So far, DE has done a pretty decent job balancing civs for 1v1 and TG, but not without making new civs OP. Some civs desperatly needs to be adressed in TG without nerfing them too bad in 1v1 (because tg and 1v1 are 2 totally different arenas for civ balance)
Khmer is just simply way too freaking strong on arabia. If the map is teamwallable, nothing stops Khmer assisted by crossbows from flank. Too many games have my team been super far behind, or ahead in early castle age only to stomp or get stomped with or by elephants vs a khmer or with a khmer when only 1 player has them. Theres seemingly no reason it should happen, but it always seem to happen when the teams are balanced but civs are different.. The fact that they outrun archers and crossbow even without huspandry is just crazy. This combined with their crazy farmers and the wood they save on no barracks, market and so on (which are fun and unique bonuses and hould be kept).
Khmer is also probably the #1 civ you would pick for your boomer in most other maps in a 4v4, such as Arena, Oasis, Scandi and Hill fort as no other civ can compete. 30 elite battle elephants at minute 32, how to stop that? 11. They are always being picked by serious teams and frankly, if you want to optimize, you would probably just go double Khmer a lot of the times.
Suggestions how to fix Khmer for TG:
- Reduce elephant speed bonus a lot. Maybe down to 5% or 7%.
- Remove the +4 defence upgrade from blacksmith, but add to their unique tech from castle +1 pierce armor to elephants / +1/+2 armor to Hussars and Cavaliers to keep them about the same in 1v1s. This is to make the elephants more balanced in early imp in teamgames where you cant just make halbs to kill the huge army of Ferrari Elephants.
Indians: Their villager food reduction bonus is too big in my opinion. Every time you are not Khmer, franks or persia against an india, you will just be so far behind by default, its not even funny. The higher up the ladder you go, the bigger you will notice the difference. Again, this is for teamgame is a situation where your flank will have crossbows.
Also, of you pick indians pocket and ask your flank to go full yolo tower rush with incas and then go crossbows later, theres just nothing the other pocket can do to keep up unless he is Khmer or persia.
Example: You are Lithuanians pocket. I am Indians pocket. For every villager I create in dark age, you have to idle a farmer for 5 food (about 13sec). For every vil I make in feudal age, you have to idle a farmer for 7 food (about 20 sec), and for every vil I make in castle, you have to idle a farmer for 10 food (about 27 sec) and im imp, its 25% but its not such a big deal at this point. But its still a lot of food saved as you usually create another 30 vills in imp. This is not even considering the wood you save on the lack of farms you need to get the same amount of food that you save with indians bonus, and the fact that your farms will last longer if you idle the vills like that, and if you do the math you save about 1000 food by the time you normally click imp, which snowballs to much bigger numbers because it starts off early, and is not all given to you by the time you wanna click imp.
All of this combined with +1 pierce armor on your castle age camels, allowing you to get +3 armor camels in castle age (one less total pierce armor than +2 kts) and Imperial camel which is a crazy unit.
Maybe move all the numbers up one age and remove the 25% bonus?
Another way to help fix this could be to give unique and fun buffs to other civs, and maybe give byzantines bloodlines? lol
Don't get me wrong, its fun to play Khmers and just dominate vs players you should lose to every game, but whenever I or my team mate choose any other civ, and we face any of the power civs above, we just get heavily punished. The game feels a bit like a joke sometimes as theres just nothing u can do even vs players you would beat quite easily with the proper civ settup. Especially if vs a Khmer. Aleast Indians arent that strong overall. And there are ways to stop indians like having your pocket feudal rush the flank and have your flank focus on massing xbow (although pockets can just switch sides), while the only way to stop Khmer is to have your flank be massively ahead, raid or do monks, none of which works in even skilled games if the map is somewhat teamwallable, and the flank makes xbow to kill off the monks.
Indians and Khmer also complement each other perfectly, as khmer is weak to getting raided by kts, but indians can help so easily with a few camels.
I get it. The devs have a lot of work to do. Bugs to fix and trying to not make the game even more bugged, to focus on balancing every aspect of the game for every player. Maybe this is just something they can keep in mind for the future if they want more than 4 civs to be played over and over again in serious 4v4 land map matchups. It's completely fine that the game isnt perfectly balanced. Some civs should be weak early, strong mid, or strong late game but weak early, but the difference is way too big between some civs atm, and most of the weak civs have no strongpoints during any time of the game, making most civs completely useless for most situations.
