Most important suggestion is making it easier to use monks in late game. Would like to know how 'pros' would feel about the change. Although I think the other changes would be good, they are not as interesting and I wouldn't be insulted if someone said "I didn't bother to read all the suggested balance changes and I think balance is fine".
Main change: make it possible to give commands to single units in a group through hotkeys. Main applications: makes monks usable in late imperial with 150+ pop, and lets you make mangonels in a group fire at different locations and different times.
Implementation A, flawed (doesn't work for mangonels): hotkey that drops one unit at a time from the current selection.
Implementation B: hotkey that highlights or focuses 'next unit' in the current group. Commands only affect this unit. Another hotkey returns to giving commands to the entire group.
Imlementation C: modifier key that makes special commands for a unit type, like Attack Ground and Convert, affect only one unit in the current group. A command input affects the first unit that is not already performing this action. (Monks with no faith would be skipped.)
Effect of change: monks potentially counter most expensive units, but are currently too difficult to use in this role. Scout units would become useful in imperial age even in team games with heavy trade. Harder to reach a snowball, as monks could counter heavy cavalry, scout cavalry counter monks, pikemen counter scout cavalry, and many things counter pikemen.
Minor changes:
Change garrisoned arrow calculation so that each unit has a calculated damage of at least 5+upgrades, equal to a town center arrow or watch tower without Arrowslits.
Examples:
Five villagers garrisoned in a TC would always give five arrows, instead of current game where they give only two arrows to a TC with 5+4 attack.
Three archers garrisoned in a watch tower would give three arrows, up from two currently.
Skirmishers would get credit for one arrow every 3 seconds (reload time for skirmishers). Buildings have reload time of 2, so five skirmishers in a watch tower would give 5*2/3 = 3 extra arrows.
Special case: let Teutonic infantry with Crenellations researched do weapon damage-per-second as arrows, up from doing 5 damage (same as a villager). Examples:
Halberdier does 10 damage in 3 sec, or 3.33 dps. Watch tower or TC with Bodkin arrow and Chemistry does 8 damage every 2 sec, or 4 dps. Just ignore the halberdier reload time here, since that's melee attack and not ranged, and give halberdiers credit for 4 dps. 8 halberdiers garrisoned in a Teutonic watch tower would add 8 arrows (the maximum for Teutons). 8 halberdiers garrisoned in a castle with 11+3 attack would add 4 arrows (rounded down from 4.57).
Champion does 13+4 damage in 2 sec, or 8.5 dps. Compare to Elite Janissary at 6.4 dps or Elite Arambai at 9.5 dps. 10 champions garrisoned in a Teutonic Bombard Tower would add 3 extra cannonballs, compared to 10 Elite Janissaries adding 2.
Elite Teutonic Knight does 17+4 damage in 2 sec, or 10.5 dps. 10 Elite Teutonic Knights garrisoned in a castle with Crenellations would add 15 arrows.
Result of letting Teutonic infantry do weapon dps when garrisoned with Crenellations: Teutons are stronger. Revert the buff to Teutonic Knight speed that brought them from 0.7 to 0.8, which lets Teutonic Knights retain their identity as a very slow, but powerful unit.
Special case: fix Chu Ko Nu garrisoned damage. They currently use the damage of their arrow projectile, which does 3 damage, making them only better when garrisoned than feudal-age skirmishers. Kipchaks probably suffer from the same bug. If Ballista Elephants add arrows when garrisoned, they should have this bug too.
Result of increasing arrows fired while garrisoned for many units, particularly villagers in imperial age: garrisoning villagers in imperial age is more beneficial. Watch towers become more useful. Math:
Huns vs Huns, paladins vs watch towers. If 5 villagers garrison in a watch tower or TC with 5+4 attack, they currently add 2 extra arrows. This does 4 damage to a paladin with 3+4 armor in about 2 seconds (maybe 2.2 seconds). In one minute, that's 120 damage, or 2/3 a paladin's health. This is worth 90 resources. In the same minute, 5 villagers could have collected about 120 resources. Conclusion: it is not cost-efficient to garrison to attack a paladin that's idle on no-attack stance, because your opponent can make new paladins faster than the garrisoned TC can kill them.
With this change, there would be 5 extra arrows instead of 2. This would result in 300 damage in one minute (or maybe 240 damage since extra arrows slow reload time). It is now cost-efficient to garrison (unless playing on Turbo Mode with 2.5x gather speed).
