By the time the second shipment has arrived, the wagon reached the socket and built the TP, you're in age 2 or seconds away from it, so your age 2 time will only be affected by the first TP. You'll have to wait a bit for the third shipment to get 700c, then if you're going to age 3 you're still slow...

I think we need to keep in mind that balance is for all skill levels, not just the top tier. If they noticed Brits getting too weak then reverting the manor cost seems fine to me. 5w isn't much anyway, that's 100w total once you build all your manors. That's the only straight buff I see. The rangers...

If you still see performance issues, can you check your video card settings? Perhaps your game is running on integrated graphics like mine was, described here: https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/game-doesnt-default-to-use-gpu-with-nvidia-video-card/197513 If so this is an easy fix (select High-Perfor...

I don't really see a design reason why almost every civ must have a 3 villager equivalent card that's head and shoulders above the rest, except that current balance is centered around it. If I wanted to think about redesigning this, I'd start by reducing each of these cards to be about 2 vils equiva...

Personally I'd love to see a general overhaul of age 1 cards with the goal of having at least 2-3 cards viable to send first for every civ, rather than one card that's so far above the rest (usually the X vils) that all strategic choice is removed. This would require significant design effort, but w...

I don't think it's that crazy good. Saying "13 vils worth of trickle" makes it sound insane, but the resource value is really only about 1 vil worth, and less flexible since you can't assign it to whatever resource you want to gather. It looks like a solid card that can rival the ubiquitou...

How much is the food trickle exactly? Is it 1.25, like a vil and a half? There is also the export trickle that comes with the card. I'd value 1 export at roughly 1.5c so that 0.4 export trickle is worth roughly a vil by itself as long as you can do something meaningful with the export. Going German ...

The consulate wagon sounds interesting to tinker with but I don't see it as a straight up buff. Maybe there are some builds where it can replace Northern Refugees, but you'd be giving up eco in favor of whatever it is you're getting from it. And since you still have to pay full price for the allianc...

Great to see the ongoing dev support. The unit alpha change might be good for some people, and being able to build from any angle sounds like a good quality of life change to reduce the infuriating pathing when trying to build something under pressure. The balance changes sound interesting to me. So...

I disagree completely. There are plenty of competitive games that see major changes frequently, often as part of ladder seasons (just about any MOBA does this, for example). Even the AoE2 competitive community has been very positive about balance changes, even new civs and significant civ overhauls,...

Depending on how long you've been away, maybe you're rating is just inflated compared to others. The overall level of play is higher now than, say, half a year ago, while yours is probably lower since you're out of practice. I don't think there is anything wrong with French in general. Personally I ...

Sounds like a fair change without overdoing it. The FI might even still be viable, but only on defensive maps with good walling, rather than a general purpose strategy. I like how they changed some cards to make them more viable and and tuned down salteadors and chinacos just a bit. Not sure if -100...

Perhaps it would be worth reaching out to the AoE2 women's community on this; it does look like https://age-of-queens.com/ has AoE4 content as well. We've seen how toxic the AoE3 community can be to female casters and in fact anyone who doesn't have the polish of Interjection or Harrison or the know...

Maybe you could compare them to the overall RTS market at the time of launch. In 1999, the RTS market was highly diverse. The competitive scene was dominated by StarCraft but non-competitively there were many other RTS games. We'd have to define what numbers we want to look at, but my guess is that ...

Pretty interesting. I'm wondering what alternatives there could be to the church card either in age 1, before, or after the revolution, although the insurgents plus free TP-equivalent are pretty nice too. Is there really a need to revolt before you're ready to convert resources and queue falcs? Mayb...

I think the optimal build might be somewhere between this and the slower 20 vil revolution that I tried before. Steel traps and maybe placer mines seem very tempting given the amount of food and coin gathered. Steel traps pay off practically the moment you click age 4, placer mines after 1 batch of ...

Can you link your bug report in the official forum so we can keep track there?

Great post Harrison. It's nice to see a candid but fair look at the civ rather than the whiny circlejerk that gets posted here so often. I only have an opinion on a few things yet as the only thing I've really tried is the soldado/cannon FI and some experimentation with Haciendas. Based on that I'd ...

Jalapeño peppers seemed really underwhelming when I tried it. For coin, each villager gathered 1.17 per second while under the influence. That's about 0.5c per second more than mining with placer mines. If we assume that we get 20 vils on the hacienda with no idle time switching them in and out, we ...

After land grab, haciendas are 360w, aren't they, so it's still an 1800w plus card investment for the remaining 5?
At what time do you get the javelins out? Is it fast enough to contest an early age 2 rush or more something against opponents doing an FF?

I've been looking at a way to use the Mexico revolutions for a quick FI leading to a soldado/artillery timing before 10 minutes. I'm still at an early stage of working this out and would appreciate any feedback. Age 1: Market opening, chop 50w, age up with Querétaro. Transition: Chop for TP, then ke...

Another cool update. I'm really impressed with the level of continued support.

Mexico balance might be wonky at first but working that out will be part of the fun.

Looks like a really cool patch!

Progress Update - Ethiopians Week 17 with the Ethiopians is completed. I played 32 games over the course of about two weeks with a roughly even win rate. Ethiopians were an interesting challenge in particular because I couldn't find any build or strategy suggestions for the October patch (i.e. afte...

Looking at Ethiopians this time, I haven't found anything regarding strategies for the October patch. Looking at their cards, nothing immediately stood out to me as a power spike and I could only see two things that looked promising: Abuns/monasteries for a small boom and the Sevastopol mortar. With...