The difference is negligible I would say. 1 vill collecting for 25 secs, which is like 7 food difference. But it feels smoother as there is something to do with TC instead of panicking with no food 11
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It should be less punishing in terms of early game âanxietyâ (letâs call it that way for my lack of a better expression) for low level players that maybe, thrown away by the wonky start, make mistakes and get way more than 25-ish idle time
That sayd, i agree that this change feel unnecessary as imho the biggest factor here is that chinese are so flexible with tech tree and tech discount, so that High levels players can abuse it easily, while low levels canât, thus why chinese perform much better for higher players than lower players. Probably making their tech discount a little less (like 5% less) could have helped as a nerf for High levels, but would have done nothing good for low levels, so thatâs why they targeted the start as an attemp
I personally like the fact that devs see problems and try to change things for the better. Sometimes changes make thing worse, but itâs better doing something and then regret the mystake and revert it, than doying nothing imho
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Tech discount is not hard to use. Whenever you click a tech it is cheaper why so hard to use? It is the start that throw low level players off because it is easy to get housed, not finding sheep, canât push deer, force drop, etcâŠ
Maybe Iâm missing something here, but the change seems to be a straight nerf to me.
Chinese now start with one less villager and 50 more food. Youâre definitely going to spend that 50 food on your sixth villager, who you will now get 25 seconds later than you did before. One villager is always better than 50 food that you are definitely going to spend on a villager.
Sure it might reduce TC idle time, but it has to reduce TC idle time by more than 25 seconds to be a benefit. I donât see how it can do that.
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Maybe just try it yourself? 11
It is not that difficult, really.
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I think I asked the wrong question to an attorney.
Did you get 3 minutes of Chinese early game without any TC idle time?
Itâs hard to capitalize on such a bonus, since it helps in unit transition and timings, which is something low level players donât know much about
It is indeed a nerf, thereâs no doubt on it. The topic of debate is wether or not the change is helpful for low level players or not, as it seems the intent behind the change is to Nerf chiense for pros while helping low levels
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5 seconds of idle time, 10 seconds of idle time, etcâŠ
Seriously guys? I bet most people get MINUTES of idle time by the time they hit the imperial age, expecially when theyâre raided or are microing stuff 
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Thatâs what I thought the intent was at first, but I donât see how it can actually help anyone. I suppose maybe itâll help psychologically because it looks more similar to a normal start.
Sure, but idle time is worse earlier in the game, and with Chinese youâre looking at idle time in the first couple of minutes.
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At least by mid feudal by idle time is usually below 30 seconds on most of my game
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11, yes. Everyone is discussing how big of a change it is, in the theoretically best case scenario.
I think its to make it easy for lower level players without changing it for pros.
Yes but practically speaking its less than 10 food. Too little to have any impact at high level.
Thatâs seriously amazing. Even very high level 2.5k+ level players get higher idle time than that by mid feudal quite often.
Yes, I am serious.
Maybe you are missunderstanding the goal of this topic⊠It is about whether the change is a buff or a nerf. Be it losing 1 wood or 100 wood does not matter. Many people believe that this change is a buff at lower ELOs. And as small as the difference sounds, I replied that it does not buff the civ at ower ELOs.
We are not talking about whether or not the civ needs a nerf or how big of a nerf it should get.
And by the way:
- 5 to 10 more seconds of idle time would be around 1/3 less villager production. Once you reach feudal age (open maps), it is a difference of ~75w. Once you reach castle age (open maps), it is a difference of ~75w + 100w = 175w.
- when you micro stuff and get TC idle tme, you often deal damage, so there is a compensation. And many other people do not over micro stuffâŠ
- when you reach imperial age, TC idle time do not matter as much because your economy is already so big or maybe even maxed out; if you get heavily raided, it is somtimes the right call to stop villagers production to make more military.
Still donât quite understand how 1 villager and loom time canât gather enough food. The only big hurdle seems to be how far the sheep are. If the distance is intolerable, let the Chinese start the game with +1 goat, like the old AoE2 Incas and AoE3 Chinese, then youâll always have a sheep that wonât be late.
I remember that many people used to think that the Chinese were too strong and need nerfs. Now they suppress the Chinese economy by losing 1 villager, and also help low ELO players adapt to the game.
Yes, the sheep distance is the main hurdle.
Or play with an Inca ally.
They surely still needed nerfs at high ELOs before this new patch.
It is less than 1 villager as you have less TC idle time.
The point of this topic is more to argue that it nerfs low elo players (as small as the nerf is for them), and the only buff is the good feeling they get by having less TC idle time, even though they are losing on eco due to delayed villagers.
If Chinese start with a free sheep under TC by allying with Incas, or if the starting 4 sheeps are closer to the TC, or if sheep move faster, then it is easier than before to gather food and definitely becomes a buff at low ELO.
In conclusion, I think the proper build is villager + loom + villagersâŠetc. try to get zero idle tc time. Still need to find sheeps asap and push deer.
In my opinion it is still a buff due to this good feeling. Less fuss helps to give enough attention to the details of other controls. In the past, even if you can catch food up, it is easy to make other deployments go wrong due to haste.
Iâd seriously consider suggesting giving them an extra goat, which should be an acceptable slight buff. This way they donât have to depend on a particular ally, nor do the map configurations have to be changed for them.
Why would anyone want to buff chinese further? They are very strong already. Imho the change is very good, as it helps to
-lower the gap between low and high elo (it hurts high elo, while only beeing a tiny nerf to lowet elo)
-make them more consistent regarding maps, reducing their OPness on maps with fast food close to TC.
-make them less reliant on fortunate sheep spawns.
-avoid potential problems in teamgames with the new inca teambonus that could bring crazy synergy.
All with one little change!
5 Likes
I guess the idea is to measure their true strengths at sub 2k levels by making the start less awkward without making it a disadvantage at higher level.
In theory its definitely not a buff but because at lower elos players struggle timing the food submission, might forget house, delay boar or something else which makes the idle time/working efficiency much worse. With the proposed change in practice we might see better start at lower leos.
I wish there were stats on average idle tc time with chinese in the first 5 mins at different levels. Based on my observation in NAC4, Titans league, it almost always surpasses 25s. 15 seconds of total idle tc time is extremely rare and is almost the best case scenario theoretically. If you take a distribution of the idle tc times observed thus far, even at pro levels, 20 secs will be much farther from the average than 30 imo. What it means is in practice we never see the theoretical limits of Chinese and this change would end up becoming either a buff or neutral in a vast majority of the games. Lower the elo, stronger the difference.
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The premise of my suggestion is that people think the current change is an intolerable nerf.
Changing the map configuration (e.g. changing the initial position of the sheep, etc.) seems unlikely I guess because itâs been done before.
The biggest intention of starting with +1 goat is to make sure the food wonât be late, which is a huge help with low ELO. If it would be considered OP, Iâd be willing to raise the Chinese food punishment from -150 to about -170 or -180 for it, so that after Loom, the 5 villagers are roughly able to gather enough food to train the 6th villager.
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