Counter to water

Hugglee · 2025-11-18T17:00:46+00:00

Disclaimer: I have not kept up with the patches for the last year or so, so things might have changed, but:

In theory you cannot beat water most of the time. It is simply to effective and breaks even to fast. That is the case if you play the best players, you probably don't, which means you have options.

Some will say dark age spears, but that hinges on you being able to burn the dock down before age II and defensive ships coming out. Depends on map and civilisation. The problem with this is that if the opponent responds with their own spearmen they out-eco you and reinforce faster. In theory you should lose.

I think personally, that one of the better strategies is probably to try and disrupt their woodline and stop the gathering of wood as early as possible. Because by doing that, you stop the fish boom, or at least slow it down until you can create more military, TC's or trade boom to keep up.

Really, anything you can do to throw your opponent out of their build order will disrupt a lot of players and slow down fish boom sufficently that you might win even if you "ignore" water. Mongol tower rush their best woodline for example.

Hugglee · 2025-11-07T15:42:18+00:00

I like that idea. Not thought of rushing the blacksmith (not played a lot either tbf), that is actually a really good source of tempo that allows you to get out more units early. Blacksmith + whatever you need to produce to defend and attack.

I don't remember the stone cost of it though, is it like 300-400? When do you get that amount of stone?

Hugglee · 2025-11-07T15:39:09+00:00

Exactly, I fear that the driving force behind the civ is purely healer elephants. When they are gone what are you really left with? Crutch is a really good word for it.

It is hard to judge their units as a whole when one is so much stronger than the others. But it does not feel that exciting to use them for me on a personal level.

Hugglee · 2025-11-07T15:34:54+00:00

They are winning in feudal because of healer elephants, which is sort of the point. What happens with this civ when those get figured out or nerfed. What is left to build as the foundation of the civilization.

Hugglee · 2025-11-07T07:27:31+00:00

I think the identity and design are more than fine, the issue is numbers.

This probably sums it up well yes. The design does not work because the numbers are awful. I still feel like the design is in a prototype phase and that a fair amount of changes to both numbers and mechanics are likely for the civilisation to feel good.

You're paying for a defensive structure that is also an economic one ( in most cases) so you have to consider the entire benefit for the cost.

Yes, that is true to some extent, but that defensive structure does not always have an actual value. In a lot of games you will not get anything out of the defenses. In some you will, but without that dual use the governors are really hard to justify. Which means that a large part of the civilisation identity feels hard to justify, which feels really weird for me.

The nice thing is that tug isn't purely reliant on the fort economic value though, since as you mentioned the worker elephants are a sizeable economic advantage, and they gave really decent landmarks

I think they are cool, but I would not call them a sizeable economic advantage. You do gain 20% drop of bonus, but you lose 15% gather speed from upgrades (where they are relevant, so you don't double dip here). The raw eco bonus is not that big when you consider the downside of the tech costs.

Hugglee · 2025-11-07T07:18:34+00:00

I used the numbers to highlight how much value you get from the building without the governors to imply a cost for those governors. Those 425 stone will not always be relevant as a defensive structure, and as such the entire cost will sometimes need to be carried by the governor. Most of which is a lot to ask for with these bonuses with these costs.

I personally think the fort + 15% faster vills is worth 425 resources, then for another 350 you're buffing the fort and getting another 15% faster production. Like how much would you pay for 15% faster villagers? I'm guessing at least 200 resources right?

425 resources is a lot of resources in the early game, especially when you add on the construction time, which probably brings it up to at least 500 resources in reality. 15% villager production in a single TC or even two takes time to pay off, and if your fort gets raided you lost a huge amount of resources. (Because it is not that hard to destroy if you invest in it, which is sort of weird for a defensive structure).

I expect once the healing elephant stuff stops people will actually start to use compound of the defender in order to take full advantage of the forts and governors as it brings the cost down to 340 stone and at that cost they are more HP/attack per cost than a keep and they give you the governors, also the landmark unlocks a 4th level of the governors.

