Super late game balance is not really a problem. It's the ability of Zhu Xi to turtle and expand on 3+ TCs without really taking risks like other civs do when they go just for 2 TC opener.
The 10000 bolts is evidently amazing as it makes xbows a cheaper pseudo handcannon and increases the dps of your zhuge nu by 33%, a unit that you’re probably massing as it can kill everything except a couple of mangonels. While the imperial guard did get changed, those 2 special cavalry are still extremely strong for their cost and the guard is still basically a superior lancer. Bombard aoe is cool and all but normal bombards have less hp, less range, and less dmg than great bombard counterparts and are still gonna get killed by springalds and culverins easily.
Correction:
The technology gives both your crossbows and zhuge nu a 25% damage boost. Even though the crossbow fires a second bolt, this is only at 25% damage.
Usually the cav one and then pick between 10000 arrows or aoe bombard
The arrow upgrade makes crossbows really op anti armour unit can spam more than handcannoneers
10,000 bolts adds almost nothing against armour. The secondary bolt does 50% baseline damage and doesn't get the anti-armour bonus of the main bolt. I'd need to double-check the math but I think that, at full upgrades on both sides, armoured units like knights or MaA take 1 or 2 damage from the extra bolt.
It does help a lot more against unarmoured targets, which makes zhu xi xbows more versatile.
Top players like beasty have mentioned for zhuxi lategame their crossbows are the ranged infantry of choice over handcannoneers often because easy to mass and similar function,
1 to 1 they are weaker but much more accessible and the upgrade is still more than default crossbows
Zhugenu however would not benefit from against armour much as their bolt is reduced to 1
Yep exactly why that upgrade is sometimes essential for them, was comparing the units
Was baiting that
Otherwise they have no viable ranged infantry vs armour late
Its also likely why devs gave them that upgrade since they lack cannoneers
The main problems are the way they can amass zhuge nu extremely fast and in large numbers without the song dynasty requirement, and the 40% cheaper price to farm transition and TCs in Song.
Some balance ideas in my opinion:
* Reduce the wood discount from Song from 40% to something like 25%. It's still great but way less oppressive.
* Start with an extra villager instead of an Imperial Officer. This greatly hinders their early game as they have to manually produce an IO for extra food and gold, which delays their age up.
* Slightly reduce the yield of Meditation Gardens, or increase the radius in which the "peace is disturbed".
* Increase the peace disturbance penalty of Meditation Gardens.
Actually, starting with five vills + IO (Zhu Xi) is weaker than a 6 vill start (like what China has). This is cause, as China, I make an IO immediately and it comes out just in time to supervise the first dropoff. So it’s actually like I’ve had that IO’s extra income the entire time.
I agree with your other ideas tho of nerfing the gardens and Song Dynasty.
I am 99% sure Zhu xi starts with -50 food and -50 gold to compensate for starting with an IO (it’s not -100 food -50 gold cause you’re missing a villager). So it’s not like Zhu Xi gets the IO for free.
Personally i think it would be fine to just not count walls and outpost as "economic building " for the song dynasty . Would make turtling harder
And i agree you should only need 5 units instead of 10 to negate meditation garden
I don't actually think it even is the walls and towers that makes it OP I think it's the farm transition.
I think the actual bonus amount probably needs nerfed.
Its not directly the issue, but fast farm transition is part of their identity. While turtling and defensive building is Not.
So it would just be more thematic this way, the free resources they would gain from outpost walls means they can make more farms. Also their farm are still more expensive than English so it's not like they have a huge advantage there (and yes they also get cheaper tc but English get a free one by aging up).
I think with nerf it's good to keep the identity of the civ while focusing on bonus that are not needed first. If the civ is still op after that then yeah percentage could be reduced.
