Ports' vill cost — 90f

[momuuu]

The changes to dutch are magnificent really. People saying otherwise are honestly just not playing correctly.

[spanky4ever]

Im sorry for not being online here @jerom?

notification

what was the change of dutch from spring tournament when they where rated OP - to the last one? I think I need some education here: (here we go again tutoring some noobs) Sorry - I am a noob - just trying to understand your upset

[deleted_user]

Im sorry for not being online here @jerom?

notification

what was the change of dutch from lst tournament when they where rated OP? I think I need some education here: (here we go again toutoring some noobs) Sorry - I am a noob - just trying to understand your upset

Per the patch notes:

"Bank cost decreased from 350f, 350w to 350f, 300w. Bounties increased from 110xp to 130xp ("build") and 220xp to 260xp ("kill").

Bank base build-limit decreased from 6 to 5.

"Bank of Amsterdam" and "Bank of Rotterdam" home-city shipments both changed from +20% Bank coin auto-gathering rate to +1 Bank build-limit."

This is from the last version of EP, but the changes made to Dutch from RE is staggering. What the decreased wood allows them to do is save 200wood in their standard ff which gives them room for a tp or marker ups RE Dutch would never get. Increased bank limit is huge in this greedy meta where 700w, 600w, bank wagon = 5 banks relatively easily. And bank building xp has been increased compared to RE allowing them to send shipments quickly and even acts as a "free" age 2 shipment.

I would like to see the build limit back down to 4, personally, keeping the 300w cost and xp.

Four banks is still a mighty fine eco but not as insane as that 10/10 unit production from 4 military building eco we sometimes see with current Dutch. Having to invest cards into more banks would also improve their team balance which at the moment seems op.

Edit: I'd like to further my argument by adding the complaints about Dutch in RE were never that their 4 bank eco wasn't good enough; Dutch was always considered to be in a good position if they got up to age 3 and could spam skirm/ruyt with 4 banks. The issue was that the banks were a heavy investment that took awhile to pay off and left dutch vulnerable to age 2 and early age 3 timings. Cheaper banks and increased xp negates this to an extent, and a limit of 4 would still cap their age 3 eco.

[spanky4ever]

thx for the tourtoring @sircallen

notification

I guess they might have "overkilled" the duch?

[Garja]

Callen got it.

[lordraphael]

Im sorry for not being online here @jerom?

notification

what was the change of dutch from lst tournament when they where rated OP? I think I need some education here: (here we go again toutoring some noobs) Sorry - I am a noob - just trying to understand your upset

Per the patch notes:

"Bank cost decreased from 350f, 350w to 350f, 300w. Bounties increased from 110xp to 130xp ("build") and 220xp to 260xp ("kill").

Bank base build-limit decreased from 6 to 5.

"Bank of Amsterdam" and "Bank of Rotterdam" home-city shipments both changed from +20% Bank coin auto-gathering rate to +1 Bank build-limit."

This is from the last version of EP, but the changes made to Dutch from RE is staggering. What the decreased wood allows them to do is save 200wood in their standard ff which gives them room for a tp or marker ups RE Dutch would never get. Increased bank limit is huge in this greedy meta where 700w, 600w, bank wagon = 5 banks relatively easily. And bank building xp has been increased compared to RE allowing them to send shipments quickly and even acts as a "free" age 2 shipment.

I would like to see the build limit back down to 4, personally, keeping the 300w cost and xp.

Four banks is still a mighty fine eco but not as insane as that 10/10 unit production from 4 military building eco we sometimes see with current Dutch. Having to invest cards into more banks would also improve their team balance which at the moment seems op.

Edit: I'd like to further my argument by adding the complaints about Dutch in RE were never that their 4 bank eco wasn't good enough; Dutch was always considered to be in a good position if they got up to age 3 and could spam skirm/ruyt with 4 banks. The issue was that the banks were a heavy investment that took awhile to pay off and left dutch vulnerable to age 2 and early age 3 timings. Cheaper banks and increased xp negates this to an extent, and a limit of 4 would still cap their age 3 eco.

i played dutch recently their RE 4 bank eco is nothing special.

[deleted_user]

Hmmm. Welp. Im out of ideas. Decreasing bank building xp is now all I got.

[yemshi]

The 5th is usually quite some overkill. It was given so that Dutch had a longlasting option to outboom other booms such as VC Brit or ATP Port etc., or at least to not be miles down if being untouched. They are a boom civ after all.
In most games you squeeze it - if you acctually do so - in with the 1k wood.

