AOE-II DE We need to boycott the new civs - call for (peaceful) action

[Kellar]

Without testing Im guessing they perform better against ranged units now and in theory shouldn't be that powerful fighting the cavalry.

Yes.

Probably worse in low numbers, better in high (the infamous double castle arambai is better than ever)

 

[RainbowDemon]

honestly i don't think the new civs are completely busted.
yeah the Burgundians get a couple nice power spikes but they lack bloodlines and if they research their two unique techs too early they don't really do anything for them really.
their unique unit will without a doubt get nerfed. Flemish Revolution should be watched for early Imp timings and Vineyards should be watched for using it in late imperial, and they can be adjusted if problematic.

Sicilians my only concern with them is their Unique Tech spawning 50 units at once, which also should get nerfed. but you can slow them down by tower rushing them (which forces them to basically build a donjon, eating all their stone), and slowing their boom down.

Magyars get a power spike. Burgundians get a medieval nuke.

 

[Instinctz]

Magyars get a power spike. Burgundians get a medieval nuke.

they literally get Lithuanian knights in castle age with +2 relics. that's literally it. and it comes at the cost of two knights basically. so you have to ask yourself if you want 2 extra knights or cavalier when you research it. ergo its not a good upgrade to get the second you hit castle age. timing is everything.

the paladin bump is a bit more substantial but they fall off compared to other civs paladins and their unique techs have to be used wisely.

 

[Marteens]

they literally get Lithuanian knights in castle age with +2 relics. that's literally it. and it comes at the cost of two knights basically. so you have to ask yourself if you want 2 extra knights or cavalier when you research it. ergo its not a good upgrade to get the second you hit castle age. timing is everything.

the paladin bump is a bit more substantial but they fall off compared to other civs paladins and their unique techs have to be used wisely.

You need to fight to get the relics, you might get them or not. And that's not literally it, as cav and paladin have more HP than a knight or cav.

 

[Akos04]

Because it's so hard to get two Relics.

 

[RainbowDemon]

they literally get Lithuanian knights in castle age with +2 relics. that's literally it. and it comes at the cost of two knights basically. so you have to ask yourself if you want 2 extra knights or cavalier when you research it. ergo its not a good upgrade to get the second you hit castle age. timing is everything.

the paladin bump is a bit more substantial but they fall off compared to other civs paladins and their unique techs have to be used wisely.

200 wood monastery + build time, 200 gold to produce monks that take a lifetime, plus the work and time to get the relics, not to mention the risk of monks getting killed.
If you want to compare that to 150 F 150 G from the safety of your base, then go ahead. It's nowhere close.
The closest thing you have is Magyars, who actually have instant Bloodlines +2 Knights, but that's all they have. All the Burgundian has to do is research Forging beforehand, plus abuse the cheap Husbandry, and their cavs are stronger than Magyar knights, who are pretty strong to begin with.
Also, their Paladins get weaker later on, but does it matter when you can outspam the opponent due to gold cheating?

 

[tissuepapercatmat]

this is a game that has sold millions of copies. About 20k folks are above average ELO on the ladder. That would suggest that the vast majority play for fun - vs AI, doing the campaigns etc, playing with friends. Remember that the "serious" players are standing on the shoulders of all those who play for fun - there's no way the scene would exist without them spending their money. For those type of players (of which I'm one, despite playing online a bit to get my impressive 825 ELO!) this DLC is unambigiously "fun" - it's going to be a hoot for a month or so for everyone who doesn;t care about ELo. Look at all the whacky stuff they have in it and all the DLC. Then it'll calm down and be patched and in a few months time, no-one at all will care, even the serious people.

Let's put this into perspective. I bought the discs back in the nineties and played this game all day every weekend for more than a decade. I have 1350 hours of HD on steam, 435 hours of DE. this year with pandemic I have watched AOE on twitch for more than 2 months!! I'm still to pay more than a total of $200 dollars on the game that I've been playing very heavily for over 20 years. The 10 bucks for this DLC will work out about a penny an hour and it's going to help keep the game healthy and alive

 

[Instinctz]

You need to fight to get the relics, you might get them or not. And that's not literally it, as cav and paladin have more HP than a knight or cav.

cavalier without bloodlines is 120 hp. guess what tech Burgundians lack?

