Burgundians get Cavaliers in Castle Age, Bohemians get Hand Cannoneers, and Cumans can make Battering Rams in Feudal and get Capped Rams in Castle Age. This is a neat trend, but I’d love to see if we could get a civ bonus for getting Two-Handed Swordsmen in Castle Age. With Gambesons coming soon, this could make a Castle Age Militia-line army quite scary (though not unstoppable).
The question is which civilization it could work on.
I’m personally thinking the Slavs could get this since their infantry isn’t really remarkable prior to Imperial Age. Free Supplies and free Gambesons are decent, but don’t let them outperform other infantry civs like Japanese, Teutons, etc. Slav Two-Handed Swordsmen in Castle Age could give them an alternative to cavalry in the mid-game.
But what do you think? Which civ do you think this bonus would be a good fit for?
For real though, I don’t know that it’s a great fit for any existing civ given that they’ve gone a different direction with Gambesons/ and Swordsmen accessibility buffs, as well as buffs to civs for which this might have previously been a good fit. Slavs were a decent contender for this bonus before, but with free Gambesons and cheaper Druzhina, I don’t think this would be necessary. Could be good on a new infantry civ though. (WRE?)
In general I think we should let the PUP/new patch changes play out before we go too crazy on immediately proposing more changes to civs that were just buffed. Civs that could use a boost but that will not benefit much from the incoming changes (e.g. Koreans, Persians, Vietnamese) are prime topics for buff proposals though.
If Dravidians didn’t get their bonus, I’d suggest them. Now I don’t think any civ needs it to improve their game. Maybe Celts? But this will make WR even less frequent.
Yes now that they got the insane free infantry armor and have access to Gamberson in the newest PUP not sure why I could have sworn they were already tournament viable. They would need to lose Gamberson and free armor first.
Zweihänder swords developed from the longswords of the Late Middle Ages and became the hallmark weapon of the German Landsknechte from the time of Maximilian I (d. 1519) and during the Italian Wars of 1494–1559.
All those people who don’t play tournaments are considering tournament balance 11. Only 0.001% of aoe2 players play tournament. Also in tournaments they have civ bans
Dravidians without a doubt. After PUP changes, I feel like Sicilians, Koreans, Dravidians and Bengalis will be the worst civs in the game, in that order. Bengalis or Koreans aren’t an infantry civ, so it won’t make much sense to give them. Giving this to Sicilians will be counter-intuitive to all the upcoming changes to force Serjeant-Donjon play. Cheaper mangonels + cheaper two handed swords upgrade + faster skirms push could become a viable option for them if it comes through.
It could work for a bunch of civilizations with good food eco or for which its easy to switch into this unit - Bulgarians, Teutons, Slavs but those civs have other options. It could be a good change for Malay as well but I don’t think its necessary for them now after the free infantry armor buff.
Eh, it would have made more sense than the siege discount, and they needed it more than Slavs, but now it would just seem kind of weird. The civ has 5 bonuses now, and I’d rather they rework the several “iconic” attributes of the civ that take up space without really being useful, before just slapping another bonus on top of what will still be a poorly designed UU, UT, and stable. Give their Battle Eles and Medical Corps a reason to exist (and Urumis outside of a few lategame situations), and the civ could be in a great spot.
Oddly specific ordering, but perhaps you’re right, although I don’t think that Paper Money will lift Vietnamese out of the bottom 4. I’m guessing Dravidians will move up a couple spots, and Bengalis, perhaps one, but I guess we’ll see, starting whenever the patch actually goes live.
Of those 5, only 3 are useful. They still don’t have knights or a replacement unit, CA or anything viable from their stable. No monk techs either.
Both Medical corps and urumi need a heavy rework or the castle unit should just be changed altogether.
Very close between Sicilians and Vietnamese but with both first crusade and the castle building bonuses nerfed, I felt Vietnamese might end up being 5th worst civ.
I initially thought so too but then Goths got a better buff for their early game, Celts, Slavs got quite decent buffs too. I still don’t think the siege discount will put them ahead of Koreans but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it ends up being Dravidians, Sicilians, Bengalis, Koreans.
With a lot of infantry civs promoted, Bohemians will do better. Fervor and sanctity on villagers, hand canoneers, chemistry on xbows will become important against more civs. And they also have good monks for closed or easy to wall maps. Why Italians?? They’re a very decent civ. They have fully upgradable cavalry, anti-gunpowder and fast infantry uu, extra armor and fully upgradable arbalesters, cheaper gunpowder, age up and ballistic discounts, good monks as well. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not a top-20 civ or anything but definitely not a bottom-5. Vietnamese are a strictly better civ than Dravidians. Eco bonus is slightly worse but they also have bonus on skirmishers and they have knights with bloodlines, husbandry, light cav with +4 in imp, extra hp CA, much better monks, much more useful uu. All of this isn’t worth less than barrack tech or mangonel discount by any means.
Also Malay’s faster age up is still powerful at lower Elo’s even if they don’t know how to utilize the timing they still have benefit from being able to produce more villager. Unilike Chinese who require skill to use they Malay only require experience to fully utilize.
So is Bengalis. Meanwhile Teutons have 8. It is not about the number of bonuses, but what the bonuses actually offer.
Bohemians is already bottom 5 in Arabia and they are not getting any meaningful buff. So I think their W/R will drop. For Italians, not getting any buff nor even Gambeson will down them. They are barely not bottom 5 but with Malay and Dravidians being out, my bet is Italians will hold the place. Also Vietnamese is already bottom 5 in 1200+ 1v1 Arabia, while Dravidians is not.
Of course, my point is that they’re already on the more loaded side, yet still not great. Especially given their weird UU/UT, better to improve their existing options before adding new stuff.
Also, where do you get 8 bonuses for Teutons? It’s listed as 6, at least in English. IDK how you get more than that unless you count the TB or rephrase one of the existing bonuses into two parts.
Arguably you could break one of them up, but I consider a combination of similar effects, or the same effects on different units to be ~1 bonus, and that seems to be the general understanding.
Yeah Medical Crops just need to go and replace by something meaningful.
I actually think this unit is not as bad as everyone says. Problem is they don’t fit on Dravidians army. They don’t address any weakness of the civ which is very opposite of other 2 infantry UU - Ghulam and Chakram. Even other UU Ratha also serves a very good knight/CA alternative (Nowhere close to them but way better mobility than Dravidians). Urumi as a glass cannon like Shotel is really good imo.
Yeah 7 then. Barracks and Stables units extra MA can be considered 2 bonuses. Althogh you can make same argument for Dravidians EA and skirmishers.
Its hard to tell indeed. I feel it’s going to depend heavily on which civs become more popular. If celts, incas, goths get picked more often Bohemians win rate will improve imo. Some of the other buffed civs might not be a good matchup for them.
win rate of civs like Italians, Malay, Burgundians moves up considerably when you move up from 1200 to higher elos. Its only Bengalis, Koreans, Dravidians, Goths, Vietnamese that remain low even when you look at 2k+. Lack of gambeson will hurt them but not going to get worse than Dravidians.