Vietnamese received a lot of changes with Vikings Saga DLC. While they did get masonry, they lost the 20% HP bonus applying to Cav Archers and Fire Lancers. They also still miss blast furnace and also don't have Gambesons.

All other civs with fire lancers have some type of applicable civ bonus. I understand the unit can be hard to balance, but do you think the Fire Lancers deserve some type of bonus for Vietnamese?

The Varangian Guard occupies the Shock Infantry class for the Vikings, Danes, Varangians, Saxons, and Byzantines and all 5 of these civs have either a unique tech, civ bonus, or both that apply to the Varangian Guards.

If a civ has a special regional type unit such as Fire Lancers for East Asia, Varangian Guards for Northern Europe and Byzantines, Slingers, Champis, or Eagles for America civs, and so on. Should those civs that have these unique regional units always have a civ bonus or unique tech applicable to them?

I did not mention Three Kingdoms but Grenadiers have a bonus for Jurchens, Xianbei and Jian Swordsmen for Wei and Wu. And Chinese, Wei, Wu, and Shu all have some type of bonus or unique tech for Lou Chuans and Traction Trebuchets.

So is this Fire Lancer change for Vietnamese really more about the unit being hard to balance? And perhaps they are planning to add something back?

Man, Cataphracts really fell from grace. My beloved cataphracts, in AoK, they used to be the elite cavalry behind frankish paladins. Now, they melt to every cavalry unit in the game. I saw a post suggesting bumping up their attack to 14 while negating their bonus damage by 2 and uping their melee armor by one. At first, i agreed with the statement. It seemed like a great idea. Better against heavy cav while still weak to ranged. But then, I came across a video on YT that gave the catas blast furnace and bloodlines. Which is essentially the same as those adjustments for melee. https://youtu.be/kfk8Tzw8Tqs?is=rFwZICfPBzKrm980

And in the video, they MELTED every heavy cavalry in the game. Even frank paladins, even leitis, even centurion or smth. That is terrible. I would like them to trade better against them, yes, but not alternate the core concepts of the game. Maybe give them only +1 melee armor, so they still lose to heavy cavalry, but at least trade better. But honestly, if the unit is unchanged, then I am fine with it. They still melt infantry, and win against most cavalier. Maybe thats enough. Maybe they were a product of their time, and now their time is up. But GOD does it pain me to see them in this light. They feel like they were forgotten. All the cool cavalry units were added in the game, and catas got no cool toy to play with. Leitis doing crazy damage, coustiller having charge attack, monaspa with great stats and extra attack, tiger cav who are basically op. I feel like most of the old civs are forgotten, and many new ones get all the attention. Like, give some new units to the old civs, or at least buff their existing ones, so theyre interesting again. Tell me about teutons, or goths, or huns. They've been power crept by something new and flashy. Anyway, I would like the cataphract to have +1 melee armour. But I dont know if thats possible, or even better, playable.

They’re inferior as scouts, inferior in melee vs MaA, inferior to the militia line against shock infantry which are becoming very prevalent, and I only a couple of them are FU units in imperial age.

what if the whole unit line upgraded free in each age for every civ, just as a feature of the unit rather than a civ bonus? If you were to slow down production time by several seconds in dark age I don’t think you’d have a sufficient mass to be OP upon hitting feudal to be oppressive, and I don’t think it’s strong enough at any later stage to need any further nerf beyond Dark age.

It seems to me that most campaigns end badly for the main hero, involving death by assassination, illness or accident. I'm referring specifically to the hero, not the person narrating the hero's story.

In your opinion, which campaign offers a peaceful ending for the hero?

Muisca (me) x Varangians on arena.

Jarls being a very big problem mid game, had the idea to mass xbows and later arbalests.

Muisca arbs are great, more armor and speed.

Late game Jarls were dying fast.

Is there a way to create new structures? Like how there is a star wars mod, is it possible for anyone to create a new structure (like a historical building) that isn't in the game already? Or a unit that isn't there? Or is this something left to the mercy of the devs?

Incase the question is too vague, basically I'm asking if it is possible for anyone to create like.. a leaning tower of Pisa or statue of liberty and use it in a new scenario.

Let them research Masonry and Architecture.

Not only it makes logical sense from a Historical Standpoint.

Byzantium was the only place that still had the Roman Concrete Recipe. So they did had good Masonry and Brick Makers.

And Byzantine Architecture with their Icons and Orthodox Style is Famous, so famous that the Slavs adopted the Orthodox Style from them. Even the entire Religion.

So yeah this Buff is all Byz needs.

On Arena they would be monsters. As their Walls would be the Theodosian Walls. Since they should keep their Base Civ Bonus together with Masonry and Architecture.

And besides there is so much more siege equipment and anti building damage units, that the buff is not as crazy.

Sure if you are against a bad siege civ, yeah Byz is basically unsiegable. But that should be the players fault for not picking properly or the team for not drafting properly. This is a competitive game. That Byz is unsiegable if nobody picked a good siege civ is entirely on the other person or team. Its not the Byz player's fault that he picked Arena, where Byz with this buff would be Top 3 easily with that alone.

They would still be pretty meh in Arabia 1v1. You would probably see people do weird Housing Strats with Masonry an Architecture, but its so late game. That it would mostly be playing from behind hoping a comeback. So its not that great. Its good if your push failed though. As you could then research Masonry and Architecture to try and save your fail attack on the enemy.

Which is kinda doing your own Manzikert and then having to play defensive. Very Historically Accurate and very Byzantine feeling. Good army and tech, but no real bonuses other than spamming trash and a very good but expensive elite unit that can win against anything, but its way to expensive and losing them = GG.

And you can now throw a few Varangians with your trash to hopefully recuperate some Gold. Very Roleplaying as basically thats what the Varangians became later in the Byzantine Empire history, just glorified mercenaries allowed to pillage to get funds back since maintaining the professional army was way too expensive.

So yeah retreat and wall up. Like real Byz did.

there is so many tools now to deal with walls and they have been nerfed in HP compared to the past, that i see no problem.

This is all the buffs Byz needs, and it also makes sense historical.

The Theodosian Walls were the only thing that allowed them to last until 1453.

And also the Venetians not screwing them, but that's another story.

Aztecs supposedly aren't doing too great

The upgrade already applies to all other shock infantry

Let Aztecs have this one

I dont even play Aztecs

Zebiok!

Maya get no cavalry and they have no real unique bonuses to Infantry.

I remember Vikings used to be really bad. But now they are really good.

I feel just that change alone would make Maya very good again.

I mean they are still very good at Booming and their Archers are Elite, But i remember when you could actually do strats with the Eagle Warriors.

Not anymore.

So either give them more HP, or open Holcans to the entire Barracks Line.

This would make their Two handed swordsmen decent and their Halberdiers truly good.

And since they lack cavalry is not an unfair buff.

Besides this just open strats. The Plumed Archer or Arbalest Strat is still viable. This just opens a Halberdier and Eagle Warrior Strat and even make the Two Handed Swordsman a good unit to get to deal with trash that can affect your Archers.

I had a horrible losing streak and went all the way down to 900ish from 1050ish, (I hadn't played 1v1 much for a few weeks and for some reason everybody seems to have a perfect build order when I play now, so much resources and perfect uptimes whereas I struggle with 19 vil uptimes).

Well anyways three matches today people call me a smurf, so I've gotten to telling them to cry about it while sniping their villagers. What else should I do when I'm winning the match and they start Smurf cope.

Hay everyone, for all the good people playing this beautiful game in PS5, I am experiencing some bugs and would like to be sure is not just me. I play with keyboard and mouse:

1. Ungarrison does not work most of the time! Vills doesn't go back to work and is a heavy pain. Mostly happens to me when going back to farming, vills return to the farm but does not restart farming.

2. Mouse pointer dissappears from screen after finishing a game. Then I have to guess where the mouse is to exit to main menu or selecting stats I want to review.

3. Sometimes when I start the game, all of the system config are reseted as if the game was just installed. Then I need to reconfig all my settings. I've noticed this mostly happens when I turn off the PS5 after a game without exiting to the main menu.

Thanks everyone!

Bulgarians really need a buff, because they have a lot of drawbacks for very little gain. Their eco bonus (less stone for TCs) is absolute garbage tier; it does nothing before castle age and gets you to 2TC after a defensive tower at best.

Their auto-upgraded militia are nice, but nothing special, because it mainly just amounts to a generic early infantry bonus; Celts, Japanese, Dravidians, Slavs, Romans can do basically the exact same things because the minor timing advantage from the free upgrade is completely outweighted by not getting any early eco boost compared to those others.

Their Kreposts are a nice option but basically just a "fair" trade-off inbetween guard tower and castle.

They also have no crossbows which is a huge limitation (and no direct compensation for this like the insane ranged UU that Spanish get).

So they have almost zero eco bonus, very limited early tech and they also lack full upgrades on all their strongest units (no Paladin, no Champion, no full armor on CA). All the discounts are one-time only, too, so those don't really compensate for the bad eco at all.

My suggestion:

option a) Let stirrups apply to CA and potentially allow it to research from kreposts, to make those a better castle-alternative pre-imp.

option b) Give them champions if they pay for the upgrade (like ethiopians with the halb line). It's kinda disgraceful that they don't really have a single better-than-fully-upgraded power unit with all their drawbacks (except Hussar, but that's a trash unit).

Those buffs would not enhance the bulgarians strength in an unfair way, but it would give them some deserved compensation for all their limitations and shit eco in my view.

Happens at around 27 minute mark where I (yellow), place a castle and my opponent is able to see it.

Game link : https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/516512280/

Edit: yeah he was cheating, reported him. Haven't heard of this cheat before though where they can kill your buildings before even placed.

I've run into a couple of bugs with the collectible treasures:

-Sometimes it just doesn't "save", as in I collect the treasure, select a choice, and then complete the mission...and then the campaign page still just shows nothing was collected on that mission. I think this was "The Hard Ruler" mission #1.

-Treasures showing up on the wrong missions, sometimes even being swapped for the opposite choice. On "The Last Viking" #3, I picked the choice that gives Harald melee damage reflect, but now for some reason, that treasure is showing up on mission #1. And in another mission, I selected the military building speed treasure, but now it's showing the opposite choice, the civic building speed treasure, also on the wrong mission.

I'm still relatively new to the game, and I can't figure out how to find other players' Steam profiles, either during a match or after the game ends.

Is there a way to add someone as a friend directly through the game? And is there any option to send private messages to players, or do you have to find them on Steam first?

I'd love to meet some people to play with instead of always playing solo. Any tips would be appreciated!

I was just watching the How to get gold in the Early Economy Art of War and I realized that the guy doing the video was queuing up 14 villagers with only 8 food. How are they doing that?

How to get Gold in Early Economy Art of War

The Temple of Heaven grounds, the wonder is actually the hall of prayer for good harvests.

6 forced maps, of which 5 are essentially locked and 1 the devs choose. For team games, we have team island which was just in the pool two weeks ago and is basically the least interesting water map

Then we have the actual voting and its the same. maps. every single time. Right now its looking like fortified clearing and african clearing - these are constantly in the pool, african clearing has been basically every 2nd rotation for the entire year.

We might get mountain pass which is exciting but the community is going to vote for the same damn maps every time if they get the chance. Enclosed, Oasis, Hideout, Four lakes, if they're available they're guarantied to get in. And it's really disappointing because there's so many interesting maps that will never ever see play unless the devs force it

I understand you need to keep arena/arabia/nomad w/e in there but please consider a system that removes maps that have been in recently from being a choice

I recently started playing the game again, I noticed that the type of animal kept changing every game and some animals had more food than others. So created an image with the help of Claude. Hope its useful.

recently when playing team games, the following situation occurred several times:

one of us gets cheesed (towers, tc drop), is able to defend quite well in the 1v1, but then gets cleaned up by another opponent.

do you have a general strategic idea how to prevent / deal with that?

is aggression the answer to occupy their forces elsewhere, should we ignore a dying teammate altogether?

are you aware of any high level games where this happens to learn from?

cheers and thank you!