Awesome!!

Damn, I was 3 mins late, I'm slacking.

"Spain
Rodelero hand attack reduced to 12, cover attacks reduced appropriately.
Shipment bonus changed to .73
Wardogs damage reduced to 15, but they get a 20% bonus vs. guardians

Iroquois
Forest Prowler reduced ranged attacks by 2, hand attack by 1, siege attack by 2

Dutch
Military Reforms – changed Halberdier speed bonus to +20%

German
Uhlan +10% Ranged Resistance
Uhlan bug fixed

British
Longbowmen get 1.25 bonus damage vs. heavy infantry

Aztecs
Chinampa and Great Chinampa cards reduced by 5%
Start with +1 food crate
Age2 Jaguar card reduced to 5

Portuguese
Organ Guns get +10% damage, +2 range, and +4 LOS

Ottomans
Abus guns get 0.75 damage vs. artillery
Abus guns get 1.5 bonus damage vs. heavy infantry
Abus guns Ranged Resistance reduced to 20%

Sioux
Age2 bear card reduced to 4

Russians
Cossacks +10% Ranged Resistance"

[This message has been edited by Cherub Walker (edited 02-27-2007 @ 04:26 PM).]

I'm reading it... and seems incredibly awesome so far! Even though not all issues have been covered, this time ES managed to only add needed changes... Ok, I'm not sure about Abus Guns, but I'll think about that

So unfair, i almost beat you (just saw it at agecom)

sounds great

Well the thinking behind abus guns was that they should absolutely destroy skirm/archers etc. but they should destroy HI. So now they still deal big damage, but will actually die to ranged units rather than absolutely destroy them. (they'll still win though)

That change to abus is huuuuuuge.

It means they no longer own LI so bad, since their resistance is low enough that gunshots now hurt them.

Awesome, thanks for the heads-up on this! Can't wait to try these new changes out.

Yay for abus nerf :P Any release date for patch?

[This message has been edited by Jumbalaya (edited 02-27-2007 @ 04:27 PM).]

woot germany fixed I love you guys and now to dust off my ports for some organ cassa goon lamaing, why nerf chimpa cards for aztec though?

Great patch, looks like hiring WackO was a good idea.

Any word yet on when it will come out?

Yes, makes sense. Now they do considerably worse against Artillery and Skirmisher units... however, I can't stop thinking they got more of a boost than a nerf. Fifteen percent against Heavy Infantry is a hell lot, when British Longbowmen got only 1.25...

However, might not be a issue. I hardly used Heavy Infantry to counter an Ottoman Army, and now one could kill Abus faster with Skirmishers, or not have their Artillery killed so fast.

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I think working at ES gives him an edge on the news

I love the patch, definitely a step in the right direction. Really like the looks of it

Edit:

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Aztecs have enough awesome eco cards as is, this still gives them access to it but won't make their late game as good.

[This message has been edited by Stonewall J (edited 02-27-2007 @ 04:31 PM).]

Btw, L_Clan_Socrates... would you know if Abus actually have the correct multipliers vs Ranged Cavalry on Stagger mode now?

It seems that the Portuguese finally get what they deserve, a reasonable artillery piece.

Ottomans got hit pretty hard with this. Maybe they have to build hussars in age 2!

I'd like to have some German units to be less gold-heavy. But with factories, forts, a proper FF, ship shipments and Uhlans that don't die before they reach the enemy at my disposal, I'm not going to complain.

Great House untouched? I expect to see even more turtling Iroquois now (as they can't rely on pure prowlers anymore).

Overall, I think this looks really good. this patch will not create new OP civs (in the worst case some already OP will be less but still OP).

EDIT: Thunders topic was named balance change list. Are these all the changes or just those related to balance?

[This message has been edited by Mediolanus (edited 02-27-2007 @ 04:33 PM).]

omg abus got uber nerfed
UBER
how does the 1.5 to HI work? does the counter inf give them 1.5 now or...
i dunno if i will even use abus anymore -_-

gerrs are still ZzZzZzZ imo but i might give them some whizzling

[This message has been edited by MusketKing (edited 02-27-2007 @ 04:37 PM).]

CIR still doesnt affect abus. And abus multipliers were untouched other than vs. HI/Art.

I thought CIR did affect abus guns. :O

I love this patch, I suspect people will start realising how good the aztecs actually are though.

I am so happy to see the boost to longbows, and a little glad about the uhlan boost. Maybe it will help Germany a bit. Fixing the bug helps vastly of course.

Yay for the FP nerf

Yay for the halb nerf. Wasn't too worried about the dutch eco, can keep up with it as Britain.

Is the organ gun boost actually going to help Portugal?

Russia got a slight boost to cossacks, not sure why them, they seem pretty good as they are, Russia needed a less harsh villager training time if you ask me.

CIR still doesnt affect abus? I thought it did affect them

EDIT: got really bad day, even james lock beat me

so far for the good news about ES balance testers, they dont know about CIR affecting abus

CIR doubles abus attack vs heavy infantry. Then they indeed do massive overkill, but they also do twice as much damage, really good investment if your opponent got heavy infantry

[This message has been edited by schildpad (edited 02-27-2007 @ 04:51 PM).]