Balance changes to specific techs and units:
Celtic Castle-age unique tech Stronghold should not reduce the number of arrows from garrisoned units. If 10 crossbowmen garrisoned in a castle add 5 arrows before researching Stronghold, they should continue to add 5 arrows after Stronghold, with the faster castle reload time.
Scorpions should do a small amount of bonus damage to ships and buildings, like Ballista Elephants do. They should also do more bonus damage to rams, like +4/+7 (heavy), up from +1/+2; this is reduced by ram armor on capped and siege rams. In addition to the 0 melee damage that does 3 damage to rams without the Ironclad tech, this makes them do about as much as an Organ Gun (9 damage).
Ballista Elephants should do an extra 2 damage and have a slower reload time. Elite Ballista Elephants should do an extra 3 damage over current, since they don't benefit from Bracer. Makes them not so heavily countered by high pierce armor units like Huskarls, paladins, Tarkans, Elephant Archers, Eagle Warriors, Rattan Archers, and to an extent skirmishers with the Imperial or Tower Shields upgrades. Instead of 1 damage vs an Elite Huskarl, Elite Ballista Elephants would now do 3 damage, or 4 damage with extra bolt from Double Crossbow.
Elephant archers should have reload time of 2, not 2.5. Due to lack of bonus damage and slower reload, a castle-age elephant archer takes 79% longer than a crossbowman to kill a pikeman, despite costing 2.57 times as much and costing food, which is harder to collect in early castle than wood and gold. A battle elephant does more damage than a knight, but an elephant archer currently does less damage than a cavalry archer. A pikeman in castle age can kill 1.39 elephant archers without thumb ring, but only 0.56 battle elephants.
Chu Ko Nus and Kipchaks should do 1 damage per extra projectile to rams, not 3 damage. Hand Cannoneers should do the same bonus damage to rams as Conquistadors. Overall, the effectiveness of rams as a way to soak arrow fire against units that don't list a bonus vs siege in their description should be more consistent.
Siege rams should get 1 ram armor, down from 2. Conquistadors should get +3/+4 (elite) bonus vs rams, down from +4/+6 (elite). Hand Cannoneers should get +3, up from +2, and Janissaries +3/+4 (elite), up from +2/+3.
Arrowslits should increase watch tower and guard tower damage by +3, instead of +1 and +2.
Obsidian Arrows should add 6 bonus damage vs towers, not 12. Similarly with various units that do twice as much bonus vs towers as against all other buildings.
Either remove Mameluke armor class or give Flaming Camels a bonus vs it. Flaming Camels should have a small bonus against rams and ships.
Remove the hidden -2 armor amounts for Cavalry, War elephant, and Siege weapon armor classes for Ballista Elephants. If necessary, nerf them some other way. Why should castle-age Eagle Warriors do +3 bonus damage vs War Elephants and Battle Elephants, but +10 bonus vs Ballista Elephants? This is a huge difference. Are they supposed to heavily counter elephants or not?
Math: with the -2 armors, an Eagle Warrior with all castle-age upgrades (cost: 70) kills 1.48 Ballista Elephants (cost: 180) or 1 light cavalry (cost: 80). A pikeman (cost: 60) kills 1.67 Ballista Elephants or 1.33 light cavalry (when faced successively, second light cav would have 28 or 2 hp left due to swing timers). Without the -2 armors, Eagle Warrior kills 1.13 Ballista Elephants and pikeman kills 1.39 Ballista Elephants. So Ballista Elephants would still be easier to kill than a unit that costs 44% as much.
If Ballista Elephants had +2 attack but reload slowed to 3 sec and no armor penalties, Eagle Warrior would kill 0.79 Ballista Elephants while pikeman kills 1.17 Ballista Elephants. For further comparison, the single Eagle Warrior kills 0.83 War Wagons (cost: 154, no thumb ring), 0.76 Elephant Archers (cost: 180, 2.5 sec reload), 0.36 knights (cost: 135), 0.18 Battle Elephants (cost: 190, has splash/trample damage), or 0.08 War Elephants (cost: 275, has splash/trample damage).
A final change that could affect balance in mid game: make box formation more useful by not using the size of the largest unit for spacing. Currently, if siege weapons are in the center of the formation, units on the outside use a wide spacing. If they used close ranks, they could prevent other units from reaching the siege weapons at the center of the formation.