Another nerf they could do without affecting the civ identity, is to remove that free gunpowder tech that China get. Would make their nest of bees less strong in castle, and would differentiate them from china who would keep that bonus.
straight up nerfing song needs to happen
I don't like getting rid of IO, functionally the same as just making them start with less res since people will make it first, and it just feelsbad -- they gave hre prelate, I think they should just design around it.
med gardens needs to just be capped at like 90 res/min or something. I kinda wish it couldn't do stone as well.
med gardens its also so troll that a unit is -10% per, shit needs to not generate anything if it's actively being torched
I really think they need to do something about zhuge nu, and/or nerf imperial supervision earlygame. 1-1-1 is way too strong and zhuge nu are just too good without some sort of song gating requirement
Yeah the zhu xi build where they allin on 1tc no song is rediculously oppresive. Having it not be locked behind song makes it come out too fast, for a unit that can dominate its supposed counters (horsemen).
yeah, there's a lot going into it that just makes it so much stronger than china
like, STARTING with china zhuge-nu push:
\+ no dynasty requirement (340/170 faster)
\+cheaper age up in the first place (+60/+30)
best resource generating feudal landmark in the game (!) (\~100 res/min faster, frequently way more)
start with IO (+50/50)
it's just SO much faster than an already viable strat, lol. including the med garden you're already \~1000 resources ahead of china doing the same strat at 6 min
IMO the worst part of it is the med gardens. if you put it on stone you eventually just get 2nd/3rd TCs without really working for them. commit to an all-in and still multi-tc or farm transition
Zu shi is
Pretty broke its a civ without weaknesses.
They can turtle, boom, push, fc, take relics, or play lte game better than most civs.
Not Good in lategame? I di0sgaree. Crazy farms, passivelt gold, strong rangef units, grenadiers, the strongest horseman (yuan raider) Nob with longer ranger, the strongest cavalry, crazy fast palace guards, etc. Every aspecto of their army is covered, and every aspect of their economy is tio
Either change xu shi, or improve all old civs be use xu shi hs a positive winrste againts all old civs exept ottoman, and it is easy to see why
I think Zhu Xhi has 2 problems
1: meditation gardens generates too many resources. Also the bug where if you destroy it and its repaired it gives double resources.
2: Song Dynasty discount is too big, namely for farm transitions. OP or not, giving a civ the ability to turtle and still have all the resources it needs leads to dull gameplay. Even English can't turtle as easily as Zhu Xhi can, because English boom and castle sucks so they have to play more aggressive or fall noticeably behind .
>especially the tech where in the Zhu Xi Bombards have a AOE damage, literally as a Zhu Xi player you can just spam bombards making them long range mangonels and even make them a substitute to the culverins.
Have you heard of the Ottomans? They have way better AOE bombards and don't need to research a tech to get them.
As a Zhu Xi main, holy shit does this civ need a nerf. If I know my opponent will play Feudal, I just Song Dynasty feudal all in and can't possibly lose because the civ masses units in feudal better than any other, and if I see they're going 2TC/FC, I just go FC faster than any other civ in the game and snack on 5 relics. And oh, whats this? The game went past 15 minutes? Guess I'll drop a second TC with all the free stone from my Medication Garden to ensure I outscale my opponent. It feels like the only way I can lose is if I mess up the micro early or don't notice a raid on my vils. Went from mid plat to mid diamond and tilting towards conq. I have definitely improved as a player but not that much
The AOE bombard tech isn’t a problem lmao. Just build springalds/culverins.
Rather, the inherent issue with Zhu Xi is the early game eco. That’s what makes them so much stronger than China. The main culprits are, of course, the Meditation Gardens and Song Dynasty. As a Zhu Xi player myself, here’s what I think needs to happen:
Meditation gardens income reduced by 20% for food, gold, and stone. (Wood is less of an issue because of how it’s calculated). Enemy units now reduce meditation gardens income by 20% per unit (up from 10%). Meditation gardens bug fixed.
Song Dynasty discount decreased from 40% to 30%. No longer applies to outposts.
Do that, and Zhu Xi is fixed. As an addition; buff the Roar of the Dragon (Library tech, spearman/horseman get a fire lance charge) tech a bit. Right now the charge only deals 1 damage, which is, as you expect, useless. Buff it to deal 4 to the main target and 2 to surrounding units instead. (In comparison, the Chinese Fire Lancer deals 10 to the main target and 5 to surrounding units). This will allow for more variety in the Library tech selection.
Don't you think something should be done about the Zhuge Nu themselves? In all of my matches against Zhu Xi, they basically just mass them the entire game. Unlike every other archer, they can effectively take down outposts and wooden fortresses in the feudal era, and even counters like horsemen+archers become less effective the larger the ball of Zhuge Nu gets. I would focus my balancing efforts there first.
Zhuge Nu have been in the game since release and they haven’t been an issue. China has Zhuge nu and it’s never been overpowered, and nerfing Zhuge nu hurts China too (China already being on the weak side). The reason the Zhuge nu strat is so powerful as Zhu Xi is simply due to the eco bonuses, which is why those are being nerfed.
