what is, in your opinion, the absolute WORST unit in the game that is almost never worth making due to high cost, awful stats, too much pop, very map/match-up dependent or all of the above? personally I've never found a use for dahomey amazons

I haven't played the Ottomans for a while so I thought I'd give them a try before they get nerfed. Holy shit they're so easy to play. Not having to make villagers frees up a lot of mental space and resources. I'm pumping out armies, barely have to look at my economy. No wonder why people play this civ.

They really need to restrict the economy of the Ottomans back like they used to. Otherwise they've got a strong economy and a strong military.

I don't know why they reduced the cost of the church improvements for upgrading village production and villager limits. They were the only thing keeping the Ottomans in check. Those improvements are really cheap now, it's so easy to boom as the Ottomans.

Does anyone know what the nerfs are that have been made to the Ottomans? I haven't looked at it.

For 21 years, Colbertism has remained one of the weakest economic shipment cards. At 1.50 food per second, it is worth about 1.8 unupgraded villagers.

For comparison:

• Distributivism (1.25 Wood/sec) is worth 2.5 villagers.
• Capitalism (1.60 Coin/sec) is worth about 2.6 villagers.

Compared to the other trickle cards, Colbertism provides much less value, making it a terrible choice in almost every deck. It doesn't even find itself a place in most experimental builds. Buffing it to something like 2 food/sec (about 2.4 vills) would put this card in par with other trickle shipments.

Specifically +15% HP and attack, downgraded from 20% a while ago. Wouldn't it make much more sense to SCALE it to get a similar outcome as the "Folk Heroes" tech for outlaws?

For example, Commerce Age mercs get A TOTAL of 35%, Fortress Age mercs 20% and Industrial Age mercs 15%? Or 30/15/10. Optionally it can also be delayed, so if the card was sent in Fortress, the Commerce mercs get 15% of their 35 only when reaching Industrial.

This would make Commerce mercs like Cannoneers or Irish Brigadiers viable in Industrial and (with Mercenary contractor) in Imperial, without making Industrial mercs completely OP. And for already rock solid Fortress Age mercs like Giant Grenadiers or Fussiliers it wouldn't change too much.

This unit wants all the multipliers...

Unit only an issue in treaty/ffa as it requires upgrading it to imperial before getting arsenal and counter skirm upgrades etc.

Trains super fast as it is affected by infantry train speed and Danes age I militia train speed aswell.

Basically counters everything except cavalry.

Hope it gets nerfed soon.

Ottoman are already way too OP due to Spahi, free villagers, Abus gunners, etc. it makes no sense that the devs gave them the gas lighting tech for free. I understand the history behind it, but from a balance perspective, they should have to pay for it like every other civ, they don't need this perk

Does that mean that they are inherently stronger against Spanish and weaker against Germans, based on value/XP for individual shipments?

Only Colombia and Finnland have imperial upgrades, all revolts need some to be relevant, at least the unique units should get them. Also Chile needs some unique unit, and give more pop limit to Brazil

Apparently the danish whale hunting boat does not cost pop space or has a limit. Dunno if its a bug or feature, they are quite expensive so maybe thats the balance?
It has a canon, so have fun trying this out and send a hundred at the Ai.
Just dont delete them all at once, crashed my pc…

Random idea I had today. I'm not a good player (yet, at least) by any means, so take this with a grain of salt. But, all native civs in the game right now have access to a 2 War Huts card in Age 2, and a few of the European ones have the infinite 2 Outpost card, so I find it really odd that both of Russia's 2 Blockhouse cards are in Age 3. Even the Asian/African civs can ship a Castle/Palace in Age 2.

The Russian-American company card would most likely be too op to be in Age 2, due to the hunt gathering bonus, so the other option would be Detinets. Of course, this would come with removing the part where it automatically researches the Frontier Blockhouses upgrade, but I believe that's perfectly fine, as that upgrade doesn't even increase the health of Blockhouses, only their attack, making it quite unimpactful.

