What mod would you make to balance the game? Balance, not give your favorite civ 99999 resources start and 20 free elite war elephants from darkage.
1v1 Arabia (for land combat) or 1v1 islands (for water combat) focused balance. Team games on black forest/michi don’t really matter. Since trade can happen in team games, that helps gold heavy civs a lot.
This game may need a balance mod to stop future insane balance changes. Keep things more normal, less crazy. Because some of the new ‘balance’ changes I seen seem really bad. So, if the game is unbalanced, why not simply make a mod to make the game balanced? Yet, at the same time not nerfing strong civs into oblivion?
I know how to mod. So I could in theory make such a mod to finally balance the game once and for all if we get enough ideas here.
I appreciate your initiative, but i dont think such mod is the way to go.
The game isnt even that unbalanced at all. Overall the game is in a pretty good spot. Ofc there is still room for some improvements, but it is not like civs are completely broken.
The discussion about balance changes will never end. Even after a balance mod the discussion will continu. I am pretty sure about that.
I dont think you can easily come to an agreement. You already see this in the balance change threads. There arent many threads in which everyone agree.
This forum is also full noobs. Many suggestios (not all) seems terrible. If you want to get an agreement on the changes you need at least the pros on your side. Otherwise i am sure no one wants to use the balance mod.
Balance is mostly done for ranked (competative) matches. You cant use the mod for those games. Again, this is a reason why such balance mod wont work.
There were some balance mods in the past (voobly), but most of them dont really got much traction. The Wololo mod (HD balance + new civs) is one of the few exceptions that did make it to the people. Most others didnt made it.
There might be even more reason why a balance mod isnt what we need.
I think a very good solution would be to give 20 cobra cars to each player at the start of the game. This way every civ matchup should be pretty much exactly 50/50. You wouldn’t even need to think about adjusting the bonuses and it’s still balanced!!!
I think balancing is at a very good spot right now and it tends to be getting better and better.
It’s very likely that a fanmade balance patch would actually be worse^^
I think adding official “new balance” mod like StarCraft 2 can be good. Developers thinks balance change and releases it as a mode. Players can test it if they want. Overbuffed, overnerfed, undernerfed and underbuffed bonuses can easily changed before adding it to ranked games.
Non-official balance data sets feels awkward and forces to master a game second time.
It depends. I’ve tried once, but that didn’t get any traction. I’d either
Keep it really small-scale, maybe only touching the generic cavelry units
or
Embrace that it’ll be niche, and make a total-conversion mod with the same graphics. Xbows reload slower than javelin throwers (because of course they do), javelins counter Elephants, spears have +1 range, slingers & genitours are more widely available. Armoured infantry is more resistant to arrows than cav is.
The only graphics change I’d want to make is to introduce a gold-heavy ‘professional’ pike unit.
Either way I’d want elephants to be 2 pop, and if I can get away with it galleons would be 20 pop.
But I doubt I’ll actually make either of these mods, unless I get very strong signals that people want to play with them.
I understand the community games mod was used to make the game more balanced for diplomacy games (mostly by making WE 2 pop and BBT 1 pop), and it has certainly been used for those settings.
Your idea changes the game way too much. Make like the original game. I want nothing outlandish. Has to be ultra conservative. No wild crazy changes to what made Age of Empires 2 … Age of Empires 2.
2 pop, and if I can get away with it galleons would be 20 pop.
That’s outrageous. That would make elephants awful units and make water maps really bad.
BomberGriffin wants a balance mod for competative play (at least that is my assumption based on the first post). If you want to succeed, then you need to pros on your side. I can understand that this isnt true for diplomacy games. In that case you need to prominent diplomacy players on your side. That was probably the case with the community balance mod.
Bottom line: Making just a new balance isnt easy. Dont expect everyone to embrace your balance instantly.
The only thing i think the Game may need is a non trash infantry unit to counter cav. I would like a real pikeman, with 1 range and heavy melee armor, but thats too similar to the incas uu
How can people say the game isn’t unbalanced, when in another thread, it’s being argued that if just one player in a team game is allowed to pick their civ, all other players are forced to also pick a civ as otherwise they will stand no chance. And the devs must agree with this, or why would they have implemented the feature to not allow any civ picks if a majority want random?
and what would the cost and stats be? and why would i make something that costs more then a pike (you said non trash, that means it costs gold), when i can make pikes/halbs and they do just fine against cavalry and don’t cost gold?
you keep bringing up this idea in many forms but never tell us how it would actually work.
like your idea for pikes/halbs to resist cavalry damage - won’t much matter because cav civs mix in skirms so they just get wrecked by the skirms and nothing has changed.
this idea - they cost gold - so why would i make them when pikes and halbs are dirt cheap? you’re the one who wants the unit - hit us with its stats, cost, and what counters it.
Why You make knights if light cav cost no gold? Or why to make archers instead of skirms? Maybe the first ones are better in many situations at the same pop cost. Population is also a límited resource.
