Ports' vill cost — 90f

[deleted_user]

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.

I think in general this is a good philosophy and would probably allow the team to return EP 1.0 France and Ger to their former power but otherwise it would be much more difficult from a balancing perspective.

[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.

I think in general this is a good philosophy and would probably allow the team to return EP 1.0 France and Ger to their former power but otherwise it would be much more difficult from a balancing perspective.

Well that's the idea. To me, France and Germany were strong, but not OP, since mostly the same as on RE. They could have been good benchmark civs and you could buff all other civs until they were at Fr/Ger level.

I say that because there are 14 civs and say, the middle civs have their own hierarchy which we aren't aware of, since people focus on the top civs (there are tournaments running, after all). Since we already know the balance of the top civs quite well, they are good civs to benchmark other civilizations.

If you buff top and and nerf bottom civs, you lose your benchmarks. Hence the idea of only buffing for a few iterations, so that we bring all civs closer to the top civ benchmark. Previously those benchmarks were Fr/Ger, today they seem to be Brit and Ports. Honestly though, for all we know, Ports and Brits were already competitive with Fr/Ger from the previous patch. So we buffed the top, most played civs, and now the underrated top civs are now top. Which we are going to nerf. Seems like an inefficient way to do things.

[deleted_user]

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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.

I think in general this is a good philosophy and would probably allow the team to return EP 1.0 France and Ger to their former power but otherwise it would be much more difficult from a balancing perspective.

Well that's the idea. To me, France and Germany were strong, but not OP, since mostly the same as on RE. They could have been good benchmark civs and you could buff all other civs until they were at Fr/Ger level.

I say that because there are 14 civs and say, the middle civs have their own hierarchy which we aren't aware of, since people focus on the top civs (there are tournaments running, after all). Since we already know the balance of the top civs quite well, they are good civs to benchmark other civilizations.

If you buff top and and nerf bottom civs, you lose your benchmarks. Hence the idea of only buffing for a few iterations, so that we bring all civs closer to the top civ benchmark. Previously those benchmarks were Fr/Ger, today they seem to be Brit and Ports. Honestly though, for all we know, Ports and Brits were already competitive with Fr/Ger from the previous patch. So we buffed the top, most played civs, and now the underrated top civs are now top. Which we are going to nerf. Seems like an inefficient way to do things.

Your benchmarks don't have to be the top two civs. A benchmark can be a civ that is unchanged from RE (brits) or a widely regarded as balanced civ unchanged from last EP (Spain) or through play testing by using previous knowledge of match ups to compare how they fare with changes. I don't think it's necessary to keep top civ a unchanged for balance reasons, but as a general principle that people don't like playing nerffed civs in general.

I think ideal balance is ambiguity, don't you think? Especially a game like aoe with many facets and complexities to it, if all the civs are roughly balanced there should be less certainty in the top and bottom civs. Right now there is ambiguity in the mid pack, but almost unanimous consensus of the top single civ for sure and the bottom two. Honestly, it only makes sense to bring that one down and the other two up, don't you think? And instead use unchanged civs from last EP as benchmarks through many, many play test games.

[iNcog]

Well buffing bottom and nerfing top only brings new ambiguity every iteration, until the new top civ is found. By using the top civ as a benchmark (EP1.0 Fr and Gers were unchanged compared to RE and they're balanced on RE, supposedly), you base all your balance changes on a known power level. Using a middle civ as the benchmark isn't as efficient since you don't know how other middle civs fare against your benchmark (are they better? worse?). In the long term obviously you should allow yourself to nerf a civ which is just too strong. Not nerfing top civ is a short term strategy (say 1 or 2 iterations) to ensure that we're more sure of where balance stands, especially since balance is a very relative measure.

[pecelot]

I'm against such principles that enforce principles of no nerfing policy. Of course, we could buff every single civ, but in some extent it would get ridiculous, don't you think? I'd rather not have something like the German previous uhlan spam in age 3 countered by the likes of RE Iro. I think our goal would be to find the golden medium settled somewhere in the middle. It's rather irrelevant anyways, I'm just can't see why you would not nerf an obvious thing if it's necessary only for the sake of your own imaginary principles.

[iNcog]

only for the sake of your own imaginary principles.

No flame, please. <_<

I'm not arguing that we should never, ever nerf. Please read what I'm saying more carefully. I think that you could probably do a few patch iterations of only buffs, let the meta-game settle down, then do further adjustments from there.

Neither Germany, France last patch, nor Ports or Brits this patch are over the top, as in as OP as Iroq is on RE. They are top civs, yes, but the margin is quite slim. Thus, for the sake of getting progressively closer to ideal balance, I propose that you refrain from nerfing the civilization whose power levels you grasp well (as they are top civ, it's easier to know where they stand compared to other civs) and instead try to progressive buff other civs until they reach the level of your benchmark. The idea of taking the top civ as the benchmark comes from the fact that the relative balance of the top civ is the most accurate metric of balance we have; more so than the middle civs.

Assuming that Ports and Brits are nerfed this iteration, then I would argue for the next iteration to not nerf whichever civ is the top in the next patch. If you nerf every top civ every patch, then all you do is cycle which civ is top. That's not efficient as far as I'm concerned, all you do is cycle the top civs every patch and progressively weaken every civilization. I also think that balance is close enough that doing a "no-nerf" iteration is doable; I wouldn't have argued for this approach if we were starting from RE (and I didn't when we did).

I'm not arguing that I'm the next apostle of aoe3 balance and that everyone should listen to me, I'm just throwing my ideas out there.

[pecelot]

lol, nice flame accusations, pretty mature I have to say
That was what I got from your posts and I don't think I was mistaken. Maybe try to elaborate on that in different words.
The thing that something is OP, but not as OP as RE Iro, is not a good indication IMO. You can clearly see some civs have major advantages over another, which of course, are killable or counterable, but by a relatively little margin. Like with Ports or Dutch — if you don't kill them early, which is not an easy task, you're pretty much dead. I know it's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. If you're not convinced that's the case in 1v1s — fair enough, it's arguable, though just have a look at team games.
And you have to admit it's easier to adjust 2 OP and 2 UP civs to the medium, benchmark ones, than to buff 12 that are not strong enough to the current tier 1.

[iNcog]

I still don't agree, however it's a moot point because Ports are going to get nerfed anyway. I think Dutch as well.

Nonetheless I'd be curious as to the state of balance from the previous iteration. Assuming Fr and Ger had been untouched, would they still beat Ports and Dutch? Would they lose? How about previous Fr/Ger compared to current Brits, Russia, Aztec? These are pretty interesting questions and I wouldn't mind hearing what people think. I don't think there's a clear cut answer, especially without testing.

Anyway I don't have much to add to that. As long as people read my post and thought about it, it's enough. I'm just here to talk about the patch more than anything.