That intro was really cute. I was needing that wholesome family vibe today, thank you. Edit: I'm still watching the vid, but can already say this is one of my favorites from you. The colors, editing, and even the intro transition music all fit perfectly. Edit 2: Alright, for me this was your best video so far. Captivating to the end and this time I agreed with 100% of the bonuses. Love the design, the ideas, historicity, sinergy. 5/5 Edit 3: Forgot to mention. Love the Gord idea too and all of the way you thought of the Slav regionality. It's, in my opinion, really a big shame the way Towers, in AoE2, are almost useless and if they become stronger they become too OP just due to Feudal trush wars. Your idea of making it so the Tower/Gord only becomes decently strong if it's placed in a Town Centers LoS (or another Tower's/Castle's LoS) is, in my opinion, something the game is missing. I also thought of making Towers build twice as slow if placed outside your base. The game could totally implement these ideas and make Towers actually useful without making them OP. I don't think they'll ever be implemented at all, as I don't think most of the players love Towers that much and the dev aren't interested in them, unfortunately.
HEY, great to hear from you Mike! Wow, thank you so, so much for the kind words in your comment here. It genuinely means a lot man, especially hearing that enjoyed seeing me with my family. The fact that you liked the build and the video so much is just gravy after that compliment! But seriously Mike, I'm delighted you liked my design. I've also been trying to up the general quality of my videos recently, so hearing you say that you're enjoying the presentation style is incredibly heartening. I honestly couldn't agree with you more about towers. I used to absolutely LOVE them when I was younger, but as I became more familiar with the game it became painfully obvious that they are really underwhelming in anything besides a cheesy rush situation. So I'm very pleased you liked the Gord! But I genuinely think that your idea of them building slower when far away from your base is brilliant, that's a very soft touch way to focus them more on their intended purpose. Maybe they could even be buffed if such a change was implemented! Regardless, trying to find a way to fix defensive buildings is now something I am determined to tackle at some point in the future on this channel. Thanks for getting my juices flowing Mike! And once again, I really cannot tell you how much I appreciate your words of support. It's wonderful having you be a part of the channel.
Man i have no idea how strong this civ would be. At higher levels that train time thing is a death sentence. But the double train eco units is so strong. Also the limited tech tree is savage as well. Success with this civ will depend heavily on the map and how creative the players is.
Couldn't agree more with you! I did a major recraft video somewhat recently in which I made some pretty substantial balance changes to this particular build, most notably toning down the intensity of the Eco / military thing. If you were even made a mock-up of how the bonus might work out in the scenario editor! Really fun to play around with, and I'm pleased to say that the new draft actually plays pretty smoothly in practice.
22:00 I really like this one, very flexible. I mentioned in another video about creating complexity with simple mechanics, I think this fits quite well in that.
Very good point Matt! Doing so would lock up a lot more of your resources in keeping the production key flowing, but I agree it wouldn't end up being as much of a penalty as I had initially intended. The current fix I'm planning, based on viewer feedback, is a dramatically lower 33% boost to economy train time and a smaller but still substantial 66% penalty to military train time. What do you think of that proposal?
Interesting! I think that’s a good idea. I think some gameplay testing would really help this. Do you have anyone who can help you with that? I know 0 about modding but it might be fun to mock up some of this stuff for testing :)
Excellent, glad you think so Matt! And holy shit dude, if you were able to actually mock some of this up and do tests I would be absolutely THRILLED! If you send me a video I can even feature it on the channel, but absolutely no worries if it doesn't work out! The more I do this channel, the more I feel like actually getting a modder to work on this is going to be a good idea. My current plan is to wait till I monetize and use whatever income I get to just pay people to do it, supposed to make sure people get their due and also because I'd honestly feel kind of weird profiting off of this channel heheh. Sound reasonable to you, or do you have other thoughts on how I could approach this?
So happy for you that you got that GL shoutout! Regarding the build: one of your most unique ones yet, hard to predict how it would play out balance wise. It does feel difficult for newer players especially and very good in team games. How do you manage to make videos so quickly? It feels like you put a lot of research in the history section and a lot of thought into the civs!
Thanks a lot for saying so Luffy! Yeah, there's definitely a chance I took this one too far. I think it'll play kind of like Chinese on steroids with how unusual the start is! As for how I'm keeping up the schedule, I think it's just that I've managed to work the process out to a very streamlined sequence of tasks that I can often incidentally do during day today activities. Like when I'm hanging out with my son in the morning sometimes I'll be thinking of civilization bonuses, or when I'm lazily watching a RUclips video sometimes I'll be working on graphic design. Either way, I'm really glad you think it's yielding high quality content! Considering how jank my setup is and how niche my topic it's very gratifying to hear. Always good seeing you in the comments section my friend! Hope you continue to enjoy the stuff I have coming out over the coming weeks!
Quality content bro! This Civ is definitely designed for more experienced players who want a challenge. I personally dig the unique playing style of the Novgorodians and it’s focus on eco will absolutely make it stand out. If it ever gets implemented in the official game I do have a feeling it might need to be buffed at some point for casual players. Haha. Beautiful family btw, as a mixed dude myself (white mom, Asian dad), this brought a smile to my face. 😊
Hey! Thank you so much for saying so smaoproducts! Really glad you enjoyed the build my friend! And yeah, I have genuinely no idea how the balance would end up going on this one. Really could be either completely broken or absolutely garbage! And while I'm delighted you like the build, I'm even happier to hear your kind words about my family. Thank you for that brother, it genuinely means a lot.
@@robbylava Pleasure's all mine man. :) I appreciate you directly engaging and talking with me and your community for ideas and feedback. That within itself is invaluable. Keep up the stellar work brother!
20:35 A problem I can see with that is that you can build multiple military buildings in all ages, but in the beginning of the game you can only have one TC.
Absolutely. This is one of my most controversial designs and was one I ended up recrafting quite a few times. The final bonus I came to gives a much heavier penalty to military than it does a bonus to economy, and even then it was still quite strong! Pretty much for exactly the reasons you described.
I only just realized why I'm late to commenting to every one of your videos - you publish them just as I get off work, so I watch them on the way home, and RUclips on mobile doesn't allow you to pause or unpause the video while typing a comment. I swear I'll catch up at some point.
Hey Robby great video as always! On the main eco bonus (100% eco production) Having double the eco production is going to make the early game very difficult to execute but will turn into such an incredible advantage that it won't ever matter. As the Novgorodian player you could easily have 50% (probably closer to 70/80%) more economy when clicking up to feudal. You could stay a bit longer to have a vil lead and still arrive to feudal faster. Upon reaching feudal you could make 2-3X as many production buildings as your opponent to offset your production de-buff as you will be able to acquire plenty of wood on the way up. You could then use these buildings to outproduce your opponent's military and go archers all in feudal with more units than your opponent. Walling would also be very hard to punish as you would have so many resources as well as vils to build the walls. Alternatively you could do some crazy tower rush play with your extra eco while your untouched eco continues to produce faster than your opponent. All-in dark age/early feudal with militia>man at arms could also be very strong
Extremely good points Tristan. So it sounds to me like you think right now the bonus is too strong. Do you have any suggestions on what I could tweak the numbers to to make it more reasonable? I'm really glad you liked the video! Great to hear from you.
@RobbyLAVA it's difficult to say without testing, but I think even reducing it to 30% (probably closer to 20%) rather than 100 would be very good as it's still triple (double) the Persian feudal age bonus in dark age. Along with the unique villager upgrade, this would still easily give them the best economy in the game.
I agree that the eco production bonus will likely overwhelm the military production penalty. I suspect that the bonus would result in much faster age-ups, weakened by the fact that they'd eat through their starting resources much faster. However, it is hard to know how effective it would be without playtesting.
Yep, that definitely makes sense. But if you were to reduce it so dramatically, would you also change the military side of the equation? I know that faster economy is definitely a bigger upside then slower military is a downside, but I feel like the military penalty should be reduced if the Eco side is nerfed, even if not exactly in parallel. Would love to hear your thoughts!
@@robbylava possibly, maybe like 50-75% for military along with the eco at 20-30? While it's nice to have the numbers match up I feel as though the nerf won't have the intended effect unless it's forcing you to make more production buildings. Reviewing the Posadnik's increase of 10 + % drop off bonus on a woodline advancing to feudal I feel 50% might even be too low. I like this drawback being substantial as it can/will force the Novgorodian player to invest more into Feudal aggression. Side note, it might be cool (and more user-friendly) to start the player off with the Posadinik replacing a villager outright at the start of the game. Kind of like how the Egyptians in AOM start with a pharaoh. This could somewhat patch the janky start by making your herdables/hunt last longer to fuel the TC as well as slow them down a hair as they will be temporarily 1 vil down and have to catch up. Likely they will have to get early loom similar to Chinese. With this set up an eco production rate closer to 30% might make a bit more sense.
Good build sir, I'd like to fight against them as an an enemy. I would just add 1 tech to them + the Rus: Gain a civ bonus or dock tech: Ice breakers - on winter maps ships movement speed +10%.
Thanks for saying so Ivan, glad you liked the build! That's certainly a creative technology, I've definitely thought about ones like it before. My problem is always that it relies so heavily on map generation, which seems like a frustrating thing to lose out on a bonus because of. But I do think there could be a way to make a technology kind of like this work! I had no idea that ice breaking prows were used in the Middle ages! Where did you come across that?
Oh boy! I love the concepts in this build, especially the Tysyatsky UU (what a bright idea there, I struggled sooo much to find ideas about any Novgorodian proper military unit!) and the Sovet Gospod UT: this idea is just spot on with the civ! And I love the Posadnik idea too: this figure was a must, and the way you implemented it (similiar to German prelates in AOE4 I believe, unless it was the Chinese? Not sure) in the best way possible. One question I have: does the Sovet Gospod tech would reset prices for all players too, then? Since AOE2 market prices are dynamically evolving the same way for all players. If so, the tech would just give advantages to your opponents as much as yourself. Not sure if I'm missing something there! Now in terms of playstyle, I can see how fantastic it could be early to mid game (up to late Castle age even I'd say), but I struggle to see how one would end a game that goes to imperial with the current build of the civ. Not sure if the siege units should be affected by the slow train civ trait, same for warships, it sounds really harsh. Like I see it right now, I think the civ would be OP Feudal and Castle Age, and fall to wet noodle level in Imperial, when the civ might just struggle to find anything on which to spend resources! Another concern regarding the fast train eco bonus: I struggle to see if players could actually keep up with production costs in early game, having units produced so fast but villagers still collecting resources at the same normal rate, you'd just end up idling your TC to a point that the bonus could be almost nullified in Dark Age? It's hard to figure it out. I think this bonus would really start to leverage from late Feudal. Small istorical observations: A note on "Sovet" word itself: I'm not sure how the "e" is pronounced in Old Novgorodian, but in Russian, the "e" in the word "Sovet" would be pronounced "ie", basically sounding "soviet" as if it was written with a "i" in the first place. Not sure about the dialect thing though, I might just be wrong there! About Novgorod's history and relationship with the Mongols: Novgorod ready to stand and saved in extremis by the "rasputitsa" is most likely a myth. Subutai would absolutely not be stopped by the weather if he really wanted to go deal with the city. Most likely, Yaroslav preventively submitted to the Mongols (we know that Novgorod started to pay tributes to the Horde since then and up until Muscovites ended the Mongol domination later on). Alexander had excellent relations with the Mongols, through his friendship with Sartaq and beyond: he is believed to have been actually formally "adopted" by Batu Khan himself, bearing his name at the mongol court, "Alexander Batu". Nevski largely used Mongol warriors and commanders to seat his own power and deal with rebellions as well. Mongols had a deep influence on Russian culture from there on, in both culture and warfare. About the Wonder, I would personally have gone for the Saint Sophia cathedral in Novgorod's kremlin, since it's the oldest major stone structure built in whole northern Russia. The building itself is (I think) bigger and more impressive than the Saint George cathedral, who comes second in that regard. But both choices are good regardless.
YES, exactly the man I was hoping to hear for! Thank you so much for watching Manu, I am so glad to hear you think I did this civilization justice! I was thinking of you a lot as I was creating it, kicking myself for forgetting to shout out your campaign. I'll be sure to remedy that in the recraft video. Appreciate the pronunciation clarification! My intent with Sovet Gospod was that it would only affect YOUR market prices, but other commenters have mentioned how broken they think this would be, so I'm actually more inclined now to have it apply universally! Maybe with you benefiting most, though of course you also get to choose when it's researched. What do you think of that idea? You're definitely right that my production time bonus is a bit too dramatic right now, a lot of other commenters have proposed some ways to fix it. The one I'm currently going off of is a dramatically reduced 33% boost on the economy side and a 66% penalty on the military side. As one commenter pointed out, creating extra production buildings is a pretty good way to get around the slower train time on the military side since you'll have so many extra resources to play with. How do you like that idea? Lastly, I really appreciate you taking the time to share all that information about the Mongols interactions with Novgorod. The sources that I consulted seemed to indicate that they had a fairly amicable relationship, but this is a fantastic level of detail! Like, I never would have guessed that Nevsky had such fantastic relations with them, I just remember reading that he did a really good job of negotiating with them to secure Novgorods sovereignty during their rule. In any case, a fantastic clarification! If anyone's qualified to talk about this, it's you! Thanks again for taking the time to leave this great review Manu. You will forever be the patron of this civilization in my heart!
To reflect the early fur trade, I will put a hunting bonus where 40% of the hunting resource will generate equal amount of gold. I would also think about adding resource generation ability from all villagers or generate 10 gold for each villager created since castle age. I would be hyped if the Pyatiny tech effect is changed to increasing 10% building hit point and 200% town center hit point (a total of 110% other building hit point and 300% town center hit points).
My like the idea of a bonus reflecting the fur trade! But I would personally give it to a different civilization, as while Novgorod was a major hub of the fur trade they didn't do nearly as much of the actual hunting themselves from what I've read. Your idea for pyatiny it's very respectable! I didn't want to give the civilization too much of a defensive focus, but if they did end up being implemented this would be a perfectly fine way to take them.
@@robbylava The Kievan Rus region was dependent on fur export. I would like to see more about your sources referring to their hunting habits. If they don't hunt, that looks very strange to me. Also I feel very odd about their infantry being worse than nomads. Infantry was the major composition for Slavic civilization during the Byzantine time. If you do not give them a fully upgraded power unit in imperial age, they do not have viable option to play aoe2, especially with the slow production rate. No matter how their economy looks like, their everything will just melt.
So you're right that the Kievan Rus had a big focus on hunting, but this bill doesn't actually include them! It's entirely focused on Novgorod, particularly the republican era, and as such has a much more urban focus. There's no doubt that they hunted plenty and were heavily involved in the fur trade, but they mostly purchased furs from the finno-ugric neighbors that they occasionally ruled. All my sources are linked in the civilization document if you want to take a look! Contrary to popular belief, many nomadic civilizations actually had extremely strong infantry cores. And from what I could tell in my research most Novgorodian armies focused around a core of heavy cavalry during the era I'm trying to highlight in the build, represented by them having quite good Boyars. And even without those, not having a fully upgraded late game power unit doesn't always make or break a civilization! It just means they either need to capitalize on earlier timings or out produce their opponent in late game, which I think this civilization is pretty capable of doing. But of course that's just my guess: if testing were to prove otherwise then we can certainly make changes.
@@robbylava Then you will definitely not want them miss plate barding armor. In aoe2 if you miss that, it severely undermine the ability to be the frontline unless you get a OP tech like Poles.
I think if it's about duchies of Rus it should be interesting to see Principality of Galizia and Volhynia united by Dalylo of Galych (this duchy was unique because had strong positions of local nobles and was more influenced by then Catholic states, first of all Hungary and Polish duchies, also Danylo was proclaimed as the king of Rus with obtaining a crown by Pope's legate in 1253/1254, also later this duchy established then Catholic features, such as unions of craftsmen, self-government of cities, German and Polish settlers in such cities and even a Catholic ruler - Yuriy II Boleslav).
It's a really interesting suggestion! I was personally only planning for two more Russian civilizations, those being the muscovites and the ruthenians. Would your suggestion here fit into either of those two, or would you propose other Russian civilizations that cover different ground? Thanks for taking the time to comment! I really hope you enjoyed the video.
