I decided to write this post because of the upcoming definitive edition for Age of Empires 3. One of the hopes that most of us have is that game balance will be improved in the definitive edition from RE patch, so the purpose of this post is exactly that of adressing what we, as a community, think should be changed or what we think should remain the same. I know that it is often hard to come to an agreement in any context, and sometimes when speaking of game balance it is very hard to agree on something; this is why i ask to everyone who is interested to share his opinion and his views on the matter as the community's feedback is obviously very valuable (aka feel free to tell me i have weird ideas
).The ESOC Patch surely did a great job at adressing balance. It has a minimalistic approach, as it aims to leave the feeling of the game mostly intact. I totally agree about not altering the original feeling of the game too much because it is the only way to make a patch that can be accepted by the majority of people (in the AoE2 community there have been many attempts at balancing but many patches failed because of too many radical changes). But at the same time, as many others pointed out, the definitive edition is the only opportunity for us to address some unbalances that "a fan patch would not dare to change" for the sake of the original game's integrity and to be able to find consensus. Reading 12 pages of changelog is bothersome and would turn away most people in case of a fan patch. However as we can see from AoE2 HD, enforced patches work a lot better, as they are auto installed and don't need any effort to be implemented. Most of the community wouldn't go out of its way to change/revert the data set of the game and would accept the new balance and keep playing because they don't care all that much.
As we can see from the data collected by pecelot and H2O about the spring championship, some civs (Germans, British) seem to be quite dominant, while other civs instead seem a bit subpar (Spanish, Iroquois) (It should also be kept in consideration though that some civs are played less frequently because of their features, some people might find spain awkward to play because of the lack of Quartermaster and Exiled Prince, so the civ is not played a lot, and this implies a less in-depth knowledge/experience of the civ, which might have an influence on the global win ratio of said civ). However, i think that it is undeniable that the balance has himproved from RE to EP, and i would say that the EP balance team is on the right track. Therefore, the definitive editon should most definitely keep in consideration the work that was done by ESOC, and the hypothetical changelog of the DE should have its roots in the EP changelog. Some things were not changed for the sake of integrity and synthesis, but i think that for example, in regard to cards, a lot can be done to make the card system easier to learn for new players and less confusing (maybe one day aoe2 players will stop bashing it
). There is plenty of cards that never see any use and just "clump" the whole card selection system of various civs, making it also harder for new players to understand what cards are actually valuable and what cards are not great. No one whould ever send 2 villagers in the discovery age instead of 3 villagers. Does the card need to be there? I don't think so. This issue can be seen a bit everywhere, probably initially the devs thought that more cards were needed in order to make better cards harder to unlock, but since all the cards should be unlocked from the very beginning in the definitive edition, i think that a lot of "cleaning” can be done in this regard.Some people expressed their fear that making a lot of changes in the definitive edition (thus abandoning the minimal approach) could be dangerous for the game balance, also because we don't know how many times it will be possible to patch the definitive edition again after its release. I think that a lot of changes that can be done to polish the game can do no harm to the game's balance and i wanted to give a shot at this kind of polishing, at least on a theoretical level by finding useless/unbalanced cards and bringing them to everyone's attention so that a judgement about them can be done and later, eventually, pointed out to Microsoft.
In the specific case of an underpowered/useless card the possibilities would be 3:
-Leaving the card untouched;
-Adjusting the card;
-Removing the card.
Just to bring an example of what i concretely have in mind, here i’m going to list the cards available for the Dutch civilization that i think should be tweaked with a short reasoning nearby:
[spoiler=Cards]-2 settlers: There is already 3 settlers.
-7 sheep: Does anyone really use a card for lovestock in age1?
-15 sheep: Card for livestock in age3, doesn’t really see any use despite its good value.
-1 covered wagon: 600 resources in age3. Never used.
-Surgeon cards: never used. Could maybe be blended in a single card that both gives you surgeons and lets you train them in the church.
-7 halberdiers: inferior to 8 halberdiers, that doesn’t get sent very often.
-11 halberdiers: inferior to 13 halberdiers, that doesn’t get sent very often.
-9 skirmishers: 1035 resources in age4. Terrible. There is also 14 skirms available.
-11 ruyters: inferior to 13 ruyters, worth 1155 resources in age4.
-13 ruyters: inferior to 17 ruyters, that doesn’t get sent very often either.
-4 grenadiers: 720 resources in age 3 for 4 unupgraded units.
-7 grenadiers: 1260 resources in age4 for 7 unupgraded units.
-1 falconet: 500 resources in age3 that never sees any use.
-Non-TEAM 2 mortars: why ship this instead of TEAM 2 mortars? It’s not likely to ship both.
-Native cards(?): These cards are basically never used (maybe in treaty?). Possible rework?
-Ranching: A card that allows to train cows. Only Aizamk could find a use for it. (Treaty?)
-2 outpost wagons: 500 resources in age2 (some time ago i also saw some people saying that outposts should be reworked)
-Advanced arsenal (?): Worth an age2 shipment+loads of wood and gold to be useful. Does it need a rework?
-Agents: spies are already a niche unit and a card for them is not really likely to be sent.
-Tulip Speculation: worth an extra bank once you already have 7 banks, really pales in comparison to factories that can be sent as well.
-Advanced mill, Advanced plantation: send improved buildings if you want the HP, send Land Grab if you want the cost reduction.
-TEAM Cheap market improvements: not sure what’s the cost reduction but this is probably a bad card.
-Advanced Market: better buy/sell ratio is nice, but not worth a card. Should it be blended with Cheap Market Improvements to make it a worthwhile card?
-Dutch East India Company: Saves you 105 resources per bank and makes them tankier. Not really worth an age2 card.
-Sawmills: Inferior to 20% wood gathering which is also available in age1.
-Colbertism: 1.50 food per second is not even worth 2 hunters. Should it be buffed?
-Medicine: allows you to train 7 villagers in the time it normally takes you to train 6. Takes really a long time to pay off.
-1 caravel: Inferior to 2 Caravels and a bad age2 card anyway.
-Non-TEAM 1 monitor: you can send TEAM 1 monitor, which is better in every aspect.
-Dance Hall: i don’t really see its usefulness…
-Mercenary Loyalty: this has really bad value. It is never used.[/spoiler]
A lot of these cards could just be removed in my opinion. Some others are maybe worth some tweaking. Many of these cards are also shared with other civilizations so this needs to be kept in consideration.
@Imperial Noob was also talking about some sort of card system polishing in the AoE3 DE thread, so he gets the tag
There are also other aspects of the game that might need some rebalancing, like for example politicians, but i’m not sure if they should be included in this very thread.
We could have different threads for civ balance (including cards), general balance, map balance and maybe even something else like water or whatever.
Sorry for the wall of text and please share your opinion
P.S: Sorry for bad format, writing this on an iPad was atrocious :sob:
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