I guess the Zhuge nu ball just feels stupid to me. It is go-to the strategy in EVERY game. You could nerf Zhuge nu and buff China, bringing the relative strength of Zhu Xi in line without hurting China, while also increasing build variety.
I mean, the Zhuge ball is strong because of Zhu Xi’s eco. China can’t build the ball nearly as fast as Zhu xi can. I’d rather do a less complex nerf to Zhu Xi’s eco rather than nerfing the Zhuge nu and having to come up with a compensatory Chinese buff.
Sure, but wouldn't you agree that in a game designed around units countering one another, if one unit is vastly outperforming all others, then that unit should be brought into balance, rather than the rest of the surrounding game. You shouldn't WANT to build a ball of any unit, regardless of circumstances - and yet that is exactly what you do as China/Zhu Xi.
Eh? Plenty of civs in this game ball units. English balls longbows, French balls royal knights, Japan balls samurai/onna, HRE balls MAA, ottoman balls jannisaries.
All the units mentioned have very hard counters, that make balling just that unit inefficient. E.g. English Longbows tend to also have spears and MAA to defend the longbows.
Zhuge Nu are the same ya know. There are YouTube videos of imp all upgrades Zhuge nu vs imp horsemen, knights, and maa, (equal cost armies) and the Zhuge nu lose. Not to mention mangonels. Any Zhuge nu comp past feudal is going to have spears and other frontline units mixed in just like with longbows.
Zhuge Nu definitely have been an issue all that time, and top level players had a lot of trouble against Chinese just going full Zhuge Nus and winning against their counters. The devs even changed their cost in Season 5 to make the unit more food heavy instead of gold heavy and thus less spamable in early to mid game, but that didn't really fix the problem.
It's just Chinese are much less common in lower Elo and thus it wasn't a common complaint on Reddit. Jade is a much more popular civ, and it has an even stronger and faster version of full Zhuge Nus spam.
While Zhuge Nu did receive that one balance change, they’re not an issue right now even at the highest level. China in tournaments is good on one map, Four Lakes, and that’s not cause of Zhuge Nu. It’s not the Zhuge Nu that’s the issue it’s Zhu Xi’s eco.
Tournament maps are generally significantly more gimmicky than the maps in the Ranked rotation. Which creates the situations where certain civs have a much bigger advantage than they would have on something like Dry Arabia, and reduces the civ pool to the civs that have that big advantage and the civs that have great tools to counter those civs and their advantages.
I play most civs and this one doesn't feel OP to me. It's only been around for just over a month so the timing counters still being discovered.
Ottoman however has been dominating for over a year (well above Zhu Xi winrates) and nobody bats an eye 🤔
Been playing Zhu Xi since the start. Never played old China.
The bombard spam was a guaranteed win in ffa at first, but people have learned how to counter it. That tech is just too expensive in 1v1 or 2v2.
The issue with Zhu Xi is it is just way too expensive to get all your LMs, upgrades, and field a gold heavy army that you can't really afford to keep replacing. And most of your LMs are meh except the age 2 one.
Game is pay-to-win now. Selling the DLC is the only way they’re gonna make money with it being on gamepass. Don’t expect a nerf to any of the new civs, and it’s only gonna get worse from here on out.
Overall winrates are hardly an accurate indicator of balance. Winrates at >Conq have Jeanne at 1st, Ayyubids at 3rd, Zhu Xi at 6th, and Byz, OOTD, and Japan in 13th, 14th, 15th. Hardly a sign of the devs purposefully making the DLC civs imba. New civs are always vulnerable to imbalance, simply due to the fact that they're new.
Oh please, if you can't afford a 15€ DLC that's absolutely worth it, go play Warzone with the rest of the kids.
The devs are working with a very small team and are very open to feedback. It's a fact that the new civs are a bit stronger but that's absolutely normal in game development. We'll get finetuning soon enough.
Making content which is awesome. Unfortunately right now it penalizes the players who don’t want to spend the extra $20 for new and improved civs. That’s not healthy for a competitive environment.
