N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

My Age Sanctuary Thread for those interested.

Posted there a few times.

I believe more needs to be added to the Japanese.
Firstly the Shogun has 192 base Damage in age 4 with 2000 or so hp, which goes up to like 250-something base damage in Age 5 with 2500 or so hp, thus killing most villagers in one hit, I believe they it have a negative effect on vills!
Secondly is the monestery research, if you send the monestery rickshaw it halves the cost of the research which is ok, but you have 2 researches when combined can be really op, sabotage (Age 4) and stealth (Age2). Sabotage in age 4 can be researched giving them a special crackshot ability against buildings, with 1500 siege damage, so thats 3000 if they are together, then the stealth allows the monks to go into stealth mode. So basically put them in stealth go into oppos base and start on their factories or wonders, and they can go down in no time.
The price of this research is 200 wood 200 gold for the stealth and 350 wood 350 gold for sbaotage, which may be expensive, but with the monestery rickshaw, it is reduced to 100 wood and 100 gold for stealth and 175 wood and 175 gold for sabotage, it would take 1 monk 4 sabotages to take down a wonder, with both of them, 2. Thats without the 60 siege damage they have normally.

Judge them as you wish, but to me they are op! :roll:

P.S. It doesn't stop me using them whilst they exist though :twisted:

Dan problem with that is stuff like that which will only pop up in really long games (that last to Age 4 or 5) are a lot lower priority than dealing with balance issues that are prominent in the majority of games (Age 1-3).

Main thing for the Japanese is doing something about how dominant Ashigaru are against units that are meant to counter them. Otherwise I think the Japanese are mostly okay.

[quote=""djdan""]
Secondly is the monestery research, if you send the monestery rickshaw it halves the cost of the research which is ok, but you have 2 researches when combined can be really op, sabotage (Age 4) and stealth (Age2). The price of this research is 200 wood 200 gold for the stealth and 350 wood 350 gold for sbaotage, which may be expensive, but with the monestery rickshaw, it is reduced to 100 wood and 100 gold for stealth and 175 wood and 175 gold for sabotage, it would take 1 monk 4 sabotages to take down a wonder, with both of them[/quote]

When u use it like this, the monastery rickshaw is a wasted shipment. U just save 550 res when in Age4 u get about 1600 res for a shipment.

It is also more a issue in teamgames which go more often to age 4. I didn't try this yet. How long does the reload of sabotage take? If it takes too long, the monks are taken down by units which are left in the base which u should have in case of raiding.

Else i agree with what KK said

MNBob, here are my thoughts in response to each civ suggestion:

Aztec:
overall UP
- too one dimensional in relying on rush
- needs key unit improvements (for example xpCoyoteMan)
- major water balance problems (water dance, xpTlalocCanoe, etc)

*Agreed on all points. I think coyotes need to be more like Rodelero's. I am however scared of anything that makes there rush stronger though. Maces also need a boost. They are by far the worst 1 pop skirmisher in the game.

British:
overall UP
- needs politician improvements

*They need a boost, but i'm not sure what it looks like. Politicians is a thought. The thing that scares me about Britain is there potential to be OP. A minor change could drastically change their status.

Chinese:
overall OP
- disciples too strong
- OP team cards
- too weak vs cavalry

*Disciples need a lower build limit or increased food expense. Personally I like the idea of adding wood/coin to the mix (that way it makes it more difficult than balancing food only). Team card should be moved to age 4.

Dutch:
overall OP
- early econ is too strong

*Yep. Solution is simple though -- less XP from building banks. Dutch get 320XP (if memory serves me correct) and thus get an additional shipment over most civs too. I think the bank gather rate itself is fine.

French:
overall Balanced (high)
- could become top civ if OP civs are nerfed (replacing 400w politician could be a fix)

*Not sure what to say about this. I think it would turn france into an FF civ, which is something I don't want to see. Maybe 400w could become 250f + 200 wood or something like that. Generally though, they are quite well balanced and can do okay against any civ -- well done here ESO.