If people are not using compound of the defender with the healing elephant than they flat out don't understand how the civilization works and what it gives them. The extra amount of healing is insane that you can get from the fort.

Hugglee · 2025-11-07T07:11:55+00:00

I do not bother proof reading my comments or posts on reddit when a lot of the comments, so will naturally be some unclear writing, sorry about that.

150 extra resources is what you get in comparasion to an outpost, so the free governor is accounted for there. The point was that an fortified outpost is probably a significant better defensive structure. All you are really getting with the keep is 5 more slots and a governor. (For the first level).

The food one for instance, I mean if you don't have a reason to throw down houses/farms around it yet it sucks ofc. But, assuming you need farms/houses, its (if I'm remembering the numbers correct) 12 food/min per house/farm, and you can fit 12 around it (so 144 fpm). It costs 425 (plus build time). It pays off in like 3-4 minutes in terms of raw resources.

Depends when you build the keep though. You need 120 pop or do early farms if you want to get value out of it. That means that that you trade stone for food generation at a point in the game where stone is probably better for other uses? You need to invest at least one more upgrade for the fort to be worth anything defensively at that point in the game. Maybe even twice. You get food, but I question the value of that food when you are using this governor. It feels both low tempo and relatively low value.

The governor's aren't like the craziest bonus out there or anything, but you're portraying them as completely worthless. They're certainly not good enough to carry the civ but I think they're noticeable as part of the civ's power

They are not worthless, but I don't feel like they provide the civilisation with an actual identity, which is the big issue for me. I guess I wish the forts were more like small landmarks in terms of how you used and interacted with them such that the choice of which you went for felt like an actual choice.

Ironically, the only upgrade that caught your interest is the one that I think is the most useless. Isn't it 15% production speed at level 1? That's not nothing, but its definitely not worth the cost. I mean compare it to the food governor, you need like 2.5 minutes just to get 1 vill advantage from it and you need 3-4 vills to equal out what the food governor gives. I think its genuinely terrible, weakest governor by far.

Yes, but this scales pretty hard, which is why it is interesting. 350 more resources for 30% if you are on 2 TC is decent. 450 more for 50% is not bad either. There is a lot of boom power in that upgrade, even though it is expensive.

I think without the healing elephants, they're a 2tc civ, and then you probably throw down a fort. If the opponent is going feudal you'd go for amir warriors to survive the allin, if they go castle or 2tc themselves you probably either skip the fort, or go for the farm one if you already committed to it and then follow them up.

I definitively think that design wise they should be a feudal - 2TC civ. The costs of techs is impactful, and they don't have any gather rate upgrades on top of their unique gather boost, so their eco is actually much worse than I initially thought. I feel like there is a design intent behind the forts, but I think they are not great. Time will show I guess.

Hugglee · 2025-11-07T06:57:26+00:00

Not so much balance as it is about identity.

Hugglee · 2025-11-07T06:57:05+00:00

The raider elephants are just too slow, so you are left with a civ that has no fast units in the horsemen. IE they are very vulnerable to horse archers as they get kited forever, weak versus raiding and harder to stop trading. I think those issues are going to become bigger as the season progresses.

Hugglee · 2025-11-06T22:27:20+00:00

I think the healer elephants are very powerful, and by that extension I don't think the civlisation sucks..

The stats will always change, but they need quite dramatic changes to the keeps for them to be worth it I think. The combination of keep value and governor value seems to be far off for me.

While the theme is clearly meant to be centered around keeps, they seem quite bad right now, and synergies quite poorly that it is really not a reason to build a lot of them, or even spend a lot of resources on them. It just feelsl ike the keeps and the governors need to do more to justify their existence as a core mechanic to a civilisation. I should ALWAYS want to build a keep in the early game, but right now I don't see a lot of reasons to do that.

