Why I don't like the Mayan's new UT

Depends on the ELO? As in, the tech was used in events such as 2v2 World cup to nuke TC after TC? Let’s be honest OA was designed to give people a reason to make a mono arb army over a plume archer one (ie.one of the best UU in the game) They had to buff it to make people realise it isn’t a meme but oh boy was the result explosive.

Uh what? How is taking stone and using it to make castles a bad thing? If anything LEL don’t make enough of them and let their stone pile up for too much time.

Ig it doubles skirm damage output against buildings (ironic I know) They are still useless against them. As stated in the OP, Mayan have their own arbalest, plumed archers, eagle warriors and siege rams to use against archers so their skirms ain’t becoming their best option either. And by no mean slightly stronger skirms make up for their complete lack of scout line.

It’s not weird it’s normal. Not all nerfs have to followed by a compensation.

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  • I talked only about 1v1 as stated in my Comment and you mention a 2v2 Cup. Teamgames play out totaly different then 1v1 Games.
    In Team Games its possible to ply much more Greedy and Tech right away into much more expensive stuff, because its simply harder to lose in the early Game, because you have the Armys of 2 Players with defender Advantage who can back up each other

  • As said all other options of Mayans you mentioned are very Gold intesne and i sayed this Tech is good for when Mayans start run out of Gold, because in this situation their only 2 Trash Option will get countered by Skirms only. Giving a tech which makes Skirms especially stronger against Skirms will help that. I never said their trash Game is S Tier now, ofc having Light Cav would be better, but its much better then before. And thats why its a Buff I would say, because Mayans have always been scary with Gold, but very weak without. Now they can still hold up even without Gold, or at least better then before.

  • Has nothing to do with the topic but you asked:
    Castels dont rly have any value in early Castle Age. You pay 650 Stone, (which because of Upgrades is probably collected slower then Wood) which is probably worth around 700 Resources, for something that gives you no value if its not a Castle drop on the opponent. A Defensiv Castle might protect some area of your Eco, but you still open on other sides. Also you dont rly have an Eco worth protecting cbs you infested into a Castle instead of new TCs and Farms.
    If these 700 Res would have been infested into Eco and/ or Army, then you would have a stronger Eco (which snowballs your eco), or a bigger Army. A bigger Eco can result in an bigger army a few minutes Ahead, and an Army can Defend your Base at any location (which a Castle cant) as well as generate Map Control to get new Resources, as well as pressure the Enemy to deny his Resources, reduce his Army, or Idle his Eco (which makes your Eco stronger in contrast to his).

Castles only have 3 purposes in this Game:
1: Production and Researchs: Only a few Unique Units are worth producing in early Castle age like Conqus. Trebs cant be made before Imp. Conscription is an Imp Tech.
2: Pressure on the Opponent; Basicly a forward Castle drop on the Opponent. The only reason to get a early Castle if you wont produce Conqus or Arambai.
3: Secure Map Control/ Resources: In late Castle Age and Imp you will place Castels at important locations, which are either an important Hill on the Map, or a place with valueble Res like Gold/ Stone or big Wood Lines.
In early Castle Age your Main Resources around your Base havent run out yet, which means you dont need to expand to neutral Gold yet. Therefore there is no need to secure these Resources yet, which make sit much better to invest the Resources of a potential Castle instead into Eco/ Army to get an advantage over your Opponent. If you generated an advantage over your Opponent in early to mid Castle Age, then this Advantage will snowball, making it much easier to get control over the neutral Resources for Imp. After all it makes no sense to get a Castle on a neutral Gold in advance, just to then be behind your Enemy in Economy, because of this later in Imp and then have to look how he Trebs the Castle down.

  • “Not all nerfs have to followed by a compensation.”
    Dont get this sentence tbh. I said the Change is probably a Buff and therefore there might come a Nerf, but your sentence implies that I would have said its a Nerf and therefore there will come a compensation in the Future, while I sayed the exact opposite.
    I agree that not any Buff or Nerf normaly needs to be compensated, but it depends on the Posiiton of the received Object in the Tier List.
    If a B Tier Civ gets buffed it probably dont needs a Nerf, because it got buffed to maybe get into the A Tier, but if an already S Tier Civ gets buffed, then it should get Nerfed later on, because it already was to strong.
    The same would apply the other way around on nerfing a D or C Tier Civ. In this case a D or C Tier Civ should get compensation to not be totally useless, while a Nerf to a S or A Tier Civ probably wont need compensations.

I disagree, they are basically unassailable until Trebs and Capped Rams start showing up in the Imperial Age.
The Castle is the best defense for the Castle Age, it basically stopps whole armies dead in their tracks, and has to be avoided, rather than faced head on.

Could you pls respond to my arguments instead of just ignoring them.

I explained in detail why I say they are mostly useless, so instead of just ignoring all I sayed and saying that Iam wrong, attack my Arguments and explain why these are wrong.
Otherwise this is no Discussion but just a collection of expressions of Opinions
I went into detailed Arguments right there: Why I don't like the Mayan's new UT - #22 by Sylne4r
so pls counter my Arguments.

