The 5.7 Slavs

Do you think we're going to see more the Slavs in the Meta after the release of 5.7 ?

15% farming bonus even in late imperial seems quite a relevant improvement, and they were never seen as weak before this (even if never picked up in KotD...).

I think they are quite strong at all stage of play now :

• Their Dark Age has nothing special, but they start having interesting options from Feudal. Their Team Bonus (and to a lesser extant their token tracking) seems to be screaming for early aggression. 3 military building means +15 free pop, which is an equivalent of 75 Wood + building time. Their farm bonus should become significant from mid-feudal. I think they can do pretty much what they want at this stage, including archers : even if you're less incited to go archers because farming bonus will still boost your villagers, upgrades, and various eco techs. 2 Eco bonuses have always been a good thing for early game, even if the Slavs' ones might not be the greatest ones for this stage.

• They have a very good Castle Age with a lot of options. Their knights are okay (sharing upgrades with Boyars and Light Cavs might help you later). They have arguably the best castle age Siege (they have to argue with celts about this :-) ). Their Monk UT might not be awesome, but they have all monk techs. Only crossbowmen start to become subpars due to the absence of thumb ring...

• Once you've build a Castle, you get the very strong Castle Age Boyars. I see them as a mix of knights and camels because of their ability to chase and counter knights (probably the reason why their speed was set to 1.4 instead of 1.35). Their relative weakness against ranged units is not that bad in castle age, especially because they are slightly faster than knights and can 3-shots Xbows. Finally, as Gold is less relevant than Food in Castle age, they are also cheaper than knights. They are probably a top tier Pocket UU due to their ability to counter knights while also being able to fullfill the same role.

• Early Imp, Elite Boyars could create an interesting power spike because they are faster and cheaper to upgrade than paladins. Cheap Onagers are another interesting option, and contrary to some other Siege Civs, they don't require an expensive Unique Tech to boost their siege.

• Late Imp, they would have very strong Siege (around top 5), FU Infantry that you don't want yo meet in a narrow path, FU Monks, FU Heavy Cavalry (EBoyars are equivalent to Paladins for me, even a bit more specialized and less well-rounded) and FU Hussars (sort of AoE2 Swiss knife for me). Okay their defenses are not excellent, their archers are bad, but they have on the best Late game eco bonus of the game with +15% Farming Rate. Yes, Druzhina is cost and food heavy, but as Slavs you're the very definition of food-heavy.

• Finally, their Post Imp (trash wars) is quite Good, with FU Druzhina Halbs, FU Hussars and mediocre but decent Skirms. At this stage, their Food Bonus gives them an edge against most civs.

To summarize, I think that the combination of 2 eco bonuses (and one of the best middle to late-game one) and a versatile tech tree should make them a powerful and interesting civ. So I really hope they will be picked a bit more now :-)