1- very enjoyable to listen to your structured opinions on a civ balance! 2- i know you said they are not op but it just feels sad when you compare them to always low spanish, burmese, turks etc. maybe balance changes should cause more swings in the rankings 3- would love to hear your opinions on weaker civs! Such as “are turks underpowered?”
@@CrnaStrela Turks yes, but not the case with Bengalis, Burmese, etc who are bad in basically every situation, and the best they can do is "somewhat above average" in just a few matchups at some really niche maps
turks being my favorite civ, id love to see them get some buffs. I dont think theyre complete garbage, but theyre definitely towards the bottom due to their limitations
@@CrnaStrela well, when 42 civs are being drafted turks are consistently at bottom 3. I know they are top 3 in arena, top 10 in bf. But thats all. There is still a big room for balance improvement. A one (or two) trick pony civ is not ideal :) All in all, thats just my opinion. it would be fun if bottom 10 civs get entertaining buffs
Completely agree that they're not overpowered. They're just strong, and some civs have to be in the top 5. Love these civ analysis videos and the tech analysis videos! Your content has always been both helpful and entertaining, especially lately. Keep it coming!
Im 1400 ELO and every time i play aganist somebody using the franks I know for years of experience that I'm going to struggle and probably lose. It's true they have weaknesess in Imperial Age, but if the use the Castle age to secure relics and map control with they good economy and cheaper castles, then in Imperial is reeeeaally hard to deal with them. I like your definition of OP, but you yourself say that in civ drafts you have to pick specific civs you know are going to counter them (meaning most of them are in disadvantage, and for me that's OP), also most of the civs you can think to counter them (like in your previous video) actually counter them since Castle Age, not imperial. What do you think?
I just think they're a little too basic, especially compared to what the newer/remodeled civs are going for. With that said tho, i don't know if they should change up a classic civ like that tho, it's a weird situation.
I think flexibility is more important than one unique advantage to be a strong civ in aoe2. There are a lot of options in Frank, and so are China and Britton. I'm afraid that too many civ have given up other things for one advantage (especially dlc civ, and goth/viking.)
I think Xbows are way more OP, else how can someone deny it when certain civs are neglecting all of their bonuses for other types of units and instead, going straight for xbow every single match?
Yea, like vikings , japanese. These "infantry" civs are better off going for xbows cus hehe so fun to abuse the mechanics in the game which make ranged units so responsive and able to kite down enemy units so abusively.
@@Elhugexx Oh yeah, goths are just a generic xbow-knight civ in castle age. The reason is bc infantry is still trash, compared to xbows and knights. And pros like it that way sadly.
@@dirkauditore8413 u can nevwr make infantry balanced imo. By design they are either OP or underpowered. Right now its not bad with infantry being situational, how it shud be
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 "How it should be" is a perception created on players based off how the meta has developed that way in over 20+ years imo, but the devs clearly intended infantry (Militia line) to be used as one of the mainstream units along with Knights and Xbows. It's just that , the devs' execution was poor and they made infantry too underpowered stat-wise. Only recently have they started adressing this with the recent buffs, but it's still not enough. It also doesn't help that the pathing for melee units is garb. And people have just gotten used to it and like it. Which is okay people are alloweed to like whatever they want.
I think I just have a different definition of “overpowered” than you. I view it more as overtuned or poorly balanced. It’s TOO reliable. I view what you say where there is nothing you can do against them as BROKEN. Because that’s essentially what it is. The game does not work because you don’t have counterplay. Obviously that is not the case here. However, the Franks have a few too many strong points and key points in a game. Your early eco advantage combined with a strong castle is extremely rare as most castle boomers are weaker early to compensate. I think Franks’ power curve could be ok if it were harder to execute or was slightly weaker while retaining ease of execution. Maybe weaker early and improve/change their castle unit? If enough changes are made to push games into imperial then they become more balanced. If most games don’t last that long, then they’re strong the whole duration of the game. That sounds poorly balanced to me.
Hera this video actually changed how I think about a lot of match ups. You don't always have to win in castle age. Between this video and the one about recognizing your win conditions I've learned a ton honestly.
ya you guys think they don't need a nerf and then you'll go and queue with them in ranked, do 18 pop 54 hp scouts, 3 stable +2 kts, 3-4 castle drops, and finally kill with Chivalry paladin, halbs/axemen and canons.
@@hareshneeraj998 Actually I think they don’t need a nerf because they are easy to counter and they only have three late game options: Axemen, Paladins, or Champions… all of which are countered with pikes and archers. Their openings are easy to counter too, you just need to scout them.
@@CoffeeAndBusiness But you'll lose map control with that army combo and be vulnerable to get raided by their knight-line. There are only 4-5 civs which can defend against Franks comfortably with pikes-monk-crossbow in castle age and arbs-halbs combo in imp and push to the late game. Rest just fall behind economically by a huge margin because of Franks' strong eco. Hera picks Franks almost all land tournament sets and chokes his opponent. And almost all the time where he couldn't get Franks, Hera himself wasn't able to defend.(Lost against Liereyy in Kotd-3, RBW-4 with civs like Chinese, Lithuanians or against Mbl in RBW-5). So defending against all those knights and castle drops is not that simple.
@@hareshneeraj998 Well I’m not Hera. All I’m saying is, Frank’s are easy to counter and kill with early agro. You can keep map control with camels and cav archers, defend with pikes, castle drop for map control. Japanese or Huns come to mind for early agro. Force your opponent to take the fight on your terms or he loses his base.
Do u mean the faster age time?if so its becz u save resources on bloodlines and horse collar.Its nearly 200 food and 50 gold.i dont know if hera said that simply becz of the same logic i made here or if he checked some website.Either way he is crct becz i think franks have the fastest castle times on avg(i think even SOTL mentioned this in his top 5 civs video)
In scenario editor you can add patches of fake farms as terrain, you can see that villagers path in a strange way, that is because they are farming the real farm and stop on its corners to recolect
I would agree that Franks is a bit strong. From my experience in playing/playing against frank, the only problem is Franks is sooo strong in early game. They have 2 eco bonus and 1 military bonus, it's the only civ in the game having so much bonus in the early game. Franks is flexible and strong in the early game, at my elo(~1400), players often do 19 pop scout or 20 pop m@a, archer or even towers, the pressure is insane. Even if the you play defensively, the Franks player can punish it by a really early castle drop. After the mid-castle, Franks is not scary at all. So I won't call Franks op, but Franks should be tweaked a bit, the dev should move some of the early game strength to mid to late game.
The farm bonuses do not have any effect on the game til castle age. So It's only one early eco bonus. Compare to mayans or gujaras or poles with multiple early bonuses. It's still amazing but nowhere near as good in feudal. Franks strength is they get a relevant bonus in every age not that they're super frontloaded.
@@forsakenquery Yes, but if you get horse collar, you are 150 resources behind Franks, if you don't, Frank would have a strong power spike when hitting castle. In my humble opinion, Franks eco is much better than Mayans or poles in feudal(not Gujaras, they are op). For poles, if you place 8 farms with horse collar, you get 125 food, which is less then 150 resources, and the farms are more vulnerable. And Franks berry bonus actually worth 0.6 vil given you have 4 on berries, so it's not a small bonus.
Ok, I disagree, politely :D, so you say in the video that also players above 2k ELO get 54.5% winrate, does it mean 2k players are not thinking about strategy in advance? :D Is it balanced just like for the first 5 players on the ladder then? They had 55.6% winrate in red bull wololo, 56% last KOTD. I know some players that just repeat: ah Franks are not OP! Then I look at their winrate with Franks and it is higher than with other civs they just repeat what they hear from streamers. Do you know that you have 86% winrate with Franks from the last 280 games @Hera? :D I almost forgot to mention Franks in team games.They are absolutely OP and according to the official site 10% play rate (out of 42civs!!! that is 2,38% per civ proportionally) and 52.7% winrate (2nd highest). It is boring to play TG against Franks all the time.
@@Achilles75 Frank might not be the problem, other civ might be the problem. Most civ are like one-edge sword. They have only one viable option and the other option are inferior. Frank, on the other hand, has a lot of options.
