I like the monk change about charging, it doesn't feel right that a monk converts a scout immediately, scouts are supposed to counter it, now if you're converting a building you'll need to bring some army to defend it, some pikeman or whatever
That's EXACTLY what I think! If you want to convert enemy buildings, at least make some investment! Converting an enemy stable is not something small as converting a house... It really impacts the game.
I dont understand how it seems so many people are against this change (Hera too). Those were mechanics that feel unfair and illogical and even if these changes break the game I think they are good. You just need to balance it some other way even thou I dont know if this is the case.
I agree 100%. I'm in favor of the 3 balance changes to monks that Hera suggested... but I don't think this change should be reverted. It's not really even a balance change; both of the November patch changes to monks are more like bug fixes/closing what are clearly exploit loopholes which benefit monks (hopefully as a prelude to future actual balance changes down the road?). Sure, you could generously call "charging up" a monk on a building a "trick", since it's been in the game forever & it's pretty well-known... but really, it's more of an exploit, as it takes advantage of a technicality in how conversions are implemented to achieve something that was clearly never an intended mechanic of the game. I'm also not swayed by the argument that the fix makes it next to impossible to convert e.g. a stable, because the stable can produce units. By that same logic, it's also next to impossible to convert a tower, because it shoots arrows! Does that make towers imba vs. monks? No--that's what _supposed_ to happen. Firing arrows is what towers do--thus it should be on me to handle them to convert your tower. So why should stables be any different? Training cavalry is what stables do--so it should likewise be on me to fend them off to convert your stable. Converting enemy military production buildings _should_ be difficult and risky--like converting a tower, not like converting a house or a mill.
I disagree Hera, 4 seconds to 5 seconds is basically the teutons team bonus, I would prefer that extra second was for infantry and elephants only because units like war wagons, janissaries, conqs and mangudais would be OP in castle age, specially in arena
I am yet to see someone unironically coverting a building just to get a building or force enemy to delete it... the only buildings worth converting are stone buildings but all of those but outpost shoot and will kill the monk before he converts.
I think the best and easiest way to balance Monks it is creating a hidden "conversion resistance armor" per unit, just like Skirms do different damage to Halbs and Archers. This will give devs a fine tuning balance per-unit, so monks don't even need to be directly nerfed, but they can be made better or worse vs key units, and actually make them more fun to use and play against. Edit: Even from a lore perspective, it makes sense that it's easier to convert a lowly underpaid trash unit than an experienced warrior knighted by the king 😂
@@--SPQR-- that's not how it works. Scouts and Eagle have conversion resistance (so yes that exists already), then we have the tech and the Teutons bonus, but other than that, all other units in the game have the same baseline conversion resistance.
@@voidgods that's exactly how it works. The game is coded using oop. If some units have it, all classes have the property if the game is coded correctly, which it is. The property is not expressed for most units (so in a way we're both correct), but the property is there. It's just dormant.
Been waiting for that Saracens buff for years. That camel plus hp and monk tech are absolutely necessary for it to regain the visibility it deserves. Kudos to the aoe2 design team.
The Saracens were completely fine before, they absolutely didn't need any of this Really bad changes and I hope they get revised a little bit (Especially stagger the HP bonus to 10/25% so they are like before without having to pay. The Mameluke change has to go though)
Nice video format. Like many other I do agree with devs here on monks changes. The castle change to me was always a bug so it needed to get patched. The building conversation and unit should be different. Also redemption monk should mainly be used to convert siege etc. Pro are abusing it to convert the building hence taking rams or siege job away. So I 100% am behind this change. Also if you convert a enemy stable them popping a scout out and killing your monk is 100% fair counterplay, especially if you don't have pikeman etc near.
Cant be the only feeling like some original civs that were on the more "balanced" side like byzantines and chinese are getting kinda power-creeped, specially with all the older civs getting reworks/new techs and civ bonuses
i go further, i would like to see redemption only work with siege, and not buildings, its ridiculous to lose the momentum and suddenly you loose all your buildings
What if they made monks unable to go idle or at least make it so you can't walk them forward then spam the idle military key to target 10 knights with 10 different monks. You should have to invest time setting up the hotkeys to achieve that.
I think Magyars have too many options (light cab, heavy cab, cab archers, etc.). They shouldn't have paladin. And the other similar civ, the Tatars, are too weak, they should have better Cab arch or at least some good alternative.
I feel like Japanese Cav Archers getting +2 is low key kind of a big deal. Right now, Japanese doesn't really have an "ultimate" late game comp -- they're an "infantry" civ that just shoots for FU Arbalest, which is fine, but it's no Ethiopian or Britons. Their Cav Archers were never really special besides existing, but a humble +2 attack versus all archers? I mean, excuse me, but that brings their Castle Age attack from 8 (w/ Bodkin) to 10 versus archers, a nice 25% jump versus Crossbows, Skirms, and other Cav Archers. So you got the Civ with the best spears in the game against cav, with cav archers that are Mongol-tier versus other archers. Scuse me, but that's really well-rounded.
Completely agree on your thoughts about the monk changes. Monks camping TCs in defence is the problem, instead they removed the funniest part of the game, the redemtion monk rush.
I think the monks swapping converting buildings to units is one of those things that is good for competitive play, but bad for the broader game. The ability to just instantly convert a unit is extremely frustrating to people and will push casual people away from the game.
I had a dream about aoe2 being history accurate and then I woke up and regret it. 🐒 These patches these days change so little, no significant changes to appearance to general units for certain civilizations. I really love what they did with Savar for Persians. It gives Persian properly looking heavy cavalary. I hope they will be doing that with all civs. Unfortunately we will have to wait very long for that. Some patch that contained note for changes coming to Persians was quite long ago probably before return of Rome dlc? So yeah no general changes for appearance of general units anytime soon.