[iNcog]

This is the port thread by the way.

Jerom you yourself you say that the proposed change itself would be very small, it's fine tuning more than anything. there's nothing wrong with fine tuning but I think patches shouldn't really be fine tuning anything at this point. there are bigger, more glaring imbalances than just ports so why not work on that? I'm still not a fan of the French and German nerfs and now it seems that we are in the mindset of "nerf every iteration" which is still, I maintain, not a proper mindset. Ports aren't free win (neither were French or Germans before).

Furthermore, game 2 of Raphael vs H2O shows that Raphael's Germans are ahead in score most of the early game and then the advantage goes to H2O (why did Rapha make war wagons btw? misread musk/huss?) because he had 4 TP stagecoach economy. I don't think that shows glaring Port imbalance, just that stagecoach is very strong.

So I maintain that Ports are neither too strong to consider nerfing nor is any civilization at this point really.

[spanky4ever]

sometimes the nerf or the buff is to much - I guess. Its hard to fine the line in between. you could be right @Jerom

notification

1. they made duch OP (to OP) 2. and then they got it wrong by going a step to far - in the wrong directon

[deleted_user]

There is no such thing as a "free win" civ anyways but I would argue that RE fre and ger gave a distinct advantage unless you opted for a mirror, which, isn't that what we saw mostly in high level tourney gameplay?

I am quite sure the EP team has already addressed the fact that nerfing civs is largely less popular than buffing them.

I'm still unsure how France has been nerfed into the ground. -100 food crate takes away the 13v 3 Huss age up but that was never really a factor in their semi ff builds, the most common of their builds. I'm quite sure their ff timings are near identical as before, just that now goons need to be microd more carefully and can't be used as a blind counter to colonial musks.

Also, RE ger was plain scary. No civ, none, I'm standing by this: no civ could match the amount of veteran, 2 pop, 200 resource, cavalry they had at 10 min.

Playing vs RE Germany is needing to blindly make virtually pure anti cav just to not die. In age 2 this is musks, an inherently weak unit vs age 3 compositions. In age 3 it was goons which have been nerfed down. Now civs can actually compete in cav wars vs ger with uhlan dying in 1 less hit and ger needs to make a 3 unit composition like everyone else (shocker). Black riders are still a very effective mercenary shipment.

Also 90f ports would be a nerf to current ep ports, yes, but still a buff to RE ports.

[iNcog]

There is no such thing as a "free win" civ anyways but I would argue that RE fre and ger gave a distinct advantage unless you opted for a mirror, which, isn't that what we saw mostly in high level tourney gameplay?

Also 90f ports would be a nerf to current ep ports, yes, but still a buff to RE ports.

I snipped out the rest because I didn't want to address it. yes, RE has bad balance and no, France was not nerfed into the ground. It was simply nerfed, which is a move which I still don't personally agree with, but am willing to live with. France is probably still a top civilization.

The basis of my discussion is EP balance, not RE. I don't think RE is relevant at all to the topic at hand, since changes made are in relation to the EP, obviously. For that reason I don't care that 90f vills would still be a buff to RE ports, RE ports don't matter.

The basis of my argumentation is two fold.

First off, there is always going to be a top civilization. Today people argue it is Ports, though others have argued it is Dutch or Russians; I still feel that balance is too close to call. Regardless, there will always be a top civilization. If you take the current logic of nerfing the top civilization every single patch, then you're simply going to cycle the top civilizations, and soon every civilization will be bit nerfed at some point. That's a poor (clumsy?) methodology of tackling the problem and it's also why I was previously against nerfing both Germany and France (or any civilization for that matter) in the iteration before this one. The actual idea is to achieve balance in a sense that most civilizations will be competitive at the highest level of play, it isn't to cycle which civs are top dog.

Check the patch notes. EP has already nerfed Iroq, Otto, France, Germany, China, Sioux, Ports (Mamelukes & Genitours), China (Japan if you count an important bug fix). You can also count Brits in there, considering the Dragoon nerf (only 3 other civilizations other than Brits can make Dragoons; Spain doesn't even really make them that often). I would like to point out, and this is important, that civilizations are nerfed if they are seen too often in tournaments (e.g. Jerom citing Ports being used often in the tournament) or in ranked play, rather than if they are legitimately too strong.