@@__lim494 the options for franks r almost the same as options with other cav civs(slavs/Persians have xbow w/o bracer and arb same as franks Lithuanians have bracer but rest is same so the argument that franks r really flexible i just dont get it.Only 2 civs lack the xbow so most cav civs can go for the xbow option anyway.Plz contradict me if im wrng
@@Achilles75 That needs to be subject to thorough testing but there are many options: 1) Nerf current bonuses, Foragers do not work 15% (10% 5% 0) faster, no cheaper castles, no free farm upgrades (e.g. 25% cheaper instead) 2) Make them more vulnerable to counters - no halb 3) I also think +hp in imp could be 18% instead of 20% absolutely not sure about it though. I would suggest gradual and tiny changes not to change all simultaneously. I would change just 1 thing and look how it settles.
@@Achilles75 I think their civ bonus plays a big role in flexibility. There is not much pressure on them when they make an early xbow rush and switch to cavalry. Their farm upgrade bonus, cav hp bonus saves 350 food, 200 wood, and 100 gold on early Castle age.(include bloodline) So They can switch the cavalry just by building a stable in a early xbow push build. Edit) typo
The biggest problem with franks is the early eco and uptime. It can be hard to be up fast enough to keep scouts out of your base. I you get to mid castle age untouched then you can win against Franks.
I think there cheaper castles are biggest difference maker and underrated bonus. It gives such a nice map control in mid to late game and combine with there good economy and powerspikes, that really makes a lot of difference..
Exactly my thought. They just have such a perfect transition into castle and then can just easily drop a castle wherever and make axeman as well in case they need it
I honestly can't stand devs who balance for the scrubs man. It's one of the things that made me quit LoL and any other game afterwards idgaf if it's 99.99% of players you should always balance with the skill cap of your game in mind and assuming equal skill from both sides. So great from the AoE2 team to not nerf this and other civs that are not a problem in competitive play instead of making 80% of your civs (or champ pool lmao) completely unplayable in high level and stay with a meta of a few viable picks per patch just because some morons have been crying about them for a while now.
Having cheaper castles in addition to free farm upgrade is stupid in imo. Like either give them heavy plough for free and make you pay for the additional farm upgrades and keep the cheaper castles or take the cheaper castles bonus away. That’s two eco bonuses in addition to having the highest HP paladins in the game and faster stables. I mean much does the game want to stack the deck in favor of this civilization? Lol so much stone and wood saved and you can put those extra villagers on gold for crazy knight production. Oh not well broken OP but still overpowered. That being said probably should leave them where they are since that’s what makes them the Franks.
Very good video Hera! You have now convinced me that they aren't overpowered. But they are one of the most stress-inducing civs to play against (atleast untilearly imp ).
For most of us I don't think its a lack of knowledge on how to play against franks. Its a lack of knowledge about how to play against knights in general.
Dont forget the poles and their "no real counter if I get to castle age" composition. Obuch+skirm is as good as a double or triple gold unit combo from other civs.
Excellent video! So can we say Franks hard die to Mongols, for example? Hunting bonus allows them to keep up with Frank eco bonus until mangubois come out and franks have no answer to them.
Not really.Mongols CAN really beat franks into the grnd but then again most cav archers can do that.Issue is getting to cav archers easily.Really expensive and takes longer to get a mass of them compared to xbow.and most of the cav archer civs dont have as strong as an eco bonus as archer civs.But all this i said is when the strength of franks is starting to ebb.Their last power spike is their cavalier in imp(practical power spike).Paladin is not really practical in most cases.as for the "hunting eco to survive the frank eco bonus until mangudai survive part".Mongols most of the time do a 18 pop scout rush with their earlier up time franks can easily do a 19 pop uptime.So not a big difference.And once feudal age is in Frank scouts have 54 hp and mongols have just 45 plus all ur farms r horse collar farms.U Wont have to reseed them till mid castle age by which point ull already have heavy plow.Mongol bonuses kind of end in early feudal(scouting bonus is still there tho most ppl will lose their scout by then and the extra 2 LOS isnt as huge becz scouts have really high LOS by that point).And getting to mangudai requires a castle which requires mining stone for quite a while sacrificing ur eco.By which point franks if played well can really cause a dent in u.So yeahhh i would nt say they hard counter franks.But something like indians or the current hindustanis on the other hand REALLY can hard counter franks.Their eco bonus lasts throughout the game.Camels r even stronger with 20% faster attk rate and imp camel cost also reduced plus now they have plate barding as well.Plus extremely flexible overall with counters to almost any army composition becz of the addition of ghulam as well
The thing is, if you try to stall the game till imp it's likely that the franks are going to get damage on you with their knights/ castles and insane eco. plus, they can play into the imp game and get a better imp timing again due to their great eco that or they simply take all the map with castles and make imp very hard for you to play.
After playing a few games agaisnt franks recently (after watching youre vid) I absolutly think that franks are overpowered. Usually you cant push back in imp becasue the hole map is filled with castles, so you cant raid. The frank army is, expacially in early imp, very strong with the extra hp cav and fully upgraded infantery. In combination with the insane eco the civ is op. It is as OP as Hindustani, becasue they have strong options against everything and a massive eco behind it. And becasue they are played so often, the argument that people just dont know how to paly agaisnt them isnt valid. We play more against franks than any other civ. They have a insane win-rate and that is because they are kinda op
I'd also argue that any gold civ are very strong if they have full access to gold but without it they are not a threat... Frank's without any gold will struggle so if it goes late game they will find it harder and harder to clear trash units
You are absolutely right that op means "there's NOTHING I could have done". I have never lost to Franks and felt that whereas these days I lose as Slavs or Bulgarians to Gurjaras and I feel like I never had a chance to do anything anyway. I feel my only chance is that they have fwd berries & I can kill their mill with MAA towers, but any smart player can defend that.
I think the Franks bonuses turn them into a consistency machine, while you can always have windows of opportunity against any civ to do damage and exploit a army comp or a map situation, Franks being no different, especially compared to civs like the Gurjaras and Hindustanis, I do feel like their ability to use their general game plan of knights siege castles eco as successfully as they do is a bit of a problem. Heavy consistency, like civs like Chinese, Mayans, Britons, and Franks have, while not making them overpowered, ends up relegating other civs that should be similarly strong into being more niche or secondary picks in true competitive settings, such as Ethiopians and Vietnamese as archer based civ choices, which is something of a balance issue in my mind
Franks are not OP its just that they're so easy to use. Intuitive does not equal overpowered. People are mastering and using the Frank bonuses without even realizing it.
Franks have come a long way. In classic AoC they were considered one of the weaker civs for 1v1 Arabia (but better in team games, especially as pocket).
The summary is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance. Basically saying despite the plethora of data saying otherwise, due to my own personal definition that I just kinda came up with, the data doesn't matter. "Franks aren't overpowered, they're just extremely hard to play against.".... I mean...lmfao... talk about some contorted logic to support an argument. Let's think about that. At even 2k elo and up, Franks have a 54.5% win rate. An elo of 2000 means you're in the 99.2 percentile of all players. And Franks are still extremely hard to play against? So then for the majority of players we should just basically light a candle and hope for the best. Vikings' very slightly tuned infantry AND arbs? Too powerful. Nerf hammer. Koreans with (Elite) War Wagons costing ONLY 115w? Crazy! Nerf it. Celt militia moving fast in Dark age? Umm? Nerf please! Tatars gaining sheep in feudal? Nerf that shit. Burmese with leather archer armor? The horror. Absolutely OP. Bengalis with elephant units 33% more resistant to counter units or conversions. Unthinkable. 25% only. And nothing else. Except for other stuff that's unworkable. Franks with dark age berry bonus + free horse collar + free heavy plow + free bloodlines equivalent + discounted castles? Chef's kiss. Muah. Perfection. Nothing to see here folks. Back to the ladder.
Franks have been a shit civ for a long time. Back then people were complaining to buff them. And they're certainly not without counter play. Knight civs by the end of the day are knight civs in an archer's game.
@@majungasaurusaaaa This is a total troll comment. Why are you willfully ignoring the data, which is plain - Franks are well over 50% winrate at all elos and 54.5% even above 2k Elo. Oh, and most pros rank them S-tier. But you, you know better...shit civ right? gtfo
this, while franks option in late game are quite limited, theyre VERY GOOD at finishing the game before the enemy reach the later stage of the game with eco advantage over the frank player. 2 eco bonus at early game, a cheap defensive option(castles are very hard to take down in castle age when you're toe to toe with the enemy). 55% win rate, one of the most picked civs since the dawn of time, "yeap not overpowered", what a kiss ass, so typical of the RTS community, thats why RTSes are dying out because the community are filled with rose eyed boomers that refuse to change for the better
Hera, in the current game, only xbow and Knight, Spearman and Skirmisher, light cavali, and finally onager are used. If you had to make infantry or Elephant useful in the game, how would you change them?