@@abdobeidat5 The problem with aoe2 is variety of units which are common with all civs. Mezoamerican, asian, African and more civs get units with European looking infantry, cavalary, monks etc. Devs hold all civs under the same denominator. That means few economic bonuses, max 2 unique units, max 1 regional unit and unfortunately “generic units” with balance to not make them too OP. And because of that Aztecs gets fire ships, demolition rafts some petards and even medieval weapons from different continent. I’m not even sure a trebuchet was once ever built in America in that age. Shame Aztecs can’t have units tied with their location like Canoes, Amazon warrior/archer, iroquez warrior (available in the scenario). Shame that Vikings can’t train Norse swordsman and transport them with drakkars. Shame Middle East civs can’t produce Eastern swordsman. Shame Japanese can’t train ninjas. Shame devs don’t want to redesign and cut off the wings from regular hussar and now regular hussar looks like winged hussar. Shame archer is not separated from crossbow or shieldman (man at arms) from swordsman (two handed swordsman. I wish patches contained more than just balance changes. And yeah that Armenia civ as naval civ is a joke as big as Aztecs “being gunpowder civ” with their petards and demolition raft.😆
I hate how devs keep removing unique features about everything when they try to balance them. The game needs more variety not similarity.It's Just what like they did to Celts and Incas, killing their identity. Same with the mango delete trick. I guess we want the same boring stuff every single game instead of cool various mechanics.
I dont get the point of monks not being able to defend themselves. Maybe dont convert a building with nothing beside the monk to defend it? You can still convert the light cav in your example like regular, you just cant charge it up
The point is if you're converting a stable, the light cav just pops up on the monk without having to close the distance. In the past you could just switch after charging up and now you'll almost guaranteed lose the monk
I mean what's wrong with that. Just because you could do something before doesn't make it right. If anything I support this change. Redemption monks are too overpowered and now they have to take some risks.
Love this style of patch overview! Made it very clear! Maybe one tiny thing that would have made it even better - would be cool if you highlighted the key information in the change description with color (eg the amount of whatever is changed, the name of the unit affected, etc). Otherwise, it ends up to be quite a lot of text to read. I found myself pause a lot during the video to read everything. Highlighting would have made it easier IMO.
@@I_enjoy_some_things It's a double dip effect. Monks AoE heal, the camels have more HP. More HP unit have, the slower they die so the more effective healing is. I feel sorry for knight civs against Saracens. Few monks mixed into an army, converting knights and healing the camels. If Byzantine's team bonus increases AoE healing as well, it will be disgusting.
The monk charging change might be better for newer players since it makes the unit more intuitive. It's okay as a pro player who keeps up with the ins and outs of how each unit works but newer players might not know that monks can be charged up that way. Abusing the mechanics like that might feel a bit too "gamey" for some players who might get frustrated with losing units that way. Especially if they don't know what's actually happening. Keep in mind that the game doesn't tell you monks work that way. I learnt from the wiki and many players probably learnt from watching content. So it feels like a good change it terms of that. Maybe redemption pushing needs this huge nerf and then a slight buff?
The Japanese cavalry archer bonus is not against the Archer-line, but everything with archer armor class. War Elephant speed is there for the non-elite version as well.
I like this style of patch review way way more than the standard "Read them first time on camera", every change gets a fair assestment and since the answer is less emotive/there are zero chances to misread the changes the analysis is more accurate and helpful Hope is the new standard, honestly I also wish Heresy at least to be less pricy 1k gold is too much and deleting instead of switching sides still gives value. Also I'd rather see a consistent conversion time instead of random, like 7/8 seconds for units. What do you think of these changes?
I think it's easier to over buff a civ and then nerf them little by little until they're balanced, rather then trying to buffing them a little until they're good
Also Devs seems to seek this approach. Incas, Saracens, Portuguese and Persians are overbuffed currently. They will nerf them in next patch. Slavs also overbuffed in my opinion, 15% faster farms is better than Folwark and Slavs has stronger military than Poles. I think pertinent buff for Slavs should be Siege Units 20% cheaper from 15% cheaper.
@@TheBikeOnTheMoon It is stronger buff but it is OP, we will see. Every Civ shouldn't be best in early game, Slavs can compensate with stronger mid game with cheap siege, Boyars, extra pop from military buildings, 10% faster farms. Slavs actually very strong mid game bonuses.
With this patch, castle age magyar huszars beat knights in equal resources. 1 magyar castle produces them as the same speed as 2 stable produces knights. + Magyar Huszars counter monks instead of being victim to monks in the case of knights. I hope pros try Magyar Huszars in castle age.
Persian war elephants also deal more damage to buildings and stone defenses, from +7/10(elite) to a flat +30 You will not need siege on a War Elephant push, they will demolish buildings a lot faster.
Maybe instead switching from a building to a unit gives a headstart on conversion instead of a 1:1 transfer on time. Basically, hard-cap how many seconds is transferred from building to unit rather than letting all that time disappear into the ether.
It should be based on the percentage of max conversion time. So if you're halfway through converting the building, then when you switch to a unit you're halfway through converting that unit rather than it just being instant, or having to completely start over.
I uninstalled the game... Tired of the inbalance... Gold units used to mean something.. People complain and they nurf your faction.. Wish it was more about skill and less about the flavor of the month.. Rip dear mongols.. you became the most useless faction with only 2 bonuses and Mangudai get rekt by trash units.. Game is complete waste of time. Just because you keep making new factions, doesn't mean the game is actually enjoyable. Remember when you could micro your way out of any situation? Ohhh wait that was like 4 years ago.. before everything got nerfed to hell...
