Compare black riders to manchu. It's a joke.

Black riders need a major speed nerf. They need a HP nerf too, but it's their speed that gets me.

yeah br are op but i think its more so that one can have so many mercs at once. I mean if someone gets jags good for them that is uber easy to counter, but then if they get jags , br and hackpels well then u have a problem.

Personally im still thinking on how one could fix this, for even tho I very much so hesitate to say it is OP i do feel it is to easy to use. Im thinking something like limit how many mercs one can have at a time, IE only 2 ships at a time... or perhaps increase the cost of age3 quite a bit. Not totally sure tho.

It's my opinion that mercs are supposed to be a supplement to your army. The Black Riders/Jaeger mix are turning mercs into an army. So many times I've ran into people who FF and get their BRs and Jaegers. It's not the germans either! It's the damn French. They can FF and have more gold available due to the CDBs. BR/Jaegers are an army, not a supplement to them. This is not how it was intended I believe.

KOP

highlanders are like 4x better than musketeers... 8 of those things slaughter cav/heavy inf like they weren't even there.

IMO Highlanders are better than Jaegers but jaegers are more numerous and accent BRs perfectly.

I think that Black Riders aren't all that great... I mean mixed with jaegers yes they are strong but that is a combo not a single unit. alone BRs drop like flies to well micro'd xbows... and don't get me started with Skirms vs BRs.

Now throw in the mix of jaegers and there are more problems, but a skirm army and goons with a few Hussars to take the beating of the jaegers and you can stop that combo. I've done it quite a few times.

mobility is the key so with jaegers and BRs you want to get them seperated. have your skirms advance on the BRs watch the BRs run and send in your hussars at the jaegers the jaegers will start to B&R their way out of it but your skirms are pumping on them, send your goons to keep pressure on the BRs long enough to dent the jaeger force your hussars should be dead by not anyway but if you can cut their numbers in half with 1 raid of regular units then you will severely limit their effectiveness.

Takes a lot of work but you do what you must.

TGE

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Ways to fix it: (my favourite ones in bold)
1) Increase the cost of age3
2)Increase the time to reach age 3
3) Make military shipments require the pop space in advance (No 29/30 supply -> 59/30 supply screws please -_-)
4)Make merc shipments take twice as long to arrive
5)Will you please nerf the damn black riders already!
6)Increase the pop cost of mercs

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lol it does!

I've defeated the combo a few times, by MASSING pikes/muskets and and cannons. With enough (more than 30) pikes/muskets ( and 6+ cannons, you can just advance the cannons ahead of the pikes and when cav comes in just block them of with pikes and muskets. Cost a lot sure, but you should have a better economy than the FF'r. If he tries to hit and run, just go straight for his base. Even better on maps with water. Ship caravels in and just put them in the boat and shell his town with cannons. So much work though

[This message has been edited by Ceres629 (edited 01-09-2006 @ 01:35 PM).]

Black Riders definitely need a nerf, yes. I don't really mind that they own cavalry badly. They'd be pointless if they didn't. It's their ability to flee so easily from everything else and to take massive amounts of damage from other units that's screwed. They've got just about as many hit points as, say, Ronin, of which you get 5 to a shipment, aren't ranged, and aren't very fast.

I think Jaegers are also a bit too good, but that's probably because skirmishers are too good in general. Change their animations so they need to load up before firing, and they both become a lot more manageable. They could still snipe, but less frequently and requiring greater care.

I think that the main problem with fast fortress strategies as they work is that it doesn't incur enough risk (i.e. a large enough window of opportunity for a guy who tries to attack in Colonial to exploit). You can go Fortress extremely fast -- I've done 5:30ish myself, and a friend of mine has done around 5:00 with Ottomans. Even without doing mercs, there are Fortress Age shipments that are very powerful -- especially when combined with the "free" age-up unit bonuses (which essentially makes aging up cost a lot less than it appears to do; you still sacrifice some villager production time, but in the short term this actually frees up production capacity for other purposes; the seven skirmisher politician + 4 cuirassier card + whatever other backup you can afford will own most Colonial armies around 6-7 minutes, with more cuirassiers coming out shortly -- France is especially problematic, but others aren't far behind).

I'm thinking that the time for shipments to come in should be proportional to the value of the shipment. If a Fortress Age shipment is roughly 1.5 times better than a Colonial shipment, it should take about that much longer to come in (or not quite that much longer).

If ES's intent with mercs was to make them supplemental rather than a mainline army, they could put the number of mercs you get on a timer, similar to how various techs like the one that gets you dog soldiers work. Of course, that would also require a variable cost. The upside to this is that the strength of available mercs can be adjusted to fit with what the assumed ability to counter said mercs should be at any given time.

If that isn't the intent, I think that nerfing the mercs that are too good (mostly Black Riders and Jaegers) and making higher-end shipments take a bit longer to arrive in general would be all that's really required.

Dont nerf the BRs pls ~ one of Dutch's best merc options...