I think by design infantry and wlephant will never be the main unit and i think its fine that way. Both those units have their uses and are situational
Heyo, I noticed you didn't mention the Scorpion as a potential counter to the halb-arb combo. I'm just a crappy 11xx player, so I could be wrong, so please point out any flaws in my logic. No blacksmith upgrades needed, Franks have siege engineers, and the upgrade to Heavy Scorpion is arguably cheaper than the Onager upgrade. High range, high pierce armour, decent against arb, good against halb. SE and Heavy Scorp both cost 0 gold, so it takes literally zero gold investment to get to full powered scorps - just some wood and food investment that your civ is already swimming in. Combine that with your video a few months back saying that Paladin is rarely worth the investment (though perhaps Franks are an exception?), and you can repurpose the upgrade cost of paladin into easily covering the heavy scorpion upgades. Repurpose maybe 20% of your cav unity investment into scorps, and you'll get 15-25 of them out. It seems to me that Cavalier-Heavy Scorpion would be a better combo than Paladin-TA/HC, since you're looking at double gold units anyway?
Franks, easy yes. Maybe 2nd to the Magyars. Maybe I'm just low ELO trash, but Cav in general tend to be the game-winning go-to units. Easy to understand why. My only gripe is that it makes games very same-y. With majority of the strategies being circled around defending scout, knight rushes. EDIT: Would be cool to see AoE centered around more variety of units (even for rushing), and variety of strategies. As of now, isn't it mainly about the SPEED of the player? It's about MICRO and SPEED, as opposed to Unit composition and Strategy :\
If Franks weren't overly strong they wouldn't have such a high win rate. Pike Crossbow still dies to mass knight. Or you give up map control and get one of those free castles on your gold. Plus three siege workshops they get from wood saving with wheelbarrow that pump Skorpions. What do you do with Halb Arb against Knights tearing down your TCs backed up by 5 Skorpions sitting under a castle that got plopped on your gold and production buildings?
Any other civ with a win rate over 53% got nerfed into the dirt after a patch or two. Only Franks stand unimpeded at 56!!!!% winrate at mid Elo since fricking age of Conquerors.
I think you didn't mention that CA absolutely shit on Franks late game, at least paladin + hand cannon can do SOMETHING vs arbs + halbs, like yeah gold intensive but you can go for a big gold all in and try to kill your opponent (and if it fails you run out of gold and lose). Against CA you can't even go double gold comp and kill the damn CA!
For a Civs weakness to be in Imperial when they have the strongest Paladins in the game. It's not THAT big a weakness. I think it's important to note that they have a very high win rate and a very high playrate. Their high playrate makes that 55% more significant. If it was up to me I would nerd them slightly. Probably I would tweak down their cavalry HP bonus to something like +17%. Honestly though at least half my problem is their consistent status as the best pocket in TG's. I think having so clear a best cavalry civ is very dull and bad for ballance.
@@peterzeger7263 Their Knights would be 3hp worse (but without paying for bloodlines), Cavalier about equal and Paladin would have 11 more hp. It also slightly weakens their scout rush. But I quite like the idea of Franks not always having the absolute best Knights, whilst still intending to keep their identity as having the best Paladins. I'm probably more outspoken than most about some of the original civ designs being poorly balanced. I think Britons and Franks would have a community outcry if they were introduced now as opposed to being OG civs.
@@donhooplah I just think its bad to give them a civ bonus which makes their knights worse then with Bloodlines. Free Bloodlines as Upgrade would make their Scouts/LightCav to strong so I think its hard to tweak this. Also the Frank Paladin is not the strongest Teuton Paladin is stronger (but slower) and Lithuanian Paladin with 4 Relics I actually don't know who comes out on top. Franks berry forage bonus was already nerved some time ago and their castle unique techs were switched in order to stop their late castle age dominance. I think they are alright where they are. Maybe you could put their castle discount to 550 instead of 488. But if you touch their eco or their Knightline you hit them to hard. Its like taking Britons their range bonus or nerving Mangudai (f.e. siege bonus), what do those civs effectively do then? And when does every civ start to feel like the next one?
@@peterzeger7263 Mmm the most sensible thing is probably to remove one of their eco bonuses and replace it with something else. I still am quite fond of toning down their Knights though. Perhaps Knight Line +20Hp in Castle, +30 in Imperial would work. Its a different conversation but I would 100% nerf the Britons range in some way. I think its terrible game design. Mangudai I have less of a problem with because they're harder to get to.
@@donhooplah actually they dont have the best knights :D.Its Lithuanians that r the best tho u have to go out of ur way to get relics for that or Bulgarian stirrup knights tho in that case u need to go for a castle for that
if the reason that franks are not op is that they get exploited by halb+arb, then they remain overpowered against the civs that do not get halb+arb, which includes many. maybe not quite as many if we define halb+arb a bit more general. id guess that decent CA, hand canoneers, most ranged UUs and maybe elephant archers or even scorpions could replace arbs in the lategame. however, many of these replacements are a lot more expensive/hard to get to than arbs. so, how many civs can rely on their lategame to counter franks?
In late, every civ beats Franks in theory because Franks has no Archer unit. Cav Archer civs (Mongols, Magyars, Huns, Tatars, Turks, Saracens, Japanese etc.) beats because Franks's Skirmisher is useless. Stronger melee damage civs beats such as Teutons, Bulgarians, Slavs, Dravidians etc.. Only Aztecs comes to mind as bad as Franks in late game. However, even Aztecs has insane Skirmisher, Halberdier level pikeman and 33% relic bonus.
@@Asterix958 i would add as bad: celts and slavs have very lackluster range options besides scorpions mali could make gbeto or hand cannon but also lack halberdier. turks have many good ranged options but lack even pikes and rely on generic camels.
@@derikaem8021 Slavs mass Halberdier+Onager kill any late game composition of Franks, plus Slavs has 10% farm bonus and FU Hussar. Franks has no chance against Slavs in late game. Turks mass cav archer also destroy every unit of Franks. It is all about achieving 30+ Cav Archers in late game. Turks doesn't even need Camels, generic Camel also beat Frankish Paladi 1v1 with -15% cheaper cost and upgrade. Franks has best chance against Malians, Malians is still strong tools like better archery range, better stable (Franks has Paladin but Malians has better Light Cav + Camel in return), 30% gold bonus. However, Franks with Throwing Axeman + Halberdier and 25% cheaper castle can beat Malians in late game.
I've gotten wrecked by them many times, but i don't think they're overpowered. Unless every civ is the same, there will be variation in win rate and 5% above dead average is not bad for a top tier civ. If they were close to 60% i would start to get worried
The worst thing fighting against franks at lower elos is that they refuse to fight you with buildings just abuse there cheap castles and move into your base slowly.
Hmm, ok, they are not overpower, but they still are the top 5 civs in all de scenarios and besides the weakness (that all civs have anyway), they still win a lot, dont you think that a litle neft will make a more balance game?
Yes it is but usually only on closed maps. On open maps it's hard to find the time to research all of that before arbs and trees come a knocking. But I disagree with hera. Skirm and cav can be great at countering arb halb if you play your midgame right. Even frank skirms. But you can't just sit around mid game passively. And try for castle drop the center and faster up to imp to treb his castles so he can't get trebs. Halb arb is only dangerous of they can get trebs along for the slow push. Other wise castles hold that while cav can raid them in the back
To me they just fit so well to my gameplay style, they got good cav, good archer,good arty just loads of options, when i go other civs i feel lacking in some area or another. But with franks i feel they are solid overall
Why do you mean good archer? Sure you can have a good timing in early feudal with franks, but their ranges are generic... until castle age since they are missing thumb ring.
@@da_ghoul9432 Franks player generally finishes games in Feudal / Castle Age. If game lie over Imperial Age, Franks are death, Franks has no unit Imperial Age (worst Archery Range in the game, generic Barrack, 72 hp Light Cav which is worse than Generic Light Cav).