My proposals to monk changes - Reduce conversion time randomness for generic units 4-10 seconds → 5-9 seconds. Chance of conversion per attempt reduced 28% → 20%. Faith is available in Castle Age now. Cost reduced 1000 food, 750 gold -> 500 food, 375 gold. Heresy cost reduced 1000 gold -> 600 gold. Atonement cost reduced 325 gold -> 175 gold. Monk faith regeneration CD increased 62 seconds → 75 seconds. Illumination available in Castle Age, cost is increased 120 gold → 150 gold, research time is reduced 65 seconds → 50 seconds. Illumination reduces monk faith regeneration CD 75 seconds → 60 seconds. New monastery technology “Nirvana” is introduced, available in Imperial Age after Illumination is researched. Nirvana costs 250 gold, 65 seconds. Nirvana reduces monk faith regeneration CD 60 seconds → 33 seconds.
Do Saracen monks auto heal allied troops with their aura, too? Seems like a strong bonus for allies with auto healing units, like Malians and Georgians.
My opinion won't be liked but Pros have now successfully destroyed monks too. They convinced developers to destroy old incas, Anything OP at high level like sicilian rush, hoang rush, monk rush, etc gets destroyed once it gets in hands of these pros. You pros want to make this game an APM based game. More clicks, more micro, more theoretical. Competitive AOE has become about who can more their hands faster on keys and clicks. You destroy innovation, new strategies terming them as OP, broken, broken tech, broken unit etc. And funny thing is how unapologetic and arrogant you guys are towards this. You say "Oh this is so broken, wonder WHEN we will see a nerf". Not IF but WHEN. And the low elo guy, who wants to rank up has to grind with archers, click faster , scroll faster, bash that keyboard faster. You want this game to become a grind. Pathetic.
11 месяцев назад
Have you seen DauT qualify for an S tier tournament with about 60 APM right ? He is one of the top players who is strong because of his good decisions and macro, not all players are APM focused. Striving for balance is the right thing, or do you really want to keep in game mechanics that are clearly overpowered ?
@ Saying that Daut is a slow player really tells me you don't know anything about the pro scene or Daut's gameplay. And who are the "pros" to decide what is "Clearly overpowered"? You haven't really seen neither Memb, nor T90 nor Viper cast games. They shout: Oh he lost this, Oh he lost that, Oh he can't micro properly due to low APM. And they loose. time and again. For "pros" AoE 2 competitive = high apm, more clicks and button presses.
11 месяцев назад
@@SepticIndia I never said DauT was slow. I said he plays around 60 APM, which is a fact.And I have seen plenty of Memb,T90 and so on... Yes sometimes it happens, that a player fails a quickwall or whatever due to low apm, but hey it is not the end of the game. As much as casters shout that someone lost something (maybe due to low apm) they also comment on how sick macro the players have and how good decisions players make. Aoe 2 simply is not an APM oriented game. While high apm helps, it is not necessary and never will be.
Conserving a rock-paper-scissors dynamic for (generic) trash units makes some sense. But making skirmishers stronger against pikes actually buffs all cavalry civs, especially vs. archer civs. Maybe this will finally make more room for swordsmen?
For a castle buildtime nerf, what about making it so that the first villager acts only as 1 villager or only 33% less of what it use to while all subsequent villagers remain the same. So for building a castle currently if you have 10 villagers building it it acts as if you have 12 (as the first acts as 3/ each vil past the first acts as 1/3) so if you knock off 7 vils while its building then there is still 5 vils building it technically. With the proposed change it would be only 3 vils. It would flat-out nerf buildtime but it would also make defending from the castle drop easier as each vil being attacked/removed is much more impactful.
Disagree on the charging monks. They were OP and stupid and needed to be out. Instant conversions just shouldn't exist in the game in any form whatsoever.
The charging on buildings is essentially a bug exploit, it should not work, therefore good change, and they should tweak things around the new functionality.
Bro those are going to be some thicc Saracen camels 🐪 🐫 also if you have multiple monks does the passive healing radius stack? Seems like it could be really strong if so
I don't understand why they don't just give battle elephants a larger buff. They give the unit a tiny buff once every patch and each time it remains the worst unit in the game. I don't get it.
I think Castles should take longer to build the further you are away from a town centre. That way castle drops in your enemies face are harder but it doesn't take forever to build a defensive castle.
Why do we talk so much about imp monk techs, but not faith? Faith costs 1750 and does very little. Your complaint is that going heavily into monks beats everything. Faith is the direct game counterplay to this, but it does almost nothing. I think heavy discount and buff of faith would address this.
I disagree Hera, 4 seconds to 5 seconds is basically the teutons team bonus, I would prefer that extra second was for infantry and elephants only because units like war wagons, janissaries, conqs and mangudais would be OP in castle age, specially in arena
What would happen if: 1. the conversion time was changed from (4-10 seconds randomly) to (4-10 seconds based on the target's remaining HP percentage), 2. Monks could only garrison in Castles, 3. Siege didn't require Redemption, but took 6-15 seconds to convert (based on the target's remaining HP percentage)?
1. Most annoying thing with monks , that their rng in low numbers could flips the game completely. I think fixing coversion time is the way to go. Like from 4-10 to 5-9 as first step. 2. Dont think its needed, but not a big fan that new civs can garrison monks in their churches. 3. It allows even more rng , when mangonels can shoot 1-3 times during the conversion. Redepmtion monks suupose to counter mangonels, just need to fix instaconvertions, which doesn't give time to react.
