Community Balance Update Mod Comments

Bringing the weaker gods and stronger gods closer together



Buffing aspects that are underused or not used at all



Giving Chinese as a whole a much needed balance iteration



Fixing various gameplay bugs

Global Changes:

Greek Changes:

Egyptian Changes:

Norse Changes:

Atlantean Changes:

Chinese Changes:

We Need Approval :

To Microsoft:

Hey guys,I wanted to drop a few comments on some of the changes, such as why they were made, and what effect we are hoping to achieve.See the full list of the changes at: http://steamcommunity.com/app/266840/discussions/0/2579854400734977125/ See the mod at http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1100817124 See the full community list of issues at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pkyZTMbTzFH9NH6ZiD9M1DlQqp7IuLbPrL5WlTL5QC8/edit?usp=sharing A general goals of the changes are:Below, I will be going over the key changes per faction - buckle up, there's a lot to talk about.We have made changes to maps in general to make the amount of hunt more varied across the different types of maps - what used to be low hunt maps, such as Oasis, will now have less hunt in general. We are also pushing out the minimum distance of the initial gold mine a bit. This should help a lot with varied gameplay, as the maps used to favor booming styles too heavily.The ranges of the anti-archer archers (Peltast/Slinger/Turma) are getting an increase from the heavy and champion upgrades. Seeing as their targets have a very similar range, with correct positioning the counter-archer archers need to expose themselves directly to the enemy melee units in order to get their shots of - this guarantees certain death for these units, hence why their usage in the later game is not only rare, but generally inadvisable. With good baiting techniques, using these units should be a more viable option.Even after the changes introduced with Tale of the Dragon, we have been seeing significant Zeus dominance over Hades and Poseidon. We wanted to not bring Zeus down any further than he has been (in fact, he received minor buffs from general changes), but rather we were looking at ways to make his brothers perform better. A key change in this area is the favor rate change - Zeus stays the same (except for the starting favor), but Poseidon and Hades get favor faster. This will allow them to train more myth units in any matchup, including the earlier ages.With the cheaper Cyclops, we have introduced a very strong classical age siege option for both Hades and Poseidon - this should provide some much needed variety, and reduce the predictability of players that pick these gods.On the topic of Heroes, we also did some equalization, most notably to Perseus - he is now able to better combat any unit, as well as pick off a myth unit and safely retreat as opposed to dying in the process. Even this change however is small when compared to Poseidon's Argo. The hero ship will now be accessible in the Heroic age, albeit in a somewhat weaker form. We are expecting it to provide an interesting element to the counter system on water - as an archer ship, it's still vulnerable to siege ships!We felt that Bolt was overnerfed in the previous patches in terms of how much damage gets dealt to the Son of Osiris and the Nidhogg. We are allowing it to do more in order to encourage this usage over it simply not being an efficient use.Physicians, while quite useful, were set up with a bit too much cost and a bit of a too low heal rate to be truly efficient, considering that they disrupt villager production. Dealing with both of these issues should promote their usage more.The change to Sentinel should allow Hades to expand a bit more aggressively, and actually hold that ground with the help of the 5 Sentinels - or to make sure an ally isn't losing to multiple enemies rushing them.The Hetairoi have received another large set of buffs - we would like them to act as a specialized core unit rather than a pure specialist. With more speed and damage, using them just for combat should not be a fatal idea anymore - plus, they get better at their main job, killing buildings!We are largely happy with the state of Egyptians, and so only made few changes - mainly to promote players to go for strategies that are currently sub-optimal.That said, we really wanted to include some well tested changes from the competitive community of The Titans, namely the Catapult population nerf and the Mercenary train time nerf. These two units are generally overperforming and are making Egyptian too hard to compete against in the late game.As a note for deathmatch players, the mercenary train time change will be forcing a few decisions regarding exactly how many of them to send in what age during the mercenary rush opening - train them all, and your advance time will be too slow to reset the lifespan!We wanted to bring the Kopesh into fold as a viable unit - out of the newly introduced units, this one has turned out to be rather niche, and is very hard to do anything with. The HP buff should allow it to do its job for a longer time.We have made Set animals able to attack again in the archaic age - for some reason the game has rounded their attack down to 0, making them unable to attack.Like with Egyptians, we are largely happy with most of Norse's performance. The big outlier for us is Odin, who is currently one of the weaker gods in the game, despite prior efforts to improve him. A lot of the changes are targeting his viability as a whole.Bogsveigir, while a really good unit, takes very long to train. We are bringing that train time in line with the other Hill Fort units, which should allow for wider usage of the new archer.We are not in favor of Norse players having to rely on Bragi's Swine Array for Ulfsarks to be able to properly beat Cavalry. Seeing as Norse has no hard counter to Cavalry, we decided to simply improve Ulfsarks in the early game, but take away from their HP upgrades at the same time.Njord in particular has received several buffs - most notably the Walking Woods being