Khmer is just simply way too freaking strong on arabia. If the map is teamwallable, nothing stops Khmer assisted by crossbows from flank. Too many games have my team been super far behind, or ahead in early castle age only to stomp or get stomped with or by elephants vs a khmer or with a khmer when only 1 player has them. Theres seemingly no reason it should happen, but it always seem to happen when the teams are balanced but civs are different.. The fact that they outrun archers and crossbow even without huspandry is just crazy. This combined with their crazy farmers and the wood they save on no barracks, market and so on (which are fun and unique bonuses and hould be kept).
Khmer is also probably the #1 civ you would pick for your boomer in most other maps in a 4v4, such as Arena, Oasis, Scandi and Hill fort as no other civ can compete. 30 elite battle elephants at minute 32, how to stop that? 11. They are always being picked by serious teams and frankly, if you want to optimize, you would probably just go double Khmer a lot of the times.
Suggestions how to fix Khmer for TG:
- Reduce elephant speed bonus a lot. Maybe down to 5% or 7%.
- Remove the +4 defence upgrade from blacksmith, but add to their unique tech from castle +1 pierce armor to elephants / +1/+2 armor to Hussars and Cavaliers to keep them about the same in 1v1s. This is to make the elephants more balanced in early imp in teamgames where you cant just make halbs to kill the huge army of Ferrari Elephants.
Indians: Their villager food reduction bonus is too big in my opinion. Every time you are not Khmer, franks or persia against an india, you will just be so far behind by default, its not even funny. The higher up the ladder you go, the bigger you will notice the difference. Again, this is for teamgame is a situation where your flank will have crossbows.
Also, of you pick indians pocket and ask your flank to go full yolo tower rush with incas and then go crossbows later, theres just nothing the other pocket can do to keep up unless he is Khmer or persia.
Example: You are Lithuanians pocket. I am Indians pocket. For every villager I create in dark age, you have to idle a farmer for 5 food (about 13sec). For every vil I make in feudal age, you have to idle a farmer for 7 food (about 20 sec), and for every vil I make in castle, you have to idle a farmer for 10 food (about 27 sec) and im imp, its 25% but its not such a big deal at this point. But its still a lot of food saved as you usually create another 30 vills in imp. This is not even considering the wood you save on the lack of farms you need to get the same amount of food that you save with indians bonus, and the fact that your farms will last longer if you idle the vills like that, and if you do the math you save about 1000 food by the time you normally click imp, which snowballs to much bigger numbers because it starts off early, and is not all given to you by the time you wanna click imp.
All of this combined with +1 pierce armor on your castle age camels, allowing you to get +3 armor camels in castle age (one less total pierce armor than +2 kts) and Imperial camel which is a crazy unit.
Maybe move all the numbers up one age and remove the 25% bonus?
Another way to help fix this could be to give unique and fun buffs to other civs, and maybe give byzantines bloodlines? lol
Don't get me wrong, its fun to play Khmers and just dominate vs players you should lose to every game, but whenever I or my team mate choose any other civ, and we face any of the power civs above, we just get heavily punished. The game feels a bit like a joke sometimes as theres just nothing u can do even vs players you would beat quite easily with the proper civ settup. Especially if vs a Khmer. Aleast Indians arent that strong overall. And there are ways to stop indians like having your pocket feudal rush the flank and have your flank focus on massing xbow (although pockets can just switch sides), while the only way to stop Khmer is to have your flank be massively ahead, raid or do monks, none of which works in even skilled games if the map is somewhat teamwallable, and the flank makes xbow to kill off the monks.
Indians and Khmer also complement each other perfectly, as khmer is weak to getting raided by kts, but indians can help so easily with a few camels.
I get it. The devs have a lot of work to do. Bugs to fix and trying to not make the game even more bugged, to focus on balancing every aspect of the game for every player. Maybe this is just something they can keep in mind for the future if they want more than 4 civs to be played over and over again in serious 4v4 land map matchups. It's completely fine that the game isnt perfectly balanced. Some civs should be weak early, strong mid, or strong late game but weak early, but the difference is way too big between some civs atm, and most of the weak civs have no strongpoints during any time of the game, making most civs completely useless for most situations.
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