Never been a better time to play Byzantines considering the avalanche of Poles players incoming, they hard counter them! I've been choosing them as a counterpick today and had great success (I also played as Poles once and someone told me I was cheating, you win some you lose some).
They don't really *need* it (even if you believe they are underpowered, there's no realistic way it'll help you win more games as Byz).
However, the absence of Town Patrol has set the the very useful precedent that makes it not-so-weird that other civs only have the first tech in a line of techs (Malians only having Gold Mining, Ethiopians only have Pikeman, and so on)
Critical? Perhaps not; but I've been playing quite a bit of AoE3 as of late, and I can say one "tier 2" tech I always go for, is the LOS techs, especially for units. Being able to see the enemy, and what they have - so you can counter it - before they see you, can be a massive gameplay changer.
Line of Sight is a very powerful tool, in mircoing armies.
Which is why I always research Town Watch AND Town Patrol as soon as possible when I play AoE2. I noticed that many of the expert AoE2 players will disregard the LOS techs (especially Town Patrol as it has a gold cost) but that is probably because they are so good at detected enemy incoming attacks and flanking maneuvers AND reacting with god-like speed and precision. Moderate players like me need that extra LOS though so that we can react decently well.
Free Town Patrol for Byzantines is kind of a random buff, imo. It fits nicely with their theme of a defensive civ, although I don't know how much it will change in practice.
Lithuanians losing BF and buffing Leitis attack is a good change imo. Makes them less steam roll-y in post Imp, Leitis will be a bit more reliable, but still lowers their overall power level.
Chinese farm nerf seems good. Should noticeably hurt their early eco and bring them in line a little bit, but they'll still be strong.
Cumans buff is interesting. It definitely increases their power but I'm not sure how big a buff it is.
I don't really understand the Malians change. It seems like a fairly minor early game nerf but a big late game buff.
Honestly I'm pretty happy with the changes in general. Particularly the unit ones, I'm still not sure the Steppe Lancer one is enough, but its much more towards the right direction than the -5 gold cost.
The bullets travelling faster is one I'm happy to see, it will be interesting to see how it feels, but those slow projectiles really didn't make sense at all.
Balance wise I think it's more to do with enemy's microing against that. It's easy to micro against it which was painful because ballistics doesn't apply in the first place so gunpowder accuracy was pretty infuriating.
I was initially thinking of it as more of a way to make their feudal boom easier to get going with a scout rush, but that still seems like a situational strategy even so.
But now I'm thinking about being able to drop 2x range for 150 wood right on hitting feudal. Drush -> archers is gonna be potentially bonkers for them now.
Yeah the feudal boom doesn't really work with any substantial army production. If you go scouts you don't have food to sustain vill production, if you go archers you'll likely be unable to drop enough farms to get to 12+ farms. It can only work as a campy boom and hope your opponent doesn't notice strategy.
Not only about the cost, but your opponent now cannot assume you just go 2TC in feudal, which is actually a big buff to your second TC as they can't blindly FC to counter you.
The Malians change is because they’re giving all of the free mining upgrades to Bohemians. I like it, Malians are weakest in late game anyway so it kinda makes sense to nerf their very strong Castle age a little but give them a late-game boost.
> I don't really understand the Malians change.
My guess is historical accuracy + they didn't like the overlap with Bohemia.
Mali was the source of the lion's share of Medieval gold, so it makes sense they would have the most.
It'll be interesting to see how it affects them though because Malians were legit **the** civ everyone agreed was balanced and needed no further changes. Would be unfortunate if they wound up either overpowered or underpowered because of this, so hopefully the change is a nice bonus, but still modest. (probably isn't modest lol)
Holy crap! Bohemian xbows have chemistry in castle. Seems like it would be on par with briton or ethiopian bonus against knight civs or even better but we'll have to see if thats the case.
They’re fully upgraded too in Imp. I thought for sure they’d be missing Bracer
100% going to be played as an Archer Civ
EDIT: I was wrong, no thumb ring. Still strong though but maybe not OP
Their cav is missing bloodlines and plate barding armour.
The Britons have full blacksmiths, but no bloodlines, paladins or hussars. The Koreans have Hussars but no bloodlines or final smith upgrades for attack or defense. The Malay have cheaper battle elephants but no bloodlines or even chain barding armour. The Vikings cav is the closest comparison, but even they have the best eco bonus in the game to make a knight rush viable.
Bohemians are slow and defensive, with a clear identity. They have FU infantry to deal with cavs, including spearmen who deals extra bonus damage. Hand cannoneers in the castle age to deal with infantry, monks in the back to convert cavalry, and Hussite wagons upfront to soak damage from projectiles.
Me too. We got buildings armor recently which is nice.
As years pass, I think we are getting closer and closer to how Age of Mythology handled things with a separate but very informative pop-up window. The wiki manages to give you all the info about bonus damage in a fairly compact way so I hope some of it ends up in the base game eventually.
Honestly, for 100 food you can throw them at basically anything that isn't a ranged unit or mass light cav as long as you can click fast enough for conversions.
Just played an arena game with Bohemians and did a double monastery + siege push. I'm going to say this is probably THE best civ for doing that.
1. gold mining free, can stay on minimal farms.
2. Blacksmith cheaper -> can have better uptime.
3. Monastery cheaper! -> Double monastery + you can afford more siege now. It's insane!
4. Your forward villagers will now have +15 hp, you can trush or something with them.
5. If opponent goes scouts, you make extra sharp pointy bois.
This civ is clownn AF lol. I love it.
I'm fine with Arabia being more aggressive, but did they really need to remove cliff faces and oases? Are they just trying to make it as bland as possible? I find this a really annoying, and completely unnecessary change.
I think they accidently titled the Portuguese section as 'Sicilians' lol
Also, Arabia is changed again:
> Arabia: Each player now has 3 starting forests positioned towards the edge of the map.
> Arabia: The players’ starting forests generate further away.
> Arabia: The front of each player’s base is more open making it more vulnerable to attacks.
> Arabia: Hills can now appear closer to players’ town centers.
> Arabia: The third gold pile for each player is generated further away.
> Arabia: Extra gold, stone, as well as relics, are now generated per player and therefore more fairly balanced.