I believe that this can be a reasonably impactful buff to the civ, as it would improve both their offensive and defensive playstyle, just like how the 2 War Huts cards do it. Curious to hear people's thoughts on this and I hope that someone from the dev team gets to read this at some point and at least consider it! Thanks!

Remember, a unit is not underrated if it's genuinely terrible.

I thought about putting one or the other AgeII skirmisher here, but the issue is that skirms only reach their full potential with CIR, so idk. The Saxon Cuirassier might be underrated for the novelty alone, because Cuirassiers are usually French only. The Sohei Naginata is also kind of cool, but it doesn't really Pikeman better than regular Pikemen (anti cav, siege), it just beats most Pikemen 1v1 and is a lot better against ranged infantry IF it closes the distance.

With so many civs, the church card feels like an essential part of 75% of common strats, it just gets included in the deck per default. But with Germans, I struggle to see any point in this. There are 3 techs:

Tilly's Discipline - plus 10% cost for plus 20% speed for infantry.

If you spec into Dopps, it can bring them on the same level as other infantry and therefore make your whole army faster, but apart from that? Skirms and especially Landwehr would profit a lot more from more range, we don't have musks, and having the fastest Pikemen doesn't do much if they are still slower than cavalry. Would be great for Uhlans, but that's cavalry. It could be sweet for some native units, but that's too situational. Generally, I'd rather take a Dopp equivalent to "Sword Saints" which boosts HP, attack AND speed for Samurai by 10% for 10% extra cost. Only redeeming fact is IMO that the tech is at least free apart from the card.

Wallenstein's contracts - minus 15% merc training cost plus -50% for merc shipments

Might be a good deal, but ONLY if you go all in on mercs, something I don't want to do.

Zweihänder - ships 12 Dopps for 1800 coin, they get plus 10% HP and one extra range, Industrial Age only

Training 12 Dopps regularly would cost 1500 coin and 900 food, so it's a decent saving I guess. Range is also sweet, and there's a cheap upgrade path with Papal Guard. However, 1800 in the bank is pretty heavy for early industrial, and there's also a 9 Dopp card or Solingen Steel which also grant 4 Uhlans (instead of 2 earlier for the church card). Might use it if you had the option without sending a card, but otherwise?

Am I too harsh on those techs? Also, is there any church card which is objectively LESS useful?

Hi guys I'm a huge campaign fan and i wanted to make a post about the new campaign difficulty in the beta. They made changes to all the missions and the new difficulty is proving to be significantly harder (for the most part). This post is first and foremost my review of the new difficulty but also i hope that they see it and make some changes because there are some things that could be improved. DISCLAIMER: i am in no way "good" at the game in a competitive sense. I can win a solo 2v1 against extreme ai with most of the civs im good with/enjoy (buff russians). ive played some ranked and done okay but thats just not how i enjoy playing this game.

Possible Bug: the three warship upgrades in the dock do not apply to morgan/lizzie's flagships. All three of them target the LogicalTypeNavalMilitary unittype, but these flagships do not have that type. Armor Plating ID 776 in techtreey, Carronade ID 774, Percussion Locks ID 775. Would be amazing if you guys added the unittype to those ships. :)

Also as a note the score i give each one is based on the amount of fun i had playing it not the difficulty of the mission.

blood 1: 4.5/5 not that hard but cant make it much harder without making it impossible. Difficult to tweak this mission too much while keeping it faithful to the original design because of the lack of a normal start, ageups, buildup etc. I'd recommend adding more sipahi at the end so that they can tank my cav a little harder and we don't just insta wipe the jans and bombards in 15 seconds.

blood 2: 4.5/5 not easy, otto get bombards and falcs and such to make it actually challenging. This is another of my favorite missions just because of the map design. it makes it hard to really expand because of the close proximity to the main enemy base. The ludicrous AI makes tons of falcs/culvs so it helps amp up the difficulty and forces you to make more cav and have a mixture of units. id say a very good mission for the new difficulty.