 

[Bourne2Die]

Since ranked will be unplayable and we will only see 1-2 civs picked in top level play for a while now, i was wondering if the community could actively work together to show Microsoft one big finger that we will not tolerate an utter destruction of balance for their financial benefit ...
We all expected it, but these civs will have 65% till the next hotfix and we don't even know if it will go beyond this.
It would be really nice if we would pull streamers, who are not yet part of the Microsoft Monopol, to speak up against this way of DLCs.

have you even played the new civs? or is this just some hypothetical rant? i expected the civs to be insanely broken, from what they announced before the release. but it actually is not that bad.

if i think about high level 1v1 i expect sicilians to just be irrelevant. donjons and serjants will be too expensive to commit to in castle age. serjants are really weak in castle age. you need the elite upgrade for them to be any usefull (they are quite op then tho) and that is quite expensive. but i dont see sicilians get to that position in many games. more likely they will just die to trushes due to the lack of watch towers. but if you get to 5 tcs, elite serjant and the 50 free units it is very broken. and since you were always that vocal about changing something in the water balance you should be loving the tank transports. the gold tech sounds fancy aswell, but if you are in a spot to spent that many resources to get some gold back i think the game is won anyways. a bit of a different storry for teamgames, but with a small reduction of the gold you get per unit it should be fairly balanced.

burgundians is a bit different. they might be good on closed maps, but on open maps i do not think they are that impressive. half cost cavalier upgrade in castle age is not that crazy. but the early imp power spike with paladins might be very scary and turn them into one of the few civs that can actually go for paladins in 1v1s (something that i heard a lot of people ask for many times). also the uniqe unit did not seem to be that op to me. in straight up fights it doesnt have the strongest stats, but it is crazy for raiding since you one shot villagers. the UT to get gold for food might be really good in late game, when gold runs out. but the biggest issue with the civ is the flemish revolution. i expected this to be a meme thing only, but i saw MBL trying it for the first time and it looked absolutely insane (as long as you face a mainly cav army).

in general i think that both civs are mainly meme civs in TGs. None of both civs has crazy eco bonusses, neither do they have really strong units to go to in castle age. they need to drag it out to imp and even there i do not see sicilians that strong if they do not kill one player with the 50 free unit power spike. and i dont think that should happen too often in TGs. burgundians only shine in early imp, when they might be able to get pala a bit earlier than other civs can. but it still is a rather weak pala.

for me the scariest thing of this upgrade are - as kellar mentioned - arambai, because by trying to nerf them they got buffed by a lot. at least they are a bit weaker vs buildings but i guess it still is not enough. i even felt that way before having to play against them. i don't understand how a unit that has like no accuracy should get nerfed by having 100% damage on splash damage. very questionable for me.

and for everyone complaining about the 10$: if you have enough money to own a pc that can run the game you should also have 10$ spare.

 

[Nicov]

The 2 new civs will be just average/mediocre as soon as the devs remove or nerf the obvious dumb things like spamming 150 military units in 1 second or an unique unit with +44 damage among a few other things.

They are not broken at all.

 

[Bladesman]

If they only nerf the UU unit, they will still be the best civ in the game. How can you compete with the eco techs and early cav. I am interested to hear your thoughts. The obvious thing to do would be to make maa/arch/towers vs them. (On Open maps)

 

[Bourne2Die]

If they only nerf the UU unit, they will still be the best civ in the game. How can you compete with the eco techs and early cav. I am interested to hear your thoughts. The obvious thing to do would be to make maa/arch/towers vs them. (On Open maps)

early eco upgrades delay your castle age and extra tcs by quite a bit. and as many people have said before: cav sounds more broken than it actually is. it is just a knight with 2 extra attack. nothing that lithuanians can not do.

 

[Bladesman]

I have played them and they feel so good. Yeah i heard about Liths, no wonder i lost to them twice. Never noticed it haha.