Germans:
overall Balanced (low)
- still could use a little help in colonial
- Wallenstein's contract should be re-done or replaced

*Germany's age 2 cards are pretty OP in themselves. 9 bows + 2 uhlans, 3 SW + 2 uhlans, etc. I think uhlans need 5% more RR.

Indians:
overall UP
- needs stronger start and early econ help

*10% to all wood gathering rates (like dutch gets to mining). The rest should fall into place.

Iroquois:
overall Balanced (high)
- crack shot still needs to be changed

*There colonial sucks, and i'm not sure whether its good or bad to be a civ that only has an FF as its option. Other than that i'm not too concerned about them. Maybe 5-10 less HP for FP's.

Japanese:
overall Balanced
- ypAshigaru is too strong early and has too many boosts

*Agreed.

Ottoman:
overall Balanced
- map dependence needs to be toned down

*Agreed of map dependence. I feel they need a small boost though. I think a 50% reduction of mosque costs would be ideal.

Portuguese:
overall UP
- needs colonial econ help
- needs a little more flexibility
- improvements have to occur without making them even stronger on water maps

*GIVE THESE DAMN GUYS SOME VILLAGER CARDS! LOL. Seriously I think that if they had some villager cards things would be fine. Or another alternative would be to give the explore a wardog to start and allow him to train 5 (just like spain).

Russian:
overall UP
- best strat is considered lame

*My thoughts are the same as Britain here. It will be tough to balance these guys without making them OP. I think an extra food crate so you could always age w/ 14 villagers would help. Or something to make the FF a viable option. It's mediocre at best. I don't think sevastapool needs to be nerfed either. It takes a plethora of cards to fort/blockhouse spam. If someone decides to nerf it though, i'd say take away one of the fort cards -- 3 is a lot. An alternative thought I had was that there stretlet cards could apply to muskets as well.

Sioux:
overall OP
- fast units with warchief and dances create counter system imbalances

*The wakina FF is still pretty strong. Their rush is also pretty strong. Sioux taking artillery is also pretty damn annoying. 1.5 might be a better multiplier than 2.0. I think the boost their cav got should be taken away. They can keep the extra starting food crate and everything else.

Spanish:
overall OP
- OPness centers around 2 falc card

*Spain is OP simply because of there FF. They don't have a tonne of alternatives and the reason their FF is strong is because of their lightning fast shipments. To remove that is to change the fundamental item that is unique to the civ. I don't see any viable changes that can be made to spain. Giving other civs a 2 culverin card might be an idea though (like ports as a boost for example).

Japanese are OK, just weaken their cards a little bit. I think close combat should be reduced to 20 or 10% attack, from 30. The multiplier increase is good enough.

Here are my thoughts.


China:
Reduce the number of disciples you get going to age 3 by 3 or 4.
Raise the cost of disciples by 10 or 20.
Make qiang pikemen cost more but have better multipliers against cavalry.
Nerf hand mortar range and HP.

India:
Give them a wood gathering boost like Dutch have for coin.
Give them the counter infantry rifling upgrade, possibly in age 3.
Boost sowar hp by 5-15.

Japan:
Lower close combat attack boost to 10 or 20%.
Double price of retraining shogun.
Lower yumi attack to 17 or 18 but give them a 2x multiplier against heavy infantry.
Lower ashigaru attack card to 20 or 25%.

Germany:
Raise doppelsoldner hp to 250.
Raise 5 uhlan shipment to 6.

Portugal:
Nerf genitour range increase from 6 to 4.
Increase starting food crates by 1.

Russia:
Give a card/upgrade that increases strelet range by 2, available late-game.
Nerf sevastopol from 85% to 60 or 70%.
Eliminate fort limit boost from the fort-building card.
Give musketeers x4 against cavalry.

France:
No changes needed.

Dutch:
No changes needed.

Ottomans:
Decrease villager train time.
Decrease cost of villager count-increasing techs by 20%.

Sioux:
Reduce effect of siege dance and warchief dance slightly.
Increase dog soldier dance rate of production slightly.

Iroquois:
Cut production speed of travois dance by 60%.
Reduce forest prowler attack to 15.
Reduce warchief crackshot attack range to 8 or 10.
Boost aenna multiplier against heavy infantry to 2.
Reduce light cannon range by 4.