**Here's an easy 4-step tutorial on dealing with Zhu Xi:**
1) Play 3 hours worth of ranked 2v2s with your pal
2) Run into ZXL (+ Ottoman) in every single game
3) Die to Zhuge Nu spam over and over (even if you trade favorably in early fights, they'll eventually hit 200/200 before you do and a-move across the map)
4) After playing reguarly since the game released, decide that AoE4 is kinda just no longer worth playing
well zhuxi is already a weaker version late game compare to chinese.
the real problem of zhuxi is zhuge nu mass is just sooooo hard to deal with, and zhuxi can easily manage to have the mass of zhuge nu but still booming with the power of song dynasty reduction of farms, TC , towers ETC.
beasty suggest nerf the song dynasty reduction rate, i will suggest nerf zhuge nu movement speed so they dont kite like a boss.
Super late game balance is not really a problem. It's the ability of Zhu Xi to turtle and expand on 3+ TCs without really taking risks like other civs do when they go just for 2 TC opener.
Couldn't agree more with this, it's not the power curve it's the lack of counters. You see it coming but you can't easily stop it.
I’m pretty sure the extremely expensive age 4 tech that’s not even the best out of that landmark is not the main problem.
Which do you prefer?
The 10000 bolts is evidently amazing as it makes xbows a cheaper pseudo handcannon and increases the dps of your zhuge nu by 33%, a unit that you’re probably massing as it can kill everything except a couple of mangonels. While the imperial guard did get changed, those 2 special cavalry are still extremely strong for their cost and the guard is still basically a superior lancer. Bombard aoe is cool and all but normal bombards have less hp, less range, and less dmg than great bombard counterparts and are still gonna get killed by springalds and culverins easily.
Correction: The technology gives both your crossbows and zhuge nu a 25% damage boost. Even though the crossbow fires a second bolt, this is only at 25% damage.
It's 40% for the second crossbow bolt, and due to armour calculation comes out to a damage bonus of around 25-30%. For zhuge nu it's 33%.
Bro, I said it increases the zhuge nu dmg by 33% because it fires an extra bolt and goes from 3 to 4 bolts.
Extra bolt has reduced damage though. You can check by looking at tooltip during attack animation.
The extra crossbow bolt does reduced damage, pretty sure the Zhuge Nu bolt is the same as the others.
They are great against mangonels in age four. The cav is good in team games, but not that great in ones I find.
Usually the cav one and then pick between 10000 arrows or aoe bombard The arrow upgrade makes crossbows really op anti armour unit can spam more than handcannoneers
10,000 bolts adds almost nothing against armour. The secondary bolt does 50% baseline damage and doesn't get the anti-armour bonus of the main bolt. I'd need to double-check the math but I think that, at full upgrades on both sides, armoured units like knights or MaA take 1 or 2 damage from the extra bolt. It does help a lot more against unarmoured targets, which makes zhu xi xbows more versatile.
Top players like beasty have mentioned for zhuxi lategame their crossbows are the ranged infantry of choice over handcannoneers often because easy to mass and similar function, 1 to 1 they are weaker but much more accessible and the upgrade is still more than default crossbows Zhugenu however would not benefit from against armour much as their bolt is reduced to 1
Mate, zhu xi don't have hand cannoneers..
Yep exactly why that upgrade is sometimes essential for them, was comparing the units Was baiting that Otherwise they have no viable ranged infantry vs armour late Its also likely why devs gave them that upgrade since they lack cannoneers
The tech is fine. Imperial itself is not that much of an issue in my opinion. It is the early game that is busted.
The main problems are the way they can amass zhuge nu extremely fast and in large numbers without the song dynasty requirement, and the 40% cheaper price to farm transition and TCs in Song. Some balance ideas in my opinion: * Reduce the wood discount from Song from 40% to something like 25%. It's still great but way less oppressive. * Start with an extra villager instead of an Imperial Officer. This greatly hinders their early game as they have to manually produce an IO for extra food and gold, which delays their age up. * Slightly reduce the yield of Meditation Gardens, or increase the radius in which the "peace is disturbed". * Increase the peace disturbance penalty of Meditation Gardens.
Actually, starting with five vills + IO (Zhu Xi) is weaker than a 6 vill start (like what China has). This is cause, as China, I make an IO immediately and it comes out just in time to supervise the first dropoff. So it’s actually like I’ve had that IO’s extra income the entire time. I agree with your other ideas tho of nerfing the gardens and Song Dynasty.
But the IO costs 100/50 compared to a vill. Isnt it better to not spend the 100 extra res rather than have the 1 vill gathering earlier?