The franc since the first age of empires of the kings has always been the most homoxesual civ; they kill you with pure spam of knights and if you get a pikeman they put 10 castles with ax throwers
@@Dricatronic >Crams 50 archers in one tile >Melee units cannot engage and you HAVE to resort to range of your own or siege >Can perfectly frame perfect endlessly micro archers, whereas cavalry archers have to go throught a frame delay Yeah no, fuck that noise, archers are OP and should get nerfed. 30 endlessly microing crossbows are way scarier than 20 knights.
@@martinmarzano1523 Agreed man, xbows are such a fucking pain to deal with. They shouldnt be able to kite down enemy units the way they do. How many times have we seen xbows beating knights??
Their civ bonuses are so strong. Overall the free tech bonuses are one step above the others. So the civs that have not these kind of bonuses are slightly in disadvantage imo. Furthermore the free tech for Franks has to do with FOOD the most important resource in the game. I mean, objectively, is not in the same level to have free lumber techs than free mill techs. The impact is not the same. But I still think there is always something you can do to beat Franks, as well as any other civ, whatever civ you are playing. Thats the beauty of this game and thats why so many people still plays it. Congrats for another nice video!
I would prefer to see the screen with faction tech tree rather than in game footage with buldings and units. Its less clear what are you Talking about and harder to spot pros and cons
The one thing I'd point out is top tier or good civs usually have big eco bonuses tied to them. That might be a problem to balance as a whole in the game, but definitely it's not an issue about franks or any other civ specifically. The one civ I think is broken but I wouldn't bet on it is brits because the extra range breaks every fundamentals rule in the game and makes counter units a bit irrelevant. Still I wouldn't advocate for heavy nerfs like getting rid of their extra range or anything crazy like that.
I hate it while frank being overpowered, almost no one complains. when gujara and Hindustani counter knight meta so well, everyone complains…ok I do think Hindustani need a nerf to ghulam and gujara needs nerf to sheep bonus but no more than that.
@@jonathanbrowning4 idk, but while some graphics and civ added are goods, i still prefer many of the old graphics, and i find their is way to much civ now
Yeah really am not a frank fan boi and i dont really like Franks or pick them either(so i dont think im biased).I do face up against a lot of franks tho and they r pretty strong but honestly i think they r pretty well balanced.Some good bonuses,clear strengths weaknesses.Really dont need a nerf ppl just need to learn how to play against them.I was REALLY glad when hera said the same thing.Hera just posted a recent video abt top 5 civs to couner franks rgt?i agree with that video except with the ranking.I would put hindustanis as #1 tho and mongols probably as #5 or an honourable mention becz while the Mongols have really good options to counter the frank army composition its difficult to get there and they only have a dark age eco bonus (except on maps where there is a lot of hunt scattered throughout the map then it can become a feudal and castle age eco bonus).I feel many civs can do the camel or cav archers play better than mongols eg tatars.But the mongol opening like hera said is really strong but its more of a timing thing ur eco is slightly weaker since u go up so fast and ur feudal age army isnt anything special.I m huge Mongol fan boi(mongols r my fav civ)but i would prob prefer franks to mongols for winning purposes.Ans in the late game yes the mangudai or cav archers die to zero units that the franks possess except full paladins which isnt really viable for long but then again its almost the same case with arbalest.Franks jyst dont have a good lategame.It doesnt matter if ur mongols or not,all ranged unit civs will kill franks in the lategame
Franks are not op, just that the popular maps gravitate towards their strengths. Franks are linear to the point of boring, Huns feels more lively. I suggest changing the map pool to stuff like gold rush, runestones, etc. When it comes to nerf, remove free Horse Collar, let Heavy Plow and Crop Rotation be free once it is researched.
Franks being the first to implement knighthood doesn't seem too overpowered. I wonder besides their knights, what other units belonging to the cavalry might be unique ?
Excellent video! I love that you cover Franks in such detail, as it is the one civ I struggle to play against almost everytime in early game. In my opinion, cheaper castles is such a underrated thing for low elo players. I'm a low elo btw
They are not OP, but they are a bit too strong. I see 2 options how to fix them - some of early game bonuses has to go or be nerfed ( for example farm upgrades has 50% discount instead of free ) - make them even weeker in late-castle / imperial
You didn't mention the Knight + scorpons Frank push, which is seen at the ending of the video. I always shit my pants when I'm playing crossbow + pikeman and I see that comp. Not sure how to counter it.
One of the great problems with fast patching is there is no incentive for people to figure out the next level Meta or counters. Hun wars were broken through on voobly without a patch I believe ?
I am curious how Franks do in random games vs pick games. I often see them picked but never used because in tournaments it depends on the match up. It has only become worse with all the India civs having access to camels. I am surprised by the high win rate after seeing your video on why paladins are risky.
I can easily counter those who only train knights as franks, but I cannot even hold my own against knight-throwing axemen combo :( Hera, or random people in comments , can you give me a suggestion? How can I stop knight-axemen army, it feels like impossible to beat for me (800 ELO) ? If I go for halbs, axemen got those, if I go camels, they still got killed by 20-40 axemen behind the knights.
Simple. Go for archer civs. Practice the 2 Range Feudal opening... And you're good to go! Defend your home with archers and push out when you advance to the castle Age. Attack the French players eco during the advancing time, specially their gold and stone depot. Now there are 2 paths: 1) if you sense your enemy is going full Castle age boom as Franks, you should boom too and make a lot of Xbows continuously and in Imperial Age, turn them to Arbs. And don't battle the Franks cavalry in open field, always find such places which block the Paladins from surrounding the archers... So that they can hit 4-5 archers in a group of 40. 2) Castle age aggressions: Use your Xbows and Pikes. Xbows are a great counter to the Axeman. Concentrate on making crossbows and pikes till 140 pop and then advance to Imperial... You'll need a big castle age army to hold off Imperial French troops.
If you don’t want much micro, and I assume you want to fight in late game, you can always pick. 1. Saracen and mass Mamelukes, this unit destroy both paladins and throwing axe men by simple A move. 2. Burgandian and mass constillier, these guys have charge attacks and can wipe out paladins. Very quickly. You can pair them with your hand cannoneer or halb. 3. Lithuanian and mass Letis. This unit is melee specialists, they will wipe out paladins quickly as well, leaving axemen vulnerable. 4.Khmer with mass battle elephants and scorpion or arbalest to support. The frank has no answer to this comp. 5.Teutons and mass either their own superior paladins or Teutonic Knights. Paladins and axemen can’t handle Teutonic Knights.
that really weakens them hard though because they dont get bloodlines. The higher HP knights are all they've got. Other civs have effectively superior paladins based on the circumstances like teutons, but its all about the combination of eco bonuses, castles and knight hp. Pull any brick from that tower and it collapses hard. No Hussar, no bloodlines. Their cav is a literal one trick pony, its just a very good trick.
Love making videos like these! Hope you enjoy and feel free to give your feedback/opinions in the comments I love to read them
Love ur vids my g
I love the franks series, you should do same with Koreans because they are still underpowered
1- very enjoyable to listen to your structured opinions on a civ balance!
2- i know you said they are not op but it just feels sad when you compare them to always low spanish, burmese, turks etc. maybe balance changes should cause more swings in the rankings
3- would love to hear your opinions on weaker civs! Such as “are turks underpowered?”
Well stats wise Turks do ended up consistently on top 5 among all elo level in closed map, so I guess they are okay.
@@CrnaStrela Turks yes, but not the case with Bengalis, Burmese, etc who are bad in basically every situation, and the best they can do is "somewhat above average" in just a few matchups at some really niche maps
turks being my favorite civ, id love to see them get some buffs. I dont think theyre complete garbage, but theyre definitely towards the bottom due to their limitations
@@CrnaStrela well, when 42 civs are being drafted turks are consistently at bottom 3. I know they are top 3 in arena, top 10 in bf. But thats all. There is still a big room for balance improvement. A one (or two) trick pony civ is not ideal :)
All in all, thats just my opinion. it would be fun if bottom 10 civs get entertaining buffs
@@CrnaStrelal
I defeated for first time franks in arena...
as bengalies
how satisfying
and how rare 😂
Completely agree that they're not overpowered. They're just strong, and some civs have to be in the top 5.
Love these civ analysis videos and the tech analysis videos! Your content has always been both helpful and entertaining, especially lately. Keep it coming!