I did not ignore the arguments, I disagreed with them.

The very reason why Castle Drops are so oppressive, is because there is no good, cost-effective way of disposing of Castles, in the Castle Age.
Pair that with the Castle having a very strong multi-attack and training a unit, and it becomes very clear why the Castle is the best structure to actually build in the Castle Age.

I usually make defensive Castles, but drop one as soon as I hit Castle, often even diverting Vills from Gold to Stone when I start going up to Castle Age, just so I can drop a Castle and 2 other TCs.

A well placed Castle kills all raids. The opponent will have to go to Imp and get Trebs or BBC to even be able to attack you at that point.

It can even hold 20 Vills inside, which is a huge deal when protecting your Economy, and those Vills only make the Castle hit even harder.

It is, by far, the best structure in the game, and fully worth the 650 Stone cost.

Good luck raiding with Knights or Crossbows, under a Castle. The Vills will be safe, and you will just lose all your units.

It really shouldn’t be confusing why Castles are tough to kill in castle age. If you try killing it with rams, Petards counter them cost effectively in Castle age, using just two per each one ram, and that’s assuming no splash damage able to hit multiples at once. That’s just assuming you have a castle UU that’s bad at fending off rams, and frankly, that’s the minority, not majority, of castle age UU options.

If your opponent has a castle, you have to find another area to do damage in and avoid it, or you need to wait until you can get imperial for proper answers. It’s not complicated. They can secure the most important part of your strategy for a long time, and that’s oftentimes invaluable, and oftentimes decisive.

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Petards die by the dozen to Castle fire, they really are not a good counter to Castles.
There is no cost-effective way of getting rid of that 650 Stone investment from the opponent. No matter what you do, you will have to lose more resources than he has invested to get rid of the Castle.

This is why Castle Drops are considered oppressive, and why they are a staple of even the most competitive matches.
There is no good way to get rid of Castles, in the Castle Age. It is also why Castles are so expensive.

No, I said they’re a cost effective counter to the rams attempting to destroy the castle, you’ve got it backwards. Ergo, every single civ has a cost-effective counter to the ram, the only sieging unit that wouldn’t be obliterated by an otherwise undefended castle.

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My bad, but you do not need to use Petards, just have a few Knights garrissoned at the Castle.

Actually, it takes 4 Rams to bring a Castle down, 3 get destroyed by the Castle, so they are still not great.
It is not until Capped Rams come into play, taht Rams are actually decent againmst Castles.

I agree, but let’s assume you were Mayans and were totally caught off guard by like, an 8 ram all-in against your castle (say it’s gold rush) and you were pure archers. Even in that absolute worst-case scenario, if you remember Petards exist the castle still can’t fall.

Assuming Murder holes.

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And why not? All Rajas civs have elephant UT, except malay who have a good discount for them. This give elephants more personality.

Skirms is not a important unit on meso armies but they are still useful in trash wars. Now, each meso postimp game would feel different

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Because a particular draw to the game is the differences between civs making for an interesting game. The less unique a civ is compared to it’s like counterparts, the less interesting different matchups become. I don’t know why we’d want this.

I agree. Obsidian arrows simply should have been reduced from +6 to +3 for example. (and reduce the cost).

And this make these civs different in trash wars.

Aztecs, inca and mayans usually dont go for skirms before gold run out, unless the enmy go full archer.

And after gold runs out, or when enemy goes full archer, even mayans went for normal skims sometimes. Now their skirms have more personality in those circumstances. This is not like the indian and turk extra pierce armoe in castle for light cav…

I understand your point, but I think you are overstimating the fact that the affected unit is the skirm, and understimate the UT differences (minimum range, range, damage).

I would rather discuss about the tech being useless instead of the skirm issue, imho.

it’s not like stuff like imp camels and arambai were nerfed mostly based on TG play

image

It’s barely better just because this UT is the worst skirm bonus in the game. Byz, Vietnamese, Lithuanian, all are actual improvements over a generic skirmisher that are miles better than this. Such a weak “buff” that is most useful in the super late game, a phase that is rarely reached, can’t make up for the fact the civ got denied its “click to remove ur archer’s main weakness” button.

All those plume archer, conq and arambai rushers are such noobs
Anyway you didn’t mention anything about what time of the game those castles were built in so it left room for interpretation.
And since we are discussing timing you can notice no one said “OA is OP in early castle age” It’s still OP in late castle or imperial age.

And the plume archer.

I said this because you said that

ie.to me it looks that for you if this tech was useless then they would have gotten a buff in compensation.

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  • I say they are weak without Gold and you show that they run our of Gold slower. How does running out of Gold slower make them more usefull without Gold? I said multiply times Mayans are already S Tier with Gold, and their long lasting Gold is probably a part of it, but when its all gone then a saving bonus wont rly help you. You might get a few more Archers from selling Food/ Wood, but other then that it changes nothing about my statement of them being bad without Gold as basicly their only weaknes (well and weaknes to Huskarls)

  • “Castles … in early Castle Age”. This pinpoints on early Castle Age, so how is there room for interpretation?
    But lets just end the Castle discussion anyways. This is about Obsidian Arrow, not about when Castles are useful and when not. I can discuss it with you in a private Chat or you can open another Topic, but lets not get so Off topic here anymore.