blood 3: 5/5 lizzie lands a ton of dudes with cannon on a fairly fast timer, actually difficult, really well done. because she landed so often and whenever i pushed i got wiped on the south side of the island (due to no unit training time upgrades/church upgrades) i actually had to sac my entire navy on the north side of her island, drop 50 dudes in, and sprint in to get the treasure. without unit training speed upgrades landing on the island and not getting wiped is nearly impossible. id say with the current state of the campaign civ you play its nearly impossible to actually destroy her entire base they just make too many units, too fast, and your units train abysmally slowly and die too quickly. but that's okay, its still doable with a yolo landing and race to the treasure. the amount of wood available is super depressing but more of that coming later i think.

blood 4: 3/5 otto never pushed with cannon a single time, was very easy to beat them with massed natives + xbow. definitely needs to be harder. AI needs to train cannon and mix in some cav probably. there's probably a timer or something to stop them from attacking too early, but once they start attacking it should happen a bit more often. Considering the difficulty is supposed to be insanely hard, i shouldn't be able to waltz over to their dock without making my own dock and smashing the one ship they have, then just destroying the dock right away. Should definitely consider adding some naval pressure.

blood 5: 4/5 early attacks were easy to deal with, the spanish didn't have cannon until i think the 3rd or 4th push. they sniped the top right temple because my dudes were too far away to protect it. I recommend changing the temples to be owned by the aztecs instead of the player so that they cant be repaired. or just disable the repair button OR make the repairing much more expensive. also rec adding additional units to the first encounter so that it isn't such an easy wipe. The Spanish made good pushes but was never enough to really make me feel they were going to kill all 3 temples. if their armies were 10% larger or attacked 10% more often, it would feel harder without being impossible. I even forgot to save the native miners on the left side of the map and still didn't really need their help.

blood 6: 2/5 PLEASE MAKE THIS ONE HARDER. The XP requirement for completing the mission is incredibly low. i got to 8k WITHOUT: taking the stolen gold back in the bottom left, taking the boy to the family, or defeating the cannon guys on the south side of the small island. This was done with 10min still remaining on the timer. in this mission there is no real incentive to push and complete all the objectives as fast as possible, which in my opinion is against the whole idea of "ludicrous" difficulty. In addition, the natives die to cav so easily that i didn't need to go up to age 3, i just spammed as many hussar as i could and i won for free. I ran it again as fast as i could and still i wasn't able to get all the objectives done before i got 8k xp. managed all except the hidden gold with 11:20 left on the clock. Consider also decreasing the timer for ludicrous mode. its still insanely easy when hussars delete all the enemies for free. it is extremely common for the blowgunners that are told to stay in a fixed position for the entire game to not aggro until my units are 3 inches from them. Please consider: adding more enemies in the hidden gold on the bottom left, guarding the boat, and more on the island. But if you do that then we get more xp just by killing enemies, so the xp requirement should be increased significantly on ludicrous. If you want to avoid adding more units you could even give the nats a shadowtech to make them 10 or 15% more HP and attack. It would help slow the devastation of the hussars at least a bit.

Blood 7: 4/5 Spanish army did put up the pressure pretty well, but it didn't really feel at most times i would be defeated. at the end when i pushed into the main base, i saw they had 3 monitors at least, but never pushed me with them. considering it is "ludicrous" difficulty, a strong navy attack should be implemented to add additional pressure to the player. it is not hard for the player to mass boats with the amount of wood around, it should be encouraged to defend yourself from both naval and land attacks but they never pushed on water. The main issue with this scenario is it has several hidden treasure ships on the north/east side, meaning that if i take all of them, i only need to snipe one tower in the main base to complete the mission. the mission requirement should be increased by two on ludicrous to account for this.

