What civs should be buffed next patch?

Welcome!

I'll be using aoestats - Civs for this and all Elos considered (for simplicity). In this post I dicuss and analyse what civs are weak and at which points they should be changed. My target here is to get the more civilzations into the 48-52% winrate area.

Be prepared, this is a very, VERY long post.

--------------------------------------------------The Under 50% Winrate Civs----------------------------------------------------------

All the civs under 50% winrate are:

(BTW, I= they specialise in Infantry, R= Ranged units, CA= Cav Archer and M= Mounted units)

48-49.99%:

• Aztecs I
• Britons R
• Japanese I
• Khmer M
• Mongols M CA
• Persians M
• Turks R M CA

46-47.99%:

• Burmese I CA
• Byzantines I M
• Chinese R
• Italians R
• Koreans R CA
• Malay I M
• Sicilians I
• Spanish R CA
• Vietnamese R M

Under 46%:

• Cumans CA M
• Portuguese R
• Saracens M
• Tatars CA M

From all under 50% winrate civs 6/20 specialise in Infantry, 12/20 specialise mostly in Ranged units, 7/20 ar CA civs and 10/20 specialise in Mounted units... so it appears as though the majority of players are bad at ranged civs, or the ranged civs are bad compared to others.

What I concluded:

• I think we should ignore the 48%+ winrate civs as they are pretty much balanced outside of a few things. Thus, 4/14 of all Infantry civs are below 48%, 8/14 of all Ranged civs and 6/20 are below 48% winrate.
• We should be buffing the civs, not nerfing, since 20 are under 50% but 17 are over 50% winrate.

---------------------------------------------------The Over 50% Winrate Civs-----------------------------------------------------------

Now, for the analysis of the better civs, over 50% winrate:

This time there are only 17 civs, so there are more civs under 50% winrate than over it, hence the reason we should start buffing civs to become above 50%.

50-51.99%:

• Celts I
• Ethiopians I R
• Goths I
• Incas I
• Indians M R
• Magyars M CA
• Malians I
• Mayans I R
• Slavs I M
• Teutons I M
• Vikings I

52-53.99%:

• Berbers M
• Bulgarians I M
• Burgundians M
• Huns M CA
• Lithuanians M
• Franks M

What I concluded:

• This time, in the above 50%, 9/17 were Infantry focused, 5/19 were Ranged focused, 2/9 were CA civs and 10/17 were mounted unit focused. An interesting thing to note is that there are no Gunpowder or Elephant civs above 50% winrate and there was only 1 sorta Infantry civ (Bulgarians) no ranged civ above 52% winrate, with all others being specialised in Mounted units.

THE BUFFS!:

• The obvious choice is to upgrade Elephant and Gunpowder civs like Malay, Burmese, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Khmer and Turks. All of which are under 50% winrate so they seem to need a small to large buff. This is reinforced further as Portuguese and Vietnamese are in the bottom 5 of all civs in the game. Another potential buff is to the Cav Archer civs, specifically Tatars and Cumans, who are also in the bottom 5.
• Turks just recieved a sizeable buff in the June patch, so we can skip over them.
• Another important matter that comes to kind is the Steppe Lancer, a unit that is worse than the Knight in every way in a fight, was made harder than at release to get to it's strength (large groups) and has no advantage over the Knight accept in CHOKEPOINTS. A buff to them is long overdue, and is immensly required or the unit will forever be in this meaningless cocophany of buff suggestions by the fans like me right now who don't actually have any power in what the Devs do!

The Nerfs....

• It is time, my fellow Age of Empires players, to take a stand against the unit type that has forever dominated the lower elos, galloping in to your peaceful villages and slaying your innocent villagers before they can even get to the TC. I am of course talking of... THE KNIGHT LINE! The Knight line dominates the upper winrate area, with all 6 52%+ winrate civs having intense bonuses to the Knight line. This unit has overshadowed our poor, poor infantry for too long we must retaliate against this preposterous dwarfing of the footmen! It's nerfing time! The targets here are the top 6 Winrate civs, who love their Knight line.
• There aren't many other nerfs required other than elo specific nerf, like Chinese in the 1650+ elos. That, however, is for another time.

------------------------------------------------------Civilsation Specific Changes-------------------------------------------------------

The civs that need changed are the Gunpowder civs (outside of Turks), Elephant civs, the two OG Steppe Lancer civs and the top 6 Winrate civs, which all specialise in Cavalry.

These are Burmese, Malay, Khmer, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Spanish, Cumans, Tatars, Huns, Berbers, Franks, Bulgarians, Burgundians, and Lithuanians.