Aztecs:
Reduce macehualtin attack by 1 but give a 2x multiplier to heavy infantry.
Boost coyote runner ranged resistance by 20%.
Reduce coyote runner attack by 1.
Reduce support card ERK range boost to 2 but give 10 ERK.

British:
Lower longbow attack back to 16 but give x1.5 to heavy infantry.

Spain:
Apply lancer bonus to former light infantry only.
Boost lancer hp to 360.
Cut shipment speed very slightly.

Overall:
Cut hand cavalry attack by 15 or 20% but give them 1.5x to former light infantry.
Cut castle wood cost by 50.
Cut crossbowmen attack by 2 but give them a 1.5x bonus to heavy infantry.


Just my two cents.

[quote=""Navarone_Guy""]

Dutch:
No changes needed.


Yea, right. Unit-wise I would tend to agree, but they are very strong in pretty much any matchup and there's a reason for that. I think something definitely needs to be done either to weaken their super strong economy early on (without weakening their economy a lot later on since it's not that strong later with only 50 vills) or making it easier for them to be rushed --- too easy atm for Dutch players to hang out in their base, go to fortress, then spam strong units with great eco.


Sioux:
Reduce effect of siege dance and warchief dance slightly.
Increase dog soldier dance rate of production slightly.


Agreed, Dog Soldier dance sucks, I would say Siege Dance needs more than a slight nerf though tbh...or at least make it so it doesn't give so much siege to units with so little siege int he first place (huge masses of Wakina with 40+ siege = ridiculous). Wakinas really need to be produced more slowly or need to cost a bit more, it's way, way too easy to mass them the second you hit fortress atm.


Iroquois:
Cut production speed of travois dance by 60%.
Reduce forest prowler attack to 15.
Reduce warchief crackshot attack range to 8 or 10.
Boost aenna multiplier against heavy infantry to 2.
Reduce light cannon range by 4.


Okay, um, all I can say is... LOL. Prowler attack reduced to 15? So basically, the Iro have no really good units anymore, and no dominant strategies? You have to remember that atm the Iro only have one effective strategy -- FP FF. Take that away, and what do they have left? If you nerf FPs to being closer to normal skirms, you have to significantly help out the other Iro units, especially ones in colonial. Don't tell me "Tomas are great with upgrades + aura!" Because while that's true that doesn't help an Iro player in an early game-mid game situation. FPs are very strong but they are meant to be because the Iro have really weak units besides that to make up for it (no mid-game ranged siege, no heavy cavalry at all etc). Giving Aenna a multiplier of 2 vs infantry won't nearly make up for that. I think reducing the crackshot dmg or the aoe is a better solution imo, not the range. Also...dude, I know you hate Travois dance and Light Cannons but are they really that big of an issue right now?


Aztecs:
Reduce macehualtin attack by 1 but give a 2x multiplier to heavy infantry.
Boost coyote runner ranged resistance by 20%.
Reduce coyote runner attack by 1.
Reduce support card ERK range boost to 2 but give 10 ERK.


I don't disagree with this necessarily, but I think the problem with Maces is the lack of upgrades available for them..they actually aren't that horrible to begin with. Maybe give them more multipliers through their veteran / champion upgrades? One idea I saw posted that I liked was changing the Ruthlessness card to boost Maces attack vs HI instead of ERK attack versus villagers. I'm not sure if 20% boost to coyote RR is the best idea..seems perhaps a little excessive, but I'm not sure.


Spain:
Apply lancer bonus to former light infantry only.
Boost lancer hp to 360.
Cut shipment speed very slightly.

Really I think lancers are fine. As Drew and others have said, I think the real issue is the strength of their FF which is mainly due to the 2 Falc shipment. That said, it's really tough to balance around that issue. Making Lancers worse against HI doesn't really help that out, though.


Overall:
Cut hand cavalry attack by 15 or 20% but give them 1.5x to former light infantry.
Cut castle wood cost by 50.
Cut crossbowmen attack by 2 but give them a 1.5x bonus to heavy infantry.