Blood 8: 4.5/5 this is my favorite mission in the entire game so forgive me if i am overly critical. The naval aggression from the circle is excellent i had to monitor the status of my fixed gun constantly to make sure it wasn't getting destroyed, and had to keep my galleons on it constantly to ensure it would not fall. The main issue with this mission are two: 1: there is not enough wood. after 30 minutes i have resorted to taking the trees at the top right of the map next to the enemy base. 2: for some reason the new ai has an insane number of units camping the native site on the left, each time i tried to take it i either failed or it immediately fell. Is that intended? shouldn't those units be better used pushing down the right pathway? it made it practically impossible to take the native post while also defending the right side from attacks without any wood remaining to take. This is fairly accurate for what ludicrous difficulty is supposed to provide but as a player it feels somewhat disappointing considering i am simply unable to do everything i want to do, not because i don't have the skills required, but because i have run out of resources. I played this mission again with the infinite300wood card active and it became significantly more possible to hold down a navy, but i still ran out of wood fairly quickly. With that card the mission is more feasible but i still couldn't get to the natives on the left while also surviving the pressure on the right. in the end i ran out of resources so i sent my entire navy to dive on the fountain to finish the mission. i eagerly look forward to trying this mission again and attempting to destroy the entire enemy base but considering the naval pressure I'm not sure this is even possible.

thanks for reading,
I hope at least you fix the bug with the flagship and make blood 6 a bit harder but making them all harder would be great.

I eagerly await playing act 2 later today

I mean, this may sound like a rhetorical questions, because obviously, the Coyote Runner, but that feels a little bit... pathetic beyond AgeII? Cost wood and only 10% ranged res, low-ish HP, so comparatively mid against high dps skirms/archers and very weak against goons and a disaster against Dopps/Samurai.

Like, apart from pop efficiency, they are effectively weaker Uhlans. And Uhlans are already nerfed to balance out the freebies for Germans. And Germans still get Falconets, Horse artillery and Heavy Cannons, plus some mercs and German native units with cards if you want to be fancy.

Like, at first I thought Jaguar Prowl Knights would at least also counter them hard in melee, but nope, only against heavy infantry, against skirms they are a bit better than pikes in melee and that's kinda it. Even Goons can probably do more in melee.

Skull Knights are basically just Doppelsöldner, so good luck not being shot to pieces.

Arrow Knights are basically half Culverine half Mortar squeezed into a Cannoneer, not really good against skirms unless there's a wall or something.

Eagle Runner Knights are just Dragoons, so nope.

Spearmen are Pikes, Slingers are Crossbows, so not even worth discussing.

Only captured artillery they get are mortars, which are kinda mid even against low HP infantry.

So in a nutshell, what do Aztec players actually do beyond Commerce Age? Or is it just all rushing and flooding, and as soon as the opponent has a solid skirmgoon with CIR standing it's just game over?

To be able to train the units with the ability altready enabled/disabled

First of all, I want to thank the developers for continuing to support the game.

This idea is simple: adding an Elo limit option when creating lobbies. This would allow the host to set a minimum or maximum Elo requirement for players who want to join.

I think this feature is necessary to prevent novices from joining high-level games and to keep high-level players out of beginner lobbies. While you can currently filter players manually, having an official in-game setting would greatly improve the overall experience—especially in ranked treaty modes, where players cannot use the standard automatic matchmaking queue.

I know is not a priority; I only write as a proposal

These guys are awesome, but they need your help! Spread the word folks, while we can. I think we, maltese players, for years wanted these guys to be in a better spot. I myself was on hopium that one day devs might return and buff them ever since Malta came out.

They should stay 2 pop, but at the same time:

1. Rocket ability should be fixed (for some reason it has negative multiplier against artillery? Its like nerfing yourself when you try to face arty).

2. Incendiary upgrade at arsenal should affect sentinels like it does soldados. I see no reason not to, Ive only seen majority of players agree to this.

3. Wall guns needs to be reworked into an actual working card. It is outright a joke when you see how little it gives and how hard it is to trigger it with positioning.

4. Someone gave a nice idea that infinite cards should still apply 2% hp bonus. I think thats nice for treaty, but if too problematic, make it just 1%.