@@iwersonsch5131 Every hp based mechanic - it's exploit. 1hp vil gathering resources as full hp, 1 hp archer doing full damage etc. No reason to create something hp based, bc it will make a domino effect.
@@valger3652 An archer takes 1 second to kill a 1HP villager. A monk takes 4-10 to convert it, randomly. An archer takes idk 30 seconds to kill a 40HP villager. A monk takes 3-10 to convert it, randomly. On the contrary, this degree of RNG is very atypical even for AoE2. Yes, a ranged unit may have a small variance in how many times it needs to shoot to kill a target, but that is 1) a smaller spread, and 2) a smaller swing, as a unit that barely survives an archer ends up on very low HP. A unit that barely survives a monk stays on full HP.
Thanks for nice summary Hera 👍 How exactly is the saracen passive-healing monk going to work? Imagine you have like 10 monks in the middle of square of arbalest, so each arb is in the range of aura of all 10 monks, what happens? Does the effect of each monk add to the other? That would be to OP.... And do the monks heal each other?
To fix monks, I would also reduce the cost of faith and maybe heresy. Right now, faith is so expensive it's completely unusable. Basically, we have a system where the techs that help monks are super cheap, but the techs that help protect other units from monks are ridiculously expensive. Faith costing around 400-500 gold would make sense.
While AOE team wants us Japaneses ’ HCA more, but they still have fully upgrade Arbalester. Remove Arbalester from Japanese, and players will train CA more.
@Hera What do you think about Saracens Monk healing, their monks will be able to heal an entire Crossbow/Arb ball in 30secs to full hp. I think this will be OP and abused at pro levels where you guys can micro it well enough.
I think it would be good for the monk->building conversion to still preserve conversion charge, but to scale the amount of charge according to the unit. So if you are half way done with the building's max conversion time, you should be half way done with the max conversion time of the unit that you are switching to.
Redemption charging is fine tbh. The one thing that I think should be done however is make it not affect light cavalry and eagle warriors. So you can still near insta-convert Knights, but you can't light cavalry, making light cav an actual counter for Monks as they should be.
Maybe a more reasonable way to handle the charging is that you keep the percentage of the min/max conversion time you had? I.e. when you got your building half-way converted, by switching to some other target you get half the conversion time for that target counted. No instant conversions, but you also don't lose everything.
i would suggest to split redemption into 2 techs. 1 lets you convert siege, the other lets you convert buildings. i know, aztecs monks will be OP with 5 extra HP :D
In regard to monks why not create a tech-minor faith- which does the same as the Teuton tech, charge 1/3 what faith costs and then have faith cost the remaining 2/3. This fixes two problems monk resistance and protection for elephant civs.
I like the monk change about charging, it doesn't feel right that a monk converts a scout immediately, scouts are supposed to counter it, now if you're converting a building you'll need to bring some army to defend it, some pikeman or whatever
That's EXACTLY what I think! If you want to convert enemy buildings, at least make some investment! Converting an enemy stable is not something small as converting a house... It really impacts the game.
I dont understand how it seems so many people are against this change (Hera too). Those were mechanics that feel unfair and illogical and even if these changes break the game I think they are good. You just need to balance it some other way even thou I dont know if this is the case.
I agree 100%. I'm in favor of the 3 balance changes to monks that Hera suggested... but I don't think this change should be reverted. It's not really even a balance change; both of the November patch changes to monks are more like bug fixes/closing what are clearly exploit loopholes which benefit monks (hopefully as a prelude to future actual balance changes down the road?). Sure, you could generously call "charging up" a monk on a building a "trick", since it's been in the game forever & it's pretty well-known... but really, it's more of an exploit, as it takes advantage of a technicality in how conversions are implemented to achieve something that was clearly never an intended mechanic of the game.
I'm also not swayed by the argument that the fix makes it next to impossible to convert e.g. a stable, because the stable can produce units. By that same logic, it's also next to impossible to convert a tower, because it shoots arrows! Does that make towers imba vs. monks? No--that's what _supposed_ to happen. Firing arrows is what towers do--thus it should be on me to handle them to convert your tower. So why should stables be any different? Training cavalry is what stables do--so it should likewise be on me to fend them off to convert your stable. Converting enemy military production buildings _should_ be difficult and risky--like converting a tower, not like converting a house or a mill.
I disagree Hera, 4 seconds to 5 seconds is basically the teutons team bonus, I would prefer that extra second was for infantry and elephants only because units like war wagons, janissaries, conqs and mangudais would be OP in castle age, specially in arena
I am yet to see someone unironically coverting a building just to get a building or force enemy to delete it... the only buildings worth converting are stone buildings but all of those but outpost shoot and will kill the monk before he converts.
I think the best and easiest way to balance Monks it is creating a hidden "conversion resistance armor" per unit, just like Skirms do different damage to Halbs and Archers.
This will give devs a fine tuning balance per-unit, so monks don't even need to be directly nerfed, but they can be made better or worse vs key units, and actually make them more fun to use and play against.
Edit: Even from a lore perspective, it makes sense that it's easier to convert a lowly underpaid trash unit than an experienced warrior knighted by the king 😂
Agree. AoE2 needs more granularity
This exists. Monks have bonus dmg vs knights and reduced damage vs scout line
@@--SPQR-- that's not how it works. Scouts and Eagle have conversion resistance (so yes that exists already), then we have the tech and the Teutons bonus, but other than that, all other units in the game have the same baseline conversion resistance.
