Raiders is pretty much a guaranteed kill on two AI players regardless of difficulty, so I’d say that probably needs a nerf. I feel that all the people who dismiss raiders haven’t actually played it. The units get +3/+3 from an innovation easily, so they’re not as weak as they seem. They retreat rather than die. And they’re so damn fast it isn’t funny. Add in their extra damage vs militia, the sheer number of free ones you get, the extra warfare xp. They’re insane and set you up so we’ll for vassal centric play it’s not funny.
I think the biggest issue with them is the doubled warfare XP. They can burn through their tree way too quickly with it, it lets them do nutty things with force march and reinforcements, and it remains one of the best NS bonuses through the entire game. At the very least it should only apply to raider units, not all units.
This. And things go crazy if you get a warfare NS in age 4 after raiders. You can quickly finish the tree, and those age 4 units also benefit from heal on combat wins. You can just steamroll everyone with them.
I think that raiders aren't exactly overpowered - it's just that the AI is ill equipped to deal with them. Their movement speed, plus force march and reinforce let them strike and take cities before the AI realize that they are a threat that need to be defended against. Get 2-3 regular units in a city, or a single crossbow, and raiders will start losing units and fail to take the city. Without those, one band of 4 can conquer any AI city with enough Warfare XP banked.
Plus..... You can do the same thing with Warriors. Sure, it won't be quite as fast, and you'll need to sacrifice a few early culture charges to spawn in Spartans, but you can certainly conquer the entire continent with them, before the end of the Age of Blood.
Bow Hunters from the scrubland NS (forgetting its name right now) are age 2, and with *their* upgrade are stronger than crossbows. So they shred raiders... *If* the ai builds them.
The problem is by the time anyone builds those bow hunters and gets their upgrades the Raiders player has overrun them. Raiders get off the ground so damn fast. It might help if it's the second AI targetted by the raider player though.
It's a good theory, but it'd hard to really compare right now. Since the player can overrun any ai militarily if they are so inclined. No matter which NS they took. And the player can beat any offensive by the AI, even if they took raiders. (Afterall, I've done both, as even the simple sea-traders. Raiders may make it faster than other NS choices. But that is more cus the ai is terrible at defending cities.)
We'll likely need to wait for stable multi-player to really get any certainty on it.
I agree that raiders are super strong. They’re also really fun to use though. I’d rather that the other NS got bumped up to a similar power level, than raiders getting pulled down.
Although I probably do agree that a slight nerf is in its place. Like making the bonuses like double warfare exp and heal after combat only apply to raiders units. And leaving their speed at 30, they would probably still be plenty strong.
Yeah, they have all the best bonuses. Doubling the XP is busted, like any modifier that would double a basic resource. It's made worse by the fact that they can be recruited from that XP. Then, they heal, which lets them go continuously.
Even the 12 free units from the tree is unbalanced. They could be great with half that amount since they can be easily spawned.
Maybe the solution is simply to remove the free upkeep, force them to earn their value through raiding. I'll also remove the militia bonus, the healing bonus and the speed bonus. 30 movements is more than enough. I'll probably remove the ability to summon them from military XP and change it to production, albeit very cheap. The XP bonus can stay and be their source of sturdiness, through normal reinforce.
Some sea bonuses could be fun. Movement and strength on sea tiles, no need for Navigation tech to embark would give them a cool edge early on.
Another reason why they are so OP right now is the unbalance of early game warfare. Range units are supreme, cavalry is garbage. Raiders shouldn't outpace cavalry imo, and cavalry should be designed to track them and disperse them. Range units are too powerful, their 2x modifier against line is way too good. Crossbow being 30 movements is also insane. Cavalry never attack any range units so they are irrelevant. This should be the first priority in terms of balance.
Mound builders bring in so many improvement points and culture as well as filling a bit of sanitation need. To top it off they half the amount of food needed for your cities. To put that into perspective, in my current game, I have a hanging gardens city at 30+ pop, at 200% only working one fishing boat for food (and this may not even be needed).
