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Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Yes, true, azzy get more shipments than spain lol.
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Post by Cometk »

i understand the sentiment. the fan patch is only seeking to improve upon general civ play and not target specific strategies. for the most part, playing on EP patch is the same as playing on RE patch in that you're usually using the same build order across both patches. otto still does abus/jan or FF, port still FFs, dutch still semi-FFs, et cetera. however, in the case of spain, as they are arguably the weakest civ on the patch i think it's warranted to give them a few more options.

surely a 10 or 15% hp/attk card for archaic infantry would give them some motivation to do a colonial build. flavor-wise it fits, as spain are supposed to be the civ focused around melee infantry. they have the fast-training archaic card in discovery, the two melee inf upgrade cards in colonial, and royal guard upgrade for their pikes. at the very least, i think it's worth playtesting an upgrade card like this.
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Post by Jaeger »

lesllamas wrote:
diarouga wrote:Do you understand that we want to keep the uniqueness of spain?

Sure, we could buff their semi ff with a fast age up politician and then spain is just a clone of france, because theyd go cav or musk semi every games.
We could also give them a 400w politician and musk upgrades in colonial and then theyd be just like brit but with a worse eco and no lb and would still ff.

Our goal is to balance the civ but we do not want to change the way they are played.
And I fail to see how buffing their shipments wouldnt balance them. With some testings we can reach the point were spain can have the critical mass to break his opponent without being op.

You could argue the same thing for other civs, like we should give musk and a decent cav to china to make their colonial play viable but thats not what we want.

If you look at other rts, like sc2, when blizzard makes a patch, the race uniqueness isnt changed, protoss still have good units but are slow, zerg still mass as fuck and terran still be terran.
You wont see them giving op units to zerg or allowing toss to be fast.
What uniqueness? Spain is literally the most vanilla civ that exists in the game. The civilization bonus is supposed to be centered around having a lot of shipments. And if you check my initial suggestion for something to look at, it involves changing a shipment, which affects TPs, which give more shipments, and make those shipments better, etc.

And no, you cant balance spain by buffing their melee unit shipments unless you want to change the units at their core, which would be much more radical than proposing a rework of a never used card in order to amplify Spains only unique civilization bonus. "With some testing" is a redundant argument that says nothing about the nature of Lancer/Rod in this game.

Saying "we do not want to change the way they are played" is, again, a terrible mindset for balancing purposes. Spains fortress is fundamentally broken in its current state, and just because it is currently the best option does not mean it is defining of the civilization [i style="font-weight:bold'"]independent of an established metagame in the competitive community[/i].

There are other "broken" things in AoE3, like the design of native warchiefs, but theyre much more central to the stylistic and mechanical purpose of their respective civilizations. A strategy/BO is not central to stylistic and mechanical purposes of a civilization, and it should never be considered a fundamental aspect of the civilization itself such that you attempt to [i style="font-weight:bold'"]preserve it[/i] when making balance decisions.
The problem with changing the meta too much is that people wont be inclined to use the patch because they dont feel like learning the civ all over again and learning 14 new matchups. Even if they are willing to, they wont play the patch because they know nobody else will play it for the above reason.
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Post by [Armag] diarouga »

If you think they are the weakest, buff their ff but even with a 15% bow/pike up they wouldn't play colonial.
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Post by deleted_user0 »

cometk wrote:i understand the sentiment. the fan patch is only seeking to improve upon general civ play and not target specific strategies. for the most part, playing on EP patch is the same as playing on RE patch in that you''re usually using the same build order across both patches. otto still does abus/jan or FF, port still FFs, dutch still semi-FFs, et cetera. however, in the case of spain, as they are arguably the weakest civ on the patch i think it''s warranted to give them a few more options.

surely a 10 or 15% hp/attk card for archaic infantry would give them some motivation to do a colonial build. flavor-wise it fits, as spain are supposed to be the civ focused around melee infantry. they have the fast-training archaic card in discovery, the two melee inf upgrade cards in colonial, and royal guard upgrade for their pikes. at the very least, i think it''s worth playtesting an upgrade card like this.

what makes you think spain is the weakest.
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Post by n0el »

I think giving 400 wood and boosting archaic inf card to include Xbow is a good boost to make them more unique in terms of fighting later into the game with archaic inf. No fast up option though.
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Post by Jaeger »

diarouga wrote:Do you understand that we want to keep the uniqueness of spain?

Sure, we could buff their semi ff with a fast age up politician and then spain is just a clone of france, because they''d go cav or musk semi every games.
We could also give them a 400w politician and musk upgrades in colonial and then they''d be just like brit but with a worse eco and no lb and would still ff.