I really think there should be a Quality counter to cav from the barrack. If You need 40 pikes to counter 20 cavaliers, thats 20 pop someone can use training vill for the economy or use training units that counters the pikes.
Maybe i’m fixed in this rock, paper, sissors idea that cavs should win to archers, archers to infantry and infantry to cav. And watching the world cup, infantry has a lot smaller room that archers and cavs, You may disagre, but thats my opinion
because knights perform more roles then the light cav and are better units.
except skirms attack much slower and have lower overall damage.
so you’re gonna make a gold pikeman. great. what comp would it be used with? gold pikeman/archer? sounds like a comp that does nothing agianst pure archer civs but knight civs like lithuanians and franks would struggle against.
then there should be a quality counter to every unit in the game - guess we need to make an archery range gold unit that wrecks archer and performs halfway decent at everything else.
why is it fair to royally screw over civs that rely on cavalry but not civs that rely on archer units?
except that literally isn’t the design of the game. if that was the design of the game the Militia line would be good against cavalry. furthermore archers with solid micro beat Cavalry. so this idea of your rock paper scissors? doesn’t pan out.
thats because infantry is intended to be support units. you don’t like that design? fine, but the game has been designed this way for 20 years. go make a mod, but if you’re idea is going to go through you’re going to have to give cavalry civs SOMETHING so they have a way to fight your new gold pikeman comps. because a lot of cavalry civs lack good archers to have an answer to them.
you still haven’t told us
-what the stats would be
-how much it should cost
-whats its training time
-when is it available
-what counters it
-what do cavalry civs get to fight against comps with your new gold pikeman
Requesting a feature without details is perfectly valid. Requests for Portuguese and Tatar buffs were listened to, and as far as I’m aware the devs decided on the details in consultation with the pros.
Even pros are arguably unqualified to determine what exactly the details should be before they’ve done play-testing.
If @Gaturro7777 had supplied details for the gold-pikeman unit, you would have shot down the idea based on the details without engaging with the core idea, because the details would be flawed. Even if the details were perfect you would have done the same because you over-estimate your own understanding of the game. With the few detail @Gaturro7777 did provide you engaged in what I would consider a bad-faith argument “I can’t see how I’d use the unit. Therefor it must be useless.”
Rock paper sissors works fine with trash units, halbs destroy hussars, skirms have bonus against spear and skirms can not attack hussars at melee range.
I don’t know why the devs decided not to use it with gold units, thats why u see xbows facing knights and winning, if You buffed the cavs pa right now it would be more reallistic, but very unbalanced in favor of cav civs.
But if you like xbows as the Main counter to knights thats ok, it is a little bit weird for me, but ir is only a game
huge difference between requesting a buff and requesting an entire new unit line. furthermore most people who asked for buffs to those civs proposed ideas how to do so. those who want such a drastic change to the game should propose how to keep it balanced. it’s that simple. if you want something badly enough, lead the charge on ensuring its not broken. its not fair to go “this is my idea but someone else should do all the work on it”.
oh god i can’t even take this seriously.
the point is to make him think about what he actually wants, so that the game remains balanced.
let me ask you this - he implements his idea for a new gold pikeman. it wrecks cavalry and does alright elsewhere. what do cavalry civs that lack archers do against such a unit? why is it fair to have a unit like that against cavalry civs but not one against archer civs?
i rarely see these units at the pro level, but frankly, they still have clear weaknesses and that is a unit ONLY ONE CIV has access too. imagine if a similar unit would be available to ALL civs. now cavalry civs have a problem. especially ones that lack a good anti infantry answer.
yes, but those are trash units, and frankly the skirms still get laughed at by pikes once they get into melee range. remember skirms have minimum range, which means those halbs which move faster then they do (1.1 vs 0.96), if they can get in melee range? negate the bonus skirms have. skirms do 7 damage an attack to halbs, but once those halbs close the distance (Easily done with extra speed + long attack delay of skrims), its all over.
xbows only beat knights when you have a lot of xbows and few knights. as the game goes on knights pull ahead.
they aren’t the main counter to knights though. thats pikes or camels. xbows/arbs fall off in power the longer into castle age and imp age you go. they can do well in the early stages due to the cheaper nature of their upgrades but as you get more and more tech, knights/cavaliers will beat them.
as a mod (not something that replaces the game), i’d like to see what the game would look like if:
the strongest unit wasn’t the fastest unit (knight / paladin)
there was a larger variety of unit speeds. for example, some civs should opt for cavalry archers instead of crossbows. others should opt for something slower and more armored (instead of every civ making crossbows always)
only the starting town center could fire arrows (and some other changes to make infantry less useless)
unique units were trainable from cheaper places (and balanced accordingly)
a castle age mini-trebuchet
economy changes:
a type of gold mine that harvests more quickly, but can be placed in locations that are harder to protect (such as the golden mineral bases in starcraft 2). farms should be much cheaper, but much slower than other food sources until you get lots of upgrades
adjusted water economy so it was more about choices and less about getting a 2nd town center running early. right now, there’s no reason not to make fishboats in dark age and little reason to make fishboats instead of villagers in later ages