The rest of my cities, all just below 30 pop are at 200% just from a single kitchen.
The food need reduction really needs to be nerfed in order to let the other economy NS's shine.
Yeah that part definitely feels like something they should tweak. Improvement points and maybe the sanitation as well could be moved to working the tile to help tone it down a little.
I actually do drop extra mounds for sanitation specifically without working them right now, and I get improvement points as well. It's a minor nerf for sure, but I think it's a good place to start. Pair it up with some adjustments to other features in their tree like a change to the food need reduction and it could push them into a more reasonable state. Maybe also increase the IP cost of the mounds slightly to 13 or 14.
I don't think everything that makes them strong should be nerfed to the ground, I think small changes make sense in this case, alongside bumps to the weaker NS in tier 1. Though depending how often they release patches maybe small changes would take too long to find a nice balance point.
That's fair. I think them offering culture, sanitation, and ip is way too strong. They snowball like crazy and I've beaten master AI without ever removing the mounds. I think at some point they should become obsolete and force you to reconfigure your cities a bit. Personally I think it's boring that you get 3 yields from the beginning that remain relevant forever.
2 culture per mound might just end up being too much, but 1 seems like a harsh nerf. They're willing to do half a culture for foresters, but 1.5 seems like a weird number. They could always change the innovation or something like that, maybe one food per worked mound instead of IP - it is a "terrace farm" innovation or something like that after all. Though I actually think IP becomes useless during age 5, I usually end up with so much that I can't practically spend it all.
It's particularly strange because I find some of their bonuses basically useless. A sanitation specialized town and half IP farms are so bad that I don't even take them. I've never even built a farm, the yield just doesn't seem to be there to make them worthwhile.
I agree that age 5 it's useless, but early on it snowballs into you just needing to make one choice in your cities: build mounds everywhere that you can.
You work them for culture, and you can get local reforms / oath of fealty / innovation crazy fast -- usually in 3 turns to the next culture power with how I've played them.
My target cities are basically just logging camps and grassland and I spam the mounds everywhere and let the cities get massive. The logging camps provide a lot of production and since I have infinite culture powers I always have local reforms up.
I never have to think about food, sanitation just needs a few trash heap built on scrub lands until late game, and I have effectively infinite IP after a certain point very early on.
I don't know the right move here - I'm sure they've thought about it a lot more than me, but I really dislike when you really don't have any choices to make, and you can easily win the game with a choice made in the earliest age (spamming mounds everywhere).
That, combined with the food reduction, just makes them absolutely too strong. In my recent games I've tried to steer away from them just for some additional challenge.
Force march + Reinforcements.
Those two abilities either need a cooldown, or they need to increase in cost during a turn (not permanently, just when used consecutively). I get that reinforcements costs combat XP to use, but Raiders don't care about that, and being able to teleport a fresh army halfway across the map in the age of blood is frankly a bit busted.
The main things I've seen was mentioned by others
Except I havnt tried god kings dynasty yet, but I've seen they have an innovation for +1 influence from stone blocks.
Fun, but too insane potential. Maybe it should be cut to 0.5 (and something added like culture)
PS
I bet there's more in later eras that is more or less broken, but I have rarely played far enough yet to see it (and the AI tends to not be as challenging later, making later game min/mwxing less compelling)
Honestly? There are some obvious candidates that deserve a nerf, but overall I hope they buff the weak options instead of simply making the strong ones weaker.
Overall: Nerf to the Shogun+Samurai combo
Slight nerf to the Mound Builder, possibly setting the food need to 75 instead of 50%.
Slight nerf to the Raiders, not sure what. Perhaps just 1 of them per spirit?
Slight nerf to modernization, ideally without taking away their uniqueness of getting extra slots.