Our goal is to balance the civ but we do not want to change the way they are played.
And I fail to see how buffing their shipments wouldn''t balance them. With some testings we can reach the point were spain can have the critical mass to break his opponent without being op.

You could argue the same thing for other civs, like we should give musk and a decent cav to china to make their colonial play viable but that''s not what we want.

If you look at other rts, like sc2, when blizzard makes a patch, the race uniqueness isn''t changed, protoss still have good units but are slow, zerg still mass as fuck and terran still be terran.
You won''t see them giving op units to zerg or allowing toss to be fast.


I probably wouldn''t want spain meta changed either, but they don''t have to go bow pike, they could go bow rod which is very unique because rods can also be like cav.
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Post by _DB_ »

ovi12 wrote:
diarouga wrote:Do you understand that we want to keep the uniqueness of spain?

Sure, we could buff their semi ff with a fast age up politician and then spain is just a clone of france, because theyd go cav or musk semi every games.
We could also give them a 400w politician and musk upgrades in colonial and then theyd be just like brit but with a worse eco and no lb and would still ff.

Our goal is to balance the civ but we do not want to change the way they are played.
And I fail to see how buffing their shipments wouldnt balance them. With some testings we can reach the point were spain can have the critical mass to break his opponent without being op.

You could argue the same thing for other civs, like we should give musk and a decent cav to china to make their colonial play viable but thats not what we want.

If you look at other rts, like sc2, when blizzard makes a patch, the race uniqueness isnt changed, protoss still have good units but are slow, zerg still mass as fuck and terran still be terran.
You wont see them giving op units to zerg or allowing toss to be fast.
I probably wouldnt want spain meta changed either, but they dont have to go bow pike, they could go bow rod which is very unique because rods can also be like cav.
Rods sux to act as a cav, its just not cost effective imo. They do act as a cav ok when your enemy has less units I guess.

Bow pike is more scary than bow rod imo.
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Post by Jaeger »

umeu wrote:
insert quote here
eh, spain which civ bonus should be fast exp, is getting out exp''d by fucking aztecs... not even on a shit ton of warpriest, but with just 1-4.

i think enough said. even germany with an early tp has about the same fucking shipments as spain =______________=

imo spain should get a new civ bonus. for example not just receive shipments faster, but also send them faster. like 33-50% faster.


spain is already viable btw, pretty sure they beat iro now, and im confident i can consistently (75%+) take out russia (which musket does as well with colo play even), dutch (well dont know never played vs new dutch), brits, otto, ports, india, perhaps china. so that puts them solidly in the middle.

its just they really lose hard to sioux, aztecs and japan. as well as not doing to well vs germany and france.
Faster shipment time is actually a really cool idea. Another change I was thinking of is buffing the crate shipments from 700 to 750, and from 1000 to 1100 (spain doesn''t have 1000g anyway, so 1100 food helps). This can also give them more options to go for stable earlier and stuff like that in fortress.


It would be really cool if you posted recs of you winning all the matchups :D, since besides 700g 700w 99% of people (including me partially) don''t really know all the different variations and the best ways to play each matchup
Or as many recs as you have/care to record.
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Post by Jaeger »

subzero wrote:
ovi12 wrote:I probably wouldnt want spain meta changed either, but they dont have to go bow pike, they could go bow rod which is very unique because rods can also be like cav.
Rods sux to act as a cav, its just not cost effective imo. They do act as a cav ok when your enemy has less units I guess.

Bow pike is more scary than bow rod imo.
Theyre not so good, but vs the unit which most civs have (bow) theyre not super bad either, considering you also have dogs. Of course you cant just use them as cav all the time, only when its fit' like you said when the enemy has less units and you can trap them with rods to make sure you finish off all of them
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Post by _DB_ »

ovi12 wrote:
subzero wrote:Rods sux to act as a cav, its just not cost effective imo. They do act as a cav ok when your enemy has less units I guess.

Bow pike is more scary than bow rod imo.
Theyre not so good, but vs the unit which most civs have (bow) theyre not super bad either, considering you also have dogs. Of course you cant just use them as cav all the time, only when its fit' like you said when the enemy has less units and you can trap them with rods to make sure you finish off all of them
Yep dogs are more unique to act as a cav. I think Ive saw poissondu sending dog combat card to buff them in age 2, lol
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Post by lesllamas »

calmyourtits wrote:@lesllamas you bring up some valid points, but would you agree that if there is a way to fix Spain that doesn''t standardize them but rather uses something that is unique about the civ and makes it viable, we should choose that way over the standardizing way?