@@voidgods that's exactly how it works. The game is coded using oop. If some units have it, all classes have the property if the game is coded correctly, which it is. The property is not expressed for most units (so in a way we're both correct), but the property is there. It's just dormant.
@@voidgods and also knights are absolutely more vulnerable to conversions.
Been waiting for that Saracens buff for years. That camel plus hp and monk tech are absolutely necessary for it to regain the visibility it deserves. Kudos to the aoe2 design team.
Definitely, the biggest thing saracens needed was better heeling for mamelukes to maintain a push
The Saracens were completely fine before, they absolutely didn't need any of this
Really bad changes and I hope they get revised a little bit (Especially stagger the HP bonus to 10/25% so they are like before without having to pay. The Mameluke change has to go though)
Nice video format.
Like many other I do agree with devs here on monks changes. The castle change to me was always a bug so it needed to get patched.
The building conversation and unit should be different. Also redemption monk should mainly be used to convert siege etc. Pro are abusing it to convert the building hence taking rams or siege job away. So I 100% am behind this change.
Also if you convert a enemy stable them popping a scout out and killing your monk is 100% fair counterplay, especially if you don't have pikeman etc near.
Cavalry generating gold also affects the cavalry archer though.
Nice presentation with layout and so one. Im sure devs will watch it.
Cant be the only feeling like some original civs that were on the more "balanced" side like byzantines and chinese are getting kinda power-creeped, specially with all the older civs getting reworks/new techs and civ bonuses
I think a better way to be fair with tec redemption its, 1 monk 20sec, 2 10sec, 3, 10sec
i go further, i would like to see redemption only work with siege, and not buildings, its ridiculous to lose the momentum and suddenly you loose all your buildings
When is the cheat code tier list coming? 👀
What if they made monks unable to go idle or at least make it so you can't walk them forward then spam the idle military key to target 10 knights with 10 different monks. You should have to invest time setting up the hotkeys to achieve that.
The japanese bonus is against all kind of archers? Or just archer line ?
I think Magyars have too many options (light cab, heavy cab, cab archers, etc.). They shouldn't have paladin. And the other similar civ, the Tatars, are too weak, they should have better Cab arch or at least some good alternative.
I feel like Japanese Cav Archers getting +2 is low key kind of a big deal. Right now, Japanese doesn't really have an "ultimate" late game comp -- they're an "infantry" civ that just shoots for FU Arbalest, which is fine, but it's no Ethiopian or Britons. Their Cav Archers were never really special besides existing, but a humble +2 attack versus all archers? I mean, excuse me, but that brings their Castle Age attack from 8 (w/ Bodkin) to 10 versus archers, a nice 25% jump versus Crossbows, Skirms, and other Cav Archers.
So you got the Civ with the best spears in the game against cav, with cav archers that are Mongol-tier versus other archers. Scuse me, but that's really well-rounded.
Once again Celts get a tiny buff. And once again it's not enough.
My 105 key is ready.
Slavs is a top tier civ now.
Completely agree on your thoughts about the monk changes. Monks camping TCs in defence is the problem, instead they removed the funniest part of the game, the redemtion monk rush.
I think the monks swapping converting buildings to units is one of those things that is good for competitive play, but bad for the broader game.
The ability to just instantly convert a unit is extremely frustrating to people and will push casual people away from the game.
I think it's also bad for competitive play because competitive depends more on counterplay than it does on skillful tricks
I had a dream about aoe2 being history accurate and then I woke up and regret it. 🐒
These patches these days change so little, no significant changes to appearance to general units for certain civilizations. I really love what they did with Savar for Persians. It gives Persian properly looking heavy cavalary. I hope they will be doing that with all civs. Unfortunately we will have to wait very long for that. Some patch that contained note for changes coming to Persians was quite long ago probably before return of Rome dlc? So yeah no general changes for appearance of general units anytime soon.
The joke about new civ the make Armenia navy civ but Armenia don't have a sea 😅😅😅 .
@@abdobeidat5 The problem with aoe2 is variety of units which are common with all civs. Mezoamerican, asian, African and more civs get units with European looking infantry, cavalary, monks etc. Devs hold all civs under the same denominator. That means few economic bonuses, max 2 unique units, max 1 regional unit and unfortunately “generic units” with balance to not make them too OP. And because of that Aztecs gets fire ships, demolition rafts some petards and even medieval weapons from different continent. I’m not even sure a trebuchet was once ever built in America in that age. Shame Aztecs can’t have units tied with their location like Canoes, Amazon warrior/archer, iroquez warrior (available in the scenario). Shame that Vikings can’t train Norse swordsman and transport them with drakkars. Shame Middle East civs can’t produce Eastern swordsman. Shame Japanese can’t train ninjas. Shame devs don’t want to redesign and cut off the wings from regular hussar and now regular hussar looks like winged hussar. Shame archer is not separated from crossbow or shieldman (man at arms) from swordsman (two handed swordsman. I wish patches contained more than just balance changes. And yeah that Armenia civ as naval civ is a joke as big as Aztecs “being gunpowder civ” with their petards and demolition raft.😆
@@quaintserpentSpanish tried to build a trebuchet in central america but failed to do so
isn't the magyar huszar after corvinian army cheaper now? 35+45=80 food vs 80+10=90 food before.
No because before the tech made the Huszar 10 gold cheaper. 80f 10g - 10g = 80f.
The previous version didn't convert to additional food, it just removed the gold cost.
First
I hate how devs keep removing unique features about everything when they try to balance them. The game needs more variety not similarity.It's Just what like they did to Celts and Incas, killing their identity. Same with the mango delete trick. I guess we want the same boring stuff every single game instead of cool various mechanics.
