Definitive Obscure Content Buff Suggestions Thread

[Imperial Noob]

Hey! I want to create a source thread for future discussions of completely useless aoe 3 content that in views of some should not be wasted and maybe considered changing in the future.
This is not about merely "underused" content, but about honestly useless...ly neglected content
If a suggestion is minor/looks natural or has nothing going against it, I will color it green. If it is hard to foresee, I will end it with a question mark. If it would require a major rework of something, I will list it just for posterity's sake and mark it red. Shipment means a card, Pop means a unit, Idea means an upgrade or other in-building tech.
I will go by civ, adding them 1 by 1 as I will have the time and editing as I will gather some suggestions:

A quick remark, that they are not meant to be viable in every situation, or all equally viable. Just reasonably useful.

Do you think having such thread makes sense?

Dutch
7 sheep
15 sheep
Stadhouder => -75% TC cost
2 Settlers => 3 settlers
TEAM 3 Envoy
TEAM 2 Surgeons
4 Surgeons
Master Surgeons
Covered Wagon
10 Pikemen
4 Grenadiers => 6 grenadiers
7 grenadiers => 10 grenadiers
1 Falconet => 2 falconets
2 culverins => 2 culverins, Age III
Advanced Artillery => all artillery is guard
Native Lore
Native Treaties => from each village instead of each unique tribe
Advanced Mill => -75% cost, xp bounty for building/destruction decreased by 75%
Establish Ironmonger
Silversmith
Dutch East India Company => -50% cost, +100% HP
Colbertism => 2 /sec
Medicine => -25% villager training time
1 caravel => 2 caravels
Mercenary Loyalty => -30% merc shipment costs, -15% merc training costs
Hire Landsknecht Mercenaries
Hire Swedish Fusiliers
Hire Holy Roman Army
Hire Highland Mercenary Army
Hire 3 L'il Bombards => for 20001000
Spain
France
Brits
Germany
Russia
Otto
Ports
Iro
Aztec
Sioux
China
Japan
India

[EAGLEMUT]

Stadhouders are pretty good

[dansil92]

Stadhouders are pretty good

I think he means the dutch explorer buff card?

[Imperial Noob]

Stadhouders are pretty good

I think he means the dutch explorer buff card?

Ups. Sorry, I assumed everyone remembers at this point what do the cards do.

[zoom]

Please excuse Mutmut. Poor thing's perpetually overworked.

[momuuu]

Stadhouder card is OP on yukon!

[pecelot]

You could cooperate with @Interjection and help him improve his “shipment or shitment” series

If anything, it'd be better to list all standard European cards before delving into particular nations' shipments.

The Dutch actually have the 2 caravels shipment. 1 of such vessels is meant for people who can't afford to unlock the better card, which is a usual route for most units in the game.

I'm totally for giving a helping hand to the poor, but seeing how much fuss a 10-wood discount for crossbowmen and pikemen creates within the community, I very much doubt it would actually be implemented any time soon in any patch. Not to mention countless balance disputes over highly-theoretical implications.

[p0cA]

Yeah dutch explorer card was 199w tc on twc iirc.
It got nerfed but its still useful on yukon

[Imperial Noob]

Stadhouder card is OP on yukon!

Why on Yucon? Edit: treasures and potential for a second eco base, right?

You could cooperate with @Interjection and help him improve his “shipment or shitment” series
If anything, it'd be better to list all standard European cards before delving into particular nations' shipments.
The Dutch actually have the 2 caravels shipment. 1 of such vessels is meant for people who can't afford to unlock the better card, which is a usual route for most units in the game.
I'm totally for giving a helping hand to the poor, but seeing how much fuss a 10-wood discount for crossbowmen and pikemen creates within the community, I very much doubt it would actually be implemented any time soon in any patch. Not to mention countless balance disputes over highly-theoretical implications.

I thought it will be elegant to just list them with the first nation that features them and then obviously all others would have the same.
If I gather enough and Interjection will be doing something similar, that might be a good idea for a podcast or sth.
I do not care about the poor. I care about wasted shipments!
Discount or a stat change are a different animal. My suggestions are on a deck-building level mostly. I just mentioned units and upgrades because it would be informative to look at them from a different perspective.