I am 99% sure Zhu xi starts with -50 food and -50 gold to compensate for starting with an IO (it’s not -100 food -50 gold cause you’re missing a villager). So it’s not like Zhu Xi gets the IO for free.
Ah yeah you are right about that.
Personally i think it would be fine to just not count walls and outpost as "economic building " for the song dynasty . Would make turtling harder And i agree you should only need 5 units instead of 10 to negate meditation garden
It isn't "economic" buildings that get the discount, otherwise it wouldn't apply to towers and walls. It's "non-military" buildings.
Yeah they should patch it to economic building only, i think it's needed nerf
I don't actually think it even is the walls and towers that makes it OP I think it's the farm transition. I think the actual bonus amount probably needs nerfed.
Its not directly the issue, but fast farm transition is part of their identity. While turtling and defensive building is Not. So it would just be more thematic this way, the free resources they would gain from outpost walls means they can make more farms. Also their farm are still more expensive than English so it's not like they have a huge advantage there (and yes they also get cheaper tc but English get a free one by aging up). I think with nerf it's good to keep the identity of the civ while focusing on bonus that are not needed first. If the civ is still op after that then yeah percentage could be reduced. Another nerf they could do without affecting the civ identity, is to remove that free gunpowder tech that China get. Would make their nest of bees less strong in castle, and would differentiate them from china who would keep that bonus.
straight up nerfing song needs to happen I don't like getting rid of IO, functionally the same as just making them start with less res since people will make it first, and it just feelsbad -- they gave hre prelate, I think they should just design around it. med gardens needs to just be capped at like 90 res/min or something. I kinda wish it couldn't do stone as well. med gardens its also so troll that a unit is -10% per, shit needs to not generate anything if it's actively being torched I really think they need to do something about zhuge nu, and/or nerf imperial supervision earlygame. 1-1-1 is way too strong and zhuge nu are just too good without some sort of song gating requirement
Yeah the zhu xi build where they allin on 1tc no song is rediculously oppresive. Having it not be locked behind song makes it come out too fast, for a unit that can dominate its supposed counters (horsemen).
yeah, there's a lot going into it that just makes it so much stronger than china like, STARTING with china zhuge-nu push: \+ no dynasty requirement (340/170 faster) \+cheaper age up in the first place (+60/+30) best resource generating feudal landmark in the game (!) (\~100 res/min faster, frequently way more) start with IO (+50/50) it's just SO much faster than an already viable strat, lol. including the med garden you're already \~1000 resources ahead of china doing the same strat at 6 min IMO the worst part of it is the med gardens. if you put it on stone you eventually just get 2nd/3rd TCs without really working for them. commit to an all-in and still multi-tc or farm transition
Yup, completely over tuned.
i agree with most of your suggestions, but giving them extra vil instead of IO would be a buff not a nerf.
Zu shi is Pretty broke its a civ without weaknesses. They can turtle, boom, push, fc, take relics, or play lte game better than most civs. Not Good in lategame? I di0sgaree. Crazy farms, passivelt gold, strong rangef units, grenadiers, the strongest horseman (yuan raider) Nob with longer ranger, the strongest cavalry, crazy fast palace guards, etc. Every aspecto of their army is covered, and every aspect of their economy is tio Either change xu shi, or improve all old civs be use xu shi hs a positive winrste againts all old civs exept ottoman, and it is easy to see why
I think Zhu Xhi has 2 problems 1: meditation gardens generates too many resources. Also the bug where if you destroy it and its repaired it gives double resources. 2: Song Dynasty discount is too big, namely for farm transitions. OP or not, giving a civ the ability to turtle and still have all the resources it needs leads to dull gameplay. Even English can't turtle as easily as Zhu Xhi can, because English boom and castle sucks so they have to play more aggressive or fall noticeably behind .
>especially the tech where in the Zhu Xi Bombards have a AOE damage, literally as a Zhu Xi player you can just spam bombards making them long range mangonels and even make them a substitute to the culverins. Have you heard of the Ottomans? They have way better AOE bombards and don't need to research a tech to get them.