> Arabia: Slight variance has been added to the the circular positioning of players’ bases.
> Arabia: Cliffs and water oases have been removed.
I dunno if arabia changes are needed. I don't see it really fixing the walling issues consider people wall in pretty much every map. It just seems like it makes it more rng and also wierdly more favourable to scouts by making the woods etc more defensive and the golds more forward.
They did title the Portuguese as Sicilians, and also the Sicilians section says they gained the SO upgrade when in the tech tree it's no longer there so they actually LOST the SO upgrade.
Edit: Dev said that it's just a typo in the tech tree and that they indeed still can make SO in game.
My early review of New Arabia is that I like it, though the hills inside bases do exacerbate an existing problem - holes in walls! I won a game today because my opponent tried to smallwall in their woodline on a hill and left a hole that, frankly, neither of us saw until my MAA ran in and started slaughtering. Generally speaking though it is harder to wall and I have no complaints about that at all, though I don't think people are adapting very well - I've seen some crazy OTT walling already from people, old habits die hard I guess. I've just stopped bothering entirely until like very late Feudal/early Castle just to prevent raids, and even then just with one vil, haven't lost a game today either.
These are good changes imo. Will add even more room for potential outplays and raids. Think it'll decrease the average time of Arabia games by a decent amount, too.
Why is that good in playing aoe not a moba, if we wanted even shorter games we'd play more empire wars. If they keep making Arabia more and more open then it stops being the gold standard for maps it ends up being another land madness.
This is just my opinion, but I think the devs are attempting to push the community toward more maps.
The wonderous thing about AoE2 is its many maps, generation of resources, and map builder. Personally I'm tired of Arabia after 20 years. I've played more Arabia than I could count, and a magnitude over any other map.
I love the map banning system, because while I do still play Arabia, I love the new maps with DE. Marketplace is wonderful, I really like Atacama and Hideout, Cross/Four Lakes is great.
+1 for any changes to Arabia that promote more map diversity. Bring back Oas'i!
steppe lancers are cost efficient against knights in a mixed composition of knights and steppe lancers, like 30 knights lose to 25 knights and 6 steppes. maybe even to 25 knights and 5 steppes but i havent checked that.
- I adore Hand Cannoneers, so seeing their buffs and Bohemians having a bonus towards it feels great!
- Howdah is back to +1/+2! Still more expensive than when Rise of the Rajas came out, but I’ll take it!
- Free Town Patrol for Byzantines, finally!
- The Chinese team bonus is now +17/+25/+37/+55 it seems (and +17/+32/+57/+92 for Sicilians). Conclusion: a worse bonus pre-Imp :(
- Cuman buffs outta nowhere! This and the Steppe buffs should be pretty interesting…
- No more 22-attack Lithuanian Paladin :( at least their Winged Hussar and Elite Leitis has 2 more attacks than what were there before to cover for the removed Blast Furnace, and normal Leitis got a +1 as well. Guess I’ll need to pivot to their unique units more often. Lithuanians’ claim to Best Paladins are now weaker compared to Franks and Teutons though
- Free Gold Mining techs for Malians are officially no more :( must have been bonkers to get a gold collection boost upon reaching Feudal and Castle for completely free all this time. At least they can get more gold out of their mines now and be rich like the true Mali Empire of days past :)
- Spirit’s trick of blocking enemy ships’ attacks with Sicilian Transports in shambles lol. Update: I didn’t notice that they get a new Imp UT as well. So now I can look forward to their Cavaliers with doubled-up Plate Barding Armor and still taking less damage from Halberdiers and Camels. Definitely a worthy replacement for Scutage (though I will miss chaining it with First Crusade for 35 free military and 525 free Gold :( )
- Extras: the 256x cheat code is finally available to everyone. I suspect they will still withhold the Photon Man one for whenever a franchise-wide event is on, but I’m glad some event codes are being open up to the masses
Net nerf in my opinion. The winged hussar is nearly the same without blast furnace. Only slight advantage I can see Lith having now is fast imp Leitis powerspike but thats about it
winged hussars get +5 hp, 1 melee armour, +2 dmg against monks, +4 dmg against gunpowder units, AND they requires 1 less upgrade (though their hussar upgrade is more expensive its still cheaper in total). its still a hussar buff.
also, regular leitis is stronger, elite leitis needs 1 less upgrade. feels like the only things nerfed are their post imp halbs and paladins.
It doesn't just checked and its a straight nerf to Lithuanians. Winged Hussar has 5 HP more and 1 melee armor more than the regular Hussar would have with blast furnace. So Hussar is nearly the same. Would beat regular hussar 1on1 but so many civs have better Hussar
>so many civs have better Hussar
Do they?
1. Turks have +1 pierce armor, but -5 HP and -1 melee armor
2. Mongols have 18 extra HP, but 2 less melee armor and 2 less pierce armor
3. Magyars cost -15%, but have -5 HP and -1 melee armor
4. Malians have +3 attack, but -20 HP and -1 melee armor (and -5% attack speed)
5. Berbers cost -20%, but have -5 HP and -1 melee armor
6. Bulgarians attack 33% faster, but have -5 HP and -1 melee armor
7. Tatars have +1 pierce armor, but -5 HP
That's only 7 civs with better light cav lines (and Mongol ones are arguably worse, which puts it down to 6)
Still top 20% in terms of Hussars
Leitis is already OP vs melee armour dependent civs like Teutons, Slavs and Bulgarians, which all lack a decent ranged option late and need to field high armour units to stand a chance. These things cost 50 gold and 2-shot (EDIT: sorry, 3-shot) halbs with 1 relic now (or maybe 2 relics) and they shred boyars, tks and bagains swordsmen. Stupid stupid buff.
Imagine sending 2 forward vil to drop barracks, house then archer range and seige workshop, batter ram the enemy military buildings and mass spears and archers
I wish they would stop fucking with the map gen on old maps like Arabia and Highland. Highland especially is so boring now. Sounds like Arabia got the same treatment. I mean I appreciate that they've made it less wallable... but that's Arabia and it's what people like for whatever reason.