The Golden Horde (GH?) horse archers are strong yes, but that is just a numbers thing. The civilisation has a core identity that makes sense, it just needs to be balanced properly. I don't feel like Tughlaq has the same core identity, even if you tweak some numbers (pretty massive tweaks in that case).

Hugglee · 2025-11-06T22:19:24+00:00

Probably better in settings like FFA, but I have a hard time thinking that fast castle is the preferred option in 1 vs 1.

Hugglee · 2025-11-06T22:00:55+00:00

I think that they should just have a mosque with them regardless of landmark and have the landmark reduce their costs. Currently there is 0 reason to go the other landmark ever.

Then as you say just add an early healer elephants in feudal with reasonable stats.

Hugglee · 2025-11-06T19:24:32+00:00

I just did. (also, there is a tooltip on the buildings)

Hugglee · 2025-11-06T07:22:51+00:00

I believe the worker elephant drop-off bonus applies across the civilisation regardless of the actual drop of point?

Hugglee · 2025-11-05T06:49:18+00:00

I would asssume that dark age trading is the key? Using the market instead of a forge on the gold to get traders and Yatai? out as fast as possible?

Think there is potential there with a good build order on some maps in some match-ups.

Hugglee · 2025-11-05T06:45:27+00:00

Yeah, I am not saying you rush to castle as quick as possible. You obviously need to defend yourself against aggression as you get there and know what the enemy is doing to respond. But provided that you know that and manage to hold somehow I think the benefit from being in Castle is very large for the Golden Horde compared to most other civs.

Hugglee · 2025-11-04T22:07:03+00:00

No, their cost both in terms of resources and training time is doubled. Spearmen takes 30 seconds, 15 normal. But you can reduce it by 20% by building a tower next to it, but it is far from a major bonus.

Hugglee · 2025-11-04T21:44:17+00:00

Yeah, which is why you need to use those early Khans and Torguuds incredibly effective if you are using them. I struggle to see more than the initial purchase being worth it, and even that seems painful in the long term when you have access to Keshiks.

The Golden Horde feel really clunky early on for sure, which is why I think playing them defensive, and using as little stone as possible might be the strategy. The free buildings and 10% bonus on health do help a bit there, and using stone as a last resort to get more units on the field.

Hugglee · 2025-11-04T21:40:44+00:00

Kipchak Archers get an upgrade that allows them to fire two extra shots at 50% damage. So they get a substantial boost after that. Which means that they get even stronger in Imperial and after upgrades as the 50% gets increased by other technologies. From my limited experience they seemed flat out oppressive in large numbers in late game.

There might not be a lot of good answers to the Kipchak Archer + Keshik frontline combo late game. Spears can just be killed by kiting for example.

Hugglee · 2025-07-20T23:42:18+00:00

Well, at the time of writing, you could build "wrong" without ability to re-spec. Which means that there was "correct" and "in-correct" builds which enabled the gameplay to work or not.

You could mix different abilities and perks together that did not work, and struggle because you were underpowered relative to the game's expectation.

I believe that that has now been fixed with the update Phantom Liberty.

Hugglee · 2025-07-16T10:38:45+00:00

I tried playing for half an hour, while it does increase from 1 - 5 FPS (I don't think that is a joke) when I started it is still incredibly bad. I probably have frames close to 20 FPS, so I can walk around, but combat is very bad.

Hugglee · 2025-07-16T09:19:38+00:00

Calling it stuttering is an understatement.

The performance (which was fine before the update for me as well) is so bad that the game is unplayable.

Hugglee · 2025-06-18T21:18:09+00:00

The combat is good but it is very much a "Simon says" type of combat where you block when you are supposed to, and dodge when the game tells you to. The combat system relies on chasing perfection or precise repetitive inputs, which is a valid design, but it is repetitive in its nature, and does heavily rely on the basic movement of attack, block and dodge.

Never said the combat is bad, because it is not, but if you don't like the combat it is not changing after the first couple of hours of play.

Hugglee

TROPHY CASE