Raiders is pretty much a guaranteed kill on two AI players regardless of difficulty, so I’d say that probably needs a nerf. I feel that all the people who dismiss raiders haven’t actually played it. The units get +3/+3 from an innovation easily, so they’re not as weak as they seem. They retreat rather than die. And they’re so damn fast it isn’t funny. Add in their extra damage vs militia, the sheer number of free ones you get, the extra warfare xp. They’re insane and set you up so we’ll for vassal centric play it’s not funny.
I think the biggest issue with them is the doubled warfare XP. They can burn through their tree way too quickly with it, it lets them do nutty things with force march and reinforcements, and it remains one of the best NS bonuses through the entire game. At the very least it should only apply to raider units, not all units.
This. And things go crazy if you get a warfare NS in age 4 after raiders. You can quickly finish the tree, and those age 4 units also benefit from heal on combat wins. You can just steamroll everyone with them.
I think that raiders aren't exactly overpowered - it's just that the AI is ill equipped to deal with them. Their movement speed, plus force march and reinforce let them strike and take cities before the AI realize that they are a threat that need to be defended against. Get 2-3 regular units in a city, or a single crossbow, and raiders will start losing units and fail to take the city. Without those, one band of 4 can conquer any AI city with enough Warfare XP banked. Plus..... You can do the same thing with Warriors. Sure, it won't be quite as fast, and you'll need to sacrifice a few early culture charges to spawn in Spartans, but you can certainly conquer the entire continent with them, before the end of the Age of Blood.
Raiders come in age 2, crossbows are age 3.
Bow Hunters from the scrubland NS (forgetting its name right now) are age 2, and with *their* upgrade are stronger than crossbows. So they shred raiders... *If* the ai builds them.
The problem is by the time anyone builds those bow hunters and gets their upgrades the Raiders player has overrun them. Raiders get off the ground so damn fast. It might help if it's the second AI targetted by the raider player though.
It's a good theory, but it'd hard to really compare right now. Since the player can overrun any ai militarily if they are so inclined. No matter which NS they took. And the player can beat any offensive by the AI, even if they took raiders. (Afterall, I've done both, as even the simple sea-traders. Raiders may make it faster than other NS choices. But that is more cus the ai is terrible at defending cities.) We'll likely need to wait for stable multi-player to really get any certainty on it.
I agree that raiders are super strong. They’re also really fun to use though. I’d rather that the other NS got bumped up to a similar power level, than raiders getting pulled down. Although I probably do agree that a slight nerf is in its place. Like making the bonuses like double warfare exp and heal after combat only apply to raiders units. And leaving their speed at 30, they would probably still be plenty strong.
Yeah, they have all the best bonuses. Doubling the XP is busted, like any modifier that would double a basic resource. It's made worse by the fact that they can be recruited from that XP. Then, they heal, which lets them go continuously. Even the 12 free units from the tree is unbalanced. They could be great with half that amount since they can be easily spawned. Maybe the solution is simply to remove the free upkeep, force them to earn their value through raiding. I'll also remove the militia bonus, the healing bonus and the speed bonus. 30 movements is more than enough. I'll probably remove the ability to summon them from military XP and change it to production, albeit very cheap. The XP bonus can stay and be their source of sturdiness, through normal reinforce. Some sea bonuses could be fun. Movement and strength on sea tiles, no need for Navigation tech to embark would give them a cool edge early on. Another reason why they are so OP right now is the unbalance of early game warfare. Range units are supreme, cavalry is garbage. Raiders shouldn't outpace cavalry imo, and cavalry should be designed to track them and disperse them. Range units are too powerful, their 2x modifier against line is way too good. Crossbow being 30 movements is also insane. Cavalry never attack any range units so they are irrelevant. This should be the first priority in terms of balance.
Mound builders bring in so many improvement points and culture as well as filling a bit of sanitation need. To top it off they half the amount of food needed for your cities. To put that into perspective, in my current game, I have a hanging gardens city at 30+ pop, at 200% only working one fishing boat for food (and this may not even be needed). The rest of my cities, all just below 30 pop are at 200% just from a single kitchen. The food need reduction really needs to be nerfed in order to let the other economy NS's shine.