On monks: if pros think castle drops are too hard to stop, imagine how low elo feel
I dont get the point of monks not being able to defend themselves. Maybe dont convert a building with nothing beside the monk to defend it? You can still convert the light cav in your example like regular, you just cant charge it up
The point is if you're converting a stable, the light cav just pops up on the monk without having to close the distance. In the past you could just switch after charging up and now you'll almost guaranteed lose the monk
I mean what's wrong with that. Just because you could do something before doesn't make it right. If anything I support this change. Redemption monks are too overpowered and now they have to take some risks.
@@chtyldubreux5950 Yeah I don't think anyone has a problem with that. Scouts are supposed to counter monks. Bring a spearman or something lol
@@chtyldubreux5950 Don't think I have a problem with that happening. Point is that I am going to convert buildings fully knowing the risk behind it.
If you want to convert a building, you should have to protect the monk. I like that change
Love this style of patch overview! Made it very clear! Maybe one tiny thing that would have made it even better - would be cool if you highlighted the key information in the change description with color (eg the amount of whatever is changed, the name of the unit affected, etc). Otherwise, it ends up to be quite a lot of text to read. I found myself pause a lot during the video to read everything. Highlighting would have made it easier IMO.
noted. thanks for the feedback
Spirit of the Hera
😂😂
The new saracen monk tech is OP Hera's little demonstration showed how fast they can heal units. The monk healed 2 units and everyone else was healed
Idc about the monk tech, but those camel buffs are insane. The Memeluke was already a stupidly strong unit….now it’s even stronger? :D
I like it. Healing mechanics is used rather rarely. Some buffs to it provides more fight options.
i love using monks so while the general nerfs kina suck but are fair i cant wait to spam 20 monks with extra hp camels that will never die lol.
How does Hera say the new unique tech isn't great? 💀while all the units are being fully healed in this video
@@I_enjoy_some_things It's a double dip effect. Monks AoE heal, the camels have more HP. More HP unit have, the slower they die so the more effective healing is. I feel sorry for knight civs against Saracens. Few monks mixed into an army, converting knights and healing the camels. If Byzantine's team bonus increases AoE healing as well, it will be disgusting.
The monk charging change might be better for newer players since it makes the unit more intuitive. It's okay as a pro player who keeps up with the ins and outs of how each unit works but newer players might not know that monks can be charged up that way. Abusing the mechanics like that might feel a bit too "gamey" for some players who might get frustrated with losing units that way. Especially if they don't know what's actually happening. Keep in mind that the game doesn't tell you monks work that way. I learnt from the wiki and many players probably learnt from watching content. So it feels like a good change it terms of that.
Maybe redemption pushing needs this huge nerf and then a slight buff?
The Japanese cavalry archer bonus is not against the Archer-line, but everything with archer armor class.
War Elephant speed is there for the non-elite version as well.
I like this style of patch review way way more than the standard "Read them first time on camera", every change gets a fair assestment and since the answer is less emotive/there are zero chances to misread the changes the analysis is more accurate and helpful
Hope is the new standard, honestly I also wish Heresy at least to be less pricy 1k gold is too much and deleting instead of switching sides still gives value. Also I'd rather see a consistent conversion time instead of random, like 7/8 seconds for units. What do you think of these changes?
I think it's easier to over buff a civ and then nerf them little by little until they're balanced, rather then trying to buffing them a little until they're good
Devs: Haha what a story Mark! So anyways, we’re going to nerf Sicilians.
Also Devs seems to seek this approach. Incas, Saracens, Portuguese and Persians are overbuffed currently. They will nerf them in next patch. Slavs also overbuffed in my opinion, 15% faster farms is better than Folwark and Slavs has stronger military than Poles. I think pertinent buff for Slavs should be Siege Units 20% cheaper from 15% cheaper.
@@Asterix958 20% cheaper siege won't save them in early game and castle age. That's why 15% faster farmer is the better buff.
@@TheBikeOnTheMoon It is stronger buff but it is OP, we will see. Every Civ shouldn't be best in early game, Slavs can compensate with stronger mid game with cheap siege, Boyars, extra pop from military buildings, 10% faster farms. Slavs actually very strong mid game bonuses.
With this patch, castle age magyar huszars beat knights in equal resources. 1 magyar castle produces them as the same speed as 2 stable produces knights. + Magyar Huszars counter monks instead of being victim to monks in the case of knights. I hope pros try Magyar Huszars in castle age.
Persian war elephants also deal more damage to buildings and stone defenses, from +7/10(elite) to a flat +30
You will not need siege on a War Elephant push, they will demolish buildings a lot faster.
Clear and concise video!
How would you say these changes will affect pro play? Do you think the new civs (and perisans) will be played regularly?
Persians was already great on nomad maps. New change will make em beastly on nomad maps, and close to OP with the Savar unit vs archer civs.
I hate monks charging mechanics and have never used it myself treating it as an exploit :) Instant conversions are bad. Glad they removed it.
I think the saracens healing area is going to be super strong in certain circumstances
It would definitely be good for hit and run with mamelukes, camels, cavalry archers!
We need an autoconvert function to make monks better for noobs. But of course also make them more expensive for techs and longer minimum convert time
Nah, monks should not be able to charge to instant conversion. Good change, devs, don't listen mr. Hera, keep it up!
naked redemption monk pushes should be hurt by garrisoned 1 cav. if you want to convert a building, protect the monk. great monk update
Maybe instead switching from a building to a unit gives a headstart on conversion instead of a 1:1 transfer on time. Basically, hard-cap how many seconds is transferred from building to unit rather than letting all that time disappear into the ether.
