I wouldn’t want the savar to be gone
Easily one of the coolest units added to the game
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Savar doesn’t necessarily need to go.
Just make them comparable to Bloodlines-less Paladins, not the 180 HP fully upgraded ones.
Why did you include the Franks in this topic if they are fine?
Are paladins even commonly researched in most 1v1s? Are we pretending the game gets there commonly?!
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There was a time where fast paladin was meta and devs reacted to that by moving chivalry.
Nowadays we see actually more Paladin on 1v1s than historically from the civs that get it. Nobody claims anymore Paladin wouldn’t belong in 1v1s.
This is a discussion thread about “what to do”. It’s not called “pls buff these civs” and also not “they suck”. Btw this has been spoken about in this topic several times actually. The civs (except like britons) are actually NOT performing bad on the ladder. They just see almost no tournament play anymore - and/or have lost parts of their iconic identities.
People should READ the titles and at least a few posts on topics before they post something…
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How are the high elos not punishing someone for possibly turtling up to stall until they have 1350f/750g when you could literally siege down his attempys to wall you out until he can spam this unit
this doesn’t revert the changes to Persians. This game is a nightmare for game preservation. no way to return to older versions
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Many games reach Imp with way more than 100 vills, often 130 or even more. 30 -40 of them on gold, even more on food.
It’s quite common that you can afford the tech then. It’s ofc an investment, but yeah… Age of timings/powerspikes. Paladin pushes are extremely hard to stop, even on high elo.
Either way, from my understanding of meta and tournaments, most games don’t get to that late game point where apparently gold for endless paladins is just… there.
Which is in part why its fine for Burgundy knight line to power spike early but fall off without bloodlines. Do I think Knights can be a bit much in general? Sure. I don’t think franks as a civ are but a small Bloodlines Nerf might keep it in check.
Im still sorta stumped with Britons because part of the problem is how non unique the UU feels especially when you dont need a Castle to get the unique feel of reach based archers. Really when you are meant to shoot super far you likely have accuracy issues. So make them like Arambai who trade power for extreme range but their current average damage
You’d need a lot of balance changes with +15 HP Bloodlines.
Losing 5 HP is a way bigger deal for scouts or knights than, for example, elephants, where losing 5 HP is almost nothing. So elephants’ HP would need to be reduced to keep their power the same as a weakened knight. Then you’d need to readjust lots of things as well.
It’s more convoluted than making Frank knights 125 or 130 HP.
I do want people to move away from the dominance of cavalry. Even a Goth or Japanese player might be more inclined to do Castle Age Knight play where the unit is FU compared to their bolstered Lonngswords or possibly even use cav archers in the case of Japanese. And if changing the tech to 10/15/20 based on Age helps remove cavalry dominance I am for it.
Tournament play is an aberration, practically nobody plays like that. I think it’s beginning to become apparent that tournaments should be played on a balance different from the standard ladder. There’s no way for civs to be balanced for tournament play and for the majority of players at the same time.
Another idea I’ve been toying with is splitting bloodlines into two techs; one in Feudal Age and the other in Castle, each providing +10 HP. I think the total cost would be just a little bit higher than the current cost.
Franks could then get just one upgrade, mostly to balance their scouts. Their bonus would actually be pretty decent then. Then their scouts would have 54/66 HP; Knights 120/132; Light Cavalry 72/84; Cavalier 144/156; Paladin 192/204. I definitely would remove it from the cav archer line, and mioght also remove it from the scout line or make it only apply beginning in castle age.
As a bonus, this would add a few more levers to balance other civs. The other civs I think could benefit from having just half the HP upgrade are, Bohemians, Britons, perhaps Burgundians, maybe Byzantines, probably not Celts but maybe, perhaps Chinese (which currently have the full +20), Dravidians especially, Ethiopians unlikely, probably Goths could lose one, Koreans, Lithuanians could maybe lose one but gain blast furnace, Magyars could also lose one but gain a buff elsewhere, Malay could get one but have their age up slowed a bit, Romans could lose one but have their Centurions compensated, Shu unlikely, and Vikings. Which is a good portion of the civs (16/52). Though I imagine a large percentage would not be changed.
As you can imagine, this would not be a small change. Also, simply splitting the tech in half in feudal age would change the hamster-meta, likely for the better.
Anyways, it’s an idea.
The dominance of skirmishers and the garbage-ness of infantry is a major factor.
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I think Bloodlines +10% HP is smoother.
70 HP scouts, 86 HP light cav, 130 HP knights, etc. don’t look very different either. I would keep the bonus for their CA as well.
After also nerfing the particular Paladins that I listed, as well as the Savar and Centurion, to a similar level to the Burgundian Paladin, the Franks would be fine design-wise.
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Whole point of Burgundian paladin is that you can afford more paladins and power spike with them way sooner than the Teuton or Cuman player in turn for + HP.
Not really. Like giving TA bonus damage against Camels
Yes, at this point, to play classic AoE 2, you’d only have AoE 2 HD left… AoE 2 DE has changed a lot: much improved quality of life, many castle skins, more wildlife, 3K buildable heroes, and not to mention the TLC naval rework… it feels more like a 2006 game than a 1999 one (if it had more UUs it would resemble AoE 4)…
At least the Burgundian Paladin is closer to what the second best Paladin was supposed to be.
I prefer the last one.
For OG civs, designers didn’t think how this civ will counter this specific strategy from this specific civ. They were designed as pure cav or infantry or archer civ or jack of all trade civ. But for all the new DE civs, designers always keep in mind how they can counter Goths spam or Sicilians Phosphurus strategy. This is why newer civs usually doesn’t have a pure counter civ like how Britons and Mayans have. Weakening newer civs by giving them a clear counter civ should be the approach.
But they are actually. I think none of the new cav UUs can beat Franks Paladins 1v1.
Ofc Iron Pagodas have less Gold cost and Wei have Melee Focussed Hei Guang.
So it IS actually already the case. The main point I see witht he new civ designs that they just way better fitting into the timing meta than franks. Whilst Franks still have some of the strongest Powerspikes, the other civs with their ecos are just faster and the difference in Powerspike not big enough to compensate for it imo.
Their eco is too good in general imo while the tech tree is also relatively complete compared to OG civs. There should be some exploitable tech hole/timing as a trade-off of supreme eco.
I once even wanted to remove loom from Georgians when it was released.
Surely a lot of the newer civs don’t have the exploitable tech tree holes as the older ones.
But I am actually in favor of closing the older ones a bit. That’s why I would like to see the shieldman for the european civs, cause for some reason they all share the same weakness to skirmishers - which is ofc in a skirmisher meta not so good.
And we have to see that if we get out of that skirm meta some of these civs could become really storng if we instead buff them too much on other ends.