Don't really know why about the castle thing but I don't see why not. I really like the crossbowman idea, as well the hand cavalry idea.
/quote]

This is a great discussion guys. Keep up the thoughts. This thread is really making me think.

[quote=""djdan""]I believe more needs to be added to the Japanese.
Firstly the Shogun has 192 base Damage in age 4 with 2000 or so hp, which goes up to like 250-something base damage in Age 5 with 2500 or so hp, thus killing most villagers in one hit, I believe they it have a negative effect on vills!
Secondly is the monestery research, if you send the monestery rickshaw it halves the cost of the research which is ok, but you have 2 researches when combined can be really op, sabotage (Age 4) and stealth (Age2). Sabotage in age 4 can be researched giving them a special crackshot ability against buildings, with 1500 siege damage, so thats 3000 if they are together, then the stealth allows the monks to go into stealth mode. So basically put them in stealth go into oppos base and start on their factories or wonders, and they can go down in no time.
The price of this research is 200 wood 200 gold for the stealth and 350 wood 350 gold for sbaotage, which may be expensive, but with the monestery rickshaw, it is reduced to 100 wood and 100 gold for stealth and 175 wood and 175 gold for sabotage, it would take 1 monk 4 sabotages to take down a wonder, with both of them, 2. Thats without the 60 siege damage they have normally.

Judge them as you wish, but to me they are op! :roll:

P.S. It doesn't stop me using them whilst they exist though :twisted:[/quote]

Don’t forget their inherent ability to never be killed (puff of smoke, back to HC drop off point). But none of this is truely a game imbalance in my humble opinion.


Aztec:
If they boosted coyotes and maces slightly, they could remove the additional WC aura. The swashbuckler politician for Aztecs is useless. I never use this because if the WC dies, there goes that powerful x3 aura! I keep my Aztec WC in the back hiding like a scared little boy. A better politician would be to give him 100% attack and HP and 20% attack and HP to his pets (oh wait, that’s just like China except they also get free pets and an increase to the pet limit).

They could boost the Aztec economy by decreasing the spawn time of Warrior Priests. No agrarian ways really puts a hurt on early Fortress gold mining. Of course this could be fixed by giving Aztecs a gold politician as well. As it is now, Aztecs politicians really blow compared to the other natives, well to any civilization.

I don't disagree with this necessarily, but I think the problem with Maces is the lack of upgrades available for them..they actually aren't that horrible to begin with. Maybe give them more multipliers through their veteran / champion upgrades? One idea I saw posted that I liked was changing the Ruthlessness card to boost Maces attack vs HI instead of ERK attack versus villagers. I'm not sure if 20% boost to coyote RR is the best idea..seems perhaps a little excessive, but I'm not sure.

I hope they do not do this to ERK. I love Ruthlessness and their fastest unit is the coyotes / ERK (still slower than every other civs cavalry). If they made Ruthlessness effect Coyotes, I would be ok with this, but without this card, Aztecs have no effective raiders without a ton of shipments (3 cards for coyotes to be mediocre). ERK makes excellent raiders and I have turned around more than 1 game using them as raiders while my slow ass Fortress economy catches up with everyone else. Adding Mace damage in addition to this card effects as it currently could be OP. Are maces supposed to raid? If not, who will? Don’t say coyotes unless they get some serious boosts. A villager and coyote have the same base HP except the coyote costs more, has 8 more damage, and has ranged armor (opposed to hand armor). A group of villagers can fight off a small group of Colonial coyotes if running is not an option (and can even be upgraded with market to have more HP than veteran coyotes). The range damage of ERK is another reason villagers die so fast to them.

China:
Do not increase the pet limit with the White Pagoda Wonder and decrease their base damage while simultaneously boosting their damage multiplier to treasure guardians. In addition, completely remove the random effects of disciples on opponents (only against treasure guardians). I hate random in strategy games. Keep the cost and number of disciples received from the wonder the same. Disciples would still be useful, could still have a large amount with a FF but cause much less damage and cannot be replaced to the largest amount of pets available in the game!

