Germans Discussion Thread

France Kaiserklein
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Kaiserklein »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:Yea you could just make 5 uhlans for the semi, and then train skirms/WW and rely on uhlan shipment so the nerf would be irrelevant.

In some match ups you can play without really training uhlans, but in some you can't. It's not that simple.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by HUMMAN »

increase shipment arrival time like 10s? Slow downs german momentum. Nerfs eco a little, (settler cards come later) you lose like 100-150 resources in early-mid game from that, also slow downs your military timings.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Hazza54321 »

HUMMAN wrote:increase shipment arrival time like 10s? Slow downs german momentum. Nerfs eco a little, (settler cards come later) you lose like 100-150 resources in early-mid game from that, also slow downs your military timings.

i kinda like this
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Garja »

All this mess just to not accept -10 hp
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by deleted_user »

EP players hate their -10 hps.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Hazza54321 »

might be balanced in 1v1 but who cares if everyone hates it and thinks every german unit is shit
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by deleted_user »

I like the cost thing most.

Germany is contingent on uhlans being what they're meant to be -- in strength.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Garja »

Hazza54321 wrote:might be balanced in 1v1 but who cares if everyone hates it and thinks every german unit is shit

First of all it's not everyone. Second I would care anyway.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Hazza54321 »

i havent really seen anyone pro this change tbh, apart from you
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Garja »

half of the people in this thread, basically
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Hazza54321 »

who are these imaginary people of which you speak of
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Jaeger »

Kaiserklein wrote:Increasing the xp penalty isn't really an option because it makes germany be even more reliant on TPs. Currently, if you didn't get a decent amount of xp in age 1 by killing treasure guardians or getting an xp treas or whatever, you don't have a shipment ready upon colonial on a no TP map as germany. And you get your second colo shipment popping at 7 min sometimes. By increasing the xp penalty, it will just make germany even shittier on no tp maps, while they will be still fine on TP maps because of, well, the TP.

The 3 SW without uhlans would be ok I guess. It would make it easier for some civs to go cav semi against germany and it would also mean no early 2 uhlans raid if ger goes 3 SW. But I'm not sure it will really be enough of a nerf if we have a typical semi ff game with a big fight at 10+ min. Could maybe be coupled together with the uhlan cost increase, which is also a decent nerf.

I'm not a fan of 2 uhlans in fortress, because I think it kills the logic behind the civ. I feel like you're supposed to get more free uhlans when you advance in the ages, as an incentive for ger to try and age up. But at the end of the day it maybe works regardless so idk.

The hp change is just ugly. Uhlans are supposed to perform rather poorly against ranged units, because of their low hp. Now we made them even weaker at range, but we also made them quite bad in melee fights as well, since 180 hp means 1 less hit in melee from a lot of units (huss, pumas, coyotes, ruskets, cossacks, jans...). So uhlans become underwhelming, and that really makes the civ unfriendly to people used to playing the classic germany. It also made the civ a bit too weak, at least in previous patch (not sure about this one). And like I said it kills a bit the design of the uhlan being supposed to perform well in melee fights.
And it's just so awkward anyway because it's not a change where you can easily tweak the numbers to fix the balance. Every time you change 1 or 2 hp, some units will need 1 less hit to kill a uhlan, making germany weaker in some specific match ups only. For example 181 hp uhlans means that germany still dominates the cav semi fights against civs going for a huss semi (fr, port, dutch...), while 180 hp means uhlans become sucky against huss. So yeah it just doesn't work, because it will be super impactful in some mus, almost irrelevant in some others (in some mus you don't really train uhlans regardless), and instead of balancing it just creates a kind of chaos.
If we want to nerf the unit itself, which I guess is a decent way to nerf germany, we might as well just increase the cost. I actually would like 60f 100g, because increasing the gold cost would make germany deplete their gold mines even faster. Or 70f if needed, here it's easy to tweak the numbers.


I get that a stat change would affect some MU's more than others but I don't think that's the worst thing if they still don't become OP in their good matchups. What about increasing their attack a bit so that they're better in melee fights like you said but still bad in ranged fights?
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Kaiserklein »

Well the problem is that it's hard to control how well uhlans are gonna perform in 13 match ups. That's why I think it's hard to balance that way.
Increasing attack might work but again that might matter in some match ups more than in some others. Sounds just complicated.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Garja »

The point of reducing HP is exactly to affect break points. I believe we already checked which units are affected at -10hp. Same we did with -5 hp.

Hazza54321 wrote:who are these imaginary people of which you speak of

Mitoe, Lordraphael, GS, and also many people in twitch chat.
Anyway to me we can also try +10f plus -1 ulhan on fortress shipments. Need both to affect the whole semi FF build.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Hazza54321 »

i know mitoe dislikes the change, you can tell because he hasnt played germany for the past few patches.
Goodspeed: I don't like the change much, but there is just nothing better imo.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by momuuu »

Goodspeed wrote:
- increasing the xp modifier so that germany gets slightly less shipments
German's civ bonus is that their shipments are stronger, if we then compensate by making their shipments less frequent then they might as well not have a civ bonus. I already disagree with the decision to give them a shipment malus. It's entirely the wrong way to compensate for the strength of their civ bonus. I don't want to make it even worse.
It's similar to what they did to Spain. Their shipments were so fast that they became OP, so they nerfed their shipments into the ground. Great job guys. You get trainwrecks like 3 lancers in fortress age and start wondering if 3 shipments of yours may be just as good as 2 shipments of theirs.
- 3 SW + 2 Uhlan -> 3 SW
I don't think this would have been enough to balance Germans. And this, too, is nerfing their civ bonus. It's also messing with an otherwise consistent game design which I'm not a fan of.
- uhlan slight cost increase (because of mentioned negatives of nerfing uhlan stats)
I addressed this in my previous post. In short, I think it would need to be a rather large cost increase in order to have enough impact to balance the civ.
- fortress shipments only give +2 uhlans
This is also a direct nerf to their civ bonus.

