It's a good thing, I hope the developers get something for their hard work.I'm happy, but i will have to spend some money. I hate to spend some money.
11it's better for large teamgames / low skill levels / black forest / michi
it's worse for competitive games that are about rushing and early game economic strength
in other words, made for noobs, by noobs
the idea that they release a balance overhaul without actually fixing most of the core balance issues and creating even more imbalance is just crazy.
it's better for large teamgames / low skill levels / black forest / michi
it's worse for competitive games that are about rushing and early game economic strength
in other words, made for noobs, by noobs
the idea that they release a balance overhaul without actually fixing most of the core balance issues and creating even more imbalance is just crazy.
it was where and when? last I heard they said no to a balance patchThe thing is: Balance changes are going to happen! It was officially announced!
11it's better for large teamgames / low skill levels / black forest / michi
it's worse for competitive games that are about rushing and early game economic strength
in other words, made for noobs, by noobs
the idea that they release a balance overhaul without actually fixing most of the core balance issues and creating even more imbalance is just crazy.
I guess the sole basis for that statement is that walls take longer to build so that more op civs can overpower normal civs easier? The time for walling has been increased by 1 for palisade, 3 for stonewall. How are these going to outweigh the nerfs huns, aztecs, and even mayans (though mayans havent been nerfed enough imo) received? Having said that, Celts do stand alone, with an OP status and no real nerfs, koreans with no real improvement at all, though franks have been improved by far.
every single civ that got a new early game boost or had some boost before has so much more power over the game. this gives them dominance over the weaker civilizations.
walls build more slowly. buildings have less HP.
if you have a civilization that is weak in the early ages, you will have a harder time defending. this is less balanced.
houses cost less.
if you have a civilization that is strong at massing many units (i.e. the overpowered civilizations), you get to be even more overpowered. this is less balanced.
boost to units like cavalry archers / longswords / fireships / monks / castle age buildings / castle age fishing boats. guess which civilizations benefit the most from this? the overpowered ones. while the weaker civilizations are stuck in earlier ages or making static defenses or losing their fish, the strong ones have access to a stronger arsenal and have more options to dominate the game. this is less balanced.
when the game is fundamentally about who has a stronger army or a stronger economy, then civilizations without important boosts just cannot compete.
goth / frank / teuton / korea / turk / slav / magyar are still absolutely useless on water maps.
celt / japan / aztec / viking / hun / mongol / brit / persia / saracen are still OP on water maps.
korea / turk are just as useless as before on land maps. there are more civilizations which seem to have no viable role outside of very specific settings (eg. India with shorefish)
aztecs were very strong at galley rushing or arena games. now they are even better
mongol are just as OP as before on a map with lots of deer/boar
and there are lots of civilizations that are maybe slightly better than turk/korea, but still not good enough to compete with the top civs. they remain underpowered... spain. goths. teuton. persia. byzantine
even civs that were helped slightly like china and saracen are still not good enough to face huns/mayans/aztecs/celts/mongols
making japan / viking / briton stronger actually creates imbalance because half the civs are even worse than they are.
and these are just some of the issues... there are many more
I do agree with many points Biz. Im not a fan of the building HP change, especially how u get back a lot of HP because you castled.
The main point you raise seems to be that overpowered civs are now even more so because of walling/building HP nerfs. To know whether the nerfs for the OP civs have outweighed the indirect boosts, we have to take a look at these OP civs specifically. (in no particular order)
Huns: 25 wood for houses means now their bonus loses out by 5 wood per house. Certainly in the eco department, FE is a net loss for huns, not even taking into account CA nerf and no stonewall thing(was it removed?)
Aztecs: It is a shame that by not looming Aztecs get to be even more OP(by a little) in the monk rush department on arena, since they have 50 extra gold if they dont loom. On arabia, you have to loom and this stalls the aztec villager lead, which is basically like 8 res per every pop(10 res is assumed to take 30 sec to gather) after loom is done, that definitely offsets the wall nerf if we assume the other civ has to wall and azt dont.
Celts: Sadly no nerfs, and Biz's theory holds true here. However, the target buildings in a walled town are usually palisade walls and they are still the same strength (unless you used houses to wall off entire town).
Mayans: Not enough nerf for early part of game (actually none at all until plumes appear), and maybe still insufficient for late game. In short Mayan OPness stands out a little more early, and later on they are indeed nerfed which is definitely not satisfactory.
Koreans suck, what makes it worse is that their earliest decent bonus that is +1 mangonel range is removed in favour of a rather dubious bonus. Fortifications build faster is nothing really- neither in its quality, or quantity- spain bonus dominates it.
So I'd say Biz is partly right about what he says, but not fully, because he seems to overestimate the problem due to building HP nerf. He is definitely wrong in my opinion on some counts, however it is worthwhile to note how AOFE dont satisfactorily balance the game on a deeper look and i feel it could have been much better with more thought.
BuzZ_Quiller said:I´m very happy about it, I don´t see why anyone would be unhappy about an expansion as long as you aren´t forced to play it.