(Possible bug: hard for units chasing a ram to garrison in it?)
Main change: make it possible to give commands to single units in a group through hotkeys. Main applications: makes monks usable in late imperial with 150+ pop, and lets you make mangonels in a group fire at different locations and different times.
Implementation A, flawed (doesn't work for mangonels): hotkey that drops one unit at a time from the current selection.
Implementation B: hotkey that highlights or focuses 'next unit' in the current group. Commands only affect this unit. Another hotkey returns to giving commands to the entire group.
Imlementation C: modifier key that makes special commands for a unit type, like Attack Ground and Convert, affect only one unit in the current group. A command input affects the first unit that is not already performing this action. (Monks with no faith would be skipped.)
Effect of change: monks potentially counter most expensive units, but are currently too difficult to use in this role. Scout units would become useful in imperial age even in team games with heavy trade. Harder to reach a snowball, as monks could counter heavy cavalry, scout cavalry counter monks, pikemen counter scout cavalry, and many things counter pikemen.
Minor changes:
Change garrisoned arrow calculation so that each unit has a calculated damage of at least 5+upgrades, equal to a town center arrow or watch tower without Arrowslits.
Examples:
Five villagers garrisoned in a TC would always give five arrows, instead of current game where they give only two arrows to a TC with 5+4 attack.
Three archers garrisoned in a watch tower would give three arrows, up from two currently.
Skirmishers would get credit for one arrow every 3 seconds (reload time for skirmishers). Buildings have reload time of 2, so five skirmishers in a watch tower would give 5*2/3 = 3 extra arrows.
Special case: let Teutonic infantry with Crenellations researched do weapon damage-per-second as arrows, up from doing 5 damage (same as a villager). Examples:
Halberdier does 10 damage in 3 sec, or 3.33 dps. Watch tower or TC with Bodkin arrow and Chemistry does 8 damage every 2 sec, or 4 dps. Just ignore the halberdier reload time here, since that's melee attack and not ranged, and give halberdiers credit for 4 dps. 8 halberdiers garrisoned in a Teutonic watch tower would add 8 arrows (the maximum for Teutons). 8 halberdiers garrisoned in a castle with 11+3 attack would add 4 arrows (rounded down from 4.57).
Champion does 13+4 damage in 2 sec, or 8.5 dps. Compare to Elite Janissary at 6.4 dps or Elite Arambai at 9.5 dps. 10 champions garrisoned in a Teutonic Bombard Tower would add 3 extra cannonballs, compared to 10 Elite Janissaries adding 2.
Elite Teutonic Knight does 17+4 damage in 2 sec, or 10.5 dps. 10 Elite Teutonic Knights garrisoned in a castle with Crenellations would add 15 arrows.
Result of letting Teutonic infantry do weapon dps when garrisoned with Crenellations: Teutons are stronger. Revert the buff to Teutonic Knight speed that brought them from 0.7 to 0.8, which lets Teutonic Knights retain their identity as a very slow, but powerful unit.
Special case: fix Chu Ko Nu garrisoned damage. They currently use the damage of their arrow projectile, which does 3 damage, making them only better when garrisoned than feudal-age skirmishers. Kipchaks probably suffer from the same bug. If Ballista Elephants add arrows when garrisoned, they should have this bug too.
Result of increasing arrows fired while garrisoned for many units, particularly villagers in imperial age: garrisoning villagers in imperial age is more beneficial. Watch towers become more useful. Math:
Huns vs Huns, paladins vs watch towers. If 5 villagers garrison in a watch tower or TC with 5+4 attack, they currently add 2 extra arrows. This does 4 damage to a paladin with 3+4 armor in about 2 seconds (maybe 2.2 seconds). In one minute, that's 120 damage, or 2/3 a paladin's health. This is worth 90 resources. In the same minute, 5 villagers could have collected about 120 resources. Conclusion: it is not cost-efficient to garrison to attack a paladin that's idle on no-attack stance, because your opponent can make new paladins faster than the garrisoned TC can kill them.
With this change, there would be 5 extra arrows instead of 2. This would result in 300 damage in one minute (or maybe 240 damage since extra arrows slow reload time). It is now cost-efficient to garrison (unless playing on Turbo Mode with 2.5x gather speed).