  • You rly seem to underestimate the additional 1 Dmg. In a 1v1 they win closely, bcs they second projectile is very inaccurate, but in bigger Numbers they win very convincingly, because the missed shots hit another Enemy.
    Or in Math:
    normal Skirms deal 4 Dmg per shot to another Skirm. If all secondary Arrows hit some Target (which they normaly do in big Numbers), then the Mayan Skirm deals 25% more Dmg to enemy Skirms.
    A 25% Dmg increase is probably the best Bonus of any Civ in Skirm Fights, even better then a 25% discount, because in Trash Wars you are normaly Pop caped, which means Population efficiency is much more important then cheaper Trash.

  • “And the Plume Archer”
    As mentioned before the Plume wasnt effected by Obsidian Arrow.

  • “ie.to me it looks that for you if this tech was useless then they would have gotten a buff in compensation.”
    My sentence sayed (“On the other hand giving them a new Useless tech just to not buff them would probably also been very weird,”) that it might been weird to give them a useless Tech just to not make them stronger would been weird, because I consider the new Tech pretty good, which makes an already S Tier Civ even stronger. Because they are already S Tier they could have given them a useless Tech to not buff them, which might be understandable, but weird for the Players.
    Thats also why I expect a Nerf coming in the Future, because an already S Tier Civ got even better now.

I say that you pls should try to counter my Argument if you disagree with them (explain WHY you disagree with them) and the thing you do is totally ignoring it again in the first half.

  • You mention a Castle drop being good, which I mentioned as 1 of the 3 only cases to justify an early Castle, so you dont even argue against what i sayed.

  • The second thing you said about a defensive Castle protecting your Eco:

As explained before this might work in lower Elos, but if you invest 650 Stone (worth 700 Wood) into a early Castle which does nothing except standing there (Castles cant move to pressure) then you are behind if your Enemy didnt do the same.
If your Castle dont protects 100% of your Eco (which it only can if your Eco is pretty small Eco) then the Enemy can still raid you, which means if he invested these 700 Res in Military he will have the stronger Military and can raid your Eco and fight your Military, because he is stronger.

If he invested it into Economy then he will simply outboom you and you cant punish him for it, because your military isnt bigger then his Military, because the Resources he invested into Eco werent invested by you into Military to punish his boom, but into a Castle which cant punish his boom.
700 Res can buy 1 Tc and 5,4 Farms, and around 5 Farms can provide the food for constant Vil production out of 1 Tc, which means he will be able to invest the exact same resources you do in Military from now on, but gets 1 more Vil produced all the time, which snowballs in an stronger Eco which then will result in even more Eco, Military and Techs.

No matter if the Enemy invests the Res into Eco or Army, he will be exactly as strong in one aspect as you are, and stronger in the other (also he can invest them into both a bit, to be a bit stronger in both regards). And you wont be able to punish him for his decision, because you made a defensive Castle, which were the Res you needed to invest either in Eco or Army to keep up with your Enemy.

And a tipp: When your Economy is set up (most time around 2-3 TCs fully producing depending on the Eco - Military Balance) then you should transition 3-5 Vils to Stone. This way you will have enough Stone for a Castle around the end of Castle Age or while on the way to Imp.
Thats when you need them to get Conscription, protect neutral Resources you got control over with your superior Army, and to build Trebs.

(ofc all of this applies to s standard Game. If you get f.E. Arambai rushed on Arena, then you should make a defensive Castle, but then the Enemy is All in himself, which means his Economy is pretty bad as well.)

Honestly having such siege archers was completely bad for the game, buildings are supposed to stop archers.
And let’s not talk about how OP are the Mayans at the S tier side, to all? Was fair that the civ with an impressive economy and the cheapest archers in the game had also access to a dirty cheap tech that turned them into a scary siege machines?

Even never got how Chieftains cost was raised while Obsidian Arrows was allowed with that price.

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That’s the point. If they have the least chance to run out of gold a trash unit bonus is going to matter even less for them. So the number of situation where Hul’che > Obsidian is incredibly thin, and it’s overall a nerf because the new tech sure isn’t as game ending as Obsidian used to be.

I was was referring to the first time you mentioned castles, ie.this:

Fine

Emphasis on “if”. It’s just that innacurate. If we only discuss skirms vs skirms fights it makes Mayan better than generic but worse than Lithuanian, Sicilian or Vietnamese skirms. also if +25% is so good then imagine what +600% against buildings mean

I said this to mean that for Mayan, having a castle has always been benefical to them because their UU is so good. So by building a castle and researching OA you wouldn’t get that out of your way compared to usual Mayan gameplay.

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I think the Tech was most of all unhealthy for the Game.

It was super situational and most of the time not worth rushing, which was frustrating for the Mayan Player, but when you got Obsidian Arrow rushed it was super annoying to play against, which makes it frustrating for the Player against the Mayan.

A Game is supposed to be fun, so there shouldnt exist to many frustrating Mechanics.