[This message has been edited by lemuri (edited 01-12-2006 @ 11:39 AM).]

BRs are basically the same as war wagons. If you nerf them, they will be worse and that will stink.

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Exactly. And the 'argument' you're using there isn't exactly a very convincing one.

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No, you don't. You only have to have 1 pop available to order mercs.

My 'argument' I suppose would be this - the Dutch dont get the best mercs in the game. They lose some advantage vs an FF, because the skirms no longer stand out. Getting BRs helps against French, germans anyone. I'm not stating these premises as fact, so feel free to rebuke. If the same mercs were avail to all civs, then there would be less of an issue, right? So pretty pls sith sugar on top, dont f with one of the good things Dutch has. If certain mercs get nerfed, then every civs' merc alotment would need to be revisited to ensure balance

[This message has been edited by lemuri (edited 01-12-2006 @ 11:37 AM).]

i think in general the holy roman armie is op. we all know how op br and jags are but lachersnets are just as op. they have awsome seige and if a german even ships4 then they can preety much tear down a tc single handedly.
i was playing an ffa recently and the dutch player next to me was getting quite powerfull. so i shipped 14jags 10br and 12lchnt. i marced the army on his town and came across not 1 not 2 but 100 ruyters lol. not wanting to lose any br i attacked with the lchnts and killed em with 1 loss they were to good then they went and took down his fort in like 10secs. in general mercs need to cost less, eventhough when you see thier price it says jagears cost 270coin it doesn't add up that the shipment costs only 1200 coin.

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of course if you nerf something they become worse!!! How can you nerf them and they get better? wtf?

I just think the ff is to powerful. I mean that is all I have been doing latly and I can do it vs a laktoa natives rush, and even a otto rusher.... something is wrong there.... Perhaps age 3 costing 2000 food 1200 gold could fix it a bit more, dunno, i would just prefer to fight in age2 more, age3 should come but not as fast as it does right now...

Get skirmishers

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What about replacing skirms for highlanders and the hussars for stradiots? Would that work? (for the civs that have access to highlanders and stradiots)

You know I didn't agree with you before, on that mokon but after I stopped using spanish and used a civ that can't really FF well (british) I agree now. FF's aren't OP, it is just that stopping a good FF by staying in colonial and battling is almost impossible, but most of the time you have to get to fortress as soon as possible after the enemy does otherwise you lose now matter how good your eco is.

Increasing the cost to age up would be the best thing to do I think, but the thing is this will indirectly make ottos even more OP, since making it harder to get to fortress makes the otto rush even more effective. Lots of small changes need to be done. The main reason why FF's are so good is simply because of resource shipments. Want to get to age 3? Focus on food, ship the 700 gold and you are more than half way there, it does need to be toned down a bit.

I really hope 1.04 doesn't dissapoint. There is so many things I wish ES would look at, if they even fix just half of them I would be satisfied. If 1.04 taking a long time means they are throughly testing it and considering feedback then by all means take as long as you need ES, but a few issues are stopping the game from being excellent.

And those 2 mercs aren't even close to being building killers.

yeah i know that would make otto more op but thats another matter. If you nerf normal otto and then fix ff all will be fine.

I have to agree - add the German advantage of getting extra mercs per shipment and it's ridiculously OP. Even as the overpowered French, I find it impossible to stop the jaegar/black rider/landshnekt combo. I've resorted to playing the German civ to prevent from getting utterly dominated by this. You can't stop it - and it gets even worse in team games when there are multiple Germans on the opposite side.

Just fix Abuse guns and Ottomans will be fine.

ES already said that Mercs will be fixed in 1.04, so I am confident that the FF will be less interesting.

Did I even mention how ridiculous those guys become when combined with a priest or two? If that's the case, GG.

Ceres your #6 is ridiculous. How could you even think of making black riders take more population than a cuirassier? They take plenty already.

Here is my list of changes:

1. Slow black riders and knock a little HP off.

2. Make the Age 3 research take slighly longer.

3. Make the "Exiled Prince" politician take longer as well, but give the player a little something to go with it.

4. Require full pop space when sending unit shipments from the HC. (German non-unit shipments should be exempt from this rule. The free uhlans should come no matter what.)

You can't just nerf mercs altogethor because they are expensive. 1200 gold plus an Age 3 shipment has an approximate value of 2400 units, which means that BR's have a cost of around 300 units apiece.

[This message has been edited by Zeusmeister (edited 01-09-2006 @ 04:58 PM).]

300 gold is cheap for a unit that is worth 3-4 normal units Not to mention u dont need a production site which is more money saved, and you also dont need to worry about being countered if u produce the wrong production base since all u need to do is ship a differnt merc type.

[This message has been edited by Mokon (edited 01-09-2006 @ 04:58 PM).]

True Mokon, but some people here seem to think that all the mercs need to have their strench halved. Some mercs, like Ronin, are too weak and need a boost.

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That is a very good suggestions. That way you would have to get wood for houses also to get +20 pop for Mercs, meaning slowing them down a lot. I like it