Thank you so much bro ur a legend
Im 1400 ELO and every time i play aganist somebody using the franks I know for years of experience that I'm going to struggle and probably lose. It's true they have weaknesess in Imperial Age, but if the use the Castle age to secure relics and map control with they good economy and cheaper castles, then in Imperial is reeeeaally hard to deal with them.
I like your definition of OP, but you yourself say that in civ drafts you have to pick specific civs you know are going to counter them (meaning most of them are in disadvantage, and for me that's OP), also most of the civs you can think to counter them (like in your previous video) actually counter them since Castle Age, not imperial. What do you think?
I just think they're a little too basic, especially compared to what the newer/remodeled civs are going for.
With that said tho, i don't know if they should change up a classic civ like that tho, it's a weird situation.
I think flexibility is more important than one unique advantage to be a strong civ in aoe2. There are a lot of options in Frank, and so are China and Britton.
I'm afraid that too many civ have given up other things for one advantage (especially dlc civ, and goth/viking.)
@@__lim494 dlc civs are more diverse than og civs, except china.
Keeping the classic civs classic is a big plus imo, would tweak numbers if needed but keep core the same
I think Xbows are way more OP, else how can someone deny it when certain civs are neglecting all of their bonuses for other types of units and instead, going straight for xbow every single match?
Yea, like vikings , japanese. These "infantry" civs are better off going for xbows cus hehe so fun to abuse the mechanics in the game which make ranged units so responsive and able to kite down enemy units so abusively.
@@dirkauditore8413 also goths, don't forget goths. I've seen pros so many times going for xbows and knights and not a single infantry unit.
@@Elhugexx Oh yeah, goths are just a generic xbow-knight civ in castle age. The reason is bc infantry is still trash, compared to xbows and knights. And pros like it that way sadly.
@@dirkauditore8413 u can nevwr make infantry balanced imo. By design they are either OP or underpowered. Right now its not bad with infantry being situational, how it shud be
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 "How it should be" is a perception created on players based off how the meta has developed that way in over 20+ years imo, but the devs clearly intended infantry (Militia line) to be used as one of the mainstream units along with Knights and Xbows. It's just that , the devs' execution was poor and they made infantry too underpowered stat-wise. Only recently have they started adressing this with the recent buffs, but it's still not enough. It also doesn't help that the pathing for melee units is garb. And people have just gotten used to it and like it. Which is okay people are alloweed to like whatever they want.
I think I just have a different definition of “overpowered” than you. I view it more as overtuned or poorly balanced. It’s TOO reliable. I view what you say where there is nothing you can do against them as BROKEN. Because that’s essentially what it is. The game does not work because you don’t have counterplay. Obviously that is not the case here. However, the Franks have a few too many strong points and key points in a game. Your early eco advantage combined with a strong castle is extremely rare as most castle boomers are weaker early to compensate. I think Franks’ power curve could be ok if it were harder to execute or was slightly weaker while retaining ease of execution. Maybe weaker early and improve/change their castle unit?
If enough changes are made to push games into imperial then they become more balanced. If most games don’t last that long, then they’re strong the whole duration of the game. That sounds poorly balanced to me.
Hera this video actually changed how I think about a lot of match ups. You don't always have to win in castle age. Between this video and the one about recognizing your win conditions I've learned a ton honestly.
Don't nerf franks, they're okey, just easy to use because farm upgrades
I don’t think they need a nerf either
ya you guys think they don't need a nerf and then you'll go and queue with them in ranked, do 18 pop 54 hp scouts, 3 stable +2 kts, 3-4 castle drops, and finally kill with Chivalry paladin, halbs/axemen and canons.
@@hareshneeraj998 Actually I think they don’t need a nerf because they are easy to counter and they only have three late game options: Axemen, Paladins, or Champions… all of which are countered with pikes and archers.
Their openings are easy to counter too, you just need to scout them.
@@CoffeeAndBusiness But you'll lose map control with that army combo and be vulnerable to get raided by their knight-line. There are only 4-5 civs which can defend against Franks comfortably with pikes-monk-crossbow in castle age and arbs-halbs combo in imp and push to the late game. Rest just fall behind economically by a huge margin because of Franks' strong eco. Hera picks Franks almost all land tournament sets and chokes his opponent. And almost all the time where he couldn't get Franks, Hera himself wasn't able to defend.(Lost against Liereyy in Kotd-3, RBW-4 with civs like Chinese, Lithuanians or against Mbl in RBW-5). So defending against all those knights and castle drops is not that simple.
@@hareshneeraj998 Well I’m not Hera. All I’m saying is, Frank’s are easy to counter and kill with early agro.
You can keep map control with camels and cav archers, defend with pikes, castle drop for map control. Japanese or Huns come to mind for early agro. Force your opponent to take the fight on your terms or he loses his base.
I loved the video Hera!! hope to see more videos like this about other civs. Keep up the amazing content you're bringing us lately
wait wait man, how is 5:22 even possible?
I came to the comments just to say that too!!
Do u mean the faster age time?if so its becz u save resources on bloodlines and horse collar.Its nearly 200 food and 50 gold.i dont know if hera said that simply becz of the same logic i made here or if he checked some website.Either way he is crct becz i think franks have the fastest castle times on avg(i think even SOTL mentioned this in his top 5 civs video)
In scenario editor you can add patches of fake farms as terrain, you can see that villagers path in a strange way, that is because they are farming the real farm and stop on its corners to recolect
@@shaggyblanco9898 makes sense actually
Go to terrain options in editor and use farmlands.
I would agree that Franks is a bit strong. From my experience in playing/playing against frank, the only problem is Franks is sooo strong in early game.
They have 2 eco bonus and 1 military bonus, it's the only civ in the game having so much bonus in the early game. Franks is flexible and strong in the early game, at my elo(~1400), players often do 19 pop scout or 20 pop m@a, archer or even towers, the pressure is insane. Even if the you play defensively, the Franks player can punish it by a really early castle drop. After the mid-castle, Franks is not scary at all.
So I won't call Franks op, but Franks should be tweaked a bit, the dev should move some of the early game strength to mid to late game.
The farm bonuses do not have any effect on the game til castle age. So It's only one early eco bonus. Compare to mayans or gujaras or poles with multiple early bonuses. It's still amazing but nowhere near as good in feudal. Franks strength is they get a relevant bonus in every age not that they're super frontloaded.
@@forsakenquery Yes, but if you get horse collar, you are 150 resources behind Franks, if you don't, Frank would have a strong power spike when hitting castle. In my humble opinion, Franks eco is much better than Mayans or poles in feudal(not Gujaras, they are op). For poles, if you place 8 farms with horse collar, you get 125 food, which is less then 150 resources, and the farms are more vulnerable. And Franks berry bonus actually worth 0.6 vil given you have 4 on berries, so it's not a small bonus.
I like how every civ is unique. Yes, franks are so good in early but it is their unique playstylz
Ok, I disagree, politely :D, so you say in the video that also players above 2k ELO get 54.5% winrate, does it mean 2k players are not thinking about strategy in advance? :D Is it balanced just like for the first 5 players on the ladder then? They had 55.6% winrate in red bull wololo, 56% last KOTD. I know some players that just repeat: ah Franks are not OP! Then I look at their winrate with Franks and it is higher than with other civs they just repeat what they hear from streamers. Do you know that you have 86% winrate with Franks from the last 280 games @Hera? :D I almost forgot to mention Franks in team games.They are absolutely OP and according to the official site 10% play rate (out of 42civs!!! that is 2,38% per civ proportionally) and 52.7% winrate (2nd highest). It is boring to play TG against Franks all the time.
And another thing what do u suggest as a nerf to franks?maybe 20% more hp for cavalry starting in castle age or something.Or is it too much of a nerf?
@@Achilles75 Frank might not be the problem, other civ might be the problem. Most civ are like one-edge sword. They have only one viable option and the other option are inferior. Frank, on the other hand, has a lot of options.
@@__lim494 the options for franks r almost the same as options with other cav civs(slavs/Persians have xbow w/o bracer and arb same as franks Lithuanians have bracer but rest is same so the argument that franks r really flexible i just dont get it.Only 2 civs lack the xbow so most cav civs can go for the xbow option anyway.Plz contradict me if im wrng
@@Achilles75 That needs to be subject to thorough testing but there are many options: 1) Nerf current bonuses, Foragers do not work 15% (10% 5% 0) faster, no cheaper castles, no free farm upgrades (e.g. 25% cheaper instead) 2) Make them more vulnerable to counters - no halb 3) I also think +hp in imp could be 18% instead of 20% absolutely not sure about it though. I would suggest gradual and tiny changes not to change all simultaneously. I would change just 1 thing and look how it settles.