It should be based on the percentage of max conversion time. So if you're halfway through converting the building, then when you switch to a unit you're halfway through converting that unit rather than it just being instant, or having to completely start over.
Im so excited for my boi Persian but I'm not sure they will keep all buffs because it might be too much 😅
I uninstalled the game... Tired of the inbalance... Gold units used to mean something.. People complain and they nurf your faction.. Wish it was more about skill and less about the flavor of the month.. Rip dear mongols.. you became the most useless faction with only 2 bonuses and Mangudai get rekt by trash units.. Game is complete waste of time. Just because you keep making new factions, doesn't mean the game is actually enjoyable. Remember when you could micro your way out of any situation? Ohhh wait that was like 4 years ago.. before everything got nerfed to hell...
My proposals to monk changes -
Reduce conversion time randomness for generic units 4-10 seconds → 5-9 seconds.
Chance of conversion per attempt reduced 28% → 20%.
Faith is available in Castle Age now. Cost reduced 1000 food, 750 gold -> 500 food, 375 gold.
Heresy cost reduced 1000 gold -> 600 gold.
Atonement cost reduced 325 gold -> 175 gold.
Monk faith regeneration CD increased 62 seconds → 75 seconds.
Illumination available in Castle Age, cost is increased 120 gold → 150 gold, research time is reduced 65 seconds → 50 seconds.
Illumination reduces monk faith regeneration CD 75 seconds → 60 seconds.
New monastery technology “Nirvana” is introduced, available in Imperial Age after Illumination is researched.
Nirvana costs 250 gold, 65 seconds.
Nirvana reduces monk faith regeneration CD 60 seconds → 33 seconds.
Do Saracen monks auto heal allied troops with their aura, too? Seems like a strong bonus for allies with auto healing units, like Malians and Georgians.
My opinion won't be liked but Pros have now successfully destroyed monks too. They convinced developers to destroy old incas, Anything OP at high level like sicilian rush, hoang rush, monk rush, etc gets destroyed once it gets in hands of these pros.
You pros want to make this game an APM based game. More clicks, more micro, more theoretical. Competitive AOE has become about who can more their hands faster on keys and clicks.
You destroy innovation, new strategies terming them as OP, broken, broken tech, broken unit etc.
And funny thing is how unapologetic and arrogant you guys are towards this. You say "Oh this is so broken, wonder WHEN we will see a nerf". Not IF but WHEN.
And the low elo guy, who wants to rank up has to grind with archers, click faster , scroll faster, bash that keyboard faster.
You want this game to become a grind. Pathetic.
Have you seen DauT qualify for an S tier tournament with about 60 APM right ? He is one of the top players who is strong because of his good decisions and macro, not all players are APM focused. Striving for balance is the right thing, or do you really want to keep in game mechanics that are clearly overpowered ?
@ Saying that Daut is a slow player really tells me you don't know anything about the pro scene or Daut's gameplay.
And who are the "pros" to decide what is "Clearly overpowered"?
You haven't really seen neither Memb, nor T90 nor Viper cast games. They shout: Oh he lost this, Oh he lost that, Oh he can't micro properly due to low APM. And they loose. time and again.
For "pros" AoE 2 competitive = high apm, more clicks and button presses.
@@SepticIndia I never said DauT was slow. I said he plays around 60 APM, which is a fact.And I have seen plenty of Memb,T90 and so on... Yes sometimes it happens, that a player fails a quickwall or whatever due to low apm, but hey it is not the end of the game.
As much as casters shout that someone lost something (maybe due to low apm) they also comment on how sick macro the players have and how good decisions players make.
Aoe 2 simply is not an APM oriented game. While high apm helps, it is not necessary and never will be.
Conserving a rock-paper-scissors dynamic for (generic) trash units makes some sense. But making skirmishers stronger against pikes actually buffs all cavalry civs, especially vs. archer civs. Maybe this will finally make more room for swordsmen?
"Redemption should cost food" INSTEAD of gold, or IN ADDITION TO gold?
Who could have guessed Hera would be excited about a farming buff? 😂 MBL calls him a "farm" monster
For a castle buildtime nerf, what about making it so that the first villager acts only as 1 villager or only 33% less of what it use to while all subsequent villagers remain the same.
So for building a castle currently if you have 10 villagers building it it acts as if you have 12 (as the first acts as 3/ each vil past the first acts as 1/3) so if you knock off 7 vils while its building then there is still 5 vils building it technically. With the proposed change it would be only 3 vils.
It would flat-out nerf buildtime but it would also make defending from the castle drop easier as each vil being attacked/removed is much more impactful.
Disagree on the charging monks. They were OP and stupid and needed to be out. Instant conversions just shouldn't exist in the game in any form whatsoever.
How about they fix bugs first, like micro and pathing. I hate microsoft
The charging on buildings is essentially a bug exploit, it should not work, therefore good change, and they should tweak things around the new functionality.
Love that Battle elephants move faster now
However, people like me wanting elephant archer improvements:
_The wait continues_
Bro those are going to be some thicc Saracen camels 🐪 🐫 also if you have multiple monks does the passive healing radius stack? Seems like it could be really strong if so
Oh, i would like slower castle build time! Nice patch review, thanks!
I don't understand why they don't just give battle elephants a larger buff. They give the unit a tiny buff once every patch and each time it remains the worst unit in the game. I don't get it.
I think Castles should take longer to build the further you are away from a town centre. That way castle drops in your enemies face are harder but it doesn't take forever to build a defensive castle.
What the hell, Persian elephants are now super overpowered against buildings, they will totally work as siege units as well as cavalry.