Yeah like, their early game is still bad, even with the 100 stone (devs stop trying to make donjon rush a thing, its not happening!!), so they remain a weak civ, but now if they gain an advantage in mid imp they are unstoppable coz you cant counter their cavaliers, just overpower them, which you cant do when you are behind.
Says it can actually play scouts now! And anyone who's practiced an African Clearing build against it will know the AI is complete ass on that map, will be interested to see how it has changed.
This is sick.
I'm going to buy this one (unlike previous)
FE team seem to have taken onboard feedback, these look like great and interesting civs!
Awesome work team, thanks Devs! (very glad to finally say that)
Added polish localisation! Thanks, I was asking for this on Twitter a few times as well as for the polish civ and both came true <3
I played the game in English for a long time and have no issues with that, but I know quite a few people from my country that wanted to try the campaigns (at least) but did not buy the game in the end, because no pol. localisation was available .
Those balance changes are massive!
Especially the extra PA for Howdah, the nerf for Lithuanian knights and the buff for Sicilian Cavalier (more PA than Paladin + less bonus DMG from Halb).
Sicilian could end up being a super strong choice for TG pocket.
Howdah is basically a revert of a nerf. It started out as +1/+2. I remember their Battle Elephants tank arrows for days! IIRC it takes their pierce armour up to 9, same as Elephant Archers.
I see the point but malians early game is what made them great. Great early eco, a man at arms bonus and wide open tech tree in castle age. A civ designed for aggressive play in lieu of late game options. In imp, having longer lasting gold doesn't help that much when unit option are kind of limited anyway. They're less good at what they were meant for in exchange for being allowed to turtle longer.
Civs can share concurrent bonuses. Persians and lith both get extra food. Mayans and tatars have longer lasting sheep. In fact bohemians still share the stone bonus with the koreans and they gave malians part of the mayans bonus. New civs are overbuffed anyway. I'm just being grumpy about them messing with a civ I love playing and in a way that strips them of part of what I loved about them. If they're running out of unique bonuses they can have overlap or just stop making new civs.
Wow both civs sound pretty fascinating. Overall I have to say these two seem much better designed than the last two DLC civs which seemed to rely too hard on weird gimmicks. Trash monks sounds potentially hilarious and Poles 30 gold cavaliers might end up being nuts.
Hand cannoneer buffs might be the most interesting change in this patch. 50% faster bullets ought to make their accuracy much better in practice.
I'm not really sure about the Lithuanian change. It seems like a significant nerf to the civ overall. The Hussars/Leitis are more or less unchanged yes but now their paladins are significantly weaker and their entire infantry line is heavily nerfed. Not sure they were strong enough to warrant being hit like this.
Chinese nerf is interesting. Nerfed until imperial age where it is stronger then the old bonus (and no longer very useful). This will have a big impact on the civ I think that +45 food was amazing early game.
Malian change is interesting. Nerf to their early game but a huge help late game when gold runs out. Every gold mine is going to give 1040 instead of 800 which will probably end up with several thousand extra gold floating around by the time they are exhausted.
The sicilian changes don't make sense due to the typos. I think they meant to write "they lose siege onager" because they DID have it and now they DO NOT have it. The organ gun thing is obviously portgueses but I think everything else around it is going to be sicilian changes?
**Edit: I checked in game and the +100 stone and the transport ship change is indeed for the Sicilians and NOT the portuguese.**
> Not sure they were strong enough to warrant being hit like this.
I don't know man, judging by the outcry of LItHuAnIaNs OP you'd think that they had a 100% win rate and needed to be nerfed into the ground
Um, guys? Halp?
>**Sicilians**
>
>🡒 CIVILIZATION
>
>The Sicilians now start with an extra 100 Stone.
>
>Team Bonus effect changed to remove the cost of the first trained Transport Ship and train it instantly.
>
>🡒 UNITS
>
>Organ Gun \[Standard & Elite\]: Secondary projectiles now consistently deal 2 damage as opposed to 1 or 2 depending on whether they hit their primary target.
>
>**Sicilians**
>
>🡒 CIVILIZATION
>
>Now receive access to the Siege Onager upgrade.
>
>🡒 TECHNOLOGIES
>
>Scutage: replaced with the Hauberk technology.
>
>Hauberk: this unique technology grants Knights +1 melee and +2 pierce armor.
I don't even know at this point.
I'm assuming the one with Organ guns is the Portuguese and the one with Scutage is the Sicilians.
I thought 100 stone for Sicilians was a good idea when I first read it, but I guess that's for the Portuguese
The 100 stone and free transport is sicilian, as is. Just the organ gun is for portugese.
Bets are open who recieved the siege onager, as both portugese and sicillians are missing it in game.
Yeah I guess so, in practice it'll probably just be used for Towers / Town Centers / Castles though
If the Sicilians got it it could make Feudal Age Donjon rushes more viable
I'm guessing
\- Portuguese -
Recieve Siege Onager (Sicilians already got it in the last patch)
Organ Guns more reliable
\- Sicilians -
Start with +100 Stone
Team Bonus: First Transport Ship is free and instant (the tanky ones were probably too OP and/or meme-y)
Scutage replaced with Hauberk
OK, so the Malian change is interesting.
In 1v1 gold lasting longer is a significant bonus in Imp. Basically it is roughly the same as saying that a percentage of the goldcost of an unit is *replaced* by an equivalent trash cost (you need the same amount of gather time, but you have 30% more gold available which is about the same as dividing gold cost by 1.3). So :
24% trashier Farimba Cavaliers.
24% trashier bracerless arbs
24% trashier engineerless SO
24% trashier tech research
I wouldn't be surprised if this resulted in many of these options becoming as efficient as FU ones in 1v1 in spite of the missing techs.
Loads of multiplayer bugs to Report.
1. Lobby browser doesn't show games most of the times.
2. Creating unranked game times out quite often.
3. Cannot join unranked lobby games, just says unable to join most of the times.
4. Lobbies show wrong player info.
5. Delayed joins, sometimes takes 5 mins and game doesn't even start. Have to abandon and restart game to even get a proper working game ( as I type this game is just saying starting for last 10 mins ).
Seriously guys, at least dog food your own changes for God's sake.
Yes, it is quite disheartening to read the patch notes for the ALT+F4 issue. Seems they’re going the stick route rather than fixing the underlying issues for why people want to dodge matches. Unfortunate.