@@robbylava it's a complicated question about the number of civilizations represent different duchies Rus, the mentioned duchy fits more to Ruthenians (ancestors of modern Ukrainians and Belarusians) but I think that it should be more than two called civilizations (Ruthenians and Muscovites) because there were many local duchies with own features, I mean Galician and Volhynian duchies (were local in the 12th century but were united approximately in 1200), Kyiv and Chernihiv duchies together with Peresyaslav one (were close to Cumans and some other Turkic tribes including groups of the last ones as military settlers known as Black Klobuks, Torks, Berendeys), Belarusian duchies with the Polotsk one (was close to Baltic tribes and remained paganic even in the 11th century including paganic dukes, the famous among them was Vseslav), Novgorod and Pskov duchies/republics (as I know there is a video about Novgorod on this channel), Moscow and the majority of neighbouring duchies (the strong power of dukes and seeking the better positions under the Golden Horde's Yoke), plus the Tver duchy (was close to the Moscow duchy but in rivaling against Moscow dukes of Tver sought allies among Catholic states, first of all the Great Duchy of Lithuania).
Definitely complicated! I only barely scratched the surface in this video. So if you got to choose, what Eastern Slavic civilizations would you personally add to the game? What would be your list, and what would each of them represent? I have a bunch of great options on my own personal list, but I'd love to hear your thoughts since you seem much more knowledgeable on the topic than me!
1)Great vid! thanks for keeping up the good work! 2) Robby you're a madman. This civ as written sounds awesome, but all the "flavor" you've added makes it more like an AOE 4 civ.... How do you start with your Civ crafts? How do you weigh historical accuracy, AOE 2 relevance or fun game mechanics? I heard that when Relic designs a sequel they aim for 3 pillars. Something familiar, something updated and something new. You might be able to add your own spin on that with your civ likeliometer grades. I'm assuming Eco strength is measured by time & effort in = resources out. So to support their eco Novg could train villagers either much faster or from many more buildings. What if this civ HAD to use their more numerous villagers to train troops. But the troops trained in regular or less time. So in effect having to train vills then using them to train troops does take longer to mass military. It also leads to great decision making "trade-offs" problems for the player on whether they should prioritize vills going to eco or military. This keeps one of your concept of right clickable unit upgrades, strengthens ECO & reinforces the civ-soldier concept. Speaking of which, do your Boyars revert back to foot troops like konniks if their mounts are killed? The banner carrying Tysyatsky UU as a walking training grounds is way over powered, could be immensely frustrating to play against , but is a very cool concept. I think it needs a few balance changes before its ready to go. Maybe it can re-train existing units into something else. So that the Novgorod player can quickly counter much stronger opposing units. Or give an AOE bonus to armor or attack so that the NovG units can be better.
Thanks a lot Harpo! Genuinely means a lot to hear you say all that then, I really appreciate your kind words. I've heard people say before that my designs feel like they'd be better fit in AOE 3 or 4, but while I admire those games a lot for the risks they take I definitely prefer AOE2 as a platform for these builds by far! I should make a video about why in future... Whew, you asking about my design process is a BIG question, I'm not even sure where to start in answering! I guess the first thing I do is always gather as many sources as possible, then take the time to sift through them to get an overall picture of the broader history and what is commonly known and agreed upon. Then I come through in a bit more detail to see if I can pick out any gems, especially stuff like specific names for soldiers or ideas for UT's. After that, I lay out all of my potential ideas as a bulleted list and sift through trying to find the best combination of them, giving highest priority to the stuff that seems most congruent with the history. After that, just do a bunch of graphic design, put together the document in the presentation, and bam! Bit oversimplified, but that's the process in broad strokes. I hope it was interesting! Any other questions you have on that front? Your proposal for villagers needing to be trained into military units was actually one of the first ideas I had for the civilization! I mentioned it briefly in my table ideas section, only reason I didn't go with it is I thought it would be much too high micro, not to mention being even more of a dramatic departure from the norm than I normally go for! One final question for you my friend, you are the first person commenting who's mentioned the Tysyatsky being overpowered! Would you mind elaborating on why a little bit? My thought was that, though they do give your army a lot of mobility and versatility, their low speed and damage would make them pretty easy to pick off from cavalry, archers, or Siege if you're not careful or have your front pushed back. Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic! Thanks again for taking the time to watch and comment Harpo. It's really fun getting to speak with you and hear your thoughts! Answering questions like the one you asked is a lot harder than I could have imagined heheh, very good practice for me!
@@robbylava Thanks for your process insight! I'm a hobbyist theory-crafter myself, so its interesting to see how others pull together their end product. The Tysyatsky IMO is situationaly over powered, I love the idea but the downgraded training time thing not transferring to the UU, coupled with fast vill production, fast RSS generation, and self completing buildings. The Tsyyatsky gives the Novgorods too much flexibility, and ability to defend their sprawl across the map cheaply. Playing against the Novgorods with Tysyatsky would be the most frustrating game of wack-a-mole. The fact that NovG miss so many unit upgrades works in their favor, they can army comp switch without much regret, and use their rss saved from having to build duplicate production buildings to drop more self building walls, Monasteries, TC's, gords and castles in whatever space you take from the opponent. The Tysyatsky produces while it moves, that will allow a Novgorodian player to keep moving the front lines. Since the economy is the civ focus, and they lack most heavy hitting units, they're not trying to land knock out big blows and "trade favorably" in battles, like all other civs. They're really just trying to out produce the opposing players, control the map and wear down enemy players until they give up or run out of rss. Human wave tactics all the way. As a NovG player I'd fast castle; behind dense convoluted self building houses & defenses, and spam Tysyatsky, and then get everywhere on the map while booming & building forward bases of TC's, Castles & gords to control rss locations and choke points. The speed bonus the UU offers for troop training makes building troops out of them much more efficient than out of standard military buildings. If the Novgorods survive to castle age and can start building the UU then they avoid their biggest handicap and they'd be pretty well entrenched, and hard to unseat. A few tactics that came to mind: You could hide a few Tysyatsky in an opponents wood line and spam crossbows and spears to push them out of expansion RSS nodes. You could have a crossbow push on one side of their base and long swords on the other, what does an opponent build you counter that? Knights? Then you can switch to spear right there. You could put one UU with a vill in each corner of the map and have them build infrastructure, the buildings build themselves. You only need one vill to start a base, plus the UU can start churning out an attack wave, or you can mass up some Monks. If you could mass 10 you could constantly rebuild boyar line troops supported with constantly regenerating arbs & pikes. The enemy probably wont be able to mass enough units of the right comp to stop that. By the time the opposing player finally kills your Tysyatsky & boyar army you could have produced another 10 and taken a different path into the enemy base, using Light cav/ Knights requiring the enemy to army composition switch again. Can the Novgorods be killed in Feudal? Definitely, but if they're not completely wiped its pretty much a GG. Since they can set and forget buildings and rebuild most of their military from a single unit.
The team bonus is particularly suited for forest nothing :D ! I've been "silently" watching your vids for a while, and I like the ideas that you bring to the table, this one included. My only concern every time is "OK, that's interesting, but how do you balance it properly in a competitive gameplay" :D Keep up the nice work ;)
HEY, thank you so much for saying so Sea Dragon! It's definitely true that balance isn't always my strong suit, but getting feedback from commenters like yourself really helps me iterate through the dynamo of crazy ideas that my brain tends to churn out! Thank you so much for the kind words my friend. I very much hope you continue to enjoy the content, silently or not!
The unique unit give General,admiral,military leader vibes, like someone leading the army but not actually in the battlefield itself. But with that said, overall I think their military is very bad, I mean I know they are a defensive civ but a civ with a good scout rush in feudal especially could really set their economy back. I mean it kinda no point in producing vills faster if they're just going to die to scouts faster you know? But overall another civ concept which brings new game mechanics is always welcome. The April patch coming out kinda gives me hope that maybe the Devs have been watching your videos lol
That's exactly the vibe I was going for! A general who can help you recruit more soldiers to help shore up your crappy military. And I definitely agree with you that this chic will have a really hard time dealing with rushes. My hope was that, even if this first incarnation of its design doesn't get the balance perfect, I can eventually bring it to the point where the Eco bonuses are very strong but you will have to play smart defend off enemy early attacks while you are weak, hopefully resulting in a net benefit if you are good at the civilization. But only time will tell! Thank you so much for your kind words my friend. I had a great time reading through the patch notes, definitely seems like the game is going in a direction that is closer to my eventual vision for it! Which of course makes me very pleased heheheh
@@robbylava I can already see them in the same light as the Chinese. Horrible at low elo, great in high level play, with their somewhat difficult start. They'll probably do well on closed maps I still think they can be over run by more powerful armies with a someone decent late game economy. I'd say they're strongest point might be early castle where you'd normally plop 3 TCs to boom but I think they'd want close the game out by early imp.
Great analysis Daniel! I'm already getting a ton of great comments on how to tone it down and make them a bit more accessible while still making them feel exciting and different. My hope is that, with a couple of these changes, they'll be exactly in the sweet spot you're describing!
This certainly is an interesting one. The idea of a civ focused heavily on economy is cool - but maybe their military is too weak. So, a few thoughts: The faster training eco sounds very strong, but I think it's also going to be hard to keep the TC producing at all times early on, so the main benefit is in having each villager out faster (so it can get to work faster). The slower training military sounds like trouble, though. Especially since they don't really have a good military in the first place. Maybe the bonus should be reduced to 50% faster/slower? The Posadnik sounds nifty (believe it or not, I've had a similar idea for a unit - as you'll see whenever I get that idea I mentioned a little while ago finished). Town Bell conversion. Ah, the possibilities here! I could actually see them utilising TCs forward to send bunches of "minutemen" against the opponent, due to the fact that their Villagers would be the fastest training military unit. This would be even better if Detinets were their UT. The Tysyatsky could maybe get and upgrade with Pyatiny to further improve training time (if needed). An aura ability could also be a possibility, to help boost the military. That's it for now. It's amazing how you can keep coming up with new and unique ideas for how civs work. Well done!
Thanks so much for saying so Bjarke! Based on a lot of the other feedback I'm getting, I would definitely agree with you that 50/50 is probably a better direction for the training time bonus, just to make it a bit less extreme! Really glad you like some of the other weird elements of the build! Like the Posadnik and Town Bell mechanic, I was very proud of both of them! I particularly think that unit conversion effects like the Town Bell thing have HUGE potential for other civ designs going forward. Would you mind elaborating on your idea for how the Tysyatsky could be empowered by Pyatiny? Other commenters have said they thought that UT is a bit weak, so giving it another effect to pump up the UU is definitely something I'm interested in! (Also fun fact, an aura effect was one of my first design routes for the Tysyatsky -- we are very synchronized!) Thanks as always for commenting my friend, really glad you like the build despite all its weirdnesses! And I'm very pleased the content release rate is to your liking, I made a resolution to try to upload weekly for as long as I possibly can, and so far I don't see any immediate end in sight!
What I meant was implementing increased production speed into Pyatiny, making the Tysyatsky train units even faster. This way it'd be possibly to gain an improvement to that without having to get the very expensive elite upgrade for the unit. Something like a 10% bonus maybe. This would stack with the elite upgrade, meaning that when fully upgraded, the Tysyatsky would actually have faster than standard training time. Also, after having thought about it a bit more, I think it could be a good idea to have this Pyatiny improvement affect overall military production, not just the Tysyatsky.
That's a very interesting idea Bjarke. I'm actually talking with another commenter right now who actually thinks the exact opposite, that the Tysyatsky is too STRONG and shouldn't have its production rate reduced from the civilizations baseline at all! I definitely don't want to misquote them, but their general concern from what I understood was that the fact that the unit is so mobile would increase its value as a production center enormously, possibly getting to the point where it was almost impossible to kill. What do you think of this argument? Either way, I definitely think that you're right that Pyatiny needs a bus. I'd be personally reluctant to make it improve production speed, cuz that's one of the main identities of the civilization, but I'm definitely interested in hearing other thoughts on how to improve it if you have them! Something to do with the Tysyatsky is still a very intriguing path to go. Thanks as always Bjarke!
I don't play PvP so I don't have a feel for how things might work in competitive play (so the other commenter might have a better understanding of this). That being said, whether the Tysyatsky is too weak or too strong depends on the ability to actually make units. With their amazing eco, having the resources isn't going to be a problem, but being able to actually pump out units is another matter. With the slow production speed it'll take time to get a large number of units out so it can be really effective, and it can't quickly make units to defend itself if spotted. Of course, this can be mitigated by having a lot of them grouped together (if their defenders are dead they're still sitting ducks, though). It's also worth noting that Tysyatskys can't do anything forward that a group of villagers building stuff can't do either, except be harder to kill - but then the whole idea of a surprise is ruined in the first place, so... And it seems all of this can be rather easily countered by the opponent building outposts - which you'd know to do if you see that you're going up against Novgorodians. They can't sneak up on you if you can see them, haha! So, there are several dials to turn in order to balance them (if needed): - Make them more expensive (maybe 200f, 200g) - Make their ability to produce slower (won't affect a mass of them too much, but it will make it even easier deal with them if they don't have defenders) - Weaker stats (especially speed and LoS) - Make it unable to move while recruiting (I don't recommend this, but it's an idea) - Any combination of the above - Something else I haven't thought of Also, if you're going to change the overall production speed, the Tysyatsky should maybe just have the same as base, and only get improvements with the elite upgrade. Now, I kind of get the feeling that they aren't really going to be used as harassment generators anyway. In Castle Age you'd either be steamrolling the opponent with that superior economy, or get surprised by a raid and be too busy dealing with that to worry about attacking (this is where the Town Bell comes in). And in Inperial Age you'd have either won or be locked in a stalemate against a stronger military (basically any other civ, really). They'd probably mostly be used as a forward production base, sparing you the bother of having to build a ton of buildings. As for Pyatiny... my best idea is that it could enable production of Imp units from the Tysyatsky. Meaning that without the upgrade, you'll only be able to produce the Castle Age version of the units from the Tysyatsky. You'd still have to research the individual upgrades from the respective buildings, of course. This could both reduce the effectiveness of the Tysyatsky in early Imp as well as make Pyatiny much, much more important to get. Pyatiny shold probably be made the Imp UT for this. Another weird idea I got was that buildings would automatically start building once within the LoS of a villager. As it is, it seems way too micro-intensive to be of much use. This way, you could for example lay down a wall foundation, walk a villager alongside it and have all of it auto-build without a ton of clicking and clicking and clicking (and clicking). I don't know if it'd be too strong, even with the LoS restriction (which is absolutely necessary! No dropping auto-building towers all over the enemy base, thank you).
Thanks bud! Yeah, I felt like it had some really cool implications too. Not for a smooth brain like me who can barely crack 1600 ELO of course, but for higher level players this feels like it could be a really powerful bonus!
@@robbylava No problem, it was great fun. I think you have gotten quite good at working out the themes of a civ and implementing them into a workable theory craft. The Novgorods having the best eco by far but a kinda reluctant and mostly weak military is very spot on for their history and you find great ways to implement them. Not too much I can add this time, but some thougts - the training eco units twice as fast feels like it could be anywhere from pretty unusable early game to completely broken later on. Your early game likely wont be able to keep up constant villager production which can limit the effect of the bonus, sometimes it's even harder to keep pace with the Persian bonus, and this is more than twice as fast than that. Obviously once your economy catches up it can snowball very fast. Maybe it could be towned down a bit to like 50% - the Tysyatski sounds very interesting and I'd be interested to see how they would work exactly. Having like 20-30 dudes just walk in and start training whatever unit they like sounds really good on paper - the Novgorods would pretty much be the ultimate sling civ in Team games. Just boom to oblivion and get 3 Team mates with good late game units. Imagine like 100 amazing archers + 100 FU War Elephants + something like Sarazen/Ethiopian Siege, gg.
Hey, really appreciate you saying so Edelweiss! I feel like I learn something more about how to design effectively with every build so I'm glad to hear you think I'm improving too. Based on feedback from other commenters, my current plan is to turn the production bonus / penalty into 33/66, very tone down from where it is now but still quite useful hopefully! And the sling problem is something that another player brought to my attention as well, that's something I never even considered as being a potential threat, but apparently it's still an incredibly powerful strategy! My current thought is to remove banking, which is definitely an unusual option to take and is of course not very historically accurate, but is the best way I can think to make the slang less powerful without doing something far less elegant. What do you think? Thanks as always my friend!
If you're really pushing for a distinction between Muscovites and Novgorodians, you should also make note of the Ruthenians as the third postulate. With these three in place, the Novgorodians make the least appearances in existing campaigns, being a northern state far from the front with the Eurasian nomads. The only campaign appearance I could be certain about is Algirdas and Kestutis 4, because Tver was originally settled by Novgorodian traders, and Vladimir could be portrayed as such if we add in territories of Rostov-Suzdal to the Novgorodian flag (a big if). Other current eastern Slavic factions are all Muscovites or Ruthenians. Ivaylo is weird. I think the slavs there should just be Bulgarians. If push comes to shove, maybe Ruthenians, or a potential Serbian civ eventually, if we're really going for pre-Bulgar slav representation. But Novgorodians is far off the mark. And Vlad Dracula is a Vlachs campaign. It really shouldn't be Slavic post-split.