Why do we talk so much about imp monk techs, but not faith? Faith costs 1750 and does very little. Your complaint is that going heavily into monks beats everything. Faith is the direct game counterplay to this, but it does almost nothing. I think heavy discount and buff of faith would address this.
I think the Roman nerf was not needed. They lack so much in their tech tree, very 1 dimensional imo.
I'm looking forward to the Persian update the most of the new content, it's gonna be great
I disagree Hera, 4 seconds to 5 seconds is basically the teutons team bonus, I would prefer that extra second was for infantry and elephants only because units like war wagons, janissaries, conqs and mangudais would be OP in castle age, specially in arena
Could they do the same to Bohemians for Wagon speed like they did to persians? Bohemians need some kind of defence imo.
But these arent fixed right? they could change by the time of actual patch.
Charging conversions on buildings is dump and shouldn't be a thing in my opinion.
They mess up so much with Persians. The changes have no sense at all, as the changes for the Celts and the Japanese.
Yeah, I disagree. Monks are supposed to beat knights.
Hera! Please make a video on water units and how to use them! No one on RUclips has an overview!
Do Persian cav archers get that 5 gold on military kills too?
They need to change the Mongols unique tech regarding houses 🤢
Possible nerf for monks: Make conversion cost some money?
please more 2vs6 or 1vs4 or 1vs3
Yo gonna be happy with cetls buffs
How about not being able to garrison monks on the TC?
What would happen if:
1. the conversion time was changed from (4-10 seconds randomly) to (4-10 seconds based on the target's remaining HP percentage),
2. Monks could only garrison in Castles,
3. Siege didn't require Redemption, but took 6-15 seconds to convert (based on the target's remaining HP percentage)?
1. and 3. are based on ideas by Robbylava, 2. is based on your video about Monks being broken
1. Most annoying thing with monks , that their rng in low numbers could flips the game completely. I think fixing coversion time is the way to go. Like from 4-10 to 5-9 as first step.
2. Dont think its needed, but not a big fan that new civs can garrison monks in their churches.
3. It allows even more rng , when mangonels can shoot 1-3 times during the conversion. Redepmtion monks suupose to counter mangonels, just need to fix instaconvertions, which doesn't give time to react.
@@valger3652 There would be no RNG in 3. because it would respect the change from 1.
@@iwersonsch5131 Every hp based mechanic - it's exploit. 1hp vil gathering resources as full hp, 1 hp archer doing full damage etc. No reason to create something hp based, bc it will make a domino effect.
@@valger3652 An archer takes 1 second to kill a 1HP villager. A monk takes 4-10 to convert it, randomly.
An archer takes idk 30 seconds to kill a 40HP villager. A monk takes 3-10 to convert it, randomly.
On the contrary, this degree of RNG is very atypical even for AoE2. Yes, a ranged unit may have a small variance in how many times it needs to shoot to kill a target, but that is 1) a smaller spread, and 2) a smaller swing, as a unit that barely survives an archer ends up on very low HP. A unit that barely survives a monk stays on full HP.
I love the clean presentation
Please, turks need more nerfs. Please 😒😒😒
noob take: remove monk from the game
the monk IS the exploit
Thanks for nice summary Hera 👍 How exactly is the saracen passive-healing monk going to work? Imagine you have like 10 monks in the middle of square of arbalest, so each arb is in the range of aura of all 10 monks, what happens? Does the effect of each monk add to the other? That would be to OP.... And do the monks heal each other?
Slavs are back boys!
Turks need more nerf 😒😒
To fix monks, I would also reduce the cost of faith and maybe heresy. Right now, faith is so expensive it's completely unusable. Basically, we have a system where the techs that help monks are super cheap, but the techs that help protect other units from monks are ridiculously expensive. Faith costing around 400-500 gold would make sense.
While AOE team wants us Japaneses
’ HCA more, but they still have fully upgrade Arbalester. Remove Arbalester from Japanese, and players will train CA more.
@Hera What do you think about Saracens Monk healing, their monks will be able to heal an entire Crossbow/Arb ball in 30secs to full hp.
I think this will be OP and abused at pro levels where you guys can micro it well enough.
I think it would be good for the monk->building conversion to still preserve conversion charge, but to scale the amount of charge according to the unit. So if you are half way done with the building's max conversion time, you should be half way done with the max conversion time of the unit that you are switching to.
Redemption charging is fine tbh. The one thing that I think should be done however is make it not affect light cavalry and eagle warriors. So you can still near insta-convert Knights, but you can't light cavalry, making light cav an actual counter for Monks as they should be.
how veri toxique : (
Maybe a more reasonable way to handle the charging is that you keep the percentage of the min/max conversion time you had? I.e. when you got your building half-way converted, by switching to some other target you get half the conversion time for that target counted. No instant conversions, but you also don't lose everything.
Congrats on TTL!
Are the stats of the Centurions unchanged? If I remember correctly, SotL mentioned some HP change, but I'm not sure.
i would suggest to split redemption into 2 techs. 1 lets you convert siege, the other lets you convert buildings. i know, aztecs monks will be OP with 5 extra HP :D
In regard to monks why not create a tech-minor faith- which does the same as the Teuton tech, charge 1/3 what faith costs and then have faith cost the remaining 2/3. This fixes two problems monk resistance and protection for elephant civs.
RIP Mayans!
Hera, don't you have access to the game developers to give your ideas for baffs and nerffs?
I also thought that adding food to monk tech cost would be best.
What no dravidian elefant is now the speed of the cobra car? This game is a joke
I like the changes, especially for the monks. Monks should be combined with decent army either in defense or offense.