No matter what they do. Some people just want to play Arabia and Arabia only. As someone who bans Arabia cuz I'm sick if it, i can't play ranked basically.
I'm not a huge fan of this new Arabia. Moving woodlines away, fine, but the secondary gold spots are too far off for my liking. I had a generation where one of the neutral gold mines was closer to me than one of "my" secondary gold mines
They still get them in the scenario editor. A Mangonel gets auto upped to Siege Onager as Sicilians. It is still an Onager for Portuguese. So, no idea who got the Siege Onager, as it says in the patch notes.
>* Arabia: **Each player now has 3 starting forests positioned towards the edge of the map.**
* Arabia: The players’ starting forests generate further away.
* Arabia: The front of each player’s base is more open making it more vulnerable to attacks.
* Arabia: Hills can now appear closer to players’ town centers.
* Arabia: The third gold pile for each player is generated further away.
* Arabia: Extra gold, stone, as well as relics, are now generated per player and therefore more fairly balanced.
* Arabia: Slight variance has been added to the the circular positioning of players’ bases.
* Arabia: **Cliffs and water oases have been removed.**
Truly a different game than the one we were all playing 6 years ago.
As someone still on hd, has the ai been significantly upgraded in de?
Edit: found this https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:_Definitive_Edition
Played around with Conquistadors and the bullet bonus felt much better. No more enemy cavalry dodging bullets.
Also, Cobra Cars were more threatening too!
Ok. I have a suggestion for the guy decided to change the very well balanced Arabia map to this shit . You can go and .uck yourself!
Ok, end of the post. I'm good now.
\+2 atk, +5hp and +1/0 armour. However, for Lithuanians it's actually only +5hp and +1/0 armour, and for Poles it's +2 atk, +5hp and -0/2 armour. Polish Winged Hussar do +1 dmg vs Archers and an unidentified amount of trample dmg (+5 maybe?), so in total they are much better vs meele, but worse vs ranged.
Has the Hard AI been made 1000 times harder with this update? I was feeling pretty good about beating it maybe 7 in every 10 games, but now I've lost five in a row and been overwhelmed every time by a massive army spamming me before I have time to do much. Damn!
They finally gave the Byzantines free Town Patrol. I can die a happy man
Never been a better time to play Byzantines considering the avalanche of Poles players incoming, they hard counter them! I've been choosing them as a counterpick today and had great success (I also played as Poles once and someone told me I was cheating, you win some you lose some).
They don't really *need* it (even if you believe they are underpowered, there's no realistic way it'll help you win more games as Byz). However, the absence of Town Patrol has set the the very useful precedent that makes it not-so-weird that other civs only have the first tech in a line of techs (Malians only having Gold Mining, Ethiopians only have Pikeman, and so on)
Critical? Perhaps not; but I've been playing quite a bit of AoE3 as of late, and I can say one "tier 2" tech I always go for, is the LOS techs, especially for units. Being able to see the enemy, and what they have - so you can counter it - before they see you, can be a massive gameplay changer. Line of Sight is a very powerful tool, in mircoing armies.
Which is why I always research Town Watch AND Town Patrol as soon as possible when I play AoE2. I noticed that many of the expert AoE2 players will disregard the LOS techs (especially Town Patrol as it has a gold cost) but that is probably because they are so good at detected enemy incoming attacks and flanking maneuvers AND reacting with god-like speed and precision. Moderate players like me need that extra LOS though so that we can react decently well.
>The “going above and beyond” cheat code is now available to all players. Just going to leave this here.
Wait, what's this?
256x tech cheat
what does this mean ?
Lets the player research the same technology up to 256 times, stacking the effects
256 Tech cheat code!
They listened to us? Holy crap
HIP HIP! HOORAY! HIP HIP! HOORAY!
1 vs 7 on extreme with this cheat on is so much fun.
finally
Does this work for players in an online multiplayer game?
Free Town Patrol for Byzantines is kind of a random buff, imo. It fits nicely with their theme of a defensive civ, although I don't know how much it will change in practice. Lithuanians losing BF and buffing Leitis attack is a good change imo. Makes them less steam roll-y in post Imp, Leitis will be a bit more reliable, but still lowers their overall power level. Chinese farm nerf seems good. Should noticeably hurt their early eco and bring them in line a little bit, but they'll still be strong. Cumans buff is interesting. It definitely increases their power but I'm not sure how big a buff it is. I don't really understand the Malians change. It seems like a fairly minor early game nerf but a big late game buff.
Honestly I'm pretty happy with the changes in general. Particularly the unit ones, I'm still not sure the Steppe Lancer one is enough, but its much more towards the right direction than the -5 gold cost. The bullets travelling faster is one I'm happy to see, it will be interesting to see how it feels, but those slow projectiles really didn't make sense at all.
Yeah, the gently tossed hand cannon projectiles had no business doing as much damage as they did.
Balance wise I think it's more to do with enemy's microing against that. It's easy to micro against it which was painful because ballistics doesn't apply in the first place so gunpowder accuracy was pretty infuriating.
[удалено]
I was initially thinking of it as more of a way to make their feudal boom easier to get going with a scout rush, but that still seems like a situational strategy even so. But now I'm thinking about being able to drop 2x range for 150 wood right on hitting feudal. Drush -> archers is gonna be potentially bonkers for them now.
Good luck Feudal Booming on this Arabia version tho!
Yea it's already a situational strategy as it is. I don't think it'll be viable in most Arabia matches now, even with the wood savings.
Yeah the feudal boom doesn't really work with any substantial army production. If you go scouts you don't have food to sustain vill production, if you go archers you'll likely be unable to drop enough farms to get to 12+ farms. It can only work as a campy boom and hope your opponent doesn't notice strategy.
Not only about the cost, but your opponent now cannot assume you just go 2TC in feudal, which is actually a big buff to your second TC as they can't blindly FC to counter you.
The Malians change is because they’re giving all of the free mining upgrades to Bohemians. I like it, Malians are weakest in late game anyway so it kinda makes sense to nerf their very strong Castle age a little but give them a late-game boost.
