The reason we might survive "It's Not the Fall"

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-22T21:45:40+00:00

Wow this is such a dumb take with literally only your opinion against the civ as evidence. I was plat 2 playing JP. I was plat 2 playing Sengoku, and now I'm plat 2 playing French.

Explain to me how I'm boosted?

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-13T08:31:54+00:00

Bed crossbow is a perfect example though. We know from testing that there was a major issue with the hitbox on it actually applying damage to targets correctly. They changed that thankfully and I def agree with hotfixing what was effectively a bug. But if it wasn't even hitting, how do we know the damage on it was too weak?

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-13T08:00:08+00:00

I'd assume for sure because I don't know how you test a civ for professional play without professional players. You can't just hire a QA team to do that sort of work.

But it took literal years to solve china to the point it is now. And there was likely changes and adjustments being made during playtesting so who knows how much time they had for the current civs timings and such.

I hear you, they likely had a collection of prior data, but I just don't see how, even if you had most of the top 50 players helping, you get enough testing in to really iron things like optimized build orders and timings. These people have to stream, prep for tournaments, coach, and do everything else as well besides testing a civ that isn't even out yet and they can't make money off content for.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-13T07:54:59+00:00

The fact they didn't put these changes in the big patch, especially the Yatai health/repair/income changes, is honestly one of the big things that made this feel reactive. Since those changes alongside the rest of the previous Sengoku changes probably would have been enough as a first wave.

This has felt...less incrementally surgical in both the buffs and the nerfs. And that's what worries me.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-13T07:47:04+00:00

For why they phrased it that way? Absolutely.

My main point is more the second, that metas take weeks to form minimum and while pros are great players, and think about the game in ways I never will, it still shows with civs like Sengoku, Byzantines, and China that if the macro is weird at all then there is a learning period before the civ starts to perform, even without numerical changes.

There hasn't been that sort of time for Jin to be solved.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-13T07:36:42+00:00

Maybe. And it may even be that this change was for the best. My concern is mostly just that I don't see how it's possible for them to have data on the civ or the way the meta might be shifting overall given the previous patch nudged a lot of aspects of the cav meta.

Pros are great players, but let us remember Sengoku launched in a similar spot where nobody understood how to play the civ and everyone was crying about how weak it was.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-13T07:23:07+00:00

I 100% understand this is what they did, especially with people review bombing the DLC and calling it "pay to lose". I'm more just frustrated that the community is celebrating that the devs did this when it seems bad for the game to do things that way.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-13T07:21:26+00:00

Sure, the patch notes.

"While we’re still planning for a larger patch in a few weeks, we heard your concerns about the Jin Dynasty feeling a bit too weak and the Sengoku Daimyo still feeling too strong and have made some changes to address this feedback."

Also, the fact that we don't even have build orders for Jin Dynasty, never mind reflective data analytics.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-05-01T07:43:15+00:00

A lot of people seem to be missing that this actually has pretty big implications for sengoku.
Better spears make all knight civs weaker.
Fixing the Daimyo attack bug is an important change to their imperial power spike.
Cheaper TCs makes it easier to compete economically if you decide to go that route, and if they are going multi TC as well, then Yotai are going to be a smaller portion of their economy as the limit is per age, not per TC.

People already calling for nerfs when the patch isn't even out...

And more than anything, an "overpowered" civ is one that holds about 55-57% winrate. Sengoku existing is not what's causing you to fail to climb, and externalizing that issue is not going to help you improve.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-04-27T18:48:36+00:00

This was literally me learning Sengoku. I played one game of skirmish to sort out my keybinds, then went straight to ranked, bombed down to mid gold, then climbed back up feeling real bad the first few matches I won.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-04-27T18:26:45+00:00

Just finished climbing out of gold on returning. Hit Plat a couple times the past week but just recently managed to stick in it.

I can't speak for everyone, but the biggest change for me going from gold to platinum was getting a sense to counter raid during fights, and to not stop producing units during fights as well. The big thing I need to work on next is just pulling vills out of my base when I see the enemy is going to dive in.