[dansil92]

In regards to the original posting- i think buffing the grenadier shipments would be a nice touch for ep. I mean they arent really ever worth building a foundry to train for anyone but otto (they have abus tho so grens are still extremely situational) but sometimes you just need some shipable seige. 4 grens is a wasted shipment IMO but if it was 6 (or even 5 and auto upgrades them to veteran?) It might be worth it in certain matchups.
I also like the idea of a 2 culv shipment for the euro civs without 2 falconets. Would give dutch & germany a reasonable option to counter japan flaming arrows or standard 2 falc semi ff.
Can we all agree the age 4 merc shipments are terrible? Like not even worth the space on the screen? (Except possibly that infinite fusiliers/infinite jaegers card in treaty) mercs are not really super useful in age 4 since they no longer are much better than normal guard units (i would say mams, jaegers, elmeti, stradiots [for some civs] are maybe the exception). Add that to the fact that all the shipments include some useless unit like hackapells or corsairs that you barely would even want if they were free... like if i could ship idk like 6 jaegers 4 black riders and 3 stradiots in age 4 for 2000 coin as dutch then yeah absolutely! As it stands dutch can send lil bombards as its best age 4 merc shipment and its... yeah its pretty bad (tho i do keep it in a few of my decks just because sometimes blasting infantry across half the map is just a really good way way to win). But why would i want hackapells age 4... guard skirms honestly will pick them off quicker than the hackapells can even get close...
Otto's explorer card needs a buff it is genuinely pretty useless. Yay more speed for a single unit...
Japan could use a 3 vill card imo but a lot of people think japan is too overpowered so i know that will get shut down lol maybe a small buff to that cherry blossom card would be viable. Its a decent shipment tbh
Also advanced wonders and good faith agreements for asian civs could use a buff to make them interesting since all 3 dont have a real 3 vill shipment

Your suggestion to buff the east india card for dutch would only be really viable if it was an age 1 card. If you have to wait till colonial to ship it, it will be much too slow. If was age 1 it would be like Virginia company and could be very interesting (tho 50% would be too much, maybe 30%) and give a bit more flexibility to a very stubborn civ. Dutch is already really good so it might be overpowered...
Livestock cards are just so frustrating because they arrive not fattened making it kind of a wasted shipment no matter how you try to look at it. I tried putting the 7 sheep card in my dutch decks to make up for that RE map food shortage you get around 11 minutes (3 minutes on great plains sometimes lol) and it did NOTHING. Spice trade on berry maps was better. Advanced mill even better. EP maps the best fix (lol). Even if it was 30 sheep age 1 i dont think i would ship it lol

Native civs could all do with a bit better age 4 unit shipments imo. Aztec could use a better arrow knight shipment, iro could do with a decent forest prowler shipment, sioux (oh sioux...) could use a better rifle rider shipment... not that age 4 is really ever gonna happen but it is a balance issue imo

Thats just my 2 cents

[Imperial Noob]

I also like the idea of a 2 culv shipment for the euro civs without 2 falconets. Would give dutch & germany a reasonable option to counter japan flaming arrows or standard 2 falc semi ff.
Can we all agree the age 4 merc shipments are terrible? Like not even worth the space on the screen? (Except possibly that infinite fusiliers/infinite jaegers card in treaty) mercs are not really super useful in age 4 since they no longer are much better than normal guard units (i would say mams, jaegers, elmeti, stradiots [for some civs] are maybe the exception). Add that to the fact that all the shipments include some useless unit like hackapells or corsairs that you barely would even want if they were free... like if i could ship idk like 6 jaegers 4 black riders and 3 stradiots in age 4 for 2000 coin as dutch then yeah absolutely! As it stands dutch can send lil bombards as its best age 4 merc shipment and its... yeah its pretty bad (tho i do keep it in a few of my decks just because sometimes blasting infantry across half the map is just a really good way way to win). But why would i want hackapells age 4... guard skirms honestly will pick them off quicker than the hackapells can even get close...
Your suggestion to buff the east india card for dutch would only be really viable if it was an age 1 card. If you have to wait till colonial to ship it, it will be much too slow. If was age 1 it would be like Virginia company and could be very interesting (tho 50% would be too much, maybe 30%) and give a bit more flexibility to a very stubborn civ.
Livestock cards are just so frustrating because they arrive not fattened making it kind of a wasted shipment no matter how you try to look at it.

Mercs in Age IV shipments could be calculated at a discount, since they no longer have an advantage of "upgraded" stats. Hackapells wouldn't be more useless than, say... guard uhlans with more attack.
Sheep could be shipped fattened. How about that?
I calculated Dutch East India Company as "how many banks are left to build?" I figured out, that at the time when it is worth shipping, maybe 2.
As for cannons... according to my ideas, every civ that has 1 falc, would have => 2 falcs. Civs that have both 1 falc and 2 falcs, would have potentially 2 cards with falcs, like Russians do with HCs. Japan would be less exceptional—merely saving a deck space with their 2x flaming arrows. 2 culvs shipment would be an interesting mind game in this situation.
These 4 grenadiers could alternatively be moved to the colonial age.