Absolutely agree with you here Crossil, the Ruthenians would be the third of this triad without question! I've been doing a bunch of Slavic stuff recently, so it might be a while for me to get to them, but you can bet that they'll be making an appearance on the channel at some point! And I totally agree with you on the campaign front, the Lithuanian campaign was the only one I was at all sold on myself.
Great video! Unless I've missed something, I think they should be prevented from sending ressources to anyone who is not in imperial age. Without a limitation they could do some exceptional sling in team games that probably is overpowered with goths ally something like that.
Thanks a lot for saying so Foxy! I'm really glad you liked it. Yeah, another commenter mentioned the potential for an incredibly disgusting sling, but I would personally be a little nervous implementing a restriction like that since it feels so jarring! Can you think of any other ways we could get around this problem? Maybe even removing Banking, weird though that might be.
@@robbylava Thanks for your reply! I am a big fan of your channel. Keep up the great work! Another way to nerf the sling is to set a maximum amount you could sling per minute (increasing the allowed amount with the increasing game timer in five minute intervalls for example). That amount could be tested and balanced as needed, once it has been tried. Balancing is a process and I don't mind planning a couple of patches ahead to get it right eventually, as long as one improves with every patch : ) That said, I would really welcome many of your civs into the game and am hopeful to play some of them in the future.
Thanks so much for the kind words Foxy! Totally agree with you, as long as there is a consistent track towards improvement it's fine if it takes a while. Certainly been the case for games I've designed in the past! Really glad you're enjoying the content my friend. Here's hoping you continue to do so!
Considering that pros find the Persian bonus unmanageable at times in fuedal/castle age I can imagine this civ getting absolutely cooked in high level feudal play with the lack of food because of the vil bonus and slower military production :(
I had no idea the pros were turning away from the Persians for that reason, good note Hal! Zero doubt that I'm going to have to tone this thing down big time, current plan for the training time bonus is reduce the Eco side to 33% and the military side to 66%. Reckon that would be more manageable?
@@robbylava I do not like this idea. This is either a village rush or a douche. The build order will be totally messed up because your unit comes out too slowly.
Quite possible, but a viewer actually ended up making a custom scenario to put this idea (-33% eco, +66% military) into practice, and it ends up feeling shockingly smooth. That's not to say it would work well at high level gameplay! But it is at least a proof of concept -- rushing proved difficult but not impossible, and I was forced to adapt my playstyle pretty substantially, but it didn't feel like as dramatic of a departure as I would have expected.
The first bonus feels like completely broken. You are basically running on 2TCs with no investment whatsoever, if you play on hybrid maps and add docks your fish boom is crazy. On both open closed maps this is insanely strong, but it is especially broken on closed maps and more so on water. your eco is on steroids, your uptime is crazy and it doesnt matter that units train slower. Just add an another production building you can afford anyways with your eco to offset the slower training time, hit early and hit hard with an all-in feudal, your opp will have no ability to respond. They havent even clicked up to feudal when you already at their base with archers. Pyatiny is just a fairly niche daut castle preventer, I dont really see much other real uses of this tech, but well that depends on the auto build speed. If this was a base civ bonus, it'd be okay since you can theoretically micro a lot in feudal and dark age, like walls and houses to save vill time, but in castle age, you dont really make much use of it. Also is it a good design that it is researched in the building which benefits the most from the tech? I mean we have horadings, but the entire point of this tech is to get your castle up no matter what, and though luck if it is your first castle. You need a castle to research this tech to get your castle up from 98%, catch 22. Gospod at a first glance seems op in 1v1 lategame trash wars. Research, make a bunch of siege with the gold, push back the enemy. Repeat. Win.
All good points Széplaki! Many other commenters have pointed out similar issues -- the current change I'm toying with is dramatically slashing the Eco production time bonus to 33% (still very good of course) and reducing the military one to 66%. Might even extend the military production penalty to also affect towers, since Tower rushing was mentioned as potentially being a problem. What do you think of that as an initial balance approach? I definitely agree that Pyatiny is more niche, certainly to the point that I think decreasing its cost is a good idea. Another commenter mentioned possibly having it boost up the Tysyatsky UU to make it a bit more appealing, but I'd love to hear thoughts from you on how you would change it as well. It was actually considered as a base bonus for the civilization, but I figured all the Eco stuff was too much already! Sovet Gospod would definitely be very powerful late game, my Hope was that the cost and relatively narrow window would prevent it from being too disgusting, but in retrospect I don't think that was good enough. Another commenter did mention potentially having the technology also apply to ALL other players, so an opponent could capitalize on it but you would have the advantage of knowing when it was coming! Do you think that would be enough to fix the technology?
Heheheh you're probably right Ben! I definitely went full throttle with that element of their design. Do you think I took it too far? And if so, I'd love to hear what you would propose to tweak what I have here.
I could see that being a concern, another commenter mentioned that Tower rushes could be spooky as well. Something I was considering is extending their military building penalty to towers, do you think that would help out with the annoying cheese potential at all?
22:47 It might be easier to make them a "levy equivalent" for gameplay purposes. Instead of a Spearman, you get a Recruited Spearman. They would get the same upgrades as the original units. And I think of that more as a mechanic thing than anything else.
Not a bad idea! I'm just worried that the civilization is already too strong, enough so that I don't really want to give them any more bonuses if I can help it
A pure Economy build. Fantastic job. And while the autobuild mechanic has allready been mentioned, how about the Town Bell mechanic being straight up how you get Militia as the Humans in WC3. Also crap infantry that reverts to workers when the timer runs out or you end the effect. To have both in an AoE2 build? *chef's kiss*
Heheheh I was wondering how many WC3 nerds I'd have in the comments catching that! Very well spotted Johannes, I'm shameless when referencing my favorite games! Really glad that you like how the build turned out my friend. I hope you feel like I pulled off a pure economy civilization well!
To somewhat quote Ornlu in his State of the Civs 2022 video on the Khmer: Naturally with a massive economy comes massive.... holes in your military. Yeah that didn't work out.
For my historical rant, I really dont have much to nitpick about this one! I think you handled the history very nicely here, and I am really glad to see that you try to show people that there is more depth to eastern Europe beyond the all-encompassing SLAVS. Perhaps my only criticism would be for the Kholop, especially if it was made a regional unit. Firsty, the implication of a serf being a bad villager is a bit uncomfortable, I have to say. There is some historical reasoning for that, as work done by serfs is pretty much always recorded to be as half-assed as possible, which is understandable, because who the hell wants to work for free. On the other hand, there is kindof an implication of the Kholops just being inferior, which given their troubled history comes of as a bit demeaning. Id also like to mention that they wouldnt really make for a great regional unit either way (atleast not for all Slavic civilizations). I can comfortably say that for Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, forced labour was oftentimes not required, and the peasantry usually paid their share to the nobility in taxes, not in free labour . The lord could only demand forced labour as a part of a legal contract, they had no power to force anyone to work for no compensation, unless that was agreed when the peasants settled the lands. However, those sorts of agreements really werent too common, as the nobility generally prefered to hire people to actually do the job properly while being paid from peasants taxes. Another point is that a lot of medieval European states had forced labour as a part of their legal code. It has existed in the Holy Roman Empire for sure, though the same arguement applies - generally, the lords preferred to be paid in taxes. Such legal arangments also existed in France and England, for example. Now, if you wanted to implement it, I think it makes sense for SOME Slavic civs. Muscovites would be the most obvious example, which I feel like I dont need to elaborate on more. But the late-Polish Lithuanian commonwealth (post-medieval) also had some draconian serfdom laws. In that way, it could work for Poland, however there is one issue with this: the people affected by this were generally not Poles, but the conquered people to the east, so Ruthenians and Lithuanians were generally the people who were subject to brutal serfdom. In that way, you could sort of consider it a unique tech for the Ruthenians, but then it would be representing their civilization by a tech which brought them a lot of suffering by the hands of other people, which is again a bit morally questionable. Either way, the way it worked in most of Europe (including eastern Europe) is that IF the lord could demand forced labour, he would generally do so in brief seasonal periods, or for very special construction projects, such as building of dikes or roads. Considering this, I think it would make sense to represent this by perhaps having a unique tech that spawns a large number of villagers, who despawn after a semi-short period of a time? It would probably be most useful for getting up infrastructure (especially castles if you are being attacked) which would make a lot of sense historically. It also avoids the issue of forced labourers being inferior to regular villagers.
Hey, thank you so much Tomás! Really, really glad you think I got the history right with this one, even if the balance is a little wack! I can see what you mean about the Kholop. Maybe because my sources were subpar or maybe because I just misread them, but it didn't seem like Kholops were exact parallels to serfs (either in Slavic areas or in the rest of Europe). If you tell me I'm wrong then I totally believe you, just from what I was reading it seemed like they were kind of a distinct servile class of some kind! Especially since, from what I remember, they were often conscripted as light cavalry and cavalry archers, which feels very different from other serfdom situations you hear of elsewhere. So would you mind sharing a little more about what you know of Kholops? How wrong were my sources here? That all said, if they were pretty much just serfs then I think you're right in it not making sense to have them as a distinct unit. Something I have been toying with for the semi-distant future is a unit build for a Laborer unit (effectively a low HP villager with a timed life). I think it would be a good way to represent how prominent slavery and serfdom were in the Middle ages while also injecting some much needed diversity into economic play, but I'm hesitant because I'm not sure how well received it would be to feature slavery so prominently. I'm the sort of person who thinks it's not only acceptable but important to showcase an honest picture of what the world was like, but I have no idea whether I am in the minority here. What do you think of this idea overall Tomás? It's cool how similar you're proposed idea was to this one that's been floating around in my mind!
@@robbylava I checked out your source, and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with it! It just doesnt paint the whole picture for all Slavic people. For example, in Bohemia the word Chlap (Kholop) was simply used to refer to someone who had to make a living with his own hands. To call a nobleman a chlap was actually a severe insult and could be brought to a court. Overtime, this word shifted in meaning and is now used in hyper-masculine contexts, but it really originally reffered to a working man (or male child) in all Slavic languages, afaik. For some further context, I don't even think that this word had any legal definition in Bohemia. Either way I got a bit carried away with the serf aspect - you'd be sort of right, that there were some cultural differences. In eastern Europe, people tended to be levied for war more commonly, and the kholop would definitely play a role in that (in Rus history, it is an actual legal term). In early Slavic history, taking slaves was common, and many wars were started as simple slave raids. These slaves in Rus would then over time become bound to lands and essentially merged in function with the peasantry. I think the idea of them being a civilian who can become a military unit is usable, but do know that this wasn't the norm everywhere in Slavic Europe. As far as representation goes, I don't think there's necessarily wrong with representing more tragic parts of history, though I do think issues like this deserve a bit of extra attention. For me personally, the implication of a slave/serf being a pretty much inferior villager are a bit dark. Though I do think the idea of an east Slavic civ converting civilians into military does have some potentional, and the idea of limited-time workforce sounds great (though I wonder if this wouldn't be better used for Mesoamerica for example, with their large megaprojects).
Oh good! Really appreciate you double checking my sources there my friend, the fact that they seem decent and I didn't just remember them is a big win on my end heheh My hope for a unit like the laborer would be to make them more of a trade-off as compared to a villager then being inferior. Like, ideally, the hope would be to have them be very cheap and able to be produced en masse especially if you're doing a lot of raiding but have the downside of being on a timed life. So unlike a villager, they wouldn't be able to give hypothetically infinite returns! But this will definitely be a delicate tightrope to walk. Like, I very highly doubt that economies will be able to rely more on laborers than on villagers unless you're at a very high level of play and are an absolute master of timings! And hopefully, giving the unit very similar gathering and construction rates to villagers will communicate the idea that these were still people at the end of the day, just ones forced into a really unfortunate and inhumane situation. Anything you see that assessment missing Tomáš?
@@robbylava I see a great opportunity to introduce batch training with such a unit! Other than that not much, I think there is definitely a room for more civilian units.
Brilliant. While I don't see this being a build I will tackle soon, you can definitely expect to see it in the future! Thanks again for all this great back and forth my friend.
Hello Robby! Very interesting and bold civ design this week 11. Unfortunately, the bloated comment I had written in my usual style got lost in a page reload (or maybe it was too long to accept by youtube?). I had a long and extremely excessive thought-experiment about the eco bonus, but I'll just summarize since I definitely do not want to try to rewrite the monstrosity I had written 1111111. Also, it seems like you are well aware that the eco is uber-strong, but I think the eco strength is much, much, much too strong. Tech tree: As you intended, everything is weak/terrible, except archers / CA (these are just OK), siege, monks, and defenses. Team bonus: market techs/ trade units are not used until mid/late imperial, so this bonus is not very helpful, with the exception of sling cheese in team games (and as you pointed out -- perhaps in dark age to sell/buy?). Boosting slinging is not particularly helpful though, as slinging is already OP (always has been), and the only reason we don't see it that often is because 1). it is banned in most pro tourneys 2). it is boring to play and generally frowned upon so lower rated players usually don't do it either despite its OPness. I recall try it out with a friend just for fun and absolutely slaughtering opponents in 2v2s. Sling is crazy... UTs: both seem niche / useless in most circumstances. The castle UT is essentially only good for preventing a daut castle (the tech is too expensive / villager work time is too dispensable for it to be worth the cost in any other situation, in my opinion). The imp UT is only in extreme situations of very high wood/food banks and no gold/stone, especially as it has an up-front gold/stone cost. UU: is quite different and interesting, and I like the mechanic, but Iit seems like it ends up being a bit of a band-aid for the civ's military production anti-bonus, but not a supremely interesting stand-alone unit. Its stats are unremarkable, so its ability as a mobile military building is the only reason why you'd build it. It is an interesting mechanic but seems a little bland given the civilization as a whole has no other special military characteristics (besides being weak militarily?). Bonuses: -- the super-villager is very strong. Not too strong on its own, but.... -- +100% eco unit production is just flat out OP. I had waxed long about this in my prior comment, but I haven't the heart to reproduce my thought experiment here 11! Let's just say this bonus is ridiculously powerful and definitely not balanced by the military anti-bonus. Once the eco is rolling (maybe with some walls/towers/gords, maybe on the safety of arena, etc.) having to build an extra 2-4 production buildings for 350-700 resources in castle age won't matter very much, but having +3-5k resources and +30-40 villagers will matter, quite a lot. Also, on arena this civs wins every game, no contest. Massive dark/feudal boom --> super-monk rush. -- TC bell mechanic. Odd and different, IDK how it would play out. One question though -- can it be triggered more than once in quick succession? Then it could be abused to convert your whole eco to military, if desired, although even that might not be so strong as the timer & loss of villager work time means that repeated bell ringing might be bad for the civ if it did stack. Conclusion: the eco is way, waaaaaaaaay too strong for this civ. But almost more concerning to me is that its military is just not interesting. It has no bonuses to military, no UTs, and its UU is a glorified production building (unique & different, but almost more of an economic unit than a military unit). Besides the fact that the civ will dominate with its OP economic power, I don't really feel very excited by civ like this? IDK, that's probably too harsh a review, as the "economic powerhouse with weak military" seems like a decent trope to build a civ on, and this civ has taken that to the max, and as you described it could have a very interesting military structure in late game. But really it feels like there should be *something* to make it militarily distinctive besides being generally bad. Maybe using some of he unique units in your loose threads could be interesting. Either way, you've definitely achieved your goal of pushing the boundaries of AOE2 haha!
Thanks for the great review my friend! I had a feeling you would have plenty of thoughts on this one, heheheh Has always, I think your analysis is excellent and pretty much spot on. I didn't think that making a bunch of production buildings would be enough to completely cancel out the downside of the civ bonus, specifically because space would become an issue but also because it would still not help you protect against early raids very effectively and would force you to lock up a lot more of your resources to keep production flowing. That being said, between this comment and quite a few others, I've been convinced that I took it much too far here! The current theory I'm running on is to have the Eco side of the bonus toned down to a 33% boost and the military penalty tone down to 66%, possibly affecting towers as well as units. What do you think about that? I can see what you mean about the military being a little bit bland, though I did feel like the unique unit being a mobile production building would be very interesting and could help their strategic potential remain high despite their individual troop quality not being brilliant. As you know, I love designing civs with a strong economy and a weak military! And I do feel like there are a number of civilizations in the game right now, such as the Persians and Chinese, with a very strong economy and a relatively bland military behind it. After all, the Chinese only have rocketry and the Persians have their crappy knight damage bonus, besides that it's just the unique units that add variety, which is in the persian's case not a very good thing! But anyway, that was the framework I was operating on. Can you think of any ways we could gently spice up the military while keeping the civilization focused heavily on the economy side of things? Really appreciate you taking the time! So sorry your computer keeps deleting your beautiful comments, that's so frustrating! For me as well as you, I want to read all of them!