@@Achilles75 I think their civ bonus plays a big role in flexibility. There is not much pressure on them when they make an early xbow rush and switch to cavalry. Their farm upgrade bonus, cav hp bonus saves 350 food, 200 wood, and 100 gold on early Castle age.(include bloodline) So They can switch the cavalry just by building a stable in a early xbow push build.
Edit) typo
The only thing in AOE being OP is memb's casting. Kappa, loberboys!
The biggest problem with franks is the early eco and uptime. It can be hard to be up fast enough to keep scouts out of your base. I you get to mid castle age untouched then you can win against Franks.
I think there cheaper castles are biggest difference maker and underrated bonus. It gives such a nice map control in mid to late game and combine with there good economy and powerspikes, that really makes a lot of difference..
Exactly my thought. They just have such a perfect transition into castle and then can just easily drop a castle wherever and make axeman as well in case they need it
I honestly can't stand devs who balance for the scrubs man. It's one of the things that made me quit LoL and any other game afterwards idgaf if it's 99.99% of players you should always balance with the skill cap of your game in mind and assuming equal skill from both sides. So great from the AoE2 team to not nerf this and other civs that are not a problem in competitive play instead of making 80% of your civs (or champ pool lmao) completely unplayable in high level and stay with a meta of a few viable picks per patch just because some morons have been crying about them for a while now.
Having cheaper castles in addition to free farm upgrade is stupid in imo. Like either give them heavy plough for free and make you pay for the additional farm upgrades and keep the cheaper castles or take the cheaper castles bonus away. That’s two eco bonuses in addition to having the highest HP paladins in the game and faster stables. I mean much does the game want to stack the deck in favor of this civilization? Lol so much stone and wood saved and you can put those extra villagers on gold for crazy knight production. Oh not well broken OP but still overpowered. That being said probably should leave them where they are since that’s what makes them the Franks.
Very good video Hera! You have now convinced me that they aren't overpowered. But they are one of the most stress-inducing civs to play against (atleast untilearly imp ).
For most of us I don't think its a lack of knowledge on how to play against franks. Its a lack of knowledge about how to play against knights in general.
Great video, learned a lot about the Franks 👍
After the inexcusable mess that are burgundians with that stupid UT and now hindustanis and gurjaras I don't even mind Franks
Dont forget the poles and their "no real counter if I get to castle age" composition. Obuch+skirm is as good as a double or triple gold unit combo from other civs.
Excellent video! So can we say Franks hard die to Mongols, for example? Hunting bonus allows them to keep up with Frank eco bonus until mangubois come out and franks have no answer to them.
Not really.Mongols CAN really beat franks into the grnd but then again most cav archers can do that.Issue is getting to cav archers easily.Really expensive and takes longer to get a mass of them compared to xbow.and most of the cav archer civs dont have as strong as an eco bonus as archer civs.But all this i said is when the strength of franks is starting to ebb.Their last power spike is their cavalier in imp(practical power spike).Paladin is not really practical in most cases.as for the "hunting eco to survive the frank eco bonus until mangudai survive part".Mongols most of the time do a 18 pop scout rush with their earlier up time franks can easily do a 19 pop uptime.So not a big difference.And once feudal age is in Frank scouts have 54 hp and mongols have just 45 plus all ur farms r horse collar farms.U Wont have to reseed them till mid castle age by which point ull already have heavy plow.Mongol bonuses kind of end in early feudal(scouting bonus is still there tho most ppl will lose their scout by then and the extra 2 LOS isnt as huge becz scouts have really high LOS by that point).And getting to mangudai requires a castle which requires mining stone for quite a while sacrificing ur eco.By which point franks if played well can really cause a dent in u.So yeahhh i would nt say they hard counter franks.But something like indians or the current hindustanis on the other hand REALLY can hard counter franks.Their eco bonus lasts throughout the game.Camels r even stronger with 20% faster attk rate and imp camel cost also reduced plus now they have plate barding as well.Plus extremely flexible overall with counters to almost any army composition becz of the addition of ghulam as well
I would phrase it like ‘they have the best gameplan vs mongols’ but franks can still win for sure
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 u mean "they have the best game plan vs franks" rgt?i think u made a typo 🙂
Some civs have too much bastards to be a very good civ (franks) and some less (burmese) and some less less (bengalis)
The thing is, if you try to stall the game till imp it's likely that the franks are going to get damage on you with their knights/ castles and insane eco. plus, they can play into the imp game and get a better imp timing again due to their great eco that or they simply take all the map with castles and make imp very hard for you to play.
Franks are OP
Gurjaras: Hold my Beer 🍺
The value of AXEMAN (given their price) is incredible in tandem with Knights.
After playing a few games agaisnt franks recently (after watching youre vid) I absolutly think that franks are overpowered. Usually you cant push back in imp becasue the hole map is filled with castles, so you cant raid. The frank army is, expacially in early imp, very strong with the extra hp cav and fully upgraded infantery. In combination with the insane eco the civ is op. It is as OP as Hindustani, becasue they have strong options against everything and a massive eco behind it.
And becasue they are played so often, the argument that people just dont know how to paly agaisnt them isnt valid. We play more against franks than any other civ. They have a insane win-rate and that is because they are kinda op
I'd also argue that any gold civ are very strong if they have full access to gold but without it they are not a threat... Frank's without any gold will struggle so if it goes late game they will find it harder and harder to clear trash units
So basically Hera is telling is that aoe is in fact a strategy game
But all jokes aside very good video
You are absolutely right that op means "there's NOTHING I could have done". I have never lost to Franks and felt that whereas these days I lose as Slavs or Bulgarians to Gurjaras and I feel like I never had a chance to do anything anyway. I feel my only chance is that they have fwd berries & I can kill their mill with MAA towers, but any smart player can defend that.
I think the Franks bonuses turn them into a consistency machine, while you can always have windows of opportunity against any civ to do damage and exploit a army comp or a map situation, Franks being no different, especially compared to civs like the Gurjaras and Hindustanis, I do feel like their ability to use their general game plan of knights siege castles eco as successfully as they do is a bit of a problem. Heavy consistency, like civs like Chinese, Mayans, Britons, and Franks have, while not making them overpowered, ends up relegating other civs that should be similarly strong into being more niche or secondary picks in true competitive settings, such as Ethiopians and Vietnamese as archer based civ choices, which is something of a balance issue in my mind
Franks are not OP its just that they're so easy to use. Intuitive does not equal overpowered. People are mastering and using the Frank bonuses without even realizing it.
But their winrate is still very high in 1.8K plus bracket
1:40 OMG HE SAID THE VIPER LINE + CIMOMENT!!
Franks have come a long way. In classic AoC they were considered one of the weaker civs for 1v1 Arabia (but better in team games, especially as pocket).
The summary is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance. Basically saying despite the plethora of data saying otherwise, due to my own personal definition that I just kinda came up with, the data doesn't matter.
"Franks aren't overpowered, they're just extremely hard to play against.".... I mean...lmfao... talk about some contorted logic to support an argument.
Let's think about that. At even 2k elo and up, Franks have a 54.5% win rate. An elo of 2000 means you're in the 99.2 percentile of all players. And Franks are still extremely hard to play against? So then for the majority of players we should just basically light a candle and hope for the best.
Vikings' very slightly tuned infantry AND arbs? Too powerful. Nerf hammer.
Koreans with (Elite) War Wagons costing ONLY 115w? Crazy! Nerf it.
Celt militia moving fast in Dark age? Umm? Nerf please! Tatars gaining sheep in feudal? Nerf that shit.
Burmese with leather archer armor? The horror. Absolutely OP. Bengalis with elephant units 33% more resistant to counter units or conversions. Unthinkable. 25% only. And nothing else. Except for other stuff that's unworkable.
Franks with dark age berry bonus + free horse collar + free heavy plow + free bloodlines equivalent + discounted castles? Chef's kiss. Muah. Perfection. Nothing to see here folks. Back to the ladder.
Franks have been a shit civ for a long time. Back then people were complaining to buff them. And they're certainly not without counter play. Knight civs by the end of the day are knight civs in an archer's game.