Out of the ones you mentioned, changes to SW (shipments) are most appealing to me. But I would sooner nerf SW's gather rate than remove uhlans from shipments. Another problem I have with this though is that 3 SW is such a core German feature and I can imagine German players love sending it. I know I do when I play the civ. I'd prefer not to mess with that.

The SW gather rate was seriously considered but we decided against it in the end. Honestly, Germans seem great currently. Like I said they are balanced and their army is now diverse, instead of 90% uhlan. I don't see the problem.

I always think part of germany's strength is that after a fight they get so much xp that they'll get a shipment or sometimes two - just like the other civs, except that for germany that means 6 free uhlans which is easily enough to push a won game in their favor. Basically, if the game is even and fights are occuring, germany will win that game because of the free uhlans. I thought it'd be possible to make the penalty scale later on, meaning that the later shipments in age 3 become slower. It doesn't really change the civ much, does it? You still do the same stuff, still get a comparably strong mass but it doesn't feel like your units are garbage and you're forced to choose between garbage and trash to aid your skirmishers.

One part I don't like about 3 SW + 2 Uhlan is that it's overwhelmingly good, which limits germany in options a bit. I would guess nerfing that to 3 SW only would force germany to be more passive in early colonial against other semi FF's, in that sense it does the same as the nerf to HP but again doesn't feel that bad.

You can use semantics to say that nerfing a civ bonus is always bad, but that line of reasoning doesn't make sense in this case. After all, part of germany as a civ used to be strong hand cav and weak anti cav. In practise you've already nerfed a big part of what makes germany unique (you're going cav skirm instead of skirm + anti cav like most other civs). Basically the nerf does mean that germany gets a more balanced army composition, which kinda takes away the weakness they have to cav + goon composition. Either way, you're already nerfing their most prevalent civ feature. You're actually nerfing all shipments (except for the merc ones) because they all come with uhlans, and I think I'd prefer 8 old uhlans of 9 current uhlans, so you're straight up nerfing those characteristic shipments more than you would by doing 3 uhlan -> 2 uhlan.

Actually, in handling a civ that is too strong you'll almost always directly touch the civ bonus or unique units, because there is very little else to even adress. Otto had their most unique unit nerfed, Iro had their uniquely strong start nerfed, Brits had their manors nerfed, france had their CDB nerfed, Germany had their unique army nerfed. It's how balancing works, and it's problematic that a very potent balancing tool of adjusting the civ bonus is being blocked by mostly irrational arguments; the result is that you have a civ that has only 1 good unit available, and then 5 shitty unit types (xbow pike dopp uhlan WW).. That just doesn't feel right, and I imagine its also very frustrating with regards to playing both EP and RE sometimes.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by gamevideo113 »

momuuu wrote: the result is that you have a civ that has only 1 good unit available, and then 5 shitty unit types (xbow pike dopp uhlan WW)

Buff crossbows :!: :uglylol:
On a serious note, i think buffing crossbows wouldn't have any negative consequence on the game's balance, considering all of the four civs that have this unit.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Rikikipu »

I hope some people agree with me that if you nerf tps you solve most of the problems for iro, otto, france, germany and port on EP
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Garja »

Hazza54321 wrote:i know mitoe dislikes the change, you can tell because he hasnt played germany for the past few patches.
Goodspeed: I don't like the change much, but there is just nothing better imo.

Popularity is exactly how you don't want to balance the game. Civ usage goes with trends and trends are based on word of mouth like saying "meme civ" and bs like that.
With that said, Germany is still fairly used.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by gibson »

Iv always found it interesting that peopleā€™s perception of the relative strengths and weaknesses of civs has has very little to do with actual balance changes
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Hazza54321 »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:Yea you could just make 5 uhlans for the semi, and then train skirms/WW and rely on uhlan shipment so the nerf would be irrelevant.

unupgradable skirms, and ww with melee resist vs other civs with skirm goon and 2 falcs :hmm:
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Garja »

are you talking about 1v1?
Because in 1v1 Germans get shit tons of stuff. In team you up cav.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by Jaeger »

If germany needs a small buff, why don't we make it +4 uhlans in fortress and +6 on industrial :O
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Hazza54321 wrote:
[Armag] diarouga wrote:Yea you could just make 5 uhlans for the semi, and then train skirms/WW and rely on uhlan shipment so the nerf would be irrelevant.

unupgradable skirms, and ww with melee resist vs other civs with skirm goon and 2 falcs :hmm:

"unupgradable skirms"
Who fucking cares? You don't send skirm upgrades in 1v1 anyway, even as France/Iro
"ww with melee resist"
Yea WW are awkward but still, my point is that Germany would be in a better spot than atm, ie op with this change.
"vs other civs with skirm goon and 2 falcs"
Yes but you would have tons of uhlans, and you can just rape skirms/falcs with RE uhlans.

Anyway, it's common knowledge that RE Germany was just too strong on EP maps, and that's why they got nerfed. The point is that changing the uhlan cost wouldn't matter since you get most of your uhlans with shipments.
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Re: German Discussion Thread

Post by deleted_user »

How would changing uhlan cost "not matter?"

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