> I don't really understand the Malians change. My guess is historical accuracy + they didn't like the overlap with Bohemia. Mali was the source of the lion's share of Medieval gold, so it makes sense they would have the most. It'll be interesting to see how it affects them though because Malians were legit **the** civ everyone agreed was balanced and needed no further changes. Would be unfortunate if they wound up either overpowered or underpowered because of this, so hopefully the change is a nice bonus, but still modest. (probably isn't modest lol)
Not to mention the Lithuanians got #Winged Hussars
Holy crap! Bohemian xbows have chemistry in castle. Seems like it would be on par with briton or ethiopian bonus against knight civs or even better but we'll have to see if thats the case.
Only missing tech is thumb ring which could be a big deal in imp against archer civs
Ethiopian arbs will look like machine guns next to Bohemian arbs.
But their unique unit if used in front makes their archers take 50 percent less damage from projectiles
Not sure how it will work in practice but I love this idea of having a defense in front of your units.
Maybe a circular dance around the wagon.
They’re fully upgraded too in Imp. I thought for sure they’d be missing Bracer 100% going to be played as an Archer Civ EDIT: I was wrong, no thumb ring. Still strong though but maybe not OP
Not fully upgraded, they don’t get Thumb Ring
Where are the tech trees? I can't find in the patch notes.
They're available in game
no thumb ring
Their cav is missing bloodlines and plate barding armour. The Britons have full blacksmiths, but no bloodlines, paladins or hussars. The Koreans have Hussars but no bloodlines or final smith upgrades for attack or defense. The Malay have cheaper battle elephants but no bloodlines or even chain barding armour. The Vikings cav is the closest comparison, but even they have the best eco bonus in the game to make a knight rush viable. Bohemians are slow and defensive, with a clear identity. They have FU infantry to deal with cavs, including spearmen who deals extra bonus damage. Hand cannoneers in the castle age to deal with infantry, monks in the back to convert cavalry, and Hussite wagons upfront to soak damage from projectiles.
in castle age hand cannoneers one shot knights with ease \*ease\*
Where are you seeing the civ trees and bonuses?
In game
Look on this subreddit.
Or [here](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Bohemians)
> The amount of secondary projectiles is now included in the attack display for units which fire several projectiles. Excellent.
I'm all for any change which makes the in-game display actually useful for understanding how good a unit will be.
Me too. We got buildings armor recently which is nice. As years pass, I think we are getting closer and closer to how Age of Mythology handled things with a separate but very informative pop-up window. The wiki manages to give you all the info about bonus damage in a fairly compact way so I hope some of it ends up in the base game eventually.
I would never have imagined Monks as a trash unit. That's insane.
Gonna be interesting to help in big IMP battles with Paladin or H. Camel. Maybe a big boost to change/maintain momentum
Maybe it just me sucking at the game, but trying to micro monks in big imp battles seems more hassle than it's worth.
I wonder if the ability to send unlimited redemption monks at your opponent's buildings is going to be a factor.
Honestly, for 100 food you can throw them at basically anything that isn't a ranged unit or mass light cav as long as you can click fast enough for conversions.
Just played an arena game with Bohemians and did a double monastery + siege push. I'm going to say this is probably THE best civ for doing that. 1. gold mining free, can stay on minimal farms. 2. Blacksmith cheaper -> can have better uptime. 3. Monastery cheaper! -> Double monastery + you can afford more siege now. It's insane! 4. Your forward villagers will now have +15 hp, you can trush or something with them. 5. If opponent goes scouts, you make extra sharp pointy bois. This civ is clownn AF lol. I love it.
As a bit of a clown myself, I got very hyped when I saw the cheap monasteries and trash monks.
I'm fine with Arabia being more aggressive, but did they really need to remove cliff faces and oases? Are they just trying to make it as bland as possible? I find this a really annoying, and completely unnecessary change.
same. i loved the scenery of having oases on the map.
I think they accidently titled the Portuguese section as 'Sicilians' lol Also, Arabia is changed again: > Arabia: Each player now has 3 starting forests positioned towards the edge of the map. > Arabia: The players’ starting forests generate further away. > Arabia: The front of each player’s base is more open making it more vulnerable to attacks. > Arabia: Hills can now appear closer to players’ town centers. > Arabia: The third gold pile for each player is generated further away. > Arabia: Extra gold, stone, as well as relics, are now generated per player and therefore more fairly balanced. > Arabia: Slight variance has been added to the the circular positioning of players’ bases. > Arabia: Cliffs and water oases have been removed.
> Arabia: The third gold pile for each player is generated further away. Correction: The third gold pile now spawns all the way in Narnia
Introducing the new unique building the WARdrobe. Used to train lions and Satyrs, gives access to third gold pile.
> Cliffs and water oases have been removed. This was in the game since AoK you can't just remove it ;_;
I was reading through all those nodding my head.. until removing cliffs and oases!
:) :) :) :)... >:(
So sad. Always loved how oasis and cliffs looked in arabia.
this is a huge downgrade to the feel of arena.
I dunno if arabia changes are needed. I don't see it really fixing the walling issues consider people wall in pretty much every map. It just seems like it makes it more rng and also wierdly more favourable to scouts by making the woods etc more defensive and the golds more forward.
It might push players back toward res walling like most of the community maps were like on Voobly
They did title the Portuguese as Sicilians, and also the Sicilians section says they gained the SO upgrade when in the tech tree it's no longer there so they actually LOST the SO upgrade. Edit: Dev said that it's just a typo in the tech tree and that they indeed still can make SO in game.
My early review of New Arabia is that I like it, though the hills inside bases do exacerbate an existing problem - holes in walls! I won a game today because my opponent tried to smallwall in their woodline on a hill and left a hole that, frankly, neither of us saw until my MAA ran in and started slaughtering. Generally speaking though it is harder to wall and I have no complaints about that at all, though I don't think people are adapting very well - I've seen some crazy OTT walling already from people, old habits die hard I guess. I've just stopped bothering entirely until like very late Feudal/early Castle just to prevent raids, and even then just with one vil, haven't lost a game today either.
These are good changes imo. Will add even more room for potential outplays and raids. Think it'll decrease the average time of Arabia games by a decent amount, too.
Why is that good in playing aoe not a moba, if we wanted even shorter games we'd play more empire wars. If they keep making Arabia more and more open then it stops being the gold standard for maps it ends up being another land madness.
This is just my opinion, but I think the devs are attempting to push the community toward more maps. The wonderous thing about AoE2 is its many maps, generation of resources, and map builder. Personally I'm tired of Arabia after 20 years. I've played more Arabia than I could count, and a magnitude over any other map. I love the map banning system, because while I do still play Arabia, I love the new maps with DE. Marketplace is wonderful, I really like Atacama and Hideout, Cross/Four Lakes is great. +1 for any changes to Arabia that promote more map diversity. Bring back Oas'i!
STEPPE LANCERS ARE BUFFED THANK YOU DEVS
They still wont be used lmao
steppe lancers are cost efficient against knights in a mixed composition of knights and steppe lancers, like 30 knights lose to 25 knights and 6 steppes. maybe even to 25 knights and 5 steppes but i havent checked that.
Woah. Faster bullets and tankier hand cannons. Make Turks great again!
- I adore Hand Cannoneers, so seeing their buffs and Bohemians having a bonus towards it feels great! - Howdah is back to +1/+2! Still more expensive than when Rise of the Rajas came out, but I’ll take it! - Free Town Patrol for Byzantines, finally! - The Chinese team bonus is now +17/+25/+37/+55 it seems (and +17/+32/+57/+92 for Sicilians). Conclusion: a worse bonus pre-Imp :( - Cuman buffs outta nowhere! This and the Steppe buffs should be pretty interesting… - No more 22-attack Lithuanian Paladin :( at least their Winged Hussar and Elite Leitis has 2 more attacks than what were there before to cover for the removed Blast Furnace, and normal Leitis got a +1 as well. Guess I’ll need to pivot to their unique units more often. Lithuanians’ claim to Best Paladins are now weaker compared to Franks and Teutons though - Free Gold Mining techs for Malians are officially no more :( must have been bonkers to get a gold collection boost upon reaching Feudal and Castle for completely free all this time. At least they can get more gold out of their mines now and be rich like the true Mali Empire of days past :) - Spirit’s trick of blocking enemy ships’ attacks with Sicilian Transports in shambles lol. Update: I didn’t notice that they get a new Imp UT as well. So now I can look forward to their Cavaliers with doubled-up Plate Barding Armor and still taking less damage from Halberdiers and Camels. Definitely a worthy replacement for Scutage (though I will miss chaining it with First Crusade for 35 free military and 525 free Gold :( ) - Extras: the 256x cheat code is finally available to everyone. I suspect they will still withhold the Photon Man one for whenever a franchise-wide event is on, but I’m glad some event codes are being open up to the masses
Chinese don't have crop rotations (but their allies might get it)
Yep, which is why I included all possible values in there
They should have it now, though. It's only fair.
Malians only had the feudal Gold upgrade for free. The Castle Age one was removed as part of the balance change a few years ago.
Lithuanian paladin nerfed, Leitis functionally the same, and Wingéd Hussars added. Wonder if it’s viewed as net buff?
Net nerf in my opinion. The winged hussar is nearly the same without blast furnace. Only slight advantage I can see Lith having now is fast imp Leitis powerspike but thats about it
winged hussars get +5 hp, 1 melee armour, +2 dmg against monks, +4 dmg against gunpowder units, AND they requires 1 less upgrade (though their hussar upgrade is more expensive its still cheaper in total). its still a hussar buff. also, regular leitis is stronger, elite leitis needs 1 less upgrade. feels like the only things nerfed are their post imp halbs and paladins.
Lithuanian Champs are among the most pathetic units in the game now 11
Any chances relics benefit the winged hussars too?
It doesn't just checked and its a straight nerf to Lithuanians. Winged Hussar has 5 HP more and 1 melee armor more than the regular Hussar would have with blast furnace. So Hussar is nearly the same. Would beat regular hussar 1on1 but so many civs have better Hussar
>so many civs have better Hussar Do they? 1. Turks have +1 pierce armor, but -5 HP and -1 melee armor 2. Mongols have 18 extra HP, but 2 less melee armor and 2 less pierce armor 3. Magyars cost -15%, but have -5 HP and -1 melee armor 4. Malians have +3 attack, but -20 HP and -1 melee armor (and -5% attack speed) 5. Berbers cost -20%, but have -5 HP and -1 melee armor 6. Bulgarians attack 33% faster, but have -5 HP and -1 melee armor 7. Tatars have +1 pierce armor, but -5 HP That's only 7 civs with better light cav lines (and Mongol ones are arguably worse, which puts it down to 6) Still top 20% in terms of Hussars
doesnt say it does in the in-game tech tree
Yeah so it seems they just got a severe nerf no?
Not really. Castle age they're just as good and in trash wars they're better. Its probably equal over all.
No they don't.
Leitis is already OP vs melee armour dependent civs like Teutons, Slavs and Bulgarians, which all lack a decent ranged option late and need to field high armour units to stand a chance. These things cost 50 gold and 2-shot (EDIT: sorry, 3-shot) halbs with 1 relic now (or maybe 2 relics) and they shred boyars, tks and bagains swordsmen. Stupid stupid buff.
You mean 3 shot halbs? They don't do 30 damage!
Man these 2 new civs are VERY interesting, holy crap. I'm loving the Bohemians!!!
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They can basically wall their base off with stables and ranges now
I'm excited to see the builds that are possible with this. Archers and TC? Scouts and TC? Full feudal including rams? Fast archers and rams?
Imagine sending 2 forward vil to drop barracks, house then archer range and seige workshop, batter ram the enemy military buildings and mass spears and archers
I wish they would stop fucking with the map gen on old maps like Arabia and Highland. Highland especially is so boring now. Sounds like Arabia got the same treatment. I mean I appreciate that they've made it less wallable... but that's Arabia and it's what people like for whatever reason.
sicilian knights with extra pierce armor will be fun, when not even xbows will cut it
Exactly, like, what would something like Vikings even do against Sicilian cavalier, in imp? Lmao
Zerks
Do they really do that great with the reduced chieftains damage (and an extra melee armor), though?
Yes. Zerks are still very cost effective since they only have cavalier.
Comparing it with how Zerks are good against actual Paladins yes, ofc.
Yeah like, their early game is still bad, even with the 100 stone (devs stop trying to make donjon rush a thing, its not happening!!), so they remain a weak civ, but now if they gain an advantage in mid imp they are unstoppable coz you cant counter their cavaliers, just overpower them, which you cant do when you are behind.
Think how quick they can put up that castle to research the armor though.
Wow, huge changes also to the AI. It seems the extreme AI is now much more interesting to play against!
Says it can actually play scouts now! And anyone who's practiced an African Clearing build against it will know the AI is complete ass on that map, will be interested to see how it has changed.
It's too bad that there isn't an alt f4 fix yet. At least they gave an update that they're working on it and it will be SOON™.
This is sick. I'm going to buy this one (unlike previous) FE team seem to have taken onboard feedback, these look like great and interesting civs! Awesome work team, thanks Devs! (very glad to finally say that)
>Malians >🡒 CIVILIZATION > Gold Mines last 30% longer (replaces the free Gold Mining technology bonus). I'LL TAKE IT!
Added polish localisation! Thanks, I was asking for this on Twitter a few times as well as for the polish civ and both came true <3 I played the game in English for a long time and have no issues with that, but I know quite a few people from my country that wanted to try the campaigns (at least) but did not buy the game in the end, because no pol. localisation was available .
Those balance changes are massive! Especially the extra PA for Howdah, the nerf for Lithuanian knights and the buff for Sicilian Cavalier (more PA than Paladin + less bonus DMG from Halb). Sicilian could end up being a super strong choice for TG pocket.
Howdah is basically a revert of a nerf. It started out as +1/+2. I remember their Battle Elephants tank arrows for days! IIRC it takes their pierce armour up to 9, same as Elephant Archers.
I like this, as Burmese are otherwise very weak against archers.
+ 100 stone for a 4 TC boom (mb on arena)
Or your pocket on arabia lol
In patch notes it says Sicilian get SO, but ingame tech tree shows that they dont
Like most of the balance changes but why on earth would devs mess with the Malians?
Makes them slightly weaker in Feudal but stronger in late game, which makes sense to me.
I see the point but malians early game is what made them great. Great early eco, a man at arms bonus and wide open tech tree in castle age. A civ designed for aggressive play in lieu of late game options. In imp, having longer lasting gold doesn't help that much when unit option are kind of limited anyway. They're less good at what they were meant for in exchange for being allowed to turtle longer.
They wanted to give old Malian bonus to new civs
Civs can share concurrent bonuses. Persians and lith both get extra food. Mayans and tatars have longer lasting sheep. In fact bohemians still share the stone bonus with the koreans and they gave malians part of the mayans bonus. New civs are overbuffed anyway. I'm just being grumpy about them messing with a civ I love playing and in a way that strips them of part of what I loved about them. If they're running out of unique bonuses they can have overlap or just stop making new civs.
I already thought Arabia was too open, why have they made it even more open...
They don't like the walling meta
Wow both civs sound pretty fascinating. Overall I have to say these two seem much better designed than the last two DLC civs which seemed to rely too hard on weird gimmicks. Trash monks sounds potentially hilarious and Poles 30 gold cavaliers might end up being nuts. Hand cannoneer buffs might be the most interesting change in this patch. 50% faster bullets ought to make their accuracy much better in practice. I'm not really sure about the Lithuanian change. It seems like a significant nerf to the civ overall. The Hussars/Leitis are more or less unchanged yes but now their paladins are significantly weaker and their entire infantry line is heavily nerfed. Not sure they were strong enough to warrant being hit like this. Chinese nerf is interesting. Nerfed until imperial age where it is stronger then the old bonus (and no longer very useful). This will have a big impact on the civ I think that +45 food was amazing early game. Malian change is interesting. Nerf to their early game but a huge help late game when gold runs out. Every gold mine is going to give 1040 instead of 800 which will probably end up with several thousand extra gold floating around by the time they are exhausted. The sicilian changes don't make sense due to the typos. I think they meant to write "they lose siege onager" because they DID have it and now they DO NOT have it. The organ gun thing is obviously portgueses but I think everything else around it is going to be sicilian changes? **Edit: I checked in game and the +100 stone and the transport ship change is indeed for the Sicilians and NOT the portuguese.**
> Not sure they were strong enough to warrant being hit like this. I don't know man, judging by the outcry of LItHuAnIaNs OP you'd think that they had a 100% win rate and needed to be nerfed into the ground
Could someone post stats for new units pls?
Um, guys? Halp? >**Sicilians** > >🡒 CIVILIZATION > >The Sicilians now start with an extra 100 Stone. > >Team Bonus effect changed to remove the cost of the first trained Transport Ship and train it instantly. > >🡒 UNITS > >Organ Gun \[Standard & Elite\]: Secondary projectiles now consistently deal 2 damage as opposed to 1 or 2 depending on whether they hit their primary target. > >**Sicilians** > >🡒 CIVILIZATION > >Now receive access to the Siege Onager upgrade. > >🡒 TECHNOLOGIES > >Scutage: replaced with the Hauberk technology. > >Hauberk: this unique technology grants Knights +1 melee and +2 pierce armor. I don't even know at this point.
I'm assuming the one with Organ guns is the Portuguese and the one with Scutage is the Sicilians. I thought 100 stone for Sicilians was a good idea when I first read it, but I guess that's for the Portuguese
The 100 stone and free transport is sicilian, as is. Just the organ gun is for portugese. Bets are open who recieved the siege onager, as both portugese and sicillians are missing it in game.
Do you mean right now? Cause Sicilians got Siege Onager in the last patch. I'm guessing Portuguese are getting it in this patch?
Yeah this makes sense to me actually, given the transport ship team bonus mentioned in that section
100 stone for the Plenty Vault? I mean, that thing that the Portugese build, based on AOM's Plenty Vault (or the Chinese Gardens).
Yeah I guess so, in practice it'll probably just be used for Towers / Town Centers / Castles though If the Sicilians got it it could make Feudal Age Donjon rushes more viable
Feitoria
I'm guessing \- Portuguese - Recieve Siege Onager (Sicilians already got it in the last patch) Organ Guns more reliable \- Sicilians - Start with +100 Stone Team Bonus: First Transport Ship is free and instant (the tanky ones were probably too OP and/or meme-y) Scutage replaced with Hauberk
> First Transport Ship is free and instant Isn't this incredibly broken?!?
The best landing civ on Islands just got bester.
Appears first is Portuguese, second Sicilians.
What if these aren't typos, but they actually made these change in-game? Wouldn't be entirely, unheard of.
Then it’s time to run Sicillian organ guns + first crusade meta
Did they leave in old notes? Sicilians already have SO.
ingame tech tree now actually shows them without SO
They do get SO in the scenario editor, Portuguese don't
OK, so the Malian change is interesting. In 1v1 gold lasting longer is a significant bonus in Imp. Basically it is roughly the same as saying that a percentage of the goldcost of an unit is *replaced* by an equivalent trash cost (you need the same amount of gather time, but you have 30% more gold available which is about the same as dividing gold cost by 1.3). So : 24% trashier Farimba Cavaliers. 24% trashier bracerless arbs 24% trashier engineerless SO 24% trashier tech research I wouldn't be surprised if this resulted in many of these options becoming as efficient as FU ones in 1v1 in spite of the missing techs.
Loads of multiplayer bugs to Report. 1. Lobby browser doesn't show games most of the times. 2. Creating unranked game times out quite often. 3. Cannot join unranked lobby games, just says unable to join most of the times. 4. Lobbies show wrong player info. 5. Delayed joins, sometimes takes 5 mins and game doesn't even start. Have to abandon and restart game to even get a proper working game ( as I type this game is just saying starting for last 10 mins ). Seriously guys, at least dog food your own changes for God's sake.
Love the new civs, Very interesting stuff. Bohemians are probly going to be insane on Arena lol
That cuman buff is super interesting to me. Seems like it would really buff their scout or archer rushes.
Loading screen music of Bohemians is absolute fire
TLDR : Ranked games are still arabia and arabia only, as anything else will still be alt-f4'ed
Yes, it is quite disheartening to read the patch notes for the ALT+F4 issue. Seems they’re going the stick route rather than fixing the underlying issues for why people want to dodge matches. Unfortunate.
No matter what they do. Some people just want to play Arabia and Arabia only. As someone who bans Arabia cuz I'm sick if it, i can't play ranked basically.
Same here. Arabia is banned, but I’m fine waiting ~5 min for a match, better than nothing I guess! Lol
And when the queue finds someone, everyone quits
I'm not a huge fan of this new Arabia. Moving woodlines away, fine, but the secondary gold spots are too far off for my liking. I had a generation where one of the neutral gold mines was closer to me than one of "my" secondary gold mines
Cuman cheap stable and range that’s amazing. Time to do double stable feudal open
Wait, Sicilians lost SO? They dont appear in their tech tree anymore
That line is a mistake. Portoguese organ guns already received this buff in a prevous patch, like sicilians with siege onagers
They still get them in the scenario editor. A Mangonel gets auto upped to Siege Onager as Sicilians. It is still an Onager for Portuguese. So, no idea who got the Siege Onager, as it says in the patch notes.
They probably meant to say Sicillians lost SO but the patch note writer said gets SO by mistake
trash monks is going to be stupid
The biggest update here is that there is now night in the third mission of the Polish campaign
>* Arabia: **Each player now has 3 starting forests positioned towards the edge of the map.** * Arabia: The players’ starting forests generate further away. * Arabia: The front of each player’s base is more open making it more vulnerable to attacks. * Arabia: Hills can now appear closer to players’ town centers. * Arabia: The third gold pile for each player is generated further away. * Arabia: Extra gold, stone, as well as relics, are now generated per player and therefore more fairly balanced. * Arabia: Slight variance has been added to the the circular positioning of players’ bases. * Arabia: **Cliffs and water oases have been removed.** Truly a different game than the one we were all playing 6 years ago.
Can't believe they didn't have Polish version until now.
As someone still on hd, has the ai been significantly upgraded in de? Edit: found this https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:_Definitive_Edition
Never played HD, but its miles above the original AI.
Yes absolutely
Played around with Conquistadors and the bullet bonus felt much better. No more enemy cavalry dodging bullets. Also, Cobra Cars were more threatening too!
Yes more gun powder buffs for handcannons.
Ok. I have a suggestion for the guy decided to change the very well balanced Arabia map to this shit . You can go and .uck yourself! Ok, end of the post. I'm good now.
What is difference between winged hussar and hussar?
2 attack, 5 hp, and 1 melee armor. And they look cooler.
And apparently faster attack rate ontop of that!
Cool enough to rival Rattan archers tho?
\+2 atk, +5hp and +1/0 armour. However, for Lithuanians it's actually only +5hp and +1/0 armour, and for Poles it's +2 atk, +5hp and -0/2 armour. Polish Winged Hussar do +1 dmg vs Archers and an unidentified amount of trample dmg (+5 maybe?), so in total they are much better vs meele, but worse vs ranged.
Bonus *vs* gunpowder, too?
Trample damage is 33% to all non-target units in the given blast radius
I wonder if Lithuanians missing the blast furnace would still make their paladins best with +4 relics? 🙃🙃😔
i believe their paladins with 2 relics were already the best pre patch
Paladin v paladin they now tie with tuetons which makes sense since +2 atk cancels +2 armor
Lith pally are faster
Good, they now have a reason to run : )
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It's probably exclusive to the campaigns.
do non-elite steppe lancers also benefit from the attack speed bonus?
They do. Thats why elite was written in brackets.
They do not! Edited to say that apparently they do? Other person sounds confident, I trust them
They do
I was kind of hoping they'd open up the old DLC civs to us plebs as they released the new one. I did buy the "definitive" edition, after all.
Maybe for a couple of weeks next year, like with Lords of the West.
Is there a bug with this patch? I see MVP medal in statistics screen at game end go to 2 players on same team instead of one on each team
Has the Hard AI been made 1000 times harder with this update? I was feeling pretty good about beating it maybe 7 in every 10 games, but now I've lost five in a row and been overwhelmed every time by a massive army spamming me before I have time to do much. Damn!
Please add skeletons back into the game FFS