@@majungasaurusaaaa This is a total troll comment. Why are you willfully ignoring the data, which is plain - Franks are well over 50% winrate at all elos and 54.5% even above 2k Elo. Oh, and most pros rank them S-tier. But you, you know better...shit civ right? gtfo
this, while franks option in late game are quite limited, theyre VERY GOOD at finishing the game before the enemy reach the later stage of the game with eco advantage over the frank player. 2 eco bonus at early game, a cheap defensive option(castles are very hard to take down in castle age when you're toe to toe with the enemy).
55% win rate, one of the most picked civs since the dawn of time, "yeap not overpowered", what a kiss ass, so typical of the RTS community, thats why RTSes are dying out because the community are filled with rose eyed boomers that refuse to change for the better
Hera, in the current game, only xbow and Knight, Spearman and Skirmisher, light cavali, and finally onager are used. If you had to make infantry or Elephant useful in the game, how would you change them?
I think by design infantry and wlephant will never be the main unit and i think its fine that way. Both those units have their uses and are situational
Heyo, I noticed you didn't mention the Scorpion as a potential counter to the halb-arb combo. I'm just a crappy 11xx player, so I could be wrong, so please point out any flaws in my logic.
No blacksmith upgrades needed, Franks have siege engineers, and the upgrade to Heavy Scorpion is arguably cheaper than the Onager upgrade. High range, high pierce armour, decent against arb, good against halb. SE and Heavy Scorp both cost 0 gold, so it takes literally zero gold investment to get to full powered scorps - just some wood and food investment that your civ is already swimming in.
Combine that with your video a few months back saying that Paladin is rarely worth the investment (though perhaps Franks are an exception?), and you can repurpose the upgrade cost of paladin into easily covering the heavy scorpion upgades. Repurpose maybe 20% of your cav unity investment into scorps, and you'll get 15-25 of them out.
It seems to me that Cavalier-Heavy Scorpion would be a better combo than Paladin-TA/HC, since you're looking at double gold units anyway?
Franks, easy yes. Maybe 2nd to the Magyars. Maybe I'm just low ELO trash, but Cav in general tend to be the game-winning go-to units. Easy to understand why. My only gripe is that it makes games very same-y. With majority of the strategies being circled around defending scout, knight rushes.
EDIT: Would be cool to see AoE centered around more variety of units (even for rushing), and variety of strategies. As of now, isn't it mainly about the SPEED of the player? It's about MICRO and SPEED, as opposed to Unit composition and Strategy :\
I mean like, just wall out the scout rush?
Their berry collection was nerfed. Now its balanced. Franks are few civs can survive lame.
If Franks weren't overly strong they wouldn't have such a high win rate. Pike Crossbow still dies to mass knight. Or you give up map control and get one of those free castles on your gold. Plus three siege workshops they get from wood saving with wheelbarrow that pump Skorpions. What do you do with Halb Arb against Knights tearing down your TCs backed up by 5 Skorpions sitting under a castle that got plopped on your gold and production buildings?
Any other civ with a win rate over 53% got nerfed into the dirt after a patch or two. Only Franks stand unimpeded at 56!!!!% winrate at mid Elo since fricking age of Conquerors.
I think you didn't mention that CA absolutely shit on Franks late game, at least paladin + hand cannon can do SOMETHING vs arbs + halbs, like yeah gold intensive but you can go for a big gold all in and try to kill your opponent (and if it fails you run out of gold and lose). Against CA you can't even go double gold comp and kill the damn CA!
For a Civs weakness to be in Imperial when they have the strongest Paladins in the game. It's not THAT big a weakness.
I think it's important to note that they have a very high win rate and a very high playrate. Their high playrate makes that 55% more significant.
If it was up to me I would nerd them slightly. Probably I would tweak down their cavalry HP bonus to something like +17%.
Honestly though at least half my problem is their consistent status as the best pocket in TG's. I think having so clear a best cavalry civ is very dull and bad for ballance.
I disagree, without the 20% their knights would be less Hp then Knights with bloodlines.
@@peterzeger7263 Their Knights would be 3hp worse (but without paying for bloodlines), Cavalier about equal and Paladin would have 11 more hp. It also slightly weakens their scout rush.
But I quite like the idea of Franks not always having the absolute best Knights, whilst still intending to keep their identity as having the best Paladins.
I'm probably more outspoken than most about some of the original civ designs being poorly balanced. I think Britons and Franks would have a community outcry if they were introduced now as opposed to being OG civs.
@@donhooplah I just think its bad to give them a civ bonus which makes their knights worse then with Bloodlines. Free Bloodlines as Upgrade would make their Scouts/LightCav to strong so I think its hard to tweak this.
Also the Frank Paladin is not the strongest Teuton Paladin is stronger (but slower) and Lithuanian Paladin with 4 Relics I actually don't know who comes out on top.
Franks berry forage bonus was already nerved some time ago and their castle unique techs were switched in order to stop their late castle age dominance. I think they are alright where they are. Maybe you could put their castle discount to 550 instead of 488. But if you touch their eco or their Knightline you hit them to hard. Its like taking Britons their range bonus or nerving Mangudai (f.e. siege bonus), what do those civs effectively do then? And when does every civ start to feel like the next one?
@@peterzeger7263 Mmm the most sensible thing is probably to remove one of their eco bonuses and replace it with something else. I still am quite fond of toning down their Knights though. Perhaps Knight Line +20Hp in Castle, +30 in Imperial would work.
Its a different conversation but I would 100% nerf the Britons range in some way. I think its terrible game design.
Mangudai I have less of a problem with because they're harder to get to.
@@donhooplah actually they dont have the best knights :D.Its Lithuanians that r the best tho u have to go out of ur way to get relics for that or Bulgarian stirrup knights tho in that case u need to go for a castle for that
if the reason that franks are not op is that they get exploited by halb+arb, then they remain overpowered against the civs that do not get halb+arb, which includes many.
maybe not quite as many if we define halb+arb a bit more general. id guess that decent CA, hand canoneers, most ranged UUs and maybe elephant archers or even scorpions could replace arbs in the lategame. however, many of these replacements are a lot more expensive/hard to get to than arbs.
so, how many civs can rely on their lategame to counter franks?
In late, every civ beats Franks in theory because Franks has no Archer unit. Cav Archer civs (Mongols, Magyars, Huns, Tatars, Turks, Saracens, Japanese etc.) beats because Franks's Skirmisher is useless. Stronger melee damage civs beats such as Teutons, Bulgarians, Slavs, Dravidians etc.. Only Aztecs comes to mind as bad as Franks in late game. However, even Aztecs has insane Skirmisher, Halberdier level pikeman and 33% relic bonus.
Every Civ has bad matchups, or else we could just play with full tech tree enabled.
@@Asterix958 i would add as bad:
celts and slavs have very lackluster range options besides scorpions
mali could make gbeto or hand cannon but also lack halberdier.
turks have many good ranged options but lack even pikes and rely on generic camels.
@@derikaem8021 Slavs mass Halberdier+Onager kill any late game composition of Franks, plus Slavs has 10% farm bonus and FU Hussar. Franks has no chance against Slavs in late game. Turks mass cav archer also destroy every unit of Franks. It is all about achieving 30+ Cav Archers in late game. Turks doesn't even need Camels, generic Camel also beat Frankish Paladi 1v1 with -15% cheaper cost and upgrade.
Franks has best chance against Malians, Malians is still strong tools like better archery range, better stable (Franks has Paladin but Malians has better Light Cav + Camel in return), 30% gold bonus. However, Franks with Throwing Axeman + Halberdier and 25% cheaper castle can beat Malians in late game.
I've gotten wrecked by them many times, but i don't think they're overpowered. Unless every civ is the same, there will be variation in win rate and 5% above dead average is not bad for a top tier civ. If they were close to 60% i would start to get worried
The worst thing fighting against franks at lower elos is that they refuse to fight you with buildings just abuse there cheap castles and move into your base slowly.
Franks are strong but camel civs are even stronger. I think if the devs were to nerf one, hindustanis/gurjaras would be higher priority on the list.
Hmm, ok, they are not overpower, but they still are the top 5 civs in all de scenarios and besides the weakness (that all civs have anyway), they still win a lot, dont you think that a litle neft will make a more balance game?
nerf britons plz
I remember arguing with Roxy about this on Twitter. I feel seen and heard
Yes. They are OP. Nerf Franks. Take that goddamn cheap castle bonus away.