Dutch:
Decrease bank hit points and lower XP (give it a military building tag instead of economic building tag and XP is halved).

Iroquois

There colonial sucks, and i'm not sure whether its good or bad to be a civ that only has an FF as its option. Other than that i'm not too concerned about them. Maybe 5-10 less HP for FP's

They can play defensively with the WC card and a few travois and slowly make it to Fortress. Their pets are weak but cheap and the WC crackshot is not OP in Colonial, but effective with pets (and better with card). My point is, they can also boom, not just FF.

Ottoman

Decrease villager train time.

If you did that, they would be unstoppable on TP heavy maps.

On Silk Road, Ottomans start with an additional 50XP. This could be applied to other maps as well (without trading posts) to make that first shipment come in faster. Church techs do need cost reduction.

Portuguese
Trickle cards should be available to this civilization. I believe the food trickle would be the most beneficial.

Iroquois

Okay, um, all I can say is... LOL. Prowler attack reduced to 15? So basically, the Iro have no really good units anymore, and no dominant strategies? You have to remember that atm the Iro only have one effective strategy -- FP FF. Take that away, and what do they have left? If you nerf FPs to being closer to normal skirms, you have to significantly help out the other Iro units, especially ones in colonial. Don't tell me "Tomas are great with upgrades + aura!" Because while that's true that doesn't help an Iro player in an early game-mid game situation. FPs are very strong but they are meant to be because the Iro have really weak units besides that to make up for it (no mid-game ranged siege, no heavy cavalry at all etc). Giving Aenna a multiplier of 2 vs infantry won't nearly make up for that. I think reducing the crackshot dmg or the aoe is a better solution imo, not the range. Also...dude, I know you hate Travois dance and Light Cannons but are they really that big of an issue right now?

I agree with you. Nav still hates the Iroquois because of 1.3. Revenge!


Thats all for now...

Skirmishers have a base attack of 15 and 120 hitpoints. FP have a base attack of 17 with 110 hp. However, if FP had 15 attack they'd have the same as skirmishers, but have 10 less base HP. However, tack on 22 hp for the warchief aura, and you already have the same attack and 12 more HP than skirmishers. Not to mention that the warchief aura stacks.

Add on stealth to that.

basically, even WITH my suggested modification, they'd STILL be better than skirmishers.

But how many Iro units are a lot worse than their European counterparts?

It's like saying that AR should be toned down to be in line with Hussars etc...FP are meant to be the dominant Iro unit because of stealth and good HP / attack just like AR are meant to be the dominant Sioux unit because of very good stats, upgradeability, and speed from warchief aura. Problem for Sioux is that wakinas are similarly useful....

Also, stealth doesn't help in actual battles, just with raiding. Again, since FP are the backbone of the Iro army, nerfing them a lot makes it that much harder for Iros to win fights.

To Cyclo: Problem with staying in colonial for Iros is they are very susceptible to rushes as their colonial unit shipments are not very good and their colonial units, without upgrades, cannot really compete all that well. Iros need to FF to be really competitive, unless perhaps they are on water.

Forest prowlers, if we follow my suggestion, will STILL be better than skirmishers. They have the same upgrading capability of the best skirmishers game, Dutch ones. The Iro don't need a blatantly OP unit to "make up" for their not completely OP other units. I've never heard of a successful rush made against an Iro. They have 6 tomas, 6 aenna, 7 aenna, and 4 kanya in age 2. I'd hardly call that bad.

Try playing as Iro vs a good Aztec or Ottoman rusher...or even against a well-executed Chinese rush.

Iros are weak against rushes. If you don't take my word for it, check out the link to the discussion I referenced earlier regarding the Iroquois. The general consensus was, they suck versus rushes.

The main thing Iros have going for them in fighting off rushes is Crackshot. You want to nerf that (which I don't disagree with) but Aennas will need more help than a .5 increase in their multiplier in order for a 6 or 7 aenna shipment to be worth sending.

Have you ever tried to fight off Ottoman and Iroquois rushes with the Germans? I guarantee you have no idea how hard defending a rush can be.