is too broad.
I would rather have this 20% discount as it is⊠However, I would love restoring Arquebus to what it was in the start with the high projectile speed or removing the minimum range on Organ guns.
As for Koreans, it would be nice if their wood saving bonus applied to siege units as well⊠making them top tier at Siege.
Thanks so far for your input guys! I really like the Genitour idea, because we could see the unit more often, but I think this approach produces a lot of other balance issues.
I agree that gunpowder units should be fixed, however I do not think this would help Koreans all too much (Hand Cannons cost food and gold, so no benefit from the wood bonus. Theyâd just have generic HC).
While the gold bonus for Portuguese is kinda alright and they might be viable in 1v1 with better Hand Cannons, I do not think that the wood bonus for Koreans is enough for playing them standard (meaning e.g. maa into archers). Sure you can play trush with them on Arabia to make games messy, but if you want to play them conventionally you kinda HAVE to get to Castle Age and pump out War Wagons. The Archer line itself only gets a cost reducion of 5 wood from 25w 45g to 20w 45g. Maybe I just donât know how to play them properly but I feel that bonus doesnât do much on land maps (It affects only Archery Range units and the UU).
The problem with a siege discount is that it might be too similar to the Slavs bonus.
Am I missing something or are these civs just too unconventional to play intuitively?
I donât play at a particularly high level, but Iâve found a way of playing Portuguese which works well for me.
Essentially the whole game-plan is to make your opponent run out of gold.
I go 2 TCs, build 1-2 Feitorias in early Imp and maybe 1-2 more when all the gold & stone mines are depleted. Contest the âextraâ gold mines and descend on them like a swarm of locusts. Use Cavalier, archers, monks, defensive structures, anything to counter whatever it is my opponent is doing.
Trying this strategy there is one annoying thing which holds me back, and at this point I think it should be fixed. Portuguese should have squires. Being a generalist civ without squires leaves a mayor weakness when needing halbs (champs can be substituted for with Cavalier in most circumstances). Squires can be taken away from some other civs to maintain diversity, eg swap Squires for free Halbs @Ethiopians.
fully agree with your ports strategy. The way to win with them is to turtle and outlast.
Trying to head on fight most often results in total defeat in Imp since they got nothing FU except for their Arabalest Skirms but theses are all generic in strength (Handcannon and BBC are above but cant be main army).
So you sit back and troguh counter units and just hang in until enemy runs ot of geld. Only then there is a chance to close out. (unless you outplay your enemy with skill early game, but the civ itself is not at an advantage at any point.)
Interesting strategy for Portuguese! However i donât think they are limited to only Post-Imp strats. You can also go for a cheap milita rush that could easily translate into archers and crossbows. Cheaper Knights and Siege are also not bad. Maybe Portuguese are fine as they are just very unpopular idk
For Koreans I could see the wood bonus extend to the Mangonel line but not Rams and Bombard Cannons? Cheaper Mangonels would also help the âdefensiveâ personality Koreans have. On the other hand an extended trush with cheap Siege has a lot of Hoang potential. I would be interested to see such a change!
I wouldnât say so. If you play defensive, on paper, youâll fall more and more behind because your main civ bonus is conditional upon unit production, so in case of booming you donât use it. Feitoria is a highly situational strat and doesnât get you anywhere in most cases. Just rushing to imp for them isnât worth it and also the resource conversion rate is too low to be efficient as long there is gold/stone available. And when these resources run out, it takes 20 pop space which isnât really great while your opponent can work with 200 pop.
Well, you still have that gold bonus that can be quite good for certain aggressive strategies. For instance, itâs one of the best bonuses towards an all-in xbows plus knights approach in early castle age which main limitation normally is the high gold amounts youâd have to spend for that. This composition can clear any castle age army and can be followed up by rams, for instance, which are also a bit cheaper for them. Especially since the recent buff, imo the best approach to use portos on land maps is to go very aggressive with gold units early on and to keep the numbers advantage in order to avoid falling back to trash units (this is when portuguese will get less and less effective). If you just sit back and turtle your opponent will probably have both better eco and better units.
20% gold discount applied to everything makes the Turks bonus just a worst version. Basically Portuguese would have an effective +25% collection rate for gold, while turks have 20%âŠplus the possibility of spending more gold⊠It may be too muchâŠ
This makes a lot of sense to me now that you say that. I didnât think about it when creating the discussion.
It seems Portuguese are kind of alright, there are just enough other civs that do their job but better.
For Koreans I suppose the defensive playstyle just doesnât work in the current meta. Maybe the same reason why Teutons and Byzantines were very unpopular pre DE.
Thankfully we can test the cost reduction for siege via triggers in the editor, I will look into this when Iâve got the time