-------------------------------------------------------------------Buffs!--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Burmese:

• Burmese are weakest during 20-30 minute games, and lose mostly to Mayans, Ethiopians, Vikings, Huns and Indians.
• This means that Burmese struggle against civilizations which have good archers, which can more easily attack the Arambai, which has only 2 pierce armour in Castle Age, so with 80 hp they are killed by Xbows in 16 hits
• I believe the solution could be to either make the Howdah Battle Elephants, with +1 Pierce armour, so the Elephants can kill the archers more easily.
• Another solution is to either buff Arambai with possibly +1 pierce armour or to give the civilzation an anti-archer bonus.

Malay:

• Malay are at their worst during games under 20 minutes long against the Scout rushng civs of Magyars, Franks, Huns, Lithuanians and Burgundians.
• The solution to this problem is difficult, as the Malay don't have any special anti-cav bonuses to improve, so the answer might be to give them so extra defense against the scouts.
• Malay are very good in Arena, so they might not require much buffing at all.

Khmer:

• Khmer are weakest in 30-40 minute games, which is at Imperial Age, against Magyars, Lithuanians, Franks Burgundians and Indians.
• Khmer struggle against Cavalry civs, so they need a late game unit that can either counter Cavalry or overpower them... with maybe Elephants?

Vietnamese:

• Vietnamese are at their worst in 20-30 minute games, but immeadiatly get +4.8% winrate in 30-40 minute games, so the Vietnamese just need to get their economy up and running to boost their winrate.
• They are at their worst against Malians, Magyars, Bulgarians, Franks and Lithuanians.

Portuguese:

• Portuguese are under average about equally all through the game accept in 40+ minute games, so they, like Vietnamese, just need a better eco to get them there.
• Their lowest winrates are against Magyars, Burgundians, Britons, Persians and Franks.

Spanish:

• Spanish struggle in 30-40 minute games, which I find odd since they have the Conquistador, and their other gunpowder units in Imperial Age...
• The Spanish find difficult matchups against Berbers, Indians, Franks, Huns and Vikings. Which makes sense as Spanish don't have Xbows and must play with infantry, which is slain by ranged and mounted units, or Cavalry which can't really go up against Camel civs.
• I think a buff to the Spanish could be give their Gunpowder a bonus vs Cavalry which helps both vs Cavalry and in Imperial Age.

Cumans:

• Cumans are weakest during games under 20 minutes long against Lithuanians, Slavs, Franks, Bulgarians and Indians.
• This means that Cumans, with only palaside walls, can't defend against the scout rushes by these civs so I think that Cumans should get an extra Wall hp bonus so the lack of stone wall won't hurt as much.

Tatars:

• Tatars are bad during at all times before 30 minutes, at which they go from bad to average. They are finding difficulty in beating Aztecs, Indians, Franks, Incas and Berbers. So since they can actually be good, evident by the almost 50% winrate at 30-40 min games, they just need an eco bonus to get them to that point.
• Perhaps we could bring back the sheep spawning bonus at TCs in Fuedal, but reduce the extra food in herdables to +30% instead of +50%. This means that Tatars players would get 1300 food from sheep instad of the regular 800.

---------------------------------------------------------------Nerfs :(---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Huns:

• Huns are the least good out of all the 6 highest winrates, so I believe that since they only really excel during 20-30 minute games, a general nerf to the Knight should suffice

Berbers:

• Berbers are 2nd in the winrate category and are best in games under 30 minutes gone and are great at destroying every type of civ with their Camel Riders and Camel Archers. They need to just be less good at this.
• As 4/5 of the Berber's highest winrates are against Cav Archer civs, the Camel Archer could be nerfed to be slightly less effective at beating the Cav Archers.

Franks:

• Franks, in the existence of DE, have only been 2nd in winrate 1 time and it was to Goths when they were really good. Franks are the closest civ to OP that will ever exist without getting nerfed to oblivion. Now even though they have been nerfed they are still #1. Time for that to change...
• Franks are best during 20-30 minute games due to their Knights, so a nerf to their Hp boost (+10/15/20% instead of +20%) and a general nerf to Knights shouldn't be too destructive. Especially since their worst matchup is against Tuetons at 47.17% winrate which is better than more than 7 civs average winrate.

Bulgarians and Lithuanians:

• I love Bulgarians, so with this bias and the fact they're only 0.51% away from the target of 52% winrate I'll just nerf the Knight as a unit.
• Lithuanians are even closer to 52% win rate at 52.24%, so I'll let them get away direct nerf free.

Burgundians:

• There are 2 things with Burgundians that brought them to 4th best civ from being in 37th. These are the great eco and Flemish Revolution. The revolution has been nerfed in the latest patch so it should bring the winrate to 52%, but Flemish Revolution is a dumb technology for the game and should be changed.
• I have no nerfs to suggest other than FLEMISH REVOLUTION MUST DIE.

With these in mind, these are what I see and hopefully have convinced you to see should be the next balance changes, which I will make in a different post since this one is so long.

---------------------------------------------------The End! Thanks for Reading!--------------------------------------------------------