Aztec is a civilization which I would personally vouch as strongest, since they are very strong on RE where they are probably your best bet against Iroq, have no nerfs from RE and are also an underplayed civilization (hence their being OP doesn't show up on the community radar of OPness). Putting that aside for now, I notice that ESOC has already nerfed 6 to 9 (depending on if you count Japan, Ports and Brits) civilizations: more than half. Do you see that continuing the trend of nerfing the top civilizations means that you're going to eventually nerf them all? That being senseless, at some iteration you need to stop nerfing the top civilization and instead only bring buffs to the table.

That is why I argued against nerfing Germany and France last patch and why I argue against nerfing Dutch, Russia and Ports this patch. In fact, for this iteration, I argue against nerfing any civilization, period.

The second fold of my argument against nerfing Ports is that balance is already very, very close. Closer than most people give it credit for. People want to look smart and think that they have found the new best civilization. I don't agree. I don't agree with changes for the sake of change. The goal of the EP is to make is so that every single civilization has the ability to win games in a competitive setting (obviously some maps will favor some civilizations). We are already very close to that, however the weaker civilizations much more deserve a buff than the stronger civilizations deserve a nerf. Given how close balance is and how big the effect of some changes can be, I believe it is best to slowly increment the outlier towards the norm.

The outliers here are the weak civilizations and most certainly not the strongest ones. Most of you even agree that if Port is the best civ, it's only slightly the case. Finally I would like to point out the lack of solid, convincing arguments pertaining to Ports being too strong. No replays, no vods, nothing. At most we have some theory crafting in this thread showing how significant a boost 100f to 80f vills is. That is a moot point, considering that the baseline of our discussion is EP anyway. Any civilization being too strong should require a series of 10 replays categorically showing that Civ A has an undeniable advantage over many other civilizations. People throw around "X wins this match up" too easily.

I hope this clears things up?

[deleted_user]

Incog for EP team. You're probably right I concede previous opinions.

Buuutttt there is no way azzy is a top civ. Lack of ST, lack of a good ff, and an over dependence of a pike unit in age 2 are quite noticeable weaknesses. That doesn't mean they don't have their place in match ups though.

[Gendarme]

well I don't see compelling arguments in this thread.

My argument is fucking flawless.

[iNcog]

well I don't see compelling arguments in this thread.

My argument is fucking flawless.

ok don't tell anyone but i didn't read the thread

shh

[deleted_user]

well I don't see compelling arguments in this thread.

My argument is fucking flawless.

ok don't tell anyone but i didn't read the thread

shh

Shocker; I couldn't gander that myself.

[iNcog]

Show hidden quotes

well I don't see compelling arguments in this thread.

My argument is fucking flawless.

ok don't tell anyone but i didn't read the thread

shh

Shocker; I couldn't gander that myself.

Wait a second I have two posts on the first page of this thread.

I retract my statement.

[pecelot]

I smell misunderstanding. I didn't ask for the game to be balanced for low-level play; I explicitly said that balance is more or less irrelevant for low-level play. What I am saying is that in the process of balancing the game, let's change it as subtly as possible, so that the spirit of the game and the civilizations does not wither.

I haven't played AoE2 HD, but I think people love it because they improved the game without ruining the nostalgia/legacy/spirit/idontknowwhatwordtousetbh. I know that the remastered version of Grim Fandango was very well recieved, because they managed to graphically enhance a seventeen year-old game without making changes to the actual game. Nostalrius was an incredibly popular vanilla-WoW private server, not because it was balanced or better than The Burning Crusade in any sensible way (although it is probably better than the expansions following The Burning Crusade), but because nostalgia is real, and powerful. (I heard that they even kept the bugs as they were back in 2004 - even though removing them was possible.)

I know that if we give the Russians hussars and remove cossacks I would refuse to play with or against any Russian player. It feels wrong, and it has killed the civilization; it is not the same Russia I remember as a teenager. I really think the legacy of the game is being greatly underestimated, and it would be sad to put all this effort into a patch that won't be loved by many and split the ESO-players into two CRC-groups - perhaps doing more harm than good, even.

But that's nothing of EP's desire, right? No drastic changes like the aforementioned ones are being implemented.

I'd love to see tested (from RE) -100f; +1S.

How would this affect early tp starts when ports need to chop for a house? -100f and 8/10 pop you're either going to be idled Or popped I'd imagine.