Balance changes to specific techs and units:
Celtic Castle-age unique tech Stronghold should not reduce the number of arrows from garrisoned units. If 10 crossbowmen garrisoned in a castle add 5 arrows before researching Stronghold, they should continue to add 5 arrows after Stronghold, with the faster castle reload time.
Scorpions should do a small amount of bonus damage to ships and buildings, like Ballista Elephants do. They should also do more bonus damage to rams, like +4/+7 (heavy), up from +1/+2; this is reduced by ram armor on capped and siege rams. In addition to the 0 melee damage that does 3 damage to rams without the Ironclad tech, this makes them do about as much as an Organ Gun (9 damage).
Ballista Elephants should do an extra 2 damage and have a slower reload time. Elite Ballista Elephants should do an extra 3 damage over current, since they don't benefit from Bracer. Makes them not so heavily countered by high pierce armor units like Huskarls, paladins, Tarkans, Elephant Archers, Eagle Warriors, Rattan Archers, and to an extent skirmishers with the Imperial or Tower Shields upgrades. Instead of 1 damage vs an Elite Huskarl, Elite Ballista Elephants would now do 3 damage, or 4 damage with extra bolt from Double Crossbow.
Elephant archers should have reload time of 2, not 2.5. Due to lack of bonus damage and slower reload, a castle-age elephant archer takes 79% longer than a crossbowman to kill a pikeman, despite costing 2.57 times as much and costing food, which is harder to collect in early castle than wood and gold. A battle elephant does more damage than a knight, but an elephant archer currently does less damage than a cavalry archer. A pikeman in castle age can kill 1.39 elephant archers without thumb ring, but only 0.56 battle elephants.
Chu Ko Nus and Kipchaks should do 1 damage per extra projectile to rams, not 3 damage. Hand Cannoneers should do the same bonus damage to rams as Conquistadors. Overall, the effectiveness of rams as a way to soak arrow fire against units that don't list a bonus vs siege in their description should be more consistent.
Siege rams should get 1 ram armor, down from 2. Conquistadors should get +3/+4 (elite) bonus vs rams, down from +4/+6 (elite). Hand Cannoneers should get +3, up from +2, and Janissaries +3/+4 (elite), up from +2/+3.
Arrowslits should increase watch tower and guard tower damage by +3, instead of +1 and +2.
Obsidian Arrows should add 6 bonus damage vs towers, not 12. Similarly with various units that do twice as much bonus vs towers as against all other buildings.
Either remove Mameluke armor class or give Flaming Camels a bonus vs it. Flaming Camels should have a small bonus against rams and ships.
Remove the hidden -2 armor amounts for Cavalry, War elephant, and Siege weapon armor classes for Ballista Elephants. If necessary, nerf them some other way. Why should castle-age Eagle Warriors do +3 bonus damage vs War Elephants and Battle Elephants, but +10 bonus vs Ballista Elephants? This is a huge difference. Are they supposed to heavily counter elephants or not?
Math: with the -2 armors, an Eagle Warrior with all castle-age upgrades (cost: 70) kills 1.48 Ballista Elephants (cost: 180) or 1 light cavalry (cost: 80). A pikeman (cost: 60) kills 1.67 Ballista Elephants or 1.33 light cavalry (when faced successively, second light cav would have 28 or 2 hp left due to swing timers). Without the -2 armors, Eagle Warrior kills 1.13 Ballista Elephants and pikeman kills 1.39 Ballista Elephants. So Ballista Elephants would still be easier to kill than a unit that costs 44% as much.
If Ballista Elephants had +2 attack but reload slowed to 3 sec and no armor penalties, Eagle Warrior would kill 0.79 Ballista Elephants while pikeman kills 1.17 Ballista Elephants. For further comparison, the single Eagle Warrior kills 0.83 War Wagons (cost: 154, no thumb ring), 0.76 Elephant Archers (cost: 180, 2.5 sec reload), 0.36 knights (cost: 135), 0.18 Battle Elephants (cost: 190, has splash/trample damage), or 0.08 War Elephants (cost: 275, has splash/trample damage).
A final change that could affect balance in mid game: make box formation more useful by not using the size of the largest unit for spacing. Currently, if siege weapons are in the center of the formation, units on the outside use a wide spacing. If they used close ranks, they could prevent other units from reaching the siege weapons at the center of the formation.
(Possible bug: hard for units chasing a ram to garrison in it?)
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