pecelot wrote:Yes, Boneng has like 5 APMkami_ryu wrote:Yes but it takes at least PR36 to lose minimal assets so that balance changes are relevant to the course of the game. All I'm saying. Balance changes matter very, very little if you're under PR36 which is the only thing I've been arguing this time.
Ports got a 5f change per villager this patch. By the time you produce 20 villagers (what is that? ~7-8 minutes into the game?) that amounts to a blistering 100f. When you've made 40 villagers, 15 minutes into the game, then that amounts to 200f. That's 2 infantry units or 1 cavalry unit, at the 15 minute mark. I'm not even sure if that matters at PR40.
This is why, upon my soapbox I shall stand and say that balance is meaningless, for most of us suck too hard at the game for them to mean much. Maybe the Sioux or Otto changes are big enough for them to have effect at lower level play though. Those are big changes, I guess, but I haven't played either civ so I have no idea.
The initial change is –20 food on each vill, though — that's way more significant.
Sure. Let's say for the sake of discussion that we're talking about 100f vills vs 80f vills. I'll attach a replay to illustrate my point. I'm about a Lt-Captain level player, Ward is PR33+.
At 15 minutes into the game, Ward has 42 villagers. I think I probably killed some, so let's just say I killed 3 or 4 villagers or something. Let's say that at the 15 minute mark, Ward had produced 45-7=38 villagers.
Assuming that we boosted Ports from RE to EP, in this game ward would have saved up, at the 15 minute mark, 38x20 = 760f
We can say that this is a pretty substantial boost honestly, it's about equivalent to getting a free colonial shipment at the 15 minute mark.
The thing is, the match up is lopsided, Ward is a much better player than I am. At this point, even though Ward has a 760f handicap at that 15 minute mark, he is the better player and has more than made up for it at that point in the game. The lower player, myself, has bled off units (due to poor play, execution, etc.) much more than 760f in that 15 minute time span.
In other words, I am playing so sub-optimally that I would never be able to take advantage of the balance change in the first place. This match-up isn't even supposed to be even on RE. Ward himself also missed a few production cycles.
At this point, it becomes obvious that whether Port had 80f vills or 100f vills, the influence it has on the game itself is pretty much nullified, just due to the fact that the play is so poorly optimized. It's really easy to lose resources too. A bad raid you miss, a bad rally point, a positioning error, will influence the game much more than Ports going from 100f to 80f vills. At a HIGH level, however, players are much more crisp in their execution, so the influence of balance changes are much more felt.
Underneath PR36 (a fairly arbitrary line, I agree), I really feel that balance is just placebo for most players. I could queue my India versus a top player's Ports on RE, the top player would still win easily, regardless of balance. Thus it is senseless for me to argue that balance has any substantial effect on my play. Whether I'm playing bottom civ or top civ, I'm just a captain and the civ I pick doesn't realistically matter, I'm playing too poorly for that to matter in the first place.
Not in absolute terms obviously. Buffing Ports should logically make my Ports stronger on EP than on RE (in absolute terms, EP ports are stronger), but in all honesty I don't think there's a realistic difference in power between my EP Ports and RE Ports.
lol
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