controllable. Previous changes to improve the AI have unfortunately made the situation worse - thanks to the The Titans community, we now have a lot of feedback to support that this change is in fact the right one for the power.The prior buff to Fenris Wolves has made them somewhat too strong, particularly in games where Norse is an age ahead of their opponent. We are slightly reducing the pack bonus to a middle ground that will still keep the unit relevant.Atlanteans had another big set of changes on the more underused gods, units and techs.To compensate for the slight weakness of the Atlantean early game after having taken away the free medium archers tech, we are reducing the cost of walls to match the other civs. It's already more costly to have an Atlantean Citizen working on walling, and so it doesn't need to have more direct cost.Kronos as a whole has received a lot of attention, seeing as he hasn't really been a viable god in a very long time. Perhaps the biggest change to him is the added speed bonus to Myth and Siege units. This will help him drastically with playing to his strengths - an already well tested change by the competitive community for The Titans, that really suits Kronos' character. Time shift's reduced wood cost will be an excellent tool in harassing the enemy trade, too. The Focus buff will aid in using the first few Oracles for pressure with Valor.Our changes on Automatons should be particularly relevant, seeing as the unit will get drastically better once the upgrades are researched.To help the late game economy of Atlanteans a little bit, we are making the Citizen heroes not cost extra population - a minor change, but not to be overlooked! These guys are excellent at building close to the front, seeing how hard to kill they are.We felt that the buffs to Contarii have made the Hero raids against buildings slightly too good, particularly in team games. We are slightly adjusting the effect of Lance of Stone to compensate.As a new civilization joining the rest after 14 years, Chinese were in great need of post-release balancing, which unfortunately was very limited. Having had over a year to look at feedback, we have done a major rewamp to them that in some cases implements the intended designs that were not correctly in place.Jade mines used to give Chinese Peasants an increased gather rate. This made playing on the new competitive map "Basin" very unfair. This extra rate has now been removed, making the map fair to play on.Shennong's Fire lance was far too strong due to an incorrect setup for the area of effect. This has been sorted out. The crush damage is now increased after Burning Pitch is researched. Their speed is now slightly lower so that more units can catch them once Draft Horses is researched. Their starting pierce attack is lower, but they now benefit from weapon upgrades in the armory - on the flip side, they are countered now by anti-archer units, as they now count as an archer, as well as a siege unit.Groups of Monks used to be far too good at converting enemy armies - we are reducing their effectiveness both via conversion rates, and the range at which they do so. This will make them more exposed, and thus easier to pick off.The Cataphract+Mounted Archer mix has been a large issue for Norse players especially. While we are hopeful that the Bogsveigir change will help here, we don't want Norse to rely fully on Heroic Age options, especially seeing as the Chinese playstyles favor aggression. We are reducing the bonus of the Cataphract vs Norse Infantry, and we have reworked the Mounted Archer to be more of a focused counter unit, rather than a semi-core unit.Both the Halberdier and the Chu Ko Nu were too effective at their roles, making Chinese too dominant in classical. With these nerfs though, we are definitely keeping in mind that Chinese struggles against Archer spam, and so we are helping out the Scout Cavalry with a bonus vs Archers, but at a small cost of generic damage. The War Chariot also benefits from this.We also are highly aware of how easy it currently is to snipe the Immortals, making the Chinese prone to Myth Units. To address this, we are increasing the base HP of Immortals. Immortals however could be trained before the Temple was complete, giving the Chinese strong rush potential - this is no longer possible.Chinese Generals were overpriced for their level of impact - we are reducing their cost, and are making the Castle line upgrade affect their stats.When it comes to God Powers, we have fixed a major problem with the Uproot power, where it would permanently provide line of sight to where it was cast. Various buildings that were previously not affected now are, too. There is now an active duration, but we are confident that the power will still be strong. The Earth Dragon has received a more drastic nerf - we cut its HP in half, and reduced the duration considerably, while compensating slightly by improving the recharge. We have also given the Great Flood a considerable buff against all targets.Phew! Almost done. Now for the important part.We are not the developers. This is a fan-made update, and simply put, we do not have the resources for extensive testing. We'd like to ask you guys to help with trying the mod, and giving feedback.Soon we will kick off the process of contacting the dev team directly with these changes, and the list of prioritized, important bugs and feature requests so that they can be considered for implementation by the Microsoft decision makers. This will be where our little team's usefulness expires, and your voices will be able to make a difference.As an open reminder: Don't forget Age of Mythology. We are right here, still playing. Nearly 1,200,000 people bought just the Extended Edition. This doesn't even account for the massive commercial success that the original game was. After all our support towards you, we deserve to get something back. Make our game playable in multiplayer. Implement our mod's bug and balance fixes for starters, as we already did the work for you, in good faith that our efforts will not be in vain.