It has been made clear many times that there are some imbalances in the new HD balance, favoring the new civs over the old ones. Rather than going through each civ and look at what makes each one so strong, I wanted to take a step back and look at the broader picture, by making some stats.
It has been bothering me for a while that every civ since African kingdoms has access to BBC, and only one is missing Siege engineer. In AoC, having access to BBC wasn't so common (only 56% of the civs have it) and I strongly believe that easier access to techs like that makes new civs so much more strong and versatile.
The same could be said about redemption, which 10/13 new civs have access to compared to 8/18 in AoC.
So gathered up some data to confirm my suspicion of tech inflation in the new civs. That chart that I came up with is this :
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/359445251879993345/407855557639405571/AoR_HD_Tech_Chart.pdf
Third column to the right says the % of AoC civs having access to said tech, second to the right is the % for expansion civs, and last column is the difference between AoC and expansions civs. When the difference is superior to 20, it's highlighted in green if it favors aoc civs, in red if it favors new civs.
*for cavalry/gunpowder techs I removed meso civs from the statistics, but it doesn't impact much anyway since the proportion of meso civs is roughly the same in both AoC and expansions.
The techs that are significantly more available to AoC civs are : Arrowslits, Paladin, Faith, Siege Ram, Heavy demo, Shipwright
The ones that are more accessible to new civs are : Heated shot, Crop rotation, Guilds, Bloodlines, plate barding, Ring archer armor, Redemption, Illumination, Herbal Medicine, Siege engineer, Bombard Cannon, Elite Cannon galleon.
We can obviously see that there are twice as many techs that new civs have easier access to compared to AoC civs, and not the most insignificant ones : bloodlines, plate barding, redemption, BBC, Siege engineers, crop rotation.
Now don't get me wrong, having the exact same percentage would is unrealistic, because the sample size is so small and it doesn't take into account the complexity of the game and synergy between bonuses/missing techs/UT. But easy access to key techs makes civs much more versatile and therefore harder to counter.
To me the techs that are the most problematic are :
- crop rotations and guilds : access to these two techs makes the economy of the new civs stronger and more versatile in the late game, specially in 1v1 with guilds.
- bloodlines and plate barding : even if many of the new civs aren't cavalry civs, only 2 of them miss bloodlines and plate barding, giving archers or infantry civs good cavalry to fall back on and helping their versatility.
- redemption : it automatically makes many of the new civs strong on Arena just by having this tech.
- siege engineer and BBC : makes the siege very usable, specially at higher level where BBC micro can make big differences. For both of these techs, around 85% of the new civs have it compared to 55% of the old ones. Could probably trade these techs for siege ram for some of the new civs, correcting the imbalance with AoC civs.
Let me address the paladin issue really quick : only one Expansion civ has access to paladin, compared to 7 in AoC. But if we look at it more broadly, Raja civs have Battle elephants, Indians have imperial camels.
Overall, if we make a "heavy cavalry class" (units with 160 HP or more made from stables : Paladins, battle elephants, imperial camels, Zaelotry camels), things balance out : 50% of the civs have access to one of these units, in both expansions.
I'm not saying that we should remove access to these techs to some civs just for the sake of have the stats line up better, that would be the wrong way to do it. But if rebalancing there is, it's a good idea to keep in mind these stats, to remember why some of the new civs seem so strong and hard to counter.
It has been bothering me for a while that every civ since African kingdoms has access to BBC, and only one is missing Siege engineer. In AoC, having access to BBC wasn't so common (only 56% of the civs have it) and I strongly believe that easier access to techs like that makes new civs so much more strong and versatile.
The same could be said about redemption, which 10/13 new civs have access to compared to 8/18 in AoC.
So gathered up some data to confirm my suspicion of tech inflation in the new civs. That chart that I came up with is this :
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/359445251879993345/407855557639405571/AoR_HD_Tech_Chart.pdf
*for cavalry/gunpowder techs I removed meso civs from the statistics, but it doesn't impact much anyway since the proportion of meso civs is roughly the same in both AoC and expansions.
The techs that are significantly more available to AoC civs are : Arrowslits, Paladin, Faith, Siege Ram, Heavy demo, Shipwright
The ones that are more accessible to new civs are : Heated shot, Crop rotation, Guilds, Bloodlines, plate barding, Ring archer armor, Redemption, Illumination, Herbal Medicine, Siege engineer, Bombard Cannon, Elite Cannon galleon.
We can obviously see that there are twice as many techs that new civs have easier access to compared to AoC civs, and not the most insignificant ones : bloodlines, plate barding, redemption, BBC, Siege engineers, crop rotation.
Now don't get me wrong, having the exact same percentage would is unrealistic, because the sample size is so small and it doesn't take into account the complexity of the game and synergy between bonuses/missing techs/UT. But easy access to key techs makes civs much more versatile and therefore harder to counter.
To me the techs that are the most problematic are :
- crop rotations and guilds : access to these two techs makes the economy of the new civs stronger and more versatile in the late game, specially in 1v1 with guilds.
- bloodlines and plate barding : even if many of the new civs aren't cavalry civs, only 2 of them miss bloodlines and plate barding, giving archers or infantry civs good cavalry to fall back on and helping their versatility.
- redemption : it automatically makes many of the new civs strong on Arena just by having this tech.
- siege engineer and BBC : makes the siege very usable, specially at higher level where BBC micro can make big differences. For both of these techs, around 85% of the new civs have it compared to 55% of the old ones. Could probably trade these techs for siege ram for some of the new civs, correcting the imbalance with AoC civs.
Let me address the paladin issue really quick : only one Expansion civ has access to paladin, compared to 7 in AoC. But if we look at it more broadly, Raja civs have Battle elephants, Indians have imperial camels.
Overall, if we make a "heavy cavalry class" (units with 160 HP or more made from stables : Paladins, battle elephants, imperial camels, Zaelotry camels), things balance out : 50% of the civs have access to one of these units, in both expansions.
I'm not saying that we should remove access to these techs to some civs just for the sake of have the stats line up better, that would be the wrong way to do it. But if rebalancing there is, it's a good idea to keep in mind these stats, to remember why some of the new civs seem so strong and hard to counter.
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