I guess you could just delay it a bit or wait for the ATP

ports are also unchanged since like the first EP, they were never blatantly OP and the same can be said for fr and germany before their nerfs really. they aren't a freewin civ

Not really, Ports were given a buff, whereas Ger and Fre became too good because of the RE tier 1 civs nerf.

I would rather buff lackluster civs like iroq, sioux (otto?), spain (? is it weak anymore?), etc.

Spain is definitely not weak in my opinion, at least tier 2 out of 4.

I think the pick rate of ports is more indicative than a single match, but if you want just a single match: H2O vs Raphael game 2.

I think it was just a matter of ATP strength, rather than the pure vills' cost buff.

Finally I would like to point out the lack of solid, convincing arguments pertaining to Ports being too strong. No replays, no vods, nothing. At most we have some theory crafting in this thread showing how significant a boost 100f to 80f vills is. That is a moot point, considering that the baseline of our discussion is EP anyway. Any civilization being too strong should require a series of 10 replays categorically showing that Civ A has an undeniable advantage over many other civilizations. People throw around "X wins this match up" too easily.

Did you need recs to know that RE Iro and Otto are OP?
Also you just agree with the actions while totally omitting the reasoning behind them, I feel. People don't want to nerf top civs purely because they are OP, but rather due to their over-powerfulness.

Lack of ST, lack of a good ff, and an over dependence of a pike unit in age 2 are quite noticeable weaknesses. That doesn't mean they don't have their place in match ups though.

As far as I can tell, they can usually end the game before the lack of steel traps is that significant, also with war priests they have a nice eco option. Furthermore, you don't really need to FF when you have can just FI...

[momuuu]

Well atp ports with 3 TPs is also really good and viable on a lot of maps. Its possibly just too strong in ports case (whereas for spain it seems fine).

[Goodspeed]

Well atp ports with 3 TPs is also really good and viable on a lot of maps. Its possibly just too strong in ports case (whereas for spain it seems fine).

You realise 300w is more valuable than ATP when building 3 TPs? Especially since you get the first one(s) earlier. I would say it's doubtful that the extra HP and attack makes the card worth it as you are losing 60 wood plus the XP you lost having to wait for transition.

For next EP iteration we are looking at changing Ports, but I would actually agree with Incog here; if it were up to me alone I would not change this civ because what I see here is a massive bandwagon but little conclusive evidence that Port is indeed OP. I know Brits beat them as hard as ever, and would argue that many more civs stand a chance especially on maps with lower resources. Keep in mind guys this would not be the first time the community, including the patch team, would be collectively wrong about something. We need to be on our guard and need to keep thinking critically, trying to find counters rather than playing into Ports' hands. Remember that if a civ is considered top, then its style becomes meta and everyone starts playing into its hands.

I especially like Incog's point that there is always going to be a top civ. We need to be aware of that, and realise that if balance is very close then the community's view on which civ is top will be even more prone to the bandwagon effect. As we have seen in the past, a couple of top players saying a civ is bad or strong is enough; confirmation bias does the rest.

Meanwhile it's very telling to me that people are still not whining about the actual top civ: British.

[zoom]

well I don't see compelling arguments in this thread.

More importantly than any argument, perhaps you could point me to a tournament game where the OPness of ports is portrayed.

So I think balance could maybe be improved with either 85 or 90f vills, itd make ports go from one of the strongest civ to hopefully more middle of the pack (which is a really small difference tbh, ports is not that OP I think which is why I proposed 85f). I do kinda see some arguments against this change of vill cost in general.

I didnt dislike it at first, re ports feel unable to actually do anything at all because youre spending so much on vills early game. In the mid-late game the port 3 TC engine is already great on re, and coincidentally thats the part this buff targets the most. Its just really insane how effortlessly ports boom up to 99 villagers. You can legitemately max villagers before the 20 minutemark as ports without actually investing significantly in eco other than the tcs you get anyways. Amplifying that part of ports with the 80f change might not be so desirable. It also unfortunately makes port kinda OP in team.

I do not know good changes that could be tested instead. I was thinking maybe giving ports an 800f shipment is interesting, although I fear thats a debacle modding wise since 700f is a shared shipment between all civs in the modding files.

I think the pick rate of ports is more indicative than a single match, but if you want just a single match: H2O vs Raphael game 2.

I think it's indicative of people's perception of civilization strength.

[lesllamas]

So I'm no good at this game, but it seems to me that many people are ignoring a rather important tenet of game balance: that balance changes do not exist in a vacuum.