Hm, if CIR affects abus I never used it :P

How about this: CIR wasnt changed

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Aztecs too good? Pshh, boost everything they have Not sure what the +100 will exactly do for them, obviously a greta boost but I'm wodnering how it will effect age up times+vils and such. The Janey nerf is fine, I can live with 5

I definitely like that Forest Prowlers won't absolutely murder coyotes, so as long as I have arrowknights vs Great House I won't complain ^^

Other than that, I know a few people here will like the Longbow boost, how many threads have we had on those guys ? Or posts rather.

Looking over these changes, I think this all looks like a nice job. Be really interesting to see how it comes off in practice.

Oh, and yeah, CIR definitely affects abus...

<Tech name ='Rifling' type ='Normal'>
  ...
  <Effect type ='Data' amount ='1.00' 
      subtype ='DamageBonus' unittype ='AbstractHeavyInfantry'
      allactions ='1' relativity ='Absolute'>
    <Target type ='ProtoUnit'>AbusGun</Target>
  </Effect>
  ...
</Tech>

I assume this means that abus with CIR would do 2.5x vs. heavy inf instead of 2x like before.

This abus change is really huge -- gotta get my mind wrapped around it. My first impression, though, is that it's very good. I think that's how I feel about this patch as a whole actually...

[This message has been edited by Beatnik Joe (edited 02-27-2007 @ 04:53 PM).]

There is a god! *worships wacko*

This looks like a really great patch.

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Great.

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Hmm obviously this is good, but I'm not sure if FP needed a further nerf to around the stats of skirms. Most civs don't have great houses, spammed war huts, eagle shot and war chief to boost their HP, therefore making FP even more effective than they appear. Also, town dance?

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Good, again I think that banks or mining bonus needed to be taken down a notch as well, but this is a step in the right direction - I may be wrong, maybe this will suffice.

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Sweet, even the bug being fixed makes them that much more playable. I think many would have liked to have seen a slight shipment reduction such as 2 or 3% as well, but again very close to balanced I think.

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Very fair, this effectively gives longbows almost +4 ranged damage in age2 against HI, +2 more than before they were nerfed. I like how they are less versatile and actually counter HI now.

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I wasn't aware Chinampa and Great Chinampa were OP, but I'm not all that familiar with Aztecs. That extra food should allow them to switch vils to wood earlier, possibly easing the wood issue. I think giving them 100 wood would have been a more straightforward approach, but again I don't play them so maybe there was a reason behind this.

I'm slightly dissapointed that eagles still own and maccas weren't boosted to a pop effective unit for later game engagements.

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What we have been waiting for since the middle of vanilla!

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I've always been on the fence as to if abus should counter artillery, this seems like a good nerf however. It will now take 7 abus (6 veteran) to OHKO a falc versus 4 before, good.

The new rebalance against infantry sounds interesting, hopefully a good thing.

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Wasn't aware that this was that OP, then again it has made some Sioux rushes against some civs unbearable. Good.

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Good.

I'm still dissapointed that hussars didn't recieve the HP boost or that age 2 melee cav didn't recieve a stronger HP boost or melee resistance, but we'll have to wait and see how they fair in practice versus paper.

I think town dance needs a nerf as well, and it's still well known that gendarmes are ridiculous late game.

But honestly, besides these few exceptions this patch looks really, really promising. Congrats ES, this is surely the 1.08 of vanilla!

Just wait for Ender's comments

Anyone wanna bet how long untill an Otto player comes and start cursing it?

Oh ... my ... god ...

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CIR has always affected Abus Guns. I guarantee it. I use it often and a Musket taking 80 instead of 40 damage is hard to explain otherwise.
With the patch changes, a CIR Abus Gun will have 2.5x against heavy infantry.

~~~

So, Iroquois now basically steamroll right over Ottomans. We're gonna reduce Elite Forest Prowler ranged damage by 2.5, but we'll take away 30% ranged resistance from the only unit that actually gave you a chance against Prowler spam. Enjoy!

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A 1.5x bonus against heavy infantry for Abus Guns?! Holy mother of Kerensky!
With CIR on top of that just Colonial Abus Guns will be doing 100 damage a shot! 120 damage for Veteran. 150 damage for Guard. Yeeeeouch.
You want to basically make it impossible for Portuguese and British to compete with Ottomans late game? It's not like anyone else spams heavy infantry ...

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A 0.75x penalty against artillery is actually fine, since I can stil kill Falconets cost-effectively. It just takes 7 instead of 5 now.

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You shouldn't have touched Military Reforms. It's the Dutch economy powering them that was the real culprit.

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The Forest Prowler change is quite good. Except if you're Ottoman, that is.

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Brits ... welcome back to 1v1. And you can stop worrying about Musket/Jan/Tomahawks rushes.

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Spain got a very slight nerf. Maybe it's enough. We'll see.

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Cossacks and Uhlans got 10% extra ranged resistance. What about Hussars? ES can't possibly be under the impression that Hussars are actually cost effective units ...

Overall, the patch is just the ES style. Get in a few of the right fixes that were necessary ... get in some other ones that nobody requested but are actually a pretty good idea ... and change a whole lot of other stuff that once again will turn the game on it's head.

A hussar boost would have affected civs like spain/otto/french that we didn't feel needed a boost.