 

[Sticky Ice Cream]

The 2 new civs will be just average/mediocre as soon as the devs remove or nerf the obvious dumb things like spamming 150 military units in 1 second or an unique unit with +44 damage among a few other things.

They are not broken at all.

That's part of the criticism, you know. Which is the civs are OP on purpose at first to coax people into buying the DLC, but then are made nothing special at best to useless at worse, pulling a "bait and switch." What you say will happen. Though what you say will happen also feeds the critics' narrative, to be fair.

 

[[KoBHV]venivero]

I tried the "new Arambai" they are inded reasonable against kts and xbow, but they lost a lot of their punch against buildings. Killing a TC with 20 Arambai was no problem, now the damage per volley is 5 instead of 10. I think is is a good change.

 

[[KoBHV]venivero]

.. are you all so focused on your ELO? Don't you think people play the new civ, because they want to try new fun strats and stuff, and not for "pay to win"?

 

[oozkan]

They should implement some kind of live beta testing period with new civs before they get nerfed and they shouldn't be allowed in ranking games during that period.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

They should implement some kind of live beta testing period with new civs before they get nerfed and they shouldn't be allowed in ranking games during that period.

This is a great idea. It would also allow players to catch the gamebreaking bugs that seem to get regularly introduced with new updates.

 

[nanimaren]

@Deathcounter , thats for u! but seriously i tell u one simple thing: i can agree with some of ur rant and i can say 99% i think u right if u think microsoft prefers money over make people happy, but that s all rich companies i guess, do u think redbull really cares about health of custumers? I guess u cannot expect players that just play for fun to start some civil movement for a buggy game, is not fair but i mean who really care that much?
I love the game but still i think there are worse thing in the world and i guess most people here are like me.
I guess i ll prefer u to protest against redbull tournaments at least.
cheers

 

[Zbyszek]

I fine with paying the 10 dollars no matter what but from what ive seen and tried these civs are completely broken.
And I dont really want to ever have them as an integral part of the game.

Sicilian Transport ships in water fights will be insane. On land maps they will be fine against versitile civs I assume although i havent tested the Searjant/donjon-Strats. But whats clear is that in some maptchups against civs that rely on counter units like halbs they will be absolutely broken.

Burgundians might be ballanced because just a broken UU doesnt make a civ OP like seen with Mongols or Lithuanians. However I am still testing the flemish Militia. On paper their stats are absolutely insane. And if you could produce them without comepletely destroying your eco they would clearly be OP. But its just not clear to me yet if you can ever to afford to make them in a close game.

 

[AoeWololo]

I'm more worried about the silly nature of these bonusses rather than if they are balanced or not. That on top of the fact that this game really does not need any more civs to dillute the game. Cysion you really dissapoint me. I already fear what civs the next DLC will bring.

 

[Paint]

This “it’s just Lithuanians with 2 relics” argument is the stupidest thing I have heard all day... Cavalier attack faster and can’t be stopped by some scouts camping next to the relics. Also 2 relic give +10000 attack.

 

[Marteens]

I'm more worried about the silly nature of these bonusses rather than if they are balanced or not. That on top of the fact that this game really does not need any more civs to dillute the game. Cysion you really dissapoint me. I already fear what civs the next DLC will bring.

Arbalest is Castle Age. Obviously. But, no thumbring.

 

[HelloWorld]

I'm more worried about the silly nature of these bonusses rather than if they are balanced or not. That on top of the fact that this game really does not need any more civs to dillute the game. Cysion you really dissapoint me. I already fear what civs the next DLC will bring.

The bonuses are just copied from AoE3 and AoM. That's why it is so silly. It might fit those games but there is no place for these civs here.

 

[green eggs]

I tried the "new Arambai" they are inded reasonable against kts and xbow, but they lost a lot of their punch against buildings. Killing a TC with 20 Arambai was no problem, now the damage per volley is 5 instead of 10. I think is is a good change.

Yup, imagine destroying a building by throwing a few darts at the walls. If that were at all realistic then every pub in Britain would have burned down and collapsed long ago.