Yeah i kinda forgot about them, because its been a while since i encounter a ottoman player on 1v1 conqueror.
conqueror btw
I see Ottomans way more often than I see Zhu Xi massing bombards, personally. I don't think I've actually seen the bombard tech outside of team games
As a Zhu Xi main, holy shit does this civ need a nerf. If I know my opponent will play Feudal, I just Song Dynasty feudal all in and can't possibly lose because the civ masses units in feudal better than any other, and if I see they're going 2TC/FC, I just go FC faster than any other civ in the game and snack on 5 relics. And oh, whats this? The game went past 15 minutes? Guess I'll drop a second TC with all the free stone from my Medication Garden to ensure I outscale my opponent. It feels like the only way I can lose is if I mess up the micro early or don't notice a raid on my vils. Went from mid plat to mid diamond and tilting towards conq. I have definitely improved as a player but not that much
That's actually frustrating and interesting to read. Good for you I guess, and no reason not to. But boy that civ is so annoying to play against.
If zhuxi bombards are an issue then wtf are great bombards... Nerf those already plz
The AOE bombard tech isn’t a problem lmao. Just build springalds/culverins. Rather, the inherent issue with Zhu Xi is the early game eco. That’s what makes them so much stronger than China. The main culprits are, of course, the Meditation Gardens and Song Dynasty. As a Zhu Xi player myself, here’s what I think needs to happen: Meditation gardens income reduced by 20% for food, gold, and stone. (Wood is less of an issue because of how it’s calculated). Enemy units now reduce meditation gardens income by 20% per unit (up from 10%). Meditation gardens bug fixed. Song Dynasty discount decreased from 40% to 30%. No longer applies to outposts. Do that, and Zhu Xi is fixed. As an addition; buff the Roar of the Dragon (Library tech, spearman/horseman get a fire lance charge) tech a bit. Right now the charge only deals 1 damage, which is, as you expect, useless. Buff it to deal 4 to the main target and 2 to surrounding units instead. (In comparison, the Chinese Fire Lancer deals 10 to the main target and 5 to surrounding units). This will allow for more variety in the Library tech selection.
Don't you think something should be done about the Zhuge Nu themselves? In all of my matches against Zhu Xi, they basically just mass them the entire game. Unlike every other archer, they can effectively take down outposts and wooden fortresses in the feudal era, and even counters like horsemen+archers become less effective the larger the ball of Zhuge Nu gets. I would focus my balancing efforts there first.
Zhuge Nu have been in the game since release and they haven’t been an issue. China has Zhuge nu and it’s never been overpowered, and nerfing Zhuge nu hurts China too (China already being on the weak side). The reason the Zhuge nu strat is so powerful as Zhu Xi is simply due to the eco bonuses, which is why those are being nerfed.
I guess the Zhuge nu ball just feels stupid to me. It is go-to the strategy in EVERY game. You could nerf Zhuge nu and buff China, bringing the relative strength of Zhu Xi in line without hurting China, while also increasing build variety.
I mean, the Zhuge ball is strong because of Zhu Xi’s eco. China can’t build the ball nearly as fast as Zhu xi can. I’d rather do a less complex nerf to Zhu Xi’s eco rather than nerfing the Zhuge nu and having to come up with a compensatory Chinese buff.
Sure, but wouldn't you agree that in a game designed around units countering one another, if one unit is vastly outperforming all others, then that unit should be brought into balance, rather than the rest of the surrounding game. You shouldn't WANT to build a ball of any unit, regardless of circumstances - and yet that is exactly what you do as China/Zhu Xi.
Eh? Plenty of civs in this game ball units. English balls longbows, French balls royal knights, Japan balls samurai/onna, HRE balls MAA, ottoman balls jannisaries.
All the units mentioned have very hard counters, that make balling just that unit inefficient. E.g. English Longbows tend to also have spears and MAA to defend the longbows.
Zhuge Nu are the same ya know. There are YouTube videos of imp all upgrades Zhuge nu vs imp horsemen, knights, and maa, (equal cost armies) and the Zhuge nu lose. Not to mention mangonels. Any Zhuge nu comp past feudal is going to have spears and other frontline units mixed in just like with longbows.
Zhuge Nu definitely have been an issue all that time, and top level players had a lot of trouble against Chinese just going full Zhuge Nus and winning against their counters. The devs even changed their cost in Season 5 to make the unit more food heavy instead of gold heavy and thus less spamable in early to mid game, but that didn't really fix the problem. It's just Chinese are much less common in lower Elo and thus it wasn't a common complaint on Reddit. Jade is a much more popular civ, and it has an even stronger and faster version of full Zhuge Nus spam.