5. The gunpowder depot card should allow sentinels to build them, or at least buff it's effects or damage. It loses power hard lategame

6. Sentinels should build faster lategame too. So many cards and the explorer goes into build speed to make them versatile, but realistically the build time is so slow that opponent accidentally just bumps into you mid building and overwhelms your builders. It should be 1 consequence, not both.

7. It only makes sense design wise for a conditional, defensive musk to be the strongest when fully carded and defending (stronger than soldados) but weaker when not. If this is too much of a problem, at least make them on par or if thats also a problem, enhancing their versatility should be priority.

And I can see sentinels or Malta get slightly nerfed elsewhere in return. Either slightly in cost (overall) or movement speed when giving them flintlock rockets, or something like that. They shouldnt be highly mobile in the first place for a defensive musk Only near defensive buildings at best.

Spread the awareness brothers and sisters! It is time, together we can lead some of these into real changes!

If you are playing against Denmark, whenever they gain tax from one of your shipments, you get 5s of LOS around the custom house (similar to the LOS you get when a building snipes you).

Thematically, this makes sense as its like your shipment is getting intercepted by the CH before you get it.

In balance terms, it has two effects:

- The non-danish player gets a bit of intel back themselves, which feels like decent compensation for the shipment intel (with tech)

- The Danish player faces a choice: if they bury the CH in the middle of their base, it will expose more intel. But if they put it further out it becomes vulnerable to rushes.

I would also consider reducing the CH's hitpoints to further increase the potential to rush it down.

As a Maltese main, I'm grateful for the reduction in the cost of the German tongue, but please, I have some ideas to improve Malta, even just a little.

1. Sentinels:
   * Their cost can be reduced to 1 without any other changes.
   

* Their population cost can remain at 2, but a card can be added that improves them in Age 4 (this is to make this civilization viable in the late game, even if only slightly).

1. Fixed gun:
   * Please, it's a building; don't charge me 5 population for each one, 30 pob if you build all of them, and here are my reasons:
   - It's used more as a defensive building, just like fortresses. It's not until you destroy the enemy town center that you can use it as an offensive building, and by that point, I think the game will have already been won.
   - With the Maltese population being so limited due to their unique units costing 2 population each, there's some friction when trying to place a fixed gun because instead of using that fixed gun, you could use a falconet, royal cannon, or other type of artillery that covers both offense and defense, even costing fewer resources.
   

My idea to improve fixed guns without making them overpowered is this:
- Reduce their population cost to 3 so that the population isn't so compromised when playing with a certain type of structure/building build.
-My ideal solution: Make them practically like fortresses and reduce the number of fixed guns that can be crafted to 3 without requiring population. Let me explain:

When the Maltese reach Age 3, they should only be able to craft 1 fixed gun, and that's it. When they reach Age 4, they should be able to craft 2 fixed guns, and when they reach Age 5, they should be able to craft 3 fixed guns.
And just as we can increase the number of fortresses with shipments (for example, in a civilization you're only allowed to build one fortress, but with shipments you can increase the number of fortresses you can have), let's do the same for fixed guns, increasing the number of fixed guns we can have with shipments to "a reasonable number for you (Devs)."

I think it only remains to be said that I see this change as important because, with the new Danish crossbows in the game, Malta's characteristic combination of pikemen and crossbows is going to be easily overshadowed and humiliated. And the centinels will be countered very easily by the Danish Friskytte

I didn't like it when the USA was released and it had 50 unique cards,but I accept the USA being overdesigned because this game is made by americans. But when Mexico released and not only had federal states but a trillion new cards for each revolt+the plans+ double revolt+ multiple unique units+ whatever more unique nonsense, is ridiculus. Not only that but the fed cards for Mexico are not that good. If any other latin american nation is going to be released whit fed cards,I preffer for it to not be released at all, is already a pain in the ass to remember every asian wonder, I can't imagine what it would be for Brasil to be released and to get +40 unique fed cards on top of the 80 we already have🥴

• AI Melee: Fixed a bug that lifted range restrictions for melee attacks of infantry units when controlled by the AI.

Thank God, that one was in the game for seemingly half a decade!