Ideas/rants on Slavs

Rant 1 (major rant): Farm bonus and siege bonus

Currently they are very strong across all types of land maps, and while that was not a problem on its own, they always feel boring for me when I'm playing with them. It was like they can just do the standard thing like scouts into knights, and suddenly you are ahead of everyone else as you bank up so many food. Of course, you can argue that Franks is even more broken in this regard, and while I agree the developers might have overbuffed them a little bit, at least they are doing their own thing, the cavalry.

Probably one of the most comparable civ to Slavs is Celts: a great economy bonus with a siege and infantry focus, decent cavalry and bottom tier archery range. Celts player often go for either crossbow or knights depending on the game, but since they are missing thumb rings and bloodlines, they usually transitions into pike and siege much earlier during the castle age. Meanwhile, Slavs got FU cavalier, so very often we see them just spam knights in castle age, and transition into their speciality much later in the game. And because their farm is just so great, they almost always want to go cavalry over siege in castle age.

My point is, the units that a civilisation are going for should be decided by military bonuses, the tech tree itself, the map, the gamemode (1v1 or teamgame), opponent civs etc. BUT NOT solely on the economy bonus, which should just support the whole strategy and decide how strong they are throughout the game. Right now, it feels like Slavs player always go for cavalry in the early game just because of how many food they are floating around with that borderline OP farming bonus (of course, part of the blame goes to the fact that infantry is not good in mid-game).

Rant 2 (minor rant): Free tracking and team bonus

I'm not ranting on them being irrelevant or weak or what, but I feel like they are out of position and should swap with each other. Free tracking is essentially a LoS bonus, which is usually a team bonus like Franks, Mongols, Magyars, Japanese; while the military building gives +5 pop is a housing bonus, which is usually a civ bonus like Huns, Incas, Chinese and Goths.

And I'm not swapping it out of stylistic reason only: Slav team bonus is so OP in team game Deathmatch. I know talking about balance in deathmatch is a bit silly, but do we really need Khmer to be even stronger on DM?

Suggestion

Here is my two cents on suggested balance change on Slavs. I know AoE2:DE has been out for beta and should have its own balance changes, but I'm no beta player and know nothing about it so I might just leave it here:

• Farmers work 15% 10% faster
  • They were not a powerhouse before the fixed farm rate on wheelbarrow, so I think it would still make their economy good enough but not floating tons of food when advancing to the castle age.
• Siege workshop units 15% 25% cheaper
  • Siege is still expensive so its not like you can spam siege with this discount, but with this discount we should see more siege in the game, which would actually also encourage the use of infantry.
• Military buildings provide +5 population (change it as a civ specific bonus) (sidenote: I really like this bonus for some reason)
• Team bonus: Infantry +2 LoS
  • Yes they can still research tracking