Toning down the eco/military production bonus is a good idea. This is certainly the most important first change, but I don't know what specific numbers would work, so I'll leave that with you. Additionally, I think that toning down the economic power of the civ (while still keeping it very strong) will allow you more room to reshuffle other bonuses / add relevant military flavor without making them too strong. As far as making their military more interesting, I think that, as another commenter pointed out, moving the castle UT to be just a civ bonus would make that aspect of the civ more relevant / useful, and then you'll have a slot to put in some military flavor with a new castle age UT. Additionally, you mentioned some alternate UUs / ideas so maybe 1 of those could be added bring more military depth to the design.
Not a bad point at all Simbelmynë (no surprise considering who I'm talking to heheh)! I think that moving the current effect of Pyatiny to a civilization bonus is quite a good one, though I would actually be kind of concerned it would be too strong if I did so! Even if we nerfed the civilizations economy in other ways. What are your thoughts on that?
Given the slow rate of building (1/3 of a vil) and the need to micro individual hits of the building with villagers, I'd rank this bonus as pretty solid, but not super huge. I mainly see this be useful when: 1. walling early in dark age (as long as it is early enough that they will be finished before your opponent shows up) 2. houses in the mid game (queue a bunch, ignore them) 3. The Daut Castle Premium® insurance plan And one drawback (for micro nerds, at least): 1. your quick walls continue to build, reducing your wood refund if you didn't plan on finishing the building My real concern is more that the civ is too strong as a whole, rather than that this individual bonus is too strong. So this likely boils down to how you balance the various bonuses off each other. Maybe a further reduction in the eco-unit production vs. military production bonus/anti-bonus would be necessary (but maybe it wouldn't, IDK) if you decided to move the auto-building to be a civ bonus. I suspect the 33% vs. 66% bonus/anti-bonus would still be extremely strong on its own, perhaps still super OP, regardless of the possible building-bonus, but really someone should test it.
If I may join in. I managed to get the villager training bonus working in the editor, and... it's really good. I got about a nine minute click-up-to-Feudal with 30 villagers and then 14 minute click-up-to-Castle with 40 vils. And that's including being housed several times and occasionally having to wait for food (and also no proper build order, haha). The biggest problem here is that it's so chaotic to play with, but I imagine that once it's been refined and in the hands of a skilled player, it's going to be even better. So reducing the speed bonus seems like a must. The 33%/66% is definitely something to try out. (I can send it over once I'm done adding the military stuff, Robby.) Also, a small suggestion. You can write the messages in Notepad or similar and then copy/paste them into RUclips. This way you don't risk losing them before posting. edit: I forgot I used Vikings to test with, so any Feudal Age play is botched (Dark Age is fine, though). I'll try again with another civ.
Great question Lorddervish! As of now I am inclined towards adding the Ruthenians (representing the earlier Rus principalities, especially Kiev) and the Muscovites (more focusing on the later states). But I could be convinced of others! And all that isn't even touching upon the many other Slavic factions that I think would be good to introduce.
Yeah! Wouldn't that be somethin? Though I feel like most pro players would have an absolute conniption if they saw even half the shit that I come up with!
Rus was umbrella term for East Slavic principalities and republics. Novgorod also was Rus, it was part of North-Western Rus. Dividing Slavs into Novgorodians and Kyivans is same as dividing ancient Greeks into Athenians, Spartans, Cypriots etc.
Hello Rob! A couple day too late for the release (I had a competition elsewhere so I could not leave a comment there) but always here for a new civilization. I think that their identity is well built. Many bonus (creative even more) made to make this faction reach the top of the economy. Now imagine the Burgundians with Novgorod as an ally. Fully upgraded market in the dark age. I noticed one downside however. Tell me if I am wrong but I feel like you wanted Novgorod to be strong in castle age but not (or far less) in imperial. With that in mind, would it be great to give them thumb ring? They would have fully generic castle age units, allowing them to go whatever they want but falling from there in imperial.
Hey, great to hear from you Divicos! Really glad you think I did well on this one my friend, I was pretty pleased with their historical theming myself! Thumb Ring is a really interesting suggestion -- I did want them to be a bit better in Castle age than early imperial on average, but I'd be a little worried about thumb ring causing their archers to be to dominance. While Novgorod did use plenty of archers they weren't at all infamous for it. It's a really cool idea though, definitely something I wouldn't have picked out myself. And if it ever seemed like the civilization was too weak in Castle age, that would be a great way to buff them. Hope your competition went well by the way! May I ask what it was for? Quite curious!
@@robbylava Ok I see for thumb ring. I understand the historical point of view (I always follow it too). So it would be weird but when you look at their whole military units, in castle age they are decent, only missing thumb ring. No bonus but decent. But in imperial they have the worst pikeman and two handed swordman in the game. They have awful horsemen (no hussar, nor paladin nor blacksmith upgrades), ok siege and Aztec arbalesters with HA barely useless because they don't have thumb ring (Khmers have all the techs beside thumb ring and they don't use HA). They are weak in imperial age, it's not a problem but at least in castle age they should be strong. You can switch thumb ring and arbalester to not give them a "great" option in imperial. It's always fun to talk about design and ideas behind them. It was a powerlifting meet and it went quite well I must say.
Pretty spot on analysis Divicos. My thought was that the weakness of their army in post imperial would be made up for by their monster economy and ability to quickly reinforce with Tysyatsky. I do think I like giving them arbs, and if in practice they ever seem really off I think thumb ring will be a strong and fitting option to provide them with. And dude, that's really cool! I used to work as a personal trainer and had a number of friends at the gym who were powerlifters, but I never got into it myself. More of a Pilates guy hehehe. How long have you been doing it for?
@@robbylava I feel like they are Goths. Spam weak units but at its highest there. I can compare the cheap infantry with the great economy but at least Goths have blast furnace, haleberdiers, huskarls and decent stable. The Novgorodians have nothing like this. Their unique unit is quite interesting (a unique role in the game) but it can't fight in battles. No problem but you must rely on units weaker than the Gothic ones. I don't see them win in imperial. Some civilizations are weaker in imperial than in castle (in comparison) and that's fine, but at least they have one option. That's cool. Did you watch them in a meet? I started doing competitions in 2020. I made a video on the last one on my channel (it's in French but if you want to see, at least there are pretty landscapes)^^
DUDE I just clicked around your channel a bit and it's exceptional! You have some incredible power there my friend. 132 kilo bench is no laughing matter, that's like twice as good as my personal best when I was in gym shape! And the glute exercises you were demonstrating, those plunges in one of your slightly older videos, we're ridiculously impressive. I don't think I could have done them with weight even in my prime. I studied French for 7 years, so while I don't know a lot of the technical terms I was able to at least somewhat follow along. In summary, enjoyed the hell out of your content! Really hope you keep it up, and take a well-earned subscription.
A perfect feature would be if Alexander Nevsky had the same ability to train units like the Tysyatsky. He'd basically be like a shogun or daimyo in AoE3
YES, I adore this idea. Like, he is a special hero Tysyatsky that maybe trains faster while also being better at fighting. Maybe he could even be mounted!
I'm not sure how to feel about the faster eco/slower military bonus. It seems really cool, I'm just not sure how it would play out. Probably a lot of tower building lol. I like the Town Bell bonus, I just hope you can reset your villagers before their time limit is up. Otherwise, scout cavalry harassment could really slow you down economically.
Oohhh, that's a great point about the town bell! I think I will implement something whereby you can end the timer early by retasking the units on a town center, fantastic suggestion Guru. A bunch of other commenters have been pointing out ways that the production time bonus is too much, and Tower rushing was one of the main concerns mentioned. Do you think that element of it could be toned down by having the production time penalty also apply to fortifications? Or even just towers maybe
@@robbylava Hm... It could, but 2x slower to make towers would be unusably slow. Plus, without as many units to back them up, a tower rush would be weak anyway. So it could just be a strong, reliable means of defense. So I think as it it's actually fine in that regard
Does the slower military training speed even matter, if the villagers train twice as fast? I know its going to be a bit rough in the early game keeping your tc producing that fast, but potentionally, you can have twice as many villagers gathering twice as much wood, meaning twice as many production buildings (so essentialy no training speed disadvantage), while also having much more resource overflow. Combined with the perfectly regular archers and servicable crossbowman, I think that an archer rush could be pretty broken with this civ.
Yeah, this is something that a couple people also brought up, I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't spot this issue myself! Current proposal based on feedback from other commenters is too sharply change the production bonus to only 33% for economy units with a 66% penalty for military, so toned down overall but distinctly less parity (since it definitely would be possible to just produce out of more military buildings instead). What do you think of that proposal Tomás?
It's an interesting civ concept indeed, but it would be a nightmare implementing in the aoe 2 de engine. While op eco is good, the drawbacks is so much that civs buffed by the new patch updates can wreck them pretty badly.
OH yeah, no doubt Adithya! I would feel terrible for whatever poor bastard ended up trying to make some of these nonsense bonuses work if they ever got implemented in the game. Hope you enjoyed the build despite it's weirdness!
31:07 Maybe the siege training time should not be penalised? And considering how penalised they are by their training time, I'd say you could give them a few military techs back. I feel that in a team game they would become a "sling civilisation", basically producing resources and giving to the allies.
The second UT gonna be great in team games. Probably gonna see Novgordian teammates sell resources to allys very spammable units. Imagine them with a Goth ally in the late game. First UT sounds interesting too. So does that mean that a villager has to at least start constructing a building or even if it's simply placed it will complete itself?
You're totally right Daniel, I could see them being an absolutely amazing sling civilization, especially since get the market technologies early and we'll have so many resources to play with! In fact, I think they would probably be the single best slinging civilization in the game. Yep, you're exactly right! For the castle age UT, a villager has to hit the foundation at least once for the building to start constructing itself.
Not sure I agree with the loss of conscription. Earlier in the video you'd said their armies were usually civilian conscripted militia. In terms of historical accuracy, I'm not sure that works
That's a really sapient point Firesparq, I actually went back and forth on this for quite a while during my initial design. My eventual reason for removing conscription was because, while that was certainly how they formed their armies pretty much without exception, I had referenced that conscription process elsewhere in my build pretty thoroughly. To the point where it felt like I could at least SLIGHTLY justify removing the technology for the sake of preserving their poor military production identity. Does that seem like a coherent train of thought to you?
@@robbylava Definitely. I do understand from a gameplay perspective why you didn't include it. It doesn't fit with their identity of a eco-fast, military-slow theme. I just found it amusing. Still, love the amount of thought and effort you've put into this video. I really enjoyed learning a lot, and the end design you've come up with from a gameplay perspective. If I knew how to add graphics/custom unit menus to the game, I would 100% try and implement this as a mod
Definitely amusing! I'm absolutely delighted to hear that you enjoy the videos Firesparq -- that is honestly the absolute best I could hope for out of my channel! The more I've worked on these videos The more I've come to realize that we really, REALLY need a mod of some kind to let people actually try them out! While I suck at modding, and coding more broadly, I think at some point I'm going to try to pay modders to work on a project like this. If you're feeling more confident at that point I'd love to have you involved!
Great build. I think the civ bonus could be tweaked to be more balanced with play testing so they would'nt be to overpowered or under powered. I heard Albanians. PLEASE DO A BUILD ON ALBANIANS.
Thanks very much for saying so Gaetano! Really glad you liked the build man, I totally agree that it needs some adjustments but fortunately I have a lot of very clever people in the comments section giving all sorts of excellent input. Reading you loud and clear on the Albanians front! My cue is pretty full right now, but you can definitely expect to see them at some point in the future!
IMO great work, very well done concept. But my only problem dividing Slavs into Novgorodians, Kyivans and Muscovites or other East Slavic civ is problematic from historical perspective. They are all Rus, and Rus was umbrella term for East Slavic principalities and republics. Dividing them is same as taking ancient Greeks and dividing them into Athenians, Spartans, Cypriots etc. And even if so, lot of other civs should be divided then too. That is why I like AoE4 civ style, that they made civs based on empires, rather than ethnic groups.
Very kind of you to say! And I would agree that it's not an ideal grouping. Dynastic civilization design is definitely superior to ethnic, but I'm trying to work within the confines of the game! If nothing else, this civilization could probably represent most of the northern Rus peoples, especially after they start to get more differentiated following the collapse of the Kievan Rus. Historically speaking I think this is a more compelling niche than something like an Athenian / Spartan divide, but I do wish it had a better demonym. Regardless, thank you so much for taking the time to watch and comment!
@@robbylava In future, maybe, I will be making forums post about AoE4 Rus variant. Novgorod was as variant was my idea before but thanks to Your video, it encouraged me to make it and create analog features of your idea.
Absolutely Daniel, you can expect to see the Swahili sometime this month! So cool to hear that you're from Zambia man, it's always surreal learning how international my audience is. Great to hear from you!
@@robbylava I'm probably the only one who plays the definitive edition here, most only played age of kings and the conquerors, they always seem shocked that there's an age 2 game after that lol. Can't wait for the video!
28:20 Exept the first one, that I think is hard to balance, I liked the bonuses for this civ. On the other hand I don't like the UT. The first one is a bit "magical" for me. And the second one feels a bit abusable.
I've had a bunch of people requests this one, and I'll be honest I'm kind of scared to take it on! Really not sure what I'll be able to do with it. But seeing as I keep getting requested for it, I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and see what I can make happen! Thanks for the input Chang.
I've had so many people ask for this one, and I'm still kind of nervous to do it! Some of my initial scouting research has revealed that it is VERY hard to find sources for these guys. BUT, since so many of you are so excited for it, I think I'm going to have to try this one at some point! It might not be super soon, but you can definitely expect to see me take a crack at them sometime in the future. Thanks a lot for the request Juangalt!
You know Rodrigo, this is one of the most interesting requests I've ever gotten. I would NEVER have thought to make the Circassians as a civilization, but you're totally right, they could be an amazing fit! This will 100% be going on my list. Thanks so much for the great rec.
The Caucasus has many possible and interesting civs - I referenced the Circassians in my Georgians build (they would share an architecture set) :D Their folk music is also 🔥🔥🔥
Damn, I never thought I'd hear the Undead/Protoss autobuilding buildings being suggested for a civ...
Heheheh I saw the opportunity and I jumped on it! That was actually the very final piece of the puzzle for this civilization before I finalized it.
That intro was really cute. I was needing that wholesome family vibe today, thank you.
Edit: I'm still watching the vid, but can already say this is one of my favorites from you. The colors, editing, and even the intro transition music all fit perfectly.
Edit 2: Alright, for me this was your best video so far. Captivating to the end and this time I agreed with 100% of the bonuses. Love the design, the ideas, historicity, sinergy. 5/5
Edit 3: Forgot to mention. Love the Gord idea too and all of the way you thought of the Slav regionality. It's, in my opinion, really a big shame the way Towers, in AoE2, are almost useless and if they become stronger they become too OP just due to Feudal trush wars. Your idea of making it so the Tower/Gord only becomes decently strong if it's placed in a Town Centers LoS (or another Tower's/Castle's LoS) is, in my opinion, something the game is missing. I also thought of making Towers build twice as slow if placed outside your base. The game could totally implement these ideas and make Towers actually useful without making them OP. I don't think they'll ever be implemented at all, as I don't think most of the players love Towers that much and the dev aren't interested in them, unfortunately.
HEY, great to hear from you Mike!
Wow, thank you so, so much for the kind words in your comment here. It genuinely means a lot man, especially hearing that enjoyed seeing me with my family.
The fact that you liked the build and the video so much is just gravy after that compliment! But seriously Mike, I'm delighted you liked my design. I've also been trying to up the general quality of my videos recently, so hearing you say that you're enjoying the presentation style is incredibly heartening.
I honestly couldn't agree with you more about towers. I used to absolutely LOVE them when I was younger, but as I became more familiar with the game it became painfully obvious that they are really underwhelming in anything besides a cheesy rush situation.
So I'm very pleased you liked the Gord! But I genuinely think that your idea of them building slower when far away from your base is brilliant, that's a very soft touch way to focus them more on their intended purpose. Maybe they could even be buffed if such a change was implemented!
Regardless, trying to find a way to fix defensive buildings is now something I am determined to tackle at some point in the future on this channel. Thanks for getting my juices flowing Mike! And once again, I really cannot tell you how much I appreciate your words of support. It's wonderful having you be a part of the channel.
First! Couldn't resist, lol. Will let you know once I've finished watching it. 😊
Man i have no idea how strong this civ would be. At higher levels that train time thing is a death sentence. But the double train eco units is so strong. Also the limited tech tree is savage as well. Success with this civ will depend heavily on the map and how creative the players is.
Couldn't agree more with you! I did a major recraft video somewhat recently in which I made some pretty substantial balance changes to this particular build, most notably toning down the intensity of the Eco / military thing. If you were even made a mock-up of how the bonus might work out in the scenario editor! Really fun to play around with, and I'm pleased to say that the new draft actually plays pretty smoothly in practice.
This is quite controversial and out of the box, but adds flavour.
Great vid
Heheheh thanks for saying so Diego! Controversy and out of the box thinking are my specialties (balance not so much lol)
@@robbylava this is like chinese on steroids
Oohhh yeah, with some Burgundians and Persians mixed in!
22:00
I really like this one, very flexible.
I mentioned in another video about creating complexity with simple mechanics, I think this fits quite well in that.
The train time bonus wouldn’t matter so much if you just dropped twice as many production buildings, which you can afford with the large eco
Very good point Matt! Doing so would lock up a lot more of your resources in keeping the production key flowing, but I agree it wouldn't end up being as much of a penalty as I had initially intended.
The current fix I'm planning, based on viewer feedback, is a dramatically lower 33% boost to economy train time and a smaller but still substantial 66% penalty to military train time. What do you think of that proposal?
Interesting! I think that’s a good idea. I think some gameplay testing would really help this. Do you have anyone who can help you with that? I know 0 about modding but it might be fun to mock up some of this stuff for testing :)
Excellent, glad you think so Matt!
And holy shit dude, if you were able to actually mock some of this up and do tests I would be absolutely THRILLED! If you send me a video I can even feature it on the channel, but absolutely no worries if it doesn't work out!
The more I do this channel, the more I feel like actually getting a modder to work on this is going to be a good idea. My current plan is to wait till I monetize and use whatever income I get to just pay people to do it, supposed to make sure people get their due and also because I'd honestly feel kind of weird profiting off of this channel heheh. Sound reasonable to you, or do you have other thoughts on how I could approach this?
So happy for you that you got that GL shoutout!
Regarding the build: one of your most unique ones yet, hard to predict how it would play out balance wise. It does feel difficult for newer players especially and very good in team games.
How do you manage to make videos so quickly? It feels like you put a lot of research in the history section and a lot of thought into the civs!
Thanks a lot for saying so Luffy! Yeah, there's definitely a chance I took this one too far. I think it'll play kind of like Chinese on steroids with how unusual the start is!
As for how I'm keeping up the schedule, I think it's just that I've managed to work the process out to a very streamlined sequence of tasks that I can often incidentally do during day today activities. Like when I'm hanging out with my son in the morning sometimes I'll be thinking of civilization bonuses, or when I'm lazily watching a RUclips video sometimes I'll be working on graphic design.
Either way, I'm really glad you think it's yielding high quality content! Considering how jank my setup is and how niche my topic it's very gratifying to hear.
Always good seeing you in the comments section my friend! Hope you continue to enjoy the stuff I have coming out over the coming weeks!
Quality content bro! This Civ is definitely designed for more experienced players who want a challenge. I personally dig the unique playing style of the Novgorodians and it’s focus on eco will absolutely make it stand out. If it ever gets implemented in the official game I do have a feeling it might need to be buffed at some point for casual players. Haha. Beautiful family btw, as a mixed dude myself (white mom, Asian dad), this brought a smile to my face. 😊
Hey! Thank you so much for saying so smaoproducts! Really glad you enjoyed the build my friend! And yeah, I have genuinely no idea how the balance would end up going on this one. Really could be either completely broken or absolutely garbage!
And while I'm delighted you like the build, I'm even happier to hear your kind words about my family. Thank you for that brother, it genuinely means a lot.
@@robbylava Pleasure's all mine man. :) I appreciate you directly engaging and talking with me and your community for ideas and feedback. That within itself is invaluable. Keep up the stellar work brother!
Puts a big old smile on my face to hear you say that smaoproducts. Comments like this make it very easy to keep doing what I do!
Beautiful... Your civbuilding is very interesting process with good ideas. Спасибо for new videos!
Не за что my friend! Thank you so much for the kind words -- I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed it!
My mom loved the baby in your intro.
No surprise there, she's a very loving woman
20:35
A problem I can see with that is that you can build multiple military buildings in all ages, but in the beginning of the game you can only have one TC.
Absolutely. This is one of my most controversial designs and was one I ended up recrafting quite a few times. The final bonus I came to gives a much heavier penalty to military than it does a bonus to economy, and even then it was still quite strong! Pretty much for exactly the reasons you described.
I only just realized why I'm late to commenting to every one of your videos - you publish them just as I get off work, so I watch them on the way home, and RUclips on mobile doesn't allow you to pause or unpause the video while typing a comment.
I swear I'll catch up at some point.
Heheheh no worries my friend! You take all the time you need, your comments are always worth the wait.
Lol training vils into troops would be like Cossacks or American Conquest.
Wow now I really want a medieval Cossacks game
That would be absolutely sick. They fall a little outside of AOE2 , so I think that era and region are ripe for a committed game setting
Hey Robby great video as always!
On the main eco bonus (100% eco production)
Having double the eco production is going to make the early game very difficult to execute but will turn into such an incredible advantage that it won't ever matter. As the Novgorodian player you could easily have 50% (probably closer to 70/80%) more economy when clicking up to feudal. You could stay a bit longer to have a vil lead and still arrive to feudal faster. Upon reaching feudal you could make 2-3X as many production buildings as your opponent to offset your production de-buff as you will be able to acquire plenty of wood on the way up. You could then use these buildings to outproduce your opponent's military and go archers all in feudal with more units than your opponent. Walling would also be very hard to punish as you would have so many resources as well as vils to build the walls.
Alternatively you could do some crazy tower rush play with your extra eco while your untouched eco continues to produce faster than your opponent. All-in dark age/early feudal with militia>man at arms could also be very strong
Extremely good points Tristan. So it sounds to me like you think right now the bonus is too strong. Do you have any suggestions on what I could tweak the numbers to to make it more reasonable?
I'm really glad you liked the video! Great to hear from you.
@RobbyLAVA it's difficult to say without testing, but I think even reducing it to 30% (probably closer to 20%) rather than 100 would be very good as it's still triple (double) the Persian feudal age bonus in dark age. Along with the unique villager upgrade, this would still easily give them the best economy in the game.
I agree that the eco production bonus will likely overwhelm the military production penalty. I suspect that the bonus would result in much faster age-ups, weakened by the fact that they'd eat through their starting resources much faster. However, it is hard to know how effective it would be without playtesting.
Yep, that definitely makes sense. But if you were to reduce it so dramatically, would you also change the military side of the equation?
I know that faster economy is definitely a bigger upside then slower military is a downside, but I feel like the military penalty should be reduced if the Eco side is nerfed, even if not exactly in parallel.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
@@robbylava possibly, maybe like 50-75% for military along with the eco at 20-30? While it's nice to have the numbers match up I feel as though the nerf won't have the intended effect unless it's forcing you to make more production buildings. Reviewing the Posadnik's increase of 10 + % drop off bonus on a woodline advancing to feudal I feel 50% might even be too low. I like this drawback being substantial as it can/will force the Novgorodian player to invest more into Feudal aggression.
Side note, it might be cool (and more user-friendly) to start the player off with the Posadinik replacing a villager outright at the start of the game. Kind of like how the Egyptians in AOM start with a pharaoh. This could somewhat patch the janky start by making your herdables/hunt last longer to fuel the TC as well as slow them down a hair as they will be temporarily 1 vil down and have to catch up. Likely they will have to get early loom similar to Chinese. With this set up an eco production rate closer to 30% might make a bit more sense.
The Swahilis might be hard to do because they didn't wage war, but the Zulus sure did
It'll certainly be a challenge, but the way I see it is that after the Polynesians I really don't have an excuse to not at least try!
Good build sir, I'd like to fight against them as an an enemy.
I would just add 1 tech to them + the Rus:
Gain a civ bonus or dock tech: Ice breakers - on winter maps ships movement speed +10%.
Thanks for saying so Ivan, glad you liked the build!
That's certainly a creative technology, I've definitely thought about ones like it before. My problem is always that it relies so heavily on map generation, which seems like a frustrating thing to lose out on a bonus because of. But I do think there could be a way to make a technology kind of like this work!
I had no idea that ice breaking prows were used in the Middle ages! Where did you come across that?
Oh boy!
I love the concepts in this build, especially the Tysyatsky UU (what a bright idea there, I struggled sooo much to find ideas about any Novgorodian proper military unit!) and the Sovet Gospod UT: this idea is just spot on with the civ! And I love the Posadnik idea too: this figure was a must, and the way you implemented it (similiar to German prelates in AOE4 I believe, unless it was the Chinese? Not sure) in the best way possible.
One question I have: does the Sovet Gospod tech would reset prices for all players too, then? Since AOE2 market prices are dynamically evolving the same way for all players. If so, the tech would just give advantages to your opponents as much as yourself. Not sure if I'm missing something there!
Now in terms of playstyle, I can see how fantastic it could be early to mid game (up to late Castle age even I'd say), but I struggle to see how one would end a game that goes to imperial with the current build of the civ. Not sure if the siege units should be affected by the slow train civ trait, same for warships, it sounds really harsh. Like I see it right now, I think the civ would be OP Feudal and Castle Age, and fall to wet noodle level in Imperial, when the civ might just struggle to find anything on which to spend resources!
Another concern regarding the fast train eco bonus: I struggle to see if players could actually keep up with production costs in early game, having units produced so fast but villagers still collecting resources at the same normal rate, you'd just end up idling your TC to a point that the bonus could be almost nullified in Dark Age? It's hard to figure it out. I think this bonus would really start to leverage from late Feudal.
Small istorical observations:
A note on "Sovet" word itself: I'm not sure how the "e" is pronounced in Old Novgorodian, but in Russian, the "e" in the word "Sovet" would be pronounced "ie", basically sounding "soviet" as if it was written with a "i" in the first place. Not sure about the dialect thing though, I might just be wrong there!
About Novgorod's history and relationship with the Mongols: Novgorod ready to stand and saved in extremis by the "rasputitsa" is most likely a myth. Subutai would absolutely not be stopped by the weather if he really wanted to go deal with the city. Most likely, Yaroslav preventively submitted to the Mongols (we know that Novgorod started to pay tributes to the Horde since then and up until Muscovites ended the Mongol domination later on). Alexander had excellent relations with the Mongols, through his friendship with Sartaq and beyond: he is believed to have been actually formally "adopted" by Batu Khan himself, bearing his name at the mongol court, "Alexander Batu". Nevski largely used Mongol warriors and commanders to seat his own power and deal with rebellions as well. Mongols had a deep influence on Russian culture from there on, in both culture and warfare.
About the Wonder, I would personally have gone for the Saint Sophia cathedral in Novgorod's kremlin, since it's the oldest major stone structure built in whole northern Russia. The building itself is (I think) bigger and more impressive than the Saint George cathedral, who comes second in that regard. But both choices are good regardless.
YES, exactly the man I was hoping to hear for! Thank you so much for watching Manu, I am so glad to hear you think I did this civilization justice! I was thinking of you a lot as I was creating it, kicking myself for forgetting to shout out your campaign. I'll be sure to remedy that in the recraft video.
Appreciate the pronunciation clarification! My intent with Sovet Gospod was that it would only affect YOUR market prices, but other commenters have mentioned how broken they think this would be, so I'm actually more inclined now to have it apply universally! Maybe with you benefiting most, though of course you also get to choose when it's researched. What do you think of that idea?
You're definitely right that my production time bonus is a bit too dramatic right now, a lot of other commenters have proposed some ways to fix it. The one I'm currently going off of is a dramatically reduced 33% boost on the economy side and a 66% penalty on the military side. As one commenter pointed out, creating extra production buildings is a pretty good way to get around the slower train time on the military side since you'll have so many extra resources to play with. How do you like that idea?
Lastly, I really appreciate you taking the time to share all that information about the Mongols interactions with Novgorod. The sources that I consulted seemed to indicate that they had a fairly amicable relationship, but this is a fantastic level of detail! Like, I never would have guessed that Nevsky had such fantastic relations with them, I just remember reading that he did a really good job of negotiating with them to secure Novgorods sovereignty during their rule. In any case, a fantastic clarification! If anyone's qualified to talk about this, it's you!
Thanks again for taking the time to leave this great review Manu. You will forever be the patron of this civilization in my heart!
The team bonus is very good and a good idea for a civ. I very much want it in the game
Really appreciate you saying so Jiko! Thanks so much for watching my friend
To reflect the early fur trade, I will put a hunting bonus where 40% of the hunting resource will generate equal amount of gold. I would also think about adding resource generation ability from all villagers or generate 10 gold for each villager created since castle age. I would be hyped if the Pyatiny tech effect is changed to increasing 10% building hit point and 200% town center hit point (a total of 110% other building hit point and 300% town center hit points).
My like the idea of a bonus reflecting the fur trade! But I would personally give it to a different civilization, as while Novgorod was a major hub of the fur trade they didn't do nearly as much of the actual hunting themselves from what I've read.
Your idea for pyatiny it's very respectable! I didn't want to give the civilization too much of a defensive focus, but if they did end up being implemented this would be a perfectly fine way to take them.
@@robbylava The Kievan Rus region was dependent on fur export. I would like to see more about your sources referring to their hunting habits. If they don't hunt, that looks very strange to me.
Also I feel very odd about their infantry being worse than nomads. Infantry was the major composition for Slavic civilization during the Byzantine time. If you do not give them a fully upgraded power unit in imperial age, they do not have viable option to play aoe2, especially with the slow production rate. No matter how their economy looks like, their everything will just melt.
At least during their early settlement, hunting was definitely a major way to gather food resources. This was reflected in aoe4
So you're right that the Kievan Rus had a big focus on hunting, but this bill doesn't actually include them! It's entirely focused on Novgorod, particularly the republican era, and as such has a much more urban focus. There's no doubt that they hunted plenty and were heavily involved in the fur trade, but they mostly purchased furs from the finno-ugric neighbors that they occasionally ruled. All my sources are linked in the civilization document if you want to take a look!
Contrary to popular belief, many nomadic civilizations actually had extremely strong infantry cores. And from what I could tell in my research most Novgorodian armies focused around a core of heavy cavalry during the era I'm trying to highlight in the build, represented by them having quite good Boyars. And even without those, not having a fully upgraded late game power unit doesn't always make or break a civilization! It just means they either need to capitalize on earlier timings or out produce their opponent in late game, which I think this civilization is pretty capable of doing. But of course that's just my guess: if testing were to prove otherwise then we can certainly make changes.
@@robbylava Then you will definitely not want them miss plate barding armor. In aoe2 if you miss that, it severely undermine the ability to be the frontline unless you get a OP tech like Poles.
I think if it's about duchies of Rus it should be interesting to see Principality of Galizia and Volhynia united by Dalylo of Galych (this duchy was unique because had strong positions of local nobles and was more influenced by then Catholic states, first of all Hungary and Polish duchies, also Danylo was proclaimed as the king of Rus with obtaining a crown by Pope's legate in 1253/1254, also later this duchy established then Catholic features, such as unions of craftsmen, self-government of cities, German and Polish settlers in such cities and even a Catholic ruler - Yuriy II Boleslav).
It's a really interesting suggestion! I was personally only planning for two more Russian civilizations, those being the muscovites and the ruthenians. Would your suggestion here fit into either of those two, or would you propose other Russian civilizations that cover different ground?
Thanks for taking the time to comment! I really hope you enjoyed the video.
@@robbylava it's a complicated question about the number of civilizations represent different duchies Rus, the mentioned duchy fits more to Ruthenians (ancestors of modern Ukrainians and Belarusians) but I think that it should be more than two called civilizations (Ruthenians and Muscovites) because there were many local duchies with own features, I mean Galician and Volhynian duchies (were local in the 12th century but were united approximately in 1200), Kyiv and Chernihiv duchies together with Peresyaslav one (were close to Cumans and some other Turkic tribes including groups of the last ones as military settlers known as Black Klobuks, Torks, Berendeys), Belarusian duchies with the Polotsk one (was close to Baltic tribes and remained paganic even in the 11th century including paganic dukes, the famous among them was Vseslav), Novgorod and Pskov duchies/republics (as I know there is a video about Novgorod on this channel), Moscow and the majority of neighbouring duchies (the strong power of dukes and seeking the better positions under the Golden Horde's Yoke), plus the Tver duchy (was close to the Moscow duchy but in rivaling against Moscow dukes of Tver sought allies among Catholic states, first of all the Great Duchy of Lithuania).
Definitely complicated! I only barely scratched the surface in this video.
So if you got to choose, what Eastern Slavic civilizations would you personally add to the game? What would be your list, and what would each of them represent? I have a bunch of great options on my own personal list, but I'd love to hear your thoughts since you seem much more knowledgeable on the topic than me!
Summoning is complete!
"My life for Ner'zhul!" *cough cough*
1)Great vid! thanks for keeping up the good work! 2) Robby you're a madman. This civ as written sounds awesome, but all the "flavor" you've added makes it more like an AOE 4 civ.... How do you start with your Civ crafts? How do you weigh historical accuracy, AOE 2 relevance or fun game mechanics? I heard that when Relic designs a sequel they aim for 3 pillars. Something familiar, something updated and something new. You might be able to add your own spin on that with your civ likeliometer grades.
I'm assuming Eco strength is measured by time & effort in = resources out. So to support their eco Novg could train villagers either much faster or from many more buildings. What if this civ HAD to use their more numerous villagers to train troops. But the troops trained in regular or less time. So in effect having to train vills then using them to train troops does take longer to mass military. It also leads to great decision making "trade-offs" problems for the player on whether they should prioritize vills going to eco or military. This keeps one of your concept of right clickable unit upgrades, strengthens ECO & reinforces the civ-soldier concept. Speaking of which, do your Boyars revert back to foot troops like konniks if their mounts are killed?
The banner carrying Tysyatsky UU as a walking training grounds is way over powered, could be immensely frustrating to play against , but is a very cool concept. I think it needs a few balance changes before its ready to go. Maybe it can re-train existing units into something else. So that the Novgorod player can quickly counter much stronger opposing units. Or give an AOE bonus to armor or attack so that the NovG units can be better.
Thanks a lot Harpo! Genuinely means a lot to hear you say all that then, I really appreciate your kind words. I've heard people say before that my designs feel like they'd be better fit in AOE 3 or 4, but while I admire those games a lot for the risks they take I definitely prefer AOE2 as a platform for these builds by far! I should make a video about why in future...
Whew, you asking about my design process is a BIG question, I'm not even sure where to start in answering! I guess the first thing I do is always gather as many sources as possible, then take the time to sift through them to get an overall picture of the broader history and what is commonly known and agreed upon. Then I come through in a bit more detail to see if I can pick out any gems, especially stuff like specific names for soldiers or ideas for UT's.
After that, I lay out all of my potential ideas as a bulleted list and sift through trying to find the best combination of them, giving highest priority to the stuff that seems most congruent with the history. After that, just do a bunch of graphic design, put together the document in the presentation, and bam! Bit oversimplified, but that's the process in broad strokes. I hope it was interesting! Any other questions you have on that front?
Your proposal for villagers needing to be trained into military units was actually one of the first ideas I had for the civilization! I mentioned it briefly in my table ideas section, only reason I didn't go with it is I thought it would be much too high micro, not to mention being even more of a dramatic departure from the norm than I normally go for!
One final question for you my friend, you are the first person commenting who's mentioned the Tysyatsky being overpowered! Would you mind elaborating on why a little bit? My thought was that, though they do give your army a lot of mobility and versatility, their low speed and damage would make them pretty easy to pick off from cavalry, archers, or Siege if you're not careful or have your front pushed back. Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic!
Thanks again for taking the time to watch and comment Harpo. It's really fun getting to speak with you and hear your thoughts! Answering questions like the one you asked is a lot harder than I could have imagined heheh, very good practice for me!
@@robbylava Thanks for your process insight! I'm a hobbyist theory-crafter myself, so its interesting to see how others pull together their end product.
The Tysyatsky IMO is situationaly over powered, I love the idea but the downgraded training time thing not transferring to the UU, coupled with fast vill production, fast RSS generation, and self completing buildings. The Tsyyatsky gives the Novgorods too much flexibility, and ability to defend their sprawl across the map cheaply. Playing against the Novgorods with Tysyatsky would be the most frustrating game of wack-a-mole. The fact that NovG miss so many unit upgrades works in their favor, they can army comp switch without much regret, and use their rss saved from having to build duplicate production buildings to drop more self building walls, Monasteries, TC's, gords and castles in whatever space you take from the opponent.
The Tysyatsky produces while it moves, that will allow a Novgorodian player to keep moving the front lines. Since the economy is the civ focus, and they lack most heavy hitting units, they're not trying to land knock out big blows and "trade favorably" in battles, like all other civs. They're really just trying to out produce the opposing players, control the map and wear down enemy players until they give up or run out of rss. Human wave tactics all the way. As a NovG player I'd fast castle; behind dense convoluted self building houses & defenses, and spam Tysyatsky, and then get everywhere on the map while booming & building forward bases of TC's, Castles & gords to control rss locations and choke points. The speed bonus the UU offers for troop training makes building troops out of them much more efficient than out of standard military buildings. If the Novgorods survive to castle age and can start building the UU then they avoid their biggest handicap and they'd be pretty well entrenched, and hard to unseat.
A few tactics that came to mind: You could hide a few Tysyatsky in an opponents wood line and spam crossbows and spears to push them out of expansion RSS nodes. You could have a crossbow push on one side of their base and long swords on the other, what does an opponent build you counter that? Knights? Then you can switch to spear right there.
You could put one UU with a vill in each corner of the map and have them build infrastructure, the buildings build themselves. You only need one vill to start a base, plus the UU can start churning out an attack wave, or you can mass up some Monks.
If you could mass 10 you could constantly rebuild boyar line troops supported with constantly regenerating arbs & pikes. The enemy probably wont be able to mass enough units of the right comp to stop that. By the time the opposing player finally kills your Tysyatsky & boyar army you could have produced another 10 and taken a different path into the enemy base, using Light cav/ Knights requiring the enemy to army composition switch again.
Can the Novgorods be killed in Feudal? Definitely, but if they're not completely wiped its pretty much a GG. Since they can set and forget buildings and rebuild most of their military from a single unit.
your kids seem to be about the same age as mine. really cute! lovely job on this btw.
Thank you brother! Hope yours are doing well!
@@robbylava 11 feel like hulk hogan. BROTHER!
The team bonus is particularly suited for forest nothing :D ! I've been "silently" watching your vids for a while, and I like the ideas that you bring to the table, this one included. My only concern every time is "OK, that's interesting, but how do you balance it properly in a competitive gameplay" :D Keep up the nice work ;)
HEY, thank you so much for saying so Sea Dragon! It's definitely true that balance isn't always my strong suit, but getting feedback from commenters like yourself really helps me iterate through the dynamo of crazy ideas that my brain tends to churn out!
Thank you so much for the kind words my friend. I very much hope you continue to enjoy the content, silently or not!
The unique unit give General,admiral,military leader vibes, like someone leading the army but not actually in the battlefield itself. But with that said, overall I think their military is very bad, I mean I know they are a defensive civ but a civ with a good scout rush in feudal especially could really set their economy back. I mean it kinda no point in producing vills faster if they're just going to die to scouts faster you know? But overall another civ concept which brings new game mechanics is always welcome. The April patch coming out kinda gives me hope that maybe the Devs have been watching your videos lol
That's exactly the vibe I was going for! A general who can help you recruit more soldiers to help shore up your crappy military.
And I definitely agree with you that this chic will have a really hard time dealing with rushes. My hope was that, even if this first incarnation of its design doesn't get the balance perfect, I can eventually bring it to the point where the Eco bonuses are very strong but you will have to play smart defend off enemy early attacks while you are weak, hopefully resulting in a net benefit if you are good at the civilization.
But only time will tell!
Thank you so much for your kind words my friend. I had a great time reading through the patch notes, definitely seems like the game is going in a direction that is closer to my eventual vision for it! Which of course makes me very pleased heheheh
@@robbylava I can already see them in the same light as the Chinese. Horrible at low elo, great in high level play, with their somewhat difficult start. They'll probably do well on closed maps I still think they can be over run by more powerful armies with a someone decent late game economy. I'd say they're strongest point might be early castle where you'd normally plop 3 TCs to boom but I think they'd want close the game out by early imp.
Great analysis Daniel! I'm already getting a ton of great comments on how to tone it down and make them a bit more accessible while still making them feel exciting and different. My hope is that, with a couple of these changes, they'll be exactly in the sweet spot you're describing!
I guess you could say the Novgorodians won't be Rushin' 😅😅
I cackled
42:36
I like that one.
T-90 would absolutely hate your civ 😂
This certainly is an interesting one. The idea of a civ focused heavily on economy is cool - but maybe their military is too weak.
So, a few thoughts:
The faster training eco sounds very strong, but I think it's also going to be hard to keep the TC producing at all times early on, so the main benefit is in having each villager out faster (so it can get to work faster).
The slower training military sounds like trouble, though. Especially since they don't really have a good military in the first place.
Maybe the bonus should be reduced to 50% faster/slower?
The Posadnik sounds nifty (believe it or not, I've had a similar idea for a unit - as you'll see whenever I get that idea I mentioned a little while ago finished).
Town Bell conversion. Ah, the possibilities here! I could actually see them utilising TCs forward to send bunches of "minutemen" against the opponent, due to the fact that their Villagers would be the fastest training military unit. This would be even better if Detinets were their UT.
The Tysyatsky could maybe get and upgrade with Pyatiny to further improve training time (if needed). An aura ability could also be a possibility, to help boost the military.
That's it for now. It's amazing how you can keep coming up with new and unique ideas for how civs work. Well done!
Thanks so much for saying so Bjarke! Based on a lot of the other feedback I'm getting, I would definitely agree with you that 50/50 is probably a better direction for the training time bonus, just to make it a bit less extreme!
Really glad you like some of the other weird elements of the build! Like the Posadnik and Town Bell mechanic, I was very proud of both of them! I particularly think that unit conversion effects like the Town Bell thing have HUGE potential for other civ designs going forward.
Would you mind elaborating on your idea for how the Tysyatsky could be empowered by Pyatiny? Other commenters have said they thought that UT is a bit weak, so giving it another effect to pump up the UU is definitely something I'm interested in!
(Also fun fact, an aura effect was one of my first design routes for the Tysyatsky -- we are very synchronized!)
Thanks as always for commenting my friend, really glad you like the build despite all its weirdnesses! And I'm very pleased the content release rate is to your liking, I made a resolution to try to upload weekly for as long as I possibly can, and so far I don't see any immediate end in sight!
What I meant was implementing increased production speed into Pyatiny, making the Tysyatsky train units even faster. This way it'd be possibly to gain an improvement to that without having to get the very expensive elite upgrade for the unit. Something like a 10% bonus maybe. This would stack with the elite upgrade, meaning that when fully upgraded, the Tysyatsky would actually have faster than standard training time.
Also, after having thought about it a bit more, I think it could be a good idea to have this Pyatiny improvement affect overall military production, not just the Tysyatsky.
That's a very interesting idea Bjarke. I'm actually talking with another commenter right now who actually thinks the exact opposite, that the Tysyatsky is too STRONG and shouldn't have its production rate reduced from the civilizations baseline at all! I definitely don't want to misquote them, but their general concern from what I understood was that the fact that the unit is so mobile would increase its value as a production center enormously, possibly getting to the point where it was almost impossible to kill. What do you think of this argument?
Either way, I definitely think that you're right that Pyatiny needs a bus. I'd be personally reluctant to make it improve production speed, cuz that's one of the main identities of the civilization, but I'm definitely interested in hearing other thoughts on how to improve it if you have them! Something to do with the Tysyatsky is still a very intriguing path to go.
Thanks as always Bjarke!
I don't play PvP so I don't have a feel for how things might work in competitive play (so the other commenter might have a better understanding of this).
That being said, whether the Tysyatsky is too weak or too strong depends on the ability to actually make units. With their amazing eco, having the resources isn't going to be a problem, but being able to actually pump out units is another matter. With the slow production speed it'll take time to get a large number of units out so it can be really effective, and it can't quickly make units to defend itself if spotted. Of course, this can be mitigated by having a lot of them grouped together (if their defenders are dead they're still sitting ducks, though). It's also worth noting that Tysyatskys can't do anything forward that a group of villagers building stuff can't do either, except be harder to kill - but then the whole idea of a surprise is ruined in the first place, so...
And it seems all of this can be rather easily countered by the opponent building outposts - which you'd know to do if you see that you're going up against Novgorodians. They can't sneak up on you if you can see them, haha!
So, there are several dials to turn in order to balance them (if needed):
- Make them more expensive (maybe 200f, 200g)
- Make their ability to produce slower (won't affect a mass of them too much, but it will make it even easier deal with them if they don't have defenders)
- Weaker stats (especially speed and LoS)
- Make it unable to move while recruiting (I don't recommend this, but it's an idea)
- Any combination of the above
- Something else I haven't thought of
Also, if you're going to change the overall production speed, the Tysyatsky should maybe just have the same as base, and only get improvements with the elite upgrade.
Now, I kind of get the feeling that they aren't really going to be used as harassment generators anyway. In Castle Age you'd either be steamrolling the opponent with that superior economy, or get surprised by a raid and be too busy dealing with that to worry about attacking (this is where the Town Bell comes in). And in Inperial Age you'd have either won or be locked in a stalemate against a stronger military (basically any other civ, really). They'd probably mostly be used as a forward production base, sparing you the bother of having to build a ton of buildings.
As for Pyatiny... my best idea is that it could enable production of Imp units from the Tysyatsky. Meaning that without the upgrade, you'll only be able to produce the Castle Age version of the units from the Tysyatsky. You'd still have to research the individual upgrades from the respective buildings, of course. This could both reduce the effectiveness of the Tysyatsky in early Imp as well as make Pyatiny much, much more important to get. Pyatiny shold probably be made the Imp UT for this.
Another weird idea I got was that buildings would automatically start building once within the LoS of a villager. As it is, it seems way too micro-intensive to be of much use. This way, you could for example lay down a wall foundation, walk a villager alongside it and have all of it auto-build without a ton of clicking and clicking and clicking (and clicking). I don't know if it'd be too strong, even with the LoS restriction (which is absolutely necessary! No dropping auto-building towers all over the enemy base, thank you).
Market in dark age is actually super interesting.
Thanks bud! Yeah, I felt like it had some really cool implications too. Not for a smooth brain like me who can barely crack 1600 ELO of course, but for higher level players this feels like it could be a really powerful bonus!
This feels like Burgundians on steroids lmao. Very interessting stuff.
Thanks a lot Edelweiss ! Really appreciate you taking the time to watch my friend, hope you enjoyed the build!
@@robbylava No problem, it was great fun.
I think you have gotten quite good at working out the themes of a civ and implementing them into a workable theory craft. The Novgorods having the best eco by far but a kinda reluctant and mostly weak military is very spot on for their history and you find great ways to implement them.
Not too much I can add this time, but some thougts
- the training eco units twice as fast feels like it could be anywhere from pretty unusable early game to completely broken later on. Your early game likely wont be able to keep up constant villager production which can limit the effect of the bonus, sometimes it's even harder to keep pace with the Persian bonus, and this is more than twice as fast than that. Obviously once your economy catches up it can snowball very fast. Maybe it could be towned down a bit to like 50%
- the Tysyatski sounds very interesting and I'd be interested to see how they would work exactly. Having like 20-30 dudes just walk in and start training whatever unit they like sounds really good on paper
- the Novgorods would pretty much be the ultimate sling civ in Team games. Just boom to oblivion and get 3 Team mates with good late game units. Imagine like 100 amazing archers + 100 FU War Elephants + something like Sarazen/Ethiopian Siege, gg.
Hey, really appreciate you saying so Edelweiss! I feel like I learn something more about how to design effectively with every build so I'm glad to hear you think I'm improving too.
Based on feedback from other commenters, my current plan is to turn the production bonus / penalty into 33/66, very tone down from where it is now but still quite useful hopefully!
And the sling problem is something that another player brought to my attention as well, that's something I never even considered as being a potential threat, but apparently it's still an incredibly powerful strategy! My current thought is to remove banking, which is definitely an unusual option to take and is of course not very historically accurate, but is the best way I can think to make the slang less powerful without doing something far less elegant. What do you think?
Thanks as always my friend!
If you're really pushing for a distinction between Muscovites and Novgorodians, you should also make note of the Ruthenians as the third postulate. With these three in place, the Novgorodians make the least appearances in existing campaigns, being a northern state far from the front with the Eurasian nomads.
The only campaign appearance I could be certain about is Algirdas and Kestutis 4, because Tver was originally settled by Novgorodian traders, and Vladimir could be portrayed as such if we add in territories of Rostov-Suzdal to the Novgorodian flag (a big if). Other current eastern Slavic factions are all Muscovites or Ruthenians.
Ivaylo is weird. I think the slavs there should just be Bulgarians. If push comes to shove, maybe Ruthenians, or a potential Serbian civ eventually, if we're really going for pre-Bulgar slav representation. But Novgorodians is far off the mark.
And Vlad Dracula is a Vlachs campaign. It really shouldn't be Slavic post-split.
Absolutely agree with you here Crossil, the Ruthenians would be the third of this triad without question! I've been doing a bunch of Slavic stuff recently, so it might be a while for me to get to them, but you can bet that they'll be making an appearance on the channel at some point!
And I totally agree with you on the campaign front, the Lithuanian campaign was the only one I was at all sold on myself.
Great video! Unless I've missed something, I think they should be prevented from sending ressources to anyone who is not in imperial age. Without a limitation they could do some exceptional sling in team games that probably is overpowered with goths ally something like that.
Thanks a lot for saying so Foxy! I'm really glad you liked it.
Yeah, another commenter mentioned the potential for an incredibly disgusting sling, but I would personally be a little nervous implementing a restriction like that since it feels so jarring! Can you think of any other ways we could get around this problem? Maybe even removing Banking, weird though that might be.
@@robbylava Thanks for your reply! I am a big fan of your channel. Keep up the great work! Another way to nerf the sling is to set a maximum amount you could sling per minute (increasing the allowed amount with the increasing game timer in five minute intervalls for example). That amount could be tested and balanced as needed, once it has been tried. Balancing is a process and I don't mind planning a couple of patches ahead to get it right eventually, as long as one improves with every patch : ) That said, I would really welcome many of your civs into the game and am hopeful to play some of them in the future.
Thanks so much for the kind words Foxy! Totally agree with you, as long as there is a consistent track towards improvement it's fine if it takes a while. Certainly been the case for games I've designed in the past!
Really glad you're enjoying the content my friend. Here's hoping you continue to do so!
41:29
I think this could be a more interesting version of your first civ bonus by getting these guys from time to time.
Considering that pros find the Persian bonus unmanageable at times in fuedal/castle age I can imagine this civ getting absolutely cooked in high level feudal play with the lack of food because of the vil bonus and slower military production :(
I had no idea the pros were turning away from the Persians for that reason, good note Hal! Zero doubt that I'm going to have to tone this thing down big time, current plan for the training time bonus is reduce the Eco side to 33% and the military side to 66%. Reckon that would be more manageable?
@@robbylava I do not like this idea. This is either a village rush or a douche. The build order will be totally messed up because your unit comes out too slowly.
Quite possible, but a viewer actually ended up making a custom scenario to put this idea (-33% eco, +66% military) into practice, and it ends up feeling shockingly smooth.
That's not to say it would work well at high level gameplay! But it is at least a proof of concept -- rushing proved difficult but not impossible, and I was forced to adapt my playstyle pretty substantially, but it didn't feel like as dramatic of a departure as I would have expected.
The first bonus feels like completely broken. You are basically running on 2TCs with no investment whatsoever, if you play on hybrid maps and add docks your fish boom is crazy. On both open closed maps this is insanely strong, but it is especially broken on closed maps and more so on water. your eco is on steroids, your uptime is crazy and it doesnt matter that units train slower. Just add an another production building you can afford anyways with your eco to offset the slower training time, hit early and hit hard with an all-in feudal, your opp will have no ability to respond. They havent even clicked up to feudal when you already at their base with archers.
Pyatiny is just a fairly niche daut castle preventer, I dont really see much other real uses of this tech, but well that depends on the auto build speed. If this was a base civ bonus, it'd be okay since you can theoretically micro a lot in feudal and dark age, like walls and houses to save vill time, but in castle age, you dont really make much use of it. Also is it a good design that it is researched in the building which benefits the most from the tech? I mean we have horadings, but the entire point of this tech is to get your castle up no matter what, and though luck if it is your first castle. You need a castle to research this tech to get your castle up from 98%, catch 22.
Gospod at a first glance seems op in 1v1 lategame trash wars. Research, make a bunch of siege with the gold, push back the enemy. Repeat. Win.
All good points Széplaki! Many other commenters have pointed out similar issues -- the current change I'm toying with is dramatically slashing the Eco production time bonus to 33% (still very good of course) and reducing the military one to 66%. Might even extend the military production penalty to also affect towers, since Tower rushing was mentioned as potentially being a problem. What do you think of that as an initial balance approach?
I definitely agree that Pyatiny is more niche, certainly to the point that I think decreasing its cost is a good idea. Another commenter mentioned possibly having it boost up the Tysyatsky UU to make it a bit more appealing, but I'd love to hear thoughts from you on how you would change it as well. It was actually considered as a base bonus for the civilization, but I figured all the Eco stuff was too much already!
Sovet Gospod would definitely be very powerful late game, my Hope was that the cost and relatively narrow window would prevent it from being too disgusting, but in retrospect I don't think that was good enough. Another commenter did mention potentially having the technology also apply to ALL other players, so an opponent could capitalize on it but you would have the advantage of knowing when it was coming! Do you think that would be enough to fix the technology?
The double unit production time hurts my brain. I can see players using this civ attempting a lot of early castle drops to compensate for that.
Heheheh you're probably right Ben! I definitely went full throttle with that element of their design. Do you think I took it too far? And if so, I'd love to hear what you would propose to tweak what I have here.
I could see Dark age villager rushes being a problem on smaller maps
I could see that being a concern, another commenter mentioned that Tower rushes could be spooky as well. Something I was considering is extending their military building penalty to towers, do you think that would help out with the annoying cheese potential at all?
22:47
It might be easier to make them a "levy equivalent" for gameplay purposes.
Instead of a Spearman, you get a Recruited Spearman.
They would get the same upgrades as the original units.
And I think of that more as a mechanic thing than anything else.
40:37
That's also interesting, but I agree that the one you picked is better.
Love the ideas, however, I would add the team bonus as a civ trait, and add free trade units when building markets
Not a bad idea! I'm just worried that the civilization is already too strong, enough so that I don't really want to give them any more bonuses if I can help it
A pure Economy build. Fantastic job. And while the autobuild mechanic has allready been mentioned, how about the Town Bell mechanic being straight up how you get Militia as the Humans in WC3. Also crap infantry that reverts to workers when the timer runs out or you end the effect. To have both in an AoE2 build? *chef's kiss*
Heheheh I was wondering how many WC3 nerds I'd have in the comments catching that! Very well spotted Johannes, I'm shameless when referencing my favorite games!
Really glad that you like how the build turned out my friend. I hope you feel like I pulled off a pure economy civilization well!
To somewhat quote Ornlu in his State of the Civs 2022 video on the Khmer: Naturally with a massive economy comes massive.... holes in your military. Yeah that didn't work out.
Heheheh quite a large hole in this one! And a dangerous hole at that. A murderous hole, you might even say.
Posadnik upgrading by standing there doing nothing is weird. it should either be instant or be created from the TC.
I can see what you mean, but maybe while he's standing still it represents him running for election! Hehehehe
For my historical rant, I really dont have much to nitpick about this one! I think you handled the history very nicely here, and I am really glad to see that you try to show people that there is more depth to eastern Europe beyond the all-encompassing SLAVS.
Perhaps my only criticism would be for the Kholop, especially if it was made a regional unit. Firsty, the implication of a serf being a bad villager is a bit uncomfortable, I have to say. There is some historical reasoning for that, as work done by serfs is pretty much always recorded to be as half-assed as possible, which is understandable, because who the hell wants to work for free. On the other hand, there is kindof an implication of the Kholops just being inferior, which given their troubled history comes of as a bit demeaning.
Id also like to mention that they wouldnt really make for a great regional unit either way (atleast not for all Slavic civilizations). I can comfortably say that for Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, forced labour was oftentimes not required, and the peasantry usually paid their share to the nobility in taxes, not in free labour . The lord could only demand forced labour as a part of a legal contract, they had no power to force anyone to work for no compensation, unless that was agreed when the peasants settled the lands. However, those sorts of agreements really werent too common, as the nobility generally prefered to hire people to actually do the job properly while being paid from peasants taxes.
Another point is that a lot of medieval European states had forced labour as a part of their legal code. It has existed in the Holy Roman Empire for sure, though the same arguement applies - generally, the lords preferred to be paid in taxes. Such legal arangments also existed in France and England, for example.
Now, if you wanted to implement it, I think it makes sense for SOME Slavic civs. Muscovites would be the most obvious example, which I feel like I dont need to elaborate on more. But the late-Polish Lithuanian commonwealth (post-medieval) also had some draconian serfdom laws. In that way, it could work for Poland, however there is one issue with this: the people affected by this were generally not Poles, but the conquered people to the east, so Ruthenians and Lithuanians were generally the people who were subject to brutal serfdom. In that way, you could sort of consider it a unique tech for the Ruthenians, but then it would be representing their civilization by a tech which brought them a lot of suffering by the hands of other people, which is again a bit morally questionable.
Either way, the way it worked in most of Europe (including eastern Europe) is that IF the lord could demand forced labour, he would generally do so in brief seasonal periods, or for very special construction projects, such as building of dikes or roads. Considering this, I think it would make sense to represent this by perhaps having a unique tech that spawns a large number of villagers, who despawn after a semi-short period of a time? It would probably be most useful for getting up infrastructure (especially castles if you are being attacked) which would make a lot of sense historically. It also avoids the issue of forced labourers being inferior to regular villagers.
Hey, thank you so much Tomás! Really, really glad you think I got the history right with this one, even if the balance is a little wack!
I can see what you mean about the Kholop. Maybe because my sources were subpar or maybe because I just misread them, but it didn't seem like Kholops were exact parallels to serfs (either in Slavic areas or in the rest of Europe). If you tell me I'm wrong then I totally believe you, just from what I was reading it seemed like they were kind of a distinct servile class of some kind! Especially since, from what I remember, they were often conscripted as light cavalry and cavalry archers, which feels very different from other serfdom situations you hear of elsewhere. So would you mind sharing a little more about what you know of Kholops? How wrong were my sources here?
That all said, if they were pretty much just serfs then I think you're right in it not making sense to have them as a distinct unit. Something I have been toying with for the semi-distant future is a unit build for a Laborer unit (effectively a low HP villager with a timed life). I think it would be a good way to represent how prominent slavery and serfdom were in the Middle ages while also injecting some much needed diversity into economic play, but I'm hesitant because I'm not sure how well received it would be to feature slavery so prominently. I'm the sort of person who thinks it's not only acceptable but important to showcase an honest picture of what the world was like, but I have no idea whether I am in the minority here.
What do you think of this idea overall Tomás? It's cool how similar you're proposed idea was to this one that's been floating around in my mind!
@@robbylava I checked out your source, and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with it! It just doesnt paint the whole picture for all Slavic people. For example, in Bohemia the word Chlap (Kholop) was simply used to refer to someone who had to make a living with his own hands. To call a nobleman a chlap was actually a severe insult and could be brought to a court. Overtime, this word shifted in meaning and is now used in hyper-masculine contexts, but it really originally reffered to a working man (or male child) in all Slavic languages, afaik. For some further context, I don't even think that this word had any legal definition in Bohemia.
Either way I got a bit carried away with the serf aspect - you'd be sort of right, that there were some cultural differences. In eastern Europe, people tended to be levied for war more commonly, and the kholop would definitely play a role in that (in Rus history, it is an actual legal term). In early Slavic history, taking slaves was common, and many wars were started as simple slave raids. These slaves in Rus would then over time become bound to lands and essentially merged in function with the peasantry. I think the idea of them being a civilian who can become a military unit is usable, but do know that this wasn't the norm everywhere in Slavic Europe.
As far as representation goes, I don't think there's necessarily wrong with representing more tragic parts of history, though I do think issues like this deserve a bit of extra attention. For me personally, the implication of a slave/serf being a pretty much inferior villager are a bit dark. Though I do think the idea of an east Slavic civ converting civilians into military does have some potentional, and the idea of limited-time workforce sounds great (though I wonder if this wouldn't be better used for Mesoamerica for example, with their large megaprojects).
Oh good! Really appreciate you double checking my sources there my friend, the fact that they seem decent and I didn't just remember them is a big win on my end heheh
My hope for a unit like the laborer would be to make them more of a trade-off as compared to a villager then being inferior. Like, ideally, the hope would be to have them be very cheap and able to be produced en masse especially if you're doing a lot of raiding but have the downside of being on a timed life. So unlike a villager, they wouldn't be able to give hypothetically infinite returns!
But this will definitely be a delicate tightrope to walk. Like, I very highly doubt that economies will be able to rely more on laborers than on villagers unless you're at a very high level of play and are an absolute master of timings!
And hopefully, giving the unit very similar gathering and construction rates to villagers will communicate the idea that these were still people at the end of the day, just ones forced into a really unfortunate and inhumane situation.
Anything you see that assessment missing Tomáš?
@@robbylava I see a great opportunity to introduce batch training with such a unit! Other than that not much, I think there is definitely a room for more civilian units.
Brilliant. While I don't see this being a build I will tackle soon, you can definitely expect to see it in the future! Thanks again for all this great back and forth my friend.
Hello Robby!
Very interesting and bold civ design this week 11. Unfortunately, the bloated comment I had written in my usual style got lost in a page reload (or maybe it was too long to accept by youtube?). I had a long and extremely excessive thought-experiment about the eco bonus, but I'll just summarize since I definitely do not want to try to rewrite the monstrosity I had written 1111111. Also, it seems like you are well aware that the eco is uber-strong, but I think the eco strength is much, much, much too strong.
Tech tree: As you intended, everything is weak/terrible, except archers / CA (these are just OK), siege, monks, and defenses.
Team bonus: market techs/ trade units are not used until mid/late imperial, so this bonus is not very helpful, with the exception of sling cheese in team games (and as you pointed out -- perhaps in dark age to sell/buy?). Boosting slinging is not particularly helpful though, as slinging is already OP (always has been), and the only reason we don't see it that often is because 1). it is banned in most pro tourneys 2). it is boring to play and generally frowned upon so lower rated players usually don't do it either despite its OPness. I recall try it out with a friend just for fun and absolutely slaughtering opponents in 2v2s. Sling is crazy...
UTs: both seem niche / useless in most circumstances. The castle UT is essentially only good for preventing a daut castle (the tech is too expensive / villager work time is too dispensable for it to be worth the cost in any other situation, in my opinion). The imp UT is only in extreme situations of very high wood/food banks and no gold/stone, especially as it has an up-front gold/stone cost.
UU: is quite different and interesting, and I like the mechanic, but Iit seems like it ends up being a bit of a band-aid for the civ's military production anti-bonus, but not a supremely interesting stand-alone unit. Its stats are unremarkable, so its ability as a mobile military building is the only reason why you'd build it. It is an interesting mechanic but seems a little bland given the civilization as a whole has no other special military characteristics (besides being weak militarily?).
Bonuses:
-- the super-villager is very strong. Not too strong on its own, but....
-- +100% eco unit production is just flat out OP. I had waxed long about this in my prior comment, but I haven't the heart to reproduce my thought experiment here 11! Let's just say this bonus is ridiculously powerful and definitely not balanced by the military anti-bonus. Once the eco is rolling (maybe with some walls/towers/gords, maybe on the safety of arena, etc.) having to build an extra 2-4 production buildings for 350-700 resources in castle age won't matter very much, but having +3-5k resources and +30-40 villagers will matter, quite a lot. Also, on arena this civs wins every game, no contest. Massive dark/feudal boom --> super-monk rush.
-- TC bell mechanic. Odd and different, IDK how it would play out. One question though -- can it be triggered more than once in quick succession? Then it could be abused to convert your whole eco to military, if desired, although even that might not be so strong as the timer & loss of villager work time means that repeated bell ringing might be bad for the civ if it did stack.
Conclusion: the eco is way, waaaaaaaaay too strong for this civ. But almost more concerning to me is that its military is just not interesting. It has no bonuses to military, no UTs, and its UU is a glorified production building (unique & different, but almost more of an economic unit than a military unit). Besides the fact that the civ will dominate with its OP economic power, I don't really feel very excited by civ like this? IDK, that's probably too harsh a review, as the "economic powerhouse with weak military" seems like a decent trope to build a civ on, and this civ has taken that to the max, and as you described it could have a very interesting military structure in late game. But really it feels like there should be *something* to make it militarily distinctive besides being generally bad. Maybe using some of he unique units in your loose threads could be interesting. Either way, you've definitely achieved your goal of pushing the boundaries of AOE2 haha!
Thanks for the great review my friend! I had a feeling you would have plenty of thoughts on this one, heheheh
Has always, I think your analysis is excellent and pretty much spot on. I didn't think that making a bunch of production buildings would be enough to completely cancel out the downside of the civ bonus, specifically because space would become an issue but also because it would still not help you protect against early raids very effectively and would force you to lock up a lot more of your resources to keep production flowing.
That being said, between this comment and quite a few others, I've been convinced that I took it much too far here! The current theory I'm running on is to have the Eco side of the bonus toned down to a 33% boost and the military penalty tone down to 66%, possibly affecting towers as well as units. What do you think about that?
I can see what you mean about the military being a little bit bland, though I did feel like the unique unit being a mobile production building would be very interesting and could help their strategic potential remain high despite their individual troop quality not being brilliant. As you know, I love designing civs with a strong economy and a weak military! And I do feel like there are a number of civilizations in the game right now, such as the Persians and Chinese, with a very strong economy and a relatively bland military behind it. After all, the Chinese only have rocketry and the Persians have their crappy knight damage bonus, besides that it's just the unique units that add variety, which is in the persian's case not a very good thing!
But anyway, that was the framework I was operating on. Can you think of any ways we could gently spice up the military while keeping the civilization focused heavily on the economy side of things?
Really appreciate you taking the time! So sorry your computer keeps deleting your beautiful comments, that's so frustrating! For me as well as you, I want to read all of them!
Toning down the eco/military production bonus is a good idea. This is certainly the most important first change, but I don't know what specific numbers would work, so I'll leave that with you. Additionally, I think that toning down the economic power of the civ (while still keeping it very strong) will allow you more room to reshuffle other bonuses / add relevant military flavor without making them too strong.
As far as making their military more interesting, I think that, as another commenter pointed out, moving the castle UT to be just a civ bonus would make that aspect of the civ more relevant / useful, and then you'll have a slot to put in some military flavor with a new castle age UT. Additionally, you mentioned some alternate UUs / ideas so maybe 1 of those could be added bring more military depth to the design.
Not a bad point at all Simbelmynë (no surprise considering who I'm talking to heheh)!
I think that moving the current effect of Pyatiny to a civilization bonus is quite a good one, though I would actually be kind of concerned it would be too strong if I did so! Even if we nerfed the civilizations economy in other ways. What are your thoughts on that?
Given the slow rate of building (1/3 of a vil) and the need to micro individual hits of the building with villagers, I'd rank this bonus as pretty solid, but not super huge. I mainly see this be useful when:
1. walling early in dark age (as long as it is early enough that they will be finished before your opponent shows up)
2. houses in the mid game (queue a bunch, ignore them)
3. The Daut Castle Premium® insurance plan
And one drawback (for micro nerds, at least):
1. your quick walls continue to build, reducing your wood refund if you didn't plan on finishing the building
My real concern is more that the civ is too strong as a whole, rather than that this individual bonus is too strong. So this likely boils down to how you balance the various bonuses off each other. Maybe a further reduction in the eco-unit production vs. military production bonus/anti-bonus would be necessary (but maybe it wouldn't, IDK) if you decided to move the auto-building to be a civ bonus. I suspect the 33% vs. 66% bonus/anti-bonus would still be extremely strong on its own, perhaps still super OP, regardless of the possible building-bonus, but really someone should test it.
If I may join in. I managed to get the villager training bonus working in the editor, and... it's really good. I got about a nine minute click-up-to-Feudal with 30 villagers and then 14 minute click-up-to-Castle with 40 vils. And that's including being housed several times and occasionally having to wait for food (and also no proper build order, haha).
The biggest problem here is that it's so chaotic to play with, but I imagine that once it's been refined and in the hands of a skilled player, it's going to be even better.
So reducing the speed bonus seems like a must. The 33%/66% is definitely something to try out. (I can send it over once I'm done adding the military stuff, Robby.)
Also, a small suggestion. You can write the messages in Notepad or similar and then copy/paste them into RUclips. This way you don't risk losing them before posting.
edit: I forgot I used Vikings to test with, so any Feudal Age play is botched (Dark Age is fine, though). I'll try again with another civ.
39:08
I personally like it better than the training speed one, but I don't think either of them will ever go in an official AoE2 civ.
In how many Russ principalities are you going to split the current slav civ? the others than come to mind is the pincipality of Kiiv
Great question Lorddervish! As of now I am inclined towards adding the Ruthenians (representing the earlier Rus principalities, especially Kiev) and the Muscovites (more focusing on the later states). But I could be convinced of others! And all that isn't even touching upon the many other Slavic factions that I think would be good to introduce.
Shoutout by GL? Daut and Viper collab when?
Yeah! Wouldn't that be somethin? Though I feel like most pro players would have an absolute conniption if they saw even half the shit that I come up with!
I think as part of the Slav breakout you could do the Rus (would be the main slavs, so maybe it's good to update the "Slavs" into the Rus)
100% agree with you Pablo. It's not a build I have planned for the near future, but you can definitely expect to see it at some point!
Nice! I think to clarify I mean the muscovite Rus, which could be called Muscovites
@@kunstderfugue The Kievan Rus are also on the table, I believe.
Oh yeah, I think both they and the Ruthenians (representing the Kievan Rus and other related states) are absolute must-haves!
Rus was umbrella term for East Slavic principalities and republics. Novgorod also was Rus, it was part of North-Western Rus. Dividing Slavs into Novgorodians and Kyivans is same as dividing ancient Greeks into Athenians, Spartans, Cypriots etc.
Hello Rob! A couple day too late for the release (I had a competition elsewhere so I could not leave a comment there) but always here for a new civilization.
I think that their identity is well built. Many bonus (creative even more) made to make this faction reach the top of the economy.
Now imagine the Burgundians with Novgorod as an ally. Fully upgraded market in the dark age.
I noticed one downside however. Tell me if I am wrong but I feel like you wanted Novgorod to be strong in castle age but not (or far less) in imperial. With that in mind, would it be great to give them thumb ring? They would have fully generic castle age units, allowing them to go whatever they want but falling from there in imperial.
Hey, great to hear from you Divicos! Really glad you think I did well on this one my friend, I was pretty pleased with their historical theming myself!
Thumb Ring is a really interesting suggestion -- I did want them to be a bit better in Castle age than early imperial on average, but I'd be a little worried about thumb ring causing their archers to be to dominance. While Novgorod did use plenty of archers they weren't at all infamous for it.
It's a really cool idea though, definitely something I wouldn't have picked out myself. And if it ever seemed like the civilization was too weak in Castle age, that would be a great way to buff them.
Hope your competition went well by the way! May I ask what it was for? Quite curious!
@@robbylava Ok I see for thumb ring. I understand the historical point of view (I always follow it too). So it would be weird but when you look at their whole military units, in castle age they are decent, only missing thumb ring. No bonus but decent. But in imperial they have the worst pikeman and two handed swordman in the game. They have awful horsemen (no hussar, nor paladin nor blacksmith upgrades), ok siege and Aztec arbalesters with HA barely useless because they don't have thumb ring (Khmers have all the techs beside thumb ring and they don't use HA). They are weak in imperial age, it's not a problem but at least in castle age they should be strong. You can switch thumb ring and arbalester to not give them a "great" option in imperial.
It's always fun to talk about design and ideas behind them.
It was a powerlifting meet and it went quite well I must say.
Pretty spot on analysis Divicos. My thought was that the weakness of their army in post imperial would be made up for by their monster economy and ability to quickly reinforce with Tysyatsky. I do think I like giving them arbs, and if in practice they ever seem really off I think thumb ring will be a strong and fitting option to provide them with.
And dude, that's really cool! I used to work as a personal trainer and had a number of friends at the gym who were powerlifters, but I never got into it myself. More of a Pilates guy hehehe. How long have you been doing it for?
@@robbylava I feel like they are Goths. Spam weak units but at its highest there. I can compare the cheap infantry with the great economy but at least Goths have blast furnace, haleberdiers, huskarls and decent stable. The Novgorodians have nothing like this. Their unique unit is quite interesting (a unique role in the game) but it can't fight in battles. No problem but you must rely on units weaker than the Gothic ones. I don't see them win in imperial. Some civilizations are weaker in imperial than in castle (in comparison) and that's fine, but at least they have one option.
That's cool. Did you watch them in a meet?
I started doing competitions in 2020. I made a video on the last one on my channel (it's in French but if you want to see, at least there are pretty landscapes)^^
DUDE I just clicked around your channel a bit and it's exceptional! You have some incredible power there my friend. 132 kilo bench is no laughing matter, that's like twice as good as my personal best when I was in gym shape! And the glute exercises you were demonstrating, those plunges in one of your slightly older videos, we're ridiculously impressive. I don't think I could have done them with weight even in my prime.
I studied French for 7 years, so while I don't know a lot of the technical terms I was able to at least somewhat follow along.
In summary, enjoyed the hell out of your content! Really hope you keep it up, and take a well-earned subscription.
A perfect feature would be if Alexander Nevsky had the same ability to train units like the Tysyatsky. He'd basically be like a shogun or daimyo in AoE3
YES, I adore this idea. Like, he is a special hero Tysyatsky that maybe trains faster while also being better at fighting. Maybe he could even be mounted!
Love it
Why thank you Carlos! Great to have you watching!
I'm not sure how to feel about the faster eco/slower military bonus. It seems really cool, I'm just not sure how it would play out. Probably a lot of tower building lol.
I like the Town Bell bonus, I just hope you can reset your villagers before their time limit is up. Otherwise, scout cavalry harassment could really slow you down economically.
Oohhh, that's a great point about the town bell! I think I will implement something whereby you can end the timer early by retasking the units on a town center, fantastic suggestion Guru.
A bunch of other commenters have been pointing out ways that the production time bonus is too much, and Tower rushing was one of the main concerns mentioned. Do you think that element of it could be toned down by having the production time penalty also apply to fortifications? Or even just towers maybe
@@robbylava Hm... It could, but 2x slower to make towers would be unusably slow. Plus, without as many units to back them up, a tower rush would be weak anyway. So it could just be a strong, reliable means of defense. So I think as it it's actually fine in that regard
Alrighty Guru , that sounds like a coherent reason to me! Thanks for giving me a sanity check here.
Does the slower military training speed even matter, if the villagers train twice as fast? I know its going to be a bit rough in the early game keeping your tc producing that fast, but potentionally, you can have twice as many villagers gathering twice as much wood, meaning twice as many production buildings (so essentialy no training speed disadvantage), while also having much more resource overflow. Combined with the perfectly regular archers and servicable crossbowman, I think that an archer rush could be pretty broken with this civ.
Yeah, this is something that a couple people also brought up, I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't spot this issue myself!
Current proposal based on feedback from other commenters is too sharply change the production bonus to only 33% for economy units with a 66% penalty for military, so toned down overall but distinctly less parity (since it definitely would be possible to just produce out of more military buildings instead).
What do you think of that proposal Tomás?
It's an interesting civ concept indeed, but it would be a nightmare implementing in the aoe 2 de engine. While op eco is good, the drawbacks is so much that civs buffed by the new patch updates can wreck them pretty badly.
OH yeah, no doubt Adithya! I would feel terrible for whatever poor bastard ended up trying to make some of these nonsense bonuses work if they ever got implemented in the game.
Hope you enjoyed the build despite it's weirdness!
31:07
Maybe the siege training time should not be penalised?
And considering how penalised they are by their training time, I'd say you could give them a few military techs back.
I feel that in a team game they would become a "sling civilisation", basically producing resources and giving to the allies.
The second UT gonna be great in team games. Probably gonna see Novgordian teammates sell resources to allys very spammable units. Imagine them with a Goth ally in the late game. First UT sounds interesting too. So does that mean that a villager has to at least start constructing a building or even if it's simply placed it will complete itself?
You're totally right Daniel, I could see them being an absolutely amazing sling civilization, especially since get the market technologies early and we'll have so many resources to play with! In fact, I think they would probably be the single best slinging civilization in the game.
Yep, you're exactly right! For the castle age UT, a villager has to hit the foundation at least once for the building to start constructing itself.
This civ would be so dope to play on forest nothing lol
Holy shit you're right, and that would be absolutely wild
Not sure I agree with the loss of conscription. Earlier in the video you'd said their armies were usually civilian conscripted militia. In terms of historical accuracy, I'm not sure that works
That's a really sapient point Firesparq, I actually went back and forth on this for quite a while during my initial design.
My eventual reason for removing conscription was because, while that was certainly how they formed their armies pretty much without exception, I had referenced that conscription process elsewhere in my build pretty thoroughly. To the point where it felt like I could at least SLIGHTLY justify removing the technology for the sake of preserving their poor military production identity.
Does that seem like a coherent train of thought to you?
@@robbylava Definitely. I do understand from a gameplay perspective why you didn't include it. It doesn't fit with their identity of a eco-fast, military-slow theme. I just found it amusing.
Still, love the amount of thought and effort you've put into this video. I really enjoyed learning a lot, and the end design you've come up with from a gameplay perspective. If I knew how to add graphics/custom unit menus to the game, I would 100% try and implement this as a mod
Definitely amusing! I'm absolutely delighted to hear that you enjoy the videos Firesparq -- that is honestly the absolute best I could hope for out of my channel!
The more I've worked on these videos The more I've come to realize that we really, REALLY need a mod of some kind to let people actually try them out! While I suck at modding, and coding more broadly, I think at some point I'm going to try to pay modders to work on a project like this. If you're feeling more confident at that point I'd love to have you involved!
Great build. I think the civ bonus could be tweaked to be more balanced with play testing so they would'nt be to overpowered or under powered. I heard Albanians. PLEASE DO A BUILD ON ALBANIANS.
Thanks very much for saying so Gaetano! Really glad you liked the build man, I totally agree that it needs some adjustments but fortunately I have a lot of very clever people in the comments section giving all sorts of excellent input.
Reading you loud and clear on the Albanians front! My cue is pretty full right now, but you can definitely expect to see them at some point in the future!
IMO great work, very well done concept. But my only problem dividing Slavs into Novgorodians, Kyivans and Muscovites or other East Slavic civ is problematic from historical perspective. They are all Rus, and Rus was umbrella term for East Slavic principalities and republics. Dividing them is same as taking ancient Greeks and dividing them into Athenians, Spartans, Cypriots etc. And even if so, lot of other civs should be divided then too. That is why I like AoE4 civ style, that they made civs based on empires, rather than ethnic groups.
Very kind of you to say! And I would agree that it's not an ideal grouping. Dynastic civilization design is definitely superior to ethnic, but I'm trying to work within the confines of the game!
If nothing else, this civilization could probably represent most of the northern Rus peoples, especially after they start to get more differentiated following the collapse of the Kievan Rus. Historically speaking I think this is a more compelling niche than something like an Athenian / Spartan divide, but I do wish it had a better demonym.
Regardless, thank you so much for taking the time to watch and comment!
@@robbylava In future, maybe, I will be making forums post about AoE4 Rus variant. Novgorod was as variant was my idea before but thanks to Your video, it encouraged me to make it and create analog features of your idea.
I'm honored! Would love to hear when your do so
43:32
I like your last 3 UT ideas better than the ones you picked.
Swahili next, as a Zambian I want to see that one
Absolutely Daniel, you can expect to see the Swahili sometime this month! So cool to hear that you're from Zambia man, it's always surreal learning how international my audience is. Great to hear from you!
@@robbylava I'm probably the only one who plays the definitive edition here, most only played age of kings and the conquerors, they always seem shocked that there's an age 2 game after that lol. Can't wait for the video!
Heheheh absolutely man!
Warcraft 3 humans/undead plus age of empires 3 daimyo but set in medieval Russia.
Uhhh yep! That's just about it! Looks absolutely ridiculous when someone actually spells it out like that heheheh
28:20
Exept the first one, that I think is hard to balance, I liked the bonuses for this civ.
On the other hand I don't like the UT.
The first one is a bit "magical" for me.
And the second one feels a bit abusable.
North American Missipians
I've had a bunch of people requests this one, and I'll be honest I'm kind of scared to take it on! Really not sure what I'll be able to do with it.
But seeing as I keep getting requested for it, I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and see what I can make happen! Thanks for the input Chang.
Do Mississippians!
I've had so many people ask for this one, and I'm still kind of nervous to do it! Some of my initial scouting research has revealed that it is VERY hard to find sources for these guys.
BUT, since so many of you are so excited for it, I think I'm going to have to try this one at some point! It might not be super soon, but you can definitely expect to see me take a crack at them sometime in the future.
Thanks a lot for the request Juangalt!
Make Circassians
You know Rodrigo, this is one of the most interesting requests I've ever gotten. I would NEVER have thought to make the Circassians as a civilization, but you're totally right, they could be an amazing fit!
This will 100% be going on my list. Thanks so much for the great rec.
The Caucasus has many possible and interesting civs - I referenced the Circassians in my Georgians build (they would share an architecture set) :D
Their folk music is also 🔥🔥🔥
Well in that case I absolutely HAVE to do them at some point!
Pls do Kurds ❤
Not a bad suggestion at all Murat! It's going on my to-do list, hope you enjoyed this build!
@@robbylava thanks man :D