Personally I would vouch for an unction buff.
Yes, I made the suggestion of changing the ATP card in my initial post (perhaps to a Spanish exclusive version of the card), which I''d rather not reiterate or copy/paste for redundancy/clutter.

The lack of reading comprehension is staggering in some of the later posts, so I''ll sum up:

--DB, I did not at any point suggest 400w or fast age politicians. Diarouga put those words into my mouth. I did say that I thought changing age up politicians/experimenting with new politicians would be a potential target for change.

--Diarouga, it is literally my job to design and balance games. AoE3 is a hobby of mine that I''ve pursued on and off again since 2006. I have no interest in becoming a top player, nor am I a corporal. If you''re intent on pulling rank instead of addressing specific points, I''ll reiterate my ESO name in this thread--Fire1313. You can look up my games and look down on my PR as much as you''d like--it doesn''t make you any less wrong. Top players often make terrible designers, though some baseline level of skill is obviously required to understand the game in question. This baseline fluctuates between games. In fighting games, for example, familiarity with frame data and the whole cast is the most essential quality for a balance team. If I come off as arrogant, it''s because I have little patience for those who cannot get out of their own heads. If you present something constructive to me, I will consider it as fairly as I can. But I consider the point only, not the person presenting it, or their status in the community.

Back to Goodspeed:

Unction buff--I think this would be another solid outlet for change. It would be rather ham-handed to eliminate the need for missionaries in order to use Unction, so here''s my off-the-top of my head suggestion for unction: bring missionary limit to 5, reduce attack bonus to reasonable (very testable and tweakable) number, and add a speed buff. Missionaries already have a high speed stat, and it makes thematic sense to have religious fervor drive an army to march more quickly. The biggest problem with this that I foresee at high level play is that it may make skirm/goon insanely strong. To compensate, I would test change missionary speed and aura radius, so that missionaries are not invulnerable and able to influence an engagement from ~30 range. Adding dynamic missionary play would also have the added bonus of increasing the skill cap when playing Spain significantly.

I think that would be a big change, but with unction''s current state buffing numbers just wouldn''t cut it I don''t think. It still has the problem of having a huge opportunity cost and immediate expense, so you''d really have to make the card worth the investment. Giving small passive healing might also be something to play around with.
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Post by lesllamas »

ovi12 wrote:
lesllamas wrote:What uniqueness? Spain is literally the most vanilla civ that exists in the game. The civilization bonus is supposed to be centered around having a lot of shipments. And if you check my initial suggestion for something to look at, it involves changing a shipment, which affects TPs, which give more shipments, and make those shipments better, etc.

And no, you cant balance spain by buffing their melee unit shipments unless you want to change the units at their core, which would be much more radical than proposing a rework of a never used card in order to amplify Spains only unique civilization bonus. "With some testing" is a redundant argument that says nothing about the nature of Lancer/Rod in this game.

Saying "we do not want to change the way they are played" is, again, a terrible mindset for balancing purposes. Spains fortress is fundamentally broken in its current state, and just because it is currently the best option does not mean it is defining of the civilization [i style="font-weight:bold'"]independent of an established metagame in the competitive community[/i].

There are other "broken" things in AoE3, like the design of native warchiefs, but theyre much more central to the stylistic and mechanical purpose of their respective civilizations. A strategy/BO is not central to stylistic and mechanical purposes of a civilization, and it should never be considered a fundamental aspect of the civilization itself such that you attempt to [i style="font-weight:bold'"]preserve it[/i] when making balance decisions.
The problem with changing the meta too much is that people wont be inclined to use the patch because they dont feel like learning the civ all over again and learning 14 new matchups. Even if they are willing to, they wont play the patch because they know nobody else will play it for the above reason.
Im not arguing for intentionally changing the meta for the sake of changing the meta. Im arguing for points to be considered holistically and without concern for [i style="font-weight:bold'"]preserving a meta[/i]. Much of my back and forth with Diarouga was an enormous straw man. I initially suggested (for discussion purposes) a change to ATP and possibly changing Spains age up politicians (by experimenting with many different options). Diarougas next post was very convoluted and the conversation turned to suggestions that [i style="font-weight:bold'"]I never made[/i]. I do not want every civ to play colonial musk huss or semi-ff. Thats what killed the first Fan Patch, if you ask me. I do want, though, to discuss hypothetical changes that broaden the scope of Spains play. I dont want to nerf or neuter their current options or ability to FF. But what is clear to me is that Spains FF is a few things:

1) Its already viable, but it has some problems.
2) A pure melee composition is a balance teams nightmare because of how binary the power curve is. If rod/lancer is ineffective, it is woefully ineffective. If it is effective, it is faceroll-on-the-keyboard good. Its not just my word you have to take--there was a time when rod/lancer was good. Slightly tweaking one stat or 2 shipments is not going to initiate some kind of gray balance area. Rod/lancer will never be effective on a gradient scale.
3) It is currently Spains prohibitive best option. This should not be a reason to only focus on it for balance purposes. Nor should it be a reason to shift focus away from it. Point 2 is why balance focus should be shifted away from it. Giving Spain viable economic builds is not the most radical thing in the world, nor is looking to unction as a potential buff.
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Post by britishmusketeer »

lesllamas wrote:
ovi12 wrote:The problem with changing the meta too much is that people wont be inclined to use the patch because they dont feel like learning the civ all over again and learning 14 new matchups. Even if they are willing to, they wont play the patch because they know nobody else will play it for the above reason.
Im not arguing for intentionally changing the meta for the sake of changing the meta. Im arguing for points to be considered holistically and without concern for [i style="font-weight:bold'"]preserving a meta[/i]. Much of my back and forth with Diarouga was an enormous straw man. I initially suggested (for discussion purposes) a change to ATP and possibly changing Spains age up politicians (by experimenting with many different options)

You now that atp is already extremely strong already and that buffing would just make them super strong on a map like high plains. Changing there ageup poloitions is on the road to making a new French.
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Post by Mr_Bramboy »

In my opinion, just remove spain. If you apply any changes to them they'll just be another France. Nobody significant at the moment plays them anyways so removing Spain from the game is the best solution at the moment.
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Post by deleted_user0 »

nice troll ms_brambottom

btw the insiginificants that play spain include musketjr, garja, h2o and me ')
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Post by momuuu »

bramboy wrote:In my opinion, just remove spain. If you apply any changes to them they''ll just be another France. Nobody significant at the moment plays them anyways so removing Spain from the game is the best solution at the moment.
Best solution so far. Hire this guy for the esoc patch team already.
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Post by Mr_Bramboy »

umeu wrote:nice troll ms_brambottom

btw the insiginificants that play spain include musketjr, garja, h2o and me ')
As I have mentioned before, insignificant

:clint: :clint:
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Post by yurashic »

All things considered, we absolutely need Interjection here with his great suggestions about balancing Spain.
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Post by lesllamas »

I don't think ATP is strong already--it's an extremely situational card that saves negligible wood unless you build 3< TP's, and it would absolutely be map dependent. Probably strong on HP, Mongolia, Tibet.

Also, practically everyone in this thread just assumes that changing age up politicians means 400w and fast age, which is ridiculous. Importing ideas from non-nilla civs is one way to expand your mind on this subject. Consider Iro's age 2 wise woman age up. Giving Spain something like 200f 100w 100c could be worth playing around for a while. A more radical option would be to throw xp as a lump bonus upon aging, or increase the xp trickle rate for each age that Spain advances, scaling the trickle down in age 1, and being slightly higher than it is currently by age 3 (thereby encouraging age 3 play anyways). I don't mean that I think all of these things should be done by any stretch of the imagination. But if the FP team is ever kicking the tires on how to make Spain stronger, I think they ought to consider playing with stuff like this. I don't care if they play with any of my suggestions, but I do hope that they brainstorm effectively and non-circularly when nerfing/buffing spain.
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Post by Garja »

Spain is actually not that bad with 7 and 6 rods in colonial. They can do some nice colonial builds against most of euro civs. Against most of twc/tad civs colonial is prohibitive.
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Post by Jaeger »

garja wrote:Spain is actually not that bad with 7 and 6 rods in colonial. They can do some nice colonial builds against most of euro civs. Against most of twc/tad civs colonial is prohibitive.
Which colonial builds cs which civs? And do 2 rods really make a difference?
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Post by drumal »

lol this is ridiculous..+1rodelero do nothing
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Post by Garja »

They do make a difference because 7 rodolero + 6 rodolero + 8 pikes is a lot of units. 7 rods is also a pretty good card in itself.
With the shipment rate of spain you can do any sort of build. I usually do xbow pike (with archaic card or just 2 raxes) and also musk/rod/huss strats. In general the key is to use that extra card that Spain get over the other euro civs to pump the initial spam.
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Post by britishmusketeer »

lesllamas wrote:I don''t think ATP is strong already--it''s an extremely situational card that saves negligible wood unless you build 3< TP''s, and it would absolutely be map dependent. Probably strong on HP, Mongolia, Tibet.
Not only does it save you wood, they are also stronger + have a ranged attack + it saves you wood if you need to rebuild later. Definitely not a card that is in need of a buff.

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