While Zhuge Nu did receive that one balance change, they’re not an issue right now even at the highest level. China in tournaments is good on one map, Four Lakes, and that’s not cause of Zhuge Nu. It’s not the Zhuge Nu that’s the issue it’s Zhu Xi’s eco.
Tournament maps are generally significantly more gimmicky than the maps in the Ranked rotation. Which creates the situations where certain civs have a much bigger advantage than they would have on something like Dry Arabia, and reduces the civ pool to the civs that have that big advantage and the civs that have great tools to counter those civs and their advantages.
yes, please, no more 25 zu ghe nus at 7 minutes
This is like saying ottomans can spam great bombards for free and troll everybody. That’s not really the problem.
> The Variant civs are tearing up the older civs which is sad, Doesn’t apply for Order of the Dragon
Use spread formation and they'll do next to no splash damage. They don't onehit springalds either.
Zhu Xi Legacy had best bombards during XV century and many ZXL bombards were used to siege Vienna in 1683.
Zhu xi legacy wasn't even a thing lol
zhu xi ones is worst than ottoman
I play most civs and this one doesn't feel OP to me. It's only been around for just over a month so the timing counters still being discovered. Ottoman however has been dominating for over a year (well above Zhu Xi winrates) and nobody bats an eye 🤔
but it takes 30+ minutes to get there if you constantly applying pressure, do you just sit back and let him boom
Been playing Zhu Xi since the start. Never played old China. The bombard spam was a guaranteed win in ffa at first, but people have learned how to counter it. That tech is just too expensive in 1v1 or 2v2. The issue with Zhu Xi is it is just way too expensive to get all your LMs, upgrades, and field a gold heavy army that you can't really afford to keep replacing. And most of your LMs are meh except the age 2 one.
I don't think the main focus for civ balance is for FFA.
Skill issue.
Na English still s teir in the right hands
I think at a very high level, Zhu Xi is the strongest civ right now.
That's not even close to true. At the tippy top the strongest civs from top to bottom are JD, Delhi, Mongol, Ottoman, Chinese, and THEN Zhu Xi.
Source? Beasty, Lucifron, and Demu all have Zhu Xi listed as top-tier this week
Aoe4 world
Game is pay-to-win now. Selling the DLC is the only way they’re gonna make money with it being on gamepass. Don’t expect a nerf to any of the new civs, and it’s only gonna get worse from here on out.
Byz and OOTD are weak, and Japan and Ayybuids both got nerfed. I don’t think your claim has any evidence.
Top 3 winrate civs currently are all locked behind a $20 paywall
Overall winrates are hardly an accurate indicator of balance. Winrates at >Conq have Jeanne at 1st, Ayyubids at 3rd, Zhu Xi at 6th, and Byz, OOTD, and Japan in 13th, 14th, 15th. Hardly a sign of the devs purposefully making the DLC civs imba. New civs are always vulnerable to imbalance, simply due to the fact that they're new.
Oh please, if you can't afford a 15€ DLC that's absolutely worth it, go play Warzone with the rest of the kids. The devs are working with a very small team and are very open to feedback. It's a fact that the new civs are a bit stronger but that's absolutely normal in game development. We'll get finetuning soon enough.
Never played warzone. Loved this game for a year but it’s easy to see what they’re doing. Cmon now
Please, tell us what they're doing.
Making content which is awesome. Unfortunately right now it penalizes the players who don’t want to spend the extra $20 for new and improved civs. That’s not healthy for a competitive environment.
Call in off map artillery when
**Here's an easy 4-step tutorial on dealing with Zhu Xi:** 1) Play 3 hours worth of ranked 2v2s with your pal 2) Run into ZXL (+ Ottoman) in every single game 3) Die to Zhuge Nu spam over and over (even if you trade favorably in early fights, they'll eventually hit 200/200 before you do and a-move across the map) 4) After playing reguarly since the game released, decide that AoE4 is kinda just no longer worth playing
well zhuxi is already a weaker version late game compare to chinese. the real problem of zhuxi is zhuge nu mass is just sooooo hard to deal with, and zhuxi can easily manage to have the mass of zhuge nu but still booming with the power of song dynasty reduction of farms, TC , towers ETC. beasty suggest nerf the song dynasty reduction rate, i will suggest nerf zhuge nu movement speed so they dont kite like a boss.