[pecelot]

memetis in age 4 @knusch

[VooDoo_BoSs]

I've floated this idea before, but it would be good if the EP team would take a statistical-based approach to balancing cards / units.

For example, view the relative frequency of use of certain cards. If some cards are used every game (eg: 100%), then perhaps you could nerf them, and boost cards that are used <5%.

The will accomplish both a balancing act (overused units / cards is a sign of overpowered units / strategies), as well as improving diversity and variety in gameplay.

[Imperial Noob]

I've floated this idea before, but it would be good if the EP team would take a statistical-based approach to balancing cards / units.

For example, view the relative frequency of use of certain cards. If some cards are used every game (eg: 100%), then perhaps you could nerf them, and boost cards that are used <5%.

The will accomplish both a balancing act (overused units / cards is a sign of overpowered units / strategies), as well as improving diversity and variety in gameplay.

Nerfing popular cards is unwarranted and pointlessly overcomplicated, because something has to set the standard. What would the new standard be then? and why? We generally know which cards aren't worth enough VS to ship and thus unused.
Blind statistical approach would not give us anything relevant. And how on Earth would you even gather the data?

[VooDoo_BoSs]

I've floated this idea before, but it would be good if the EP team would take a statistical-based approach to balancing cards / units.

For example, view the relative frequency of use of certain cards. If some cards are used every game (eg: 100%), then perhaps you could nerf them, and boost cards that are used <5%.

The will accomplish both a balancing act (overused units / cards is a sign of overpowered units / strategies), as well as improving diversity and variety in gameplay.

Nerfing popular cards is unwarranted and pointlessly overcomplicated, because something has to set the standard. What would the new standard be then? and why? We generally know which cards aren't worth enough VS to ship and thus unused.
Blind statistical approach would not give us anything relevant. And how on Earth would you even gather the data?

Do we need a standard? There's so much potential variety in this game that goes unplayed due to overly dominant strategies. This game has been out for 14 years - I would gladly trade a bit of balance for a lot more variety.

At this point, every civilisation has 1-2 strategies with 1-2 card orders. There are close to 100 cards available to each civs yet more than half of them are NEVER used.

Data is possible - I know it's being done already for units (eg: total number of ashis made per game). Cards may be possible but I don't know how it works from a back-end.

#MakeUniqueChurchGreatAgain

[scarm]

Idk guys, one will never achieve a state in which everything a game hs to offer is usable or meta. And thats not even bad, after all, there also comes some fun with suddenly seeing an underused aspect of the game being used to great success (e.g. Aizamk using spies), because you just dont expect it. I personally also love trying to make underutilised shit work somehow, if nothing was underused, i wouldn't really have that possibility. Games need to have wanky shit.

[Imperial Noob]

Idk guys, one will never achieve a state in which everything a game hs to offer is usable or meta. And thats not even bad, after all, there also comes some fun with suddenly seeing an underused aspect of the game being used to great success (e.g. Aizamk using spies), because you just dont expect it. I personally also love trying to make underutilised shit work somehow, if nothing was underused, i wouldn't really have that possibility. Games need to have wanky shit.

The game being suboptimally balanced does not justify the game being suboptimally balanced. And things being sweet when "they are not so bad after all" is nothing compared to things being consistently good.
And even Aizamk is strongly limited by what can he use successfully.

[scarm]

No Game and no meta and no balance can achieve something like everything being good, unless you restrict your content by a lot. There is alaways something that is more optimal than something else, and it even is intentional game design in most games.

[n0el]

There is always something optimal, but that doesn't mean there isn't a situational use for many things. That is lacking right now, because many of the cards/techs that would have situational uses are so bad.

[momuuu]

Stadhouder card is OP on yukon!

Why on Yucon? Edit: treasures and potential for a second eco base, right?

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3366&p=70549#p70549

enligthen yourself

[pecelot]

At this point, every civilisation has 1-2 strategies with 1-2 card orders. There are close to 100 cards available to each civs yet more than half of them are NEVER used.

there are a lot of cards used exclusively for grinding, like 4 dragoons, 1 falc, 15% wood gathering upgrade, as well as all the resource shipments (up to 1600 of each for some nations)
then you have the ones used in specific circumstances, like treaty
what you could do without a doubt is to bring underpowered unit shipments to a reasonable state — the awful grenadiers, 4 hussars in age 3 (but then again, consider balance) or 2 culverins in age 4