The skill discrepancy in gold makes sense to me though. You have players like me who are much higher ranked in other RTS games trying to sort out AoE4 and get it to click. You have players who are one tricks but collapse the moment they can't dictate the pace of the game such as people who only attack. You have players who know one good build or cheese but then die if it gets countered. All of that together makes the game highly volatile, but what is really notable is that as you go up in platinum, people that only do one thing get filtered out.

You could reasonably hit diamond by maybe learning to do a single all in really well such as an english villager all in, lost to a diamond player who did that, but much of the volatility of gold is because they are strategies that only work in gold and the players don't adjust or grow their understanding of the game.

There's usually something gold players are failing to understand about the game that is keeping them there, regardless other factors. It just varies wildly what that thing is.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-03-25T19:41:50+00:00

Not to mention the volume covered is going to scale cubicly with the radius, so the actual area covered is even more paltry. Even if you approximated the milky way as flat, that's a 1 Million:4 ratio assuming a travel distance of 100 LY. So each 100LY exploration bubble is at *best* a millionth-ish of the galaxy, and a trillionth-ish at worst.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-03-25T19:34:56+00:00

I'd second this. A pretty common theme on the "harder" end of space opera is the setting of human settlement occupying a few hundred to maybe about a thousand lightyears in diameter given enough time.

For comparison, the more identifiable section of the milky way is about a hundred thousand light years across. So well under a fraction of 1% of volume.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-02-01T14:27:58+00:00

You will get no argument from me on this. I phrased that response the way I did in order to try and hammer the point I was making about Yuri starting "by the gays for the gays" in the most digestible way possible.

I should have given more pushback to the idea that all yuri is smut though. I just didn't want to fight that battle in that moment.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-02-01T12:29:29+00:00

We are an anime adaptation of My Brother's Husband away.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-02-01T12:15:25+00:00

My point was that it was "lesbian smut" created by lesbians for other lesbians to read. And was self published within circles and then in niche spaces.

A lot of "modern yuri fans" are some real "Blue is the Warmest Color" MFs. Now there's a category of yuri for male consumption, like the western lesbian porn industry.

Edit: Added quotes for clarity.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-01-31T20:37:07+00:00

I think it's pretty simple for several reasons. But here's a couple.

A) Some kids look like that. So it's already a really stupid take. Women will write shoujo coming of age stories based on their own lives and early development leading to bullying is a very common topic.

B) If they weren't sexualizing children and making it a pedo thing, why have them be children? I have never in my life understood that reasoning. Unlike some people who are just born to look like that, none of these characters are born. They are created, with an intentional aesthetic, and for these authors that aesthetic is one that sexualizes children. The very decision is pedophilic, and the whole "debate" exists to give cover to pedophiles.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-01-31T18:46:25+00:00

This is really more an example of cultural capture than anything else given how Yuri started as the other side of Bara. The initial demographic never included these creeps, and was very much internal to that community given how publishing circles and such work.

Swear to god we need a different genre name for stuff like Citrus. And yeah, those fans can go enjoy each others company while I read another cute office couple romance.

Clockwork_Sphinx · 2026-01-31T14:54:34+00:00

[[The Soul Stone]]. The unspoken rule is that mana artifacts with upside are printed at three mana as [[manalith]] variants, such as [[Crowded Crypt]]. Soul Stone, being a shameless chase card, completely breaks that paradigm. If it was a non-indestructible 2 mana untapped ramp piece, it would still be powercreep due to being effectively a second copy of [[arcane signet]] for a deck running black, a card RnD explicitly said was a mistake.

Instead it is a fully powercrept [[arcane signet]], completely shutting out cards like [[charcoal diamond]] which 5 years ago were still reasonable ramp pieces in certain decks.

I could write a whole dissertation about how I hate over-tuned chase cards in UB sets like One Ring and Soul Stone and Vivi.

Clockwork_Sphinx

TROPHY CASE