You mention they struggle against Arb+Halb compositions but they have Heavy Scorpion. Isn't that an option?
Yes it is but usually only on closed maps. On open maps it's hard to find the time to research all of that before arbs and trees come a knocking. But I disagree with hera. Skirm and cav can be great at countering arb halb if you play your midgame right. Even frank skirms. But you can't just sit around mid game passively. And try for castle drop the center and faster up to imp to treb his castles so he can't get trebs. Halb arb is only dangerous of they can get trebs along for the slow push. Other wise castles hold that while cav can raid them in the back
France> all, so they are not op, they are not strong enough.
To me they just fit so well to my gameplay style, they got good cav, good archer,good arty just loads of options, when i go other civs i feel lacking in some area or another. But with franks i feel they are solid overall
Why do you mean good archer? Sure you can have a good timing in early feudal with franks, but their ranges are generic... until castle age since they are missing thumb ring.
@@HoloDaWisewolf also no bracer.
@@da_ghoul9432 Franks player generally finishes games in Feudal / Castle Age. If game lie over Imperial Age, Franks are death, Franks has no unit Imperial Age (worst Archery Range in the game, generic Barrack, 72 hp Light Cav which is worse than Generic Light Cav).
But what happened to the "Franks not overpowered, you suck!" title
The franc since the first age of empires of the kings has always been the most homoxesual civ; they kill you with pure spam of knights and if you get a pikeman they put 10 castles with ax throwers
I think the Franks are alright, but crappier civs need a buff.
just remove berry bonus which wasn’t in the original game.
I've beaten everyone I've played against with teutons so far.
Franks suck now after they removed Treadmill Crane
No, franks are not OP, not being able to beat a knight civ is quite literally a skill issue.
Nerf archers.
@@Dricatronic >Crams 50 archers in one tile
>Melee units cannot engage and you HAVE to resort to range of your own or siege
>Can perfectly frame perfect endlessly micro archers, whereas cavalry archers have to go throught a frame delay
Yeah no, fuck that noise, archers are OP and should get nerfed.
30 endlessly microing crossbows are way scarier than 20 knights.
@@martinmarzano1523 Agreed man, xbows are such a fucking pain to deal with. They shouldnt be able to kite down enemy units the way they do. How many times have we seen xbows beating knights??
next video - why forward castle does not work at high elo?
it does though? You can watch Hera do it all the time in his games.
it does but players dont panic as much to it. But its still effective
55% win rate is within the margin of error, at least in my book.
Their civ bonuses are so strong. Overall the free tech bonuses are one step above the others. So the civs that have not these kind of bonuses are slightly in disadvantage imo. Furthermore the free tech for Franks has to do with FOOD the most important resource in the game. I mean, objectively, is not in the same level to have free lumber techs than free mill techs. The impact is not the same. But I still think there is always something you can do to beat Franks, as well as any other civ, whatever civ you are playing. Thats the beauty of this game and thats why so many people still plays it. Congrats for another nice video!
👍🏻
shudnt there b a civ where vils can deposit resources at a castle
5:20 what is that? a perfect square with farms and a mill?
I would prefer to see the screen with faction tech tree rather than in game footage with buldings and units. Its less clear what are you Talking about and harder to spot pros and cons
noted, i will also include either the related text from tech tree, or a screenshot from it. thanks for the feedback
what website is the most reliable for winrates?
Age of statistics
@@ingoseiler thank you
The one thing I'd point out is top tier or good civs usually have big eco bonuses tied to them. That might be a problem to balance as a whole in the game, but definitely it's not an issue about franks or any other civ specifically. The one civ I think is broken but I wouldn't bet on it is brits because the extra range breaks every fundamentals rule in the game and makes counter units a bit irrelevant. Still I wouldn't advocate for heavy nerfs like getting rid of their extra range or anything crazy like that.
I hate it while frank being overpowered, almost no one complains. when gujara and Hindustani counter knight meta so well, everyone complains…ok I do think Hindustani need a nerf to ghulam and gujara needs nerf to sheep bonus but no more than that.
Do people really prefer DE graphics ?
I hate the DE unique unit archer sound effects. Longbowmen and Rattans sound obnoxious.
@@jonathanbrowning4 idk, but while some graphics and civ added are goods, i still prefer many of the old graphics, and i find their is way to much civ now
Yeah really am not a frank fan boi and i dont really like Franks or pick them either(so i dont think im biased).I do face up against a lot of franks tho and they r pretty strong but honestly i think they r pretty well balanced.Some good bonuses,clear strengths weaknesses.Really dont need a nerf ppl just need to learn how to play against them.I was REALLY glad when hera said the same thing.Hera just posted a recent video abt top 5 civs to couner franks rgt?i agree with that video except with the ranking.I would put hindustanis as #1 tho and mongols probably as #5 or an honourable mention becz while the Mongols have really good options to counter the frank army composition its difficult to get there and they only have a dark age eco bonus (except on maps where there is a lot of hunt scattered throughout the map then it can become a feudal and castle age eco bonus).I feel many civs can do the camel or cav archers play better than mongols eg tatars.But the mongol opening like hera said is really strong but its more of a timing thing ur eco is slightly weaker since u go up so fast and ur feudal age army isnt anything special.I m huge Mongol fan boi(mongols r my fav civ)but i would prob prefer franks to mongols for winning purposes.Ans in the late game yes the mangudai or cav archers die to zero units that the franks possess except full paladins which isnt really viable for long but then again its almost the same case with arbalest.Franks jyst dont have a good lategame.It doesnt matter if ur mongols or not,all ranged unit civs will kill franks in the lategame
Franks are not op, just that the popular maps gravitate towards their strengths. Franks are linear to the point of boring, Huns feels more lively. I suggest changing the map pool to stuff like gold rush, runestones, etc.
When it comes to nerf, remove free Horse Collar, let Heavy Plow and Crop Rotation be free once it is researched.
They could start with - 12 wood. That would be fine for me. At least they would not be great in all maps. For example nomad
can you do a similar video on Burmese?
Don’t nerf franks, it doesn’t need it.
Franks being the first to implement knighthood doesn't seem too overpowered. I wonder besides their knights, what other units belonging to the cavalry might be unique ?
Wait, how is this possible?? 5:17
Is scorpion / heavy scorpion not an adequate answer to arb/halb? Aren’t those the units scorpions are intended to counter?
you brot up a lot of super meta concepts. when gaming u gotta keep in mind those super meta concepts omg i miss it so much.. the game i used to play.
They definitely body slower civs like portuguese but they do have some weakness
Excellent video! I love that you cover Franks in such detail, as it is the one civ I struggle to play against almost everytime in early game. In my opinion, cheaper castles is such a underrated thing for low elo players. I'm a low elo btw
They are not OP, but they are a bit too strong. I see 2 options how to fix them
- some of early game bonuses has to go or be nerfed ( for example farm upgrades has 50% discount instead of free )
- make them even weeker in late-castle / imperial
Short answer: YES
Britons are op
You didn't mention the Knight + scorpons Frank push, which is seen at the ending of the video. I always shit my pants when I'm playing crossbow + pikeman and I see that comp. Not sure how to counter it.
True, but super expensive.
Loved the video! What do you think is the best early game civ?
Nice
Yes
One of the great problems with fast patching is there is no incentive for people to figure out the next level Meta or counters. Hun wars were broken through on voobly without a patch I believe ?
Their was a time when it was hun war only on arabia, yes. But that did not change for years. That started long before Voobly even existed.
Franks are OP only if Hera is using them, like Liereyy using Britons
I am curious how Franks do in random games vs pick games. I often see them picked but never used because in tournaments it depends on the match up. It has only become worse with all the India civs having access to camels. I am surprised by the high win rate after seeing your video on why paladins are risky.
Gurjaras and indians are hard counters of Franks
@@nicolassaavedra1970 as well as against most other civs.
I can easily counter those who only train knights as franks, but I cannot even hold my own against knight-throwing axemen combo :( Hera, or random people in comments , can you give me a suggestion? How can I stop knight-axemen army, it feels like impossible to beat for me (800 ELO) ? If I go for halbs, axemen got those, if I go camels, they still got killed by 20-40 axemen behind the knights.
Simple. Go for archer civs. Practice the 2 Range Feudal opