My thoughts on the patch so far.

[Navarone_Guy]

I've played 1 unrated and 3 rated games today so far, all with Germans/Ports. I'm really starting to like uhlans again. They now are some of the best raiders in the game. (kill vils in 6 hits for 150 resources each) However, some faults that I had anticipated before the patch came out have come up.

I think the xbow multiplier against heavy inf is still too weak. I, with my xbows, had to micro like crazy to just go even with a group of musketeers. Xbows are supposed to counter muskets, but even with my superior micro I still wasn't clearly winning at all. I think xbows need something like 16 attack, x1.5 to heavy inf, or possibly 13, x2 or something like that. They just don't fit enough into their role.

Cassadores are much better now, but I think they need a little more HP (maybe 5 or 10 more), so they can really be on par with skirmishers. Right now they have substantially less hp and a little less attack/ranged HP compared to a skirmisher. Their infantry cards (combat/hp/attack) being in age 4 still baffles me. A weak civ like Ports doesn't need that.

Also, schooners need to be nerfed. Maybe -40 cost or something like that. As it stands, the Port fish boom turtle is just too damn strong.

Those are the only 3 problems I can think of so far, so I like this patch!

Thoughts?

[Sporting_Lisbon]

I've played iro once unrated, china once unrated and india three times rated. I can't say much about iro yet, but I'm impressed with 7 aenna card effectiveness and tomas in mellee are devastating comparing with how crappy they used to be. China seems to be able to survive and in the right hands be able to keep up, altho the porcelane tower nerf slowed them up. India are exactly what I wanted it to be when I played India in the early days of tad - that vills makes everything go faster, sepoy+sowar combo is really, REALLY strong.

I played vs one dutch and he was struggling a lot vs my sepoy/sowar combo, they also got slower and I love it.


That's all so far. Heh but after thinking twice I'm not gonna touch ports soon, I feel they'll be the worst civ again with these tc nerfs, cav boost and 'mix as many units as possible' theme. I might be wrong tho, give me some lights Nav

edit: I'm seeing the wrong picture, as I dunno how the port FF is now. Anyway defending rushes will be harder.

[Blackadderthe4th]

Well I'm liking Russia and being able to musket rush. These guys seem to come out so damn fast now. I managed to get 15 musk, 13 strels and 5 cossacks in about 6.18 minutes. It also seems that a 17 vil age up is much faster than before and with muskets and strelets building faster you can age up later than other civs and still have many more units faster than them.

[Shizle]

[quote=""Blackadderthe4th""]Well I'm liking Russia and being able to musket rush. These guys seem to come out so damn fast now. I managed to get 15 musk, 13 strels and 5 cossacks in about 6.18 minutes. It also seems that a 17 vil age up is much faster than before and with muskets and strelets building faster you can age up later than other civs and still have many more units faster than them.[/quote]Hmmm...I was secretly wondering whether a Russian double rax musket spam was plausible. Was going to try it tonight with the AI. Maybe get a single BH up first, with another close behind. Overwhelm with muskets and shipped cossacks? Don't know...

[Comadevil]

I like that it is now possible to raid with cav near the TC and in general raiding with cav is now easier. Now u have to be more careful and maybe leaving 5 pikes in ur base to kill raiding cav. Like in old AOC days.
And cav is finally more powerful in age2 due to the various boosts it got

[luukje]

I played 1 otto unrated and building the church and getting the first shipment later didnt slow me down, I aged at 3.58. Didnt have a second shipment then, normally does.
So for shipment FF strats, you need that TP.

[KingKaramazov]

India and Russia both seem to get started more quickly.

I played a few games with the Iro Colonial and I must say it seems a lot better than before. I may try playing Iro some more.

[djdan]

I still feel Aennas are crap, dont get to out range musket units like Ashis, as by the time they get to fire, the ashi's were in range for them to fire, the animation for Aennas means it taks them ages to fire, its not even like the Lbow where the ROF seems to decrease, they are just coninuously slow, still useless imo.

[Soccerman771]

[quote=""KingKaramazov""]India and Russia both seem to get started more quickly.[/quote]

I agree with these. I got to play a couple of comp stomps with these two and really liked the quicker starts, though I don't like the sevast nerf thinking it should have been maybe a nerf to .65 or .7 since it should at least beat the normal fast-build card to make it advantageous to play sevastapol over the other card.

I'm gonna hit the qs pretty hard this weekend with these two civs and just see what happens..

[Tatltael]

[quote=""Sporting_Lisbon""]7 aenna card effectiveness and tomas in mellee are devastating comparing with how crappy they used to be.[/quote]

yes!! i played a 2v2 with indybrit last night and i got to show off with toma melee backed by 13 aennas nice R.O.F., the poor xbows didnt stand a chance

but i tried a iro vs. port on indochina yesterday, i somehow managed to get ~20 tomas 13 aenna and 4 kanya with some blinding speed time, i couldnt take down his 2 tc =/ i only lost maybe 5 toma and 2 aenna and i continued to put serious pressure (housing, villies, etc..) but unfortunately i couldnt keep up with his water boom =( (which i have no idea how to he managed to do, seeing as i was constantly had my army on wooded areas around his base) so i decided to go fort., i got my 20 bajillion FP / mantlets / tomas and tried it again, around ~14 mins. but unfortunately he had 3 tps now and it ended up with me losing later (40 mins.)

ports are still impossible to deal with on water maps.. but hehe i still <3 this patch. theres an incentive to use that stealth card for coyote runners now that they deal serious dmg. to LI (not to mention they do pretty well against light cav.) and the mace are better than ever.

still i had some issues playing 1v1 unrated sioux vs. france, the france guy spammed klamath at my mainly tashunke / wakina / AR force.. =[ even with marauders (~18 tashunkes.. right?) and superior micro my cav. / wakina lost to his pure LI army.. :[ sucks and doesnt really have anything to do with the patch but.. yeah haha just thought id mention it

[I__CHAOS__I]

[quote=""Soccerman771""]though I don't like the sevast nerf thinking it should have been maybe a nerf to .65 or .7 since it should at least beat the normal fast-build card to make it advantageous to play sevastapol over the other card..[/quote]

sevastopol is still better than Stonemasons.
they are different is what they affect

[Soccerman771]

I'll have to check that out. I didn't know stone masons didn't affect BH or walls or TC..

[KingKaramazov]

[quote=""djdan""]I still feel Aennas are crap, dont get to out range musket units like Ashis, as by the time they get to fire, the ashi's were in range for them to fire, the animation for Aennas means it taks them ages to fire, its not even like the Lbow where the ROF seems to decrease, they are just coninuously slow, still useless imo.[/quote]

You can still get quite a few of them pretty quickly early on, and although they aren't great units on their own, they do their job, and are good support for kanyas / tomas.

This patch is all about mixing units.

[KingKaramazov]

[quote=""I__CHAOS__I""][quote=""Soccerman771""]though I don't like the sevast nerf thinking it should have been maybe a nerf to .65 or .7 since it should at least beat the normal fast-build card to make it advantageous to play sevastapol over the other card..[/quote]

sevastopol is still better than Stonemasons.
they are different is what they affect[/quote]

Yea, big difference between build speed and build points.

From the patch notes posted on AgeSanc I thought they might have changed it to build speed, in which case it would be useless. Thankfully that's not the case, although I doubt I'll be using it much anymore when I play Russia. I didn't even use it that much before.

[huGGy]

India rocks!