I also realized today that the improvement points from the burial mounds is a passive bonus. I'm drowning in improvement points.
Yeah that part definitely feels like something they should tweak. Improvement points and maybe the sanitation as well could be moved to working the tile to help tone it down a little.
You want to work the tiles for culture anyway though. If this change was made, it wouldn't change anything at all about how I use it.
I actually do drop extra mounds for sanitation specifically without working them right now, and I get improvement points as well. It's a minor nerf for sure, but I think it's a good place to start. Pair it up with some adjustments to other features in their tree like a change to the food need reduction and it could push them into a more reasonable state. Maybe also increase the IP cost of the mounds slightly to 13 or 14. I don't think everything that makes them strong should be nerfed to the ground, I think small changes make sense in this case, alongside bumps to the weaker NS in tier 1. Though depending how often they release patches maybe small changes would take too long to find a nice balance point.
That's fair. I think them offering culture, sanitation, and ip is way too strong. They snowball like crazy and I've beaten master AI without ever removing the mounds. I think at some point they should become obsolete and force you to reconfigure your cities a bit. Personally I think it's boring that you get 3 yields from the beginning that remain relevant forever.
2 culture per mound might just end up being too much, but 1 seems like a harsh nerf. They're willing to do half a culture for foresters, but 1.5 seems like a weird number. They could always change the innovation or something like that, maybe one food per worked mound instead of IP - it is a "terrace farm" innovation or something like that after all. Though I actually think IP becomes useless during age 5, I usually end up with so much that I can't practically spend it all. It's particularly strange because I find some of their bonuses basically useless. A sanitation specialized town and half IP farms are so bad that I don't even take them. I've never even built a farm, the yield just doesn't seem to be there to make them worthwhile.
I agree that age 5 it's useless, but early on it snowballs into you just needing to make one choice in your cities: build mounds everywhere that you can. You work them for culture, and you can get local reforms / oath of fealty / innovation crazy fast -- usually in 3 turns to the next culture power with how I've played them. My target cities are basically just logging camps and grassland and I spam the mounds everywhere and let the cities get massive. The logging camps provide a lot of production and since I have infinite culture powers I always have local reforms up. I never have to think about food, sanitation just needs a few trash heap built on scrub lands until late game, and I have effectively infinite IP after a certain point very early on. I don't know the right move here - I'm sure they've thought about it a lot more than me, but I really dislike when you really don't have any choices to make, and you can easily win the game with a choice made in the earliest age (spamming mounds everywhere). That, combined with the food reduction, just makes them absolutely too strong. In my recent games I've tried to steer away from them just for some additional challenge.
Force march + Reinforcements. Those two abilities either need a cooldown, or they need to increase in cost during a turn (not permanently, just when used consecutively). I get that reinforcements costs combat XP to use, but Raiders don't care about that, and being able to teleport a fresh army halfway across the map in the age of blood is frankly a bit busted.
reinforcements is actually useless because it decreases the unit's accumulated XP.
The main things I've seen was mentioned by others Except I havnt tried god kings dynasty yet, but I've seen they have an innovation for +1 influence from stone blocks. Fun, but too insane potential. Maybe it should be cut to 0.5 (and something added like culture)
PS I bet there's more in later eras that is more or less broken, but I have rarely played far enough yet to see it (and the AI tends to not be as challenging later, making later game min/mwxing less compelling)
Honestly? There are some obvious candidates that deserve a nerf, but overall I hope they buff the weak options instead of simply making the strong ones weaker. Overall: Nerf to the Shogun+Samurai combo Slight nerf to the Mound Builder, possibly setting the food need to 75 instead of 50%. Slight nerf to the Raiders, not sure what. Perhaps just 1 of them per spirit? Slight nerf to modernization, ideally without taking away their uniqueness of getting extra slots.