There are ways to reduce a civilization's effectiveness in a meta without changing anything about that civ. Imagine if all maps were heavy water. The balance solution wouldn't be to bring otto navy and port navy to the same par, but to change the map pool.

If civs like iro and Sioux were brought to a level where they have advantageous mus vs port on land maps for example, you could make port weaker in the broader context. Changing matchup spreads can be done by altering values of other civilizations. And after you did that, maybe some other civ would suddenly be the safest pick because iro/sioux changes did not affect them. And so on and so forth.

Point being that changing the civ you want to nerf might not be the most intelligent way to nerf it.

[iNcog]

I would rather buff lackluster civs like iroq, sioux (otto?), spain (? is it weak anymore?), etc.

Spain is definitely not weak in my opinion, at least tier 2 out of 4.

Yeah the impression I get is that Spain isn't bottom tier anymore and that even before, they were competitive in some situations.

Finally I would like to point out the lack of solid, convincing arguments pertaining to Ports being too strong. No replays, no vods, nothing. At most we have some theory crafting in this thread showing how significant a boost 100f to 80f vills is. That is a moot point, considering that the baseline of our discussion is EP anyway. Any civilization being too strong should require a series of 10 replays categorically showing that Civ A has an undeniable advantage over many other civilizations. People throw around "X wins this match up" too easily.

Did you need recs to know that RE Iro and Otto are OP?
Also you just agree with the actions while totally omitting the reasoning behind them, I feel. People don't want to nerf top civs purely because they are OP, but rather due to their over-powerfulness.

RE was out for several years so the balance on RE is pretty figured out, at least in terms of outlier civilizations like Otto and Iroq. EP changes things up quite a bit, to the point where I think a few months of patch play isn't enough to for the metagame to settle down and for balance to be accurately understood. That last bit is very important. I don't pretend to be a balance expert, but I read the forums a lot and it's difficult to find a consensus. I have also talked to top players in the past before about balance and have observed how quickly some will change their opinion on civ balance after figuring out a new build. Point being that I think people are, as goodspeed said, too quick to jump on bandwagons and conclusions. Kind of like how Dutch was supposedly the new OP civ when the patch just came out.

To be fair, it looks like there's little doubt that Ports are a strong civilization. Is nerfing the right thing to do? I don't think so. Nerfing at this point should only really be done to civilizations who are truly outliers; I'm not seeing that here for Ports. Maybe that was the case for France last patch (though even that I would like to debate). I think the best possible move here is to bring buffs to the underwhelming civilizations and let the metagame digest that.

People don't want to nerf top civs purely because they are OP, but rather due to their over-powerfulness.

what

[pecelot]

One is certain, though. Portuguese have become the undoubted kings of team games ever since the release of the last patch iteration in July. I would genuinely trust the opinions of virtually any good team-game player, including such figures, as Veni or Prince, if I recall correctly. The most recent tournament picks showed so, too. In certain circumstances Ports stack too many advantages, making them clearly over the top. It's not anything new, really. Still, though, I don't propose any radical solutions, just, like I underlined plenty of times here, a compromise. Don't nerf them too much so that they still remain strong in 1v1s, but hopefully also beatable in team.

You, on the other hand, seem to be opposed to nerfs per se. Say, the EP team decided to buff bow riders' HP count to 275. After initial testing everyone agrees that it's not the way to go. Would you be against the nerf then? And, like someone already pointed out, it would still remain a buff in comparison with RE.

What I meant was that people don't hate civs because they are simply OP. It's not bad to have a strong civ. Their opinions are mostly justified in this particular case, though, they have reason for demanding the nerf as a nation's performance may occur just unbeatable.

[iNcog]

Say, the EP team decided to buff bow riders' HP count to 275. After initial testing everyone agrees that it's not the way to go. Would you be against the nerf then?

That's different. I'm opposed to nerfing in this specific iteration, I think it would be more beneficial to move cursors in only one direction, so to speak. Obviously you would nerf something which was overbuffed but nothing really deserves that I think, not even Ports. I think they're probably the best civ, but the margin is again, oh so thin, that I would simply not nerf them this iteration and focus solely on bringing the underwhelming civs up to speed.

I'm against the principle of nerfing any civ for the time being because balance is in a good spot, but it looks like we won't be getting that this iteration and that Ports are going to get changed anyway. Which is something I'll live with, I'm not the only guy playing the game after all (actually I'm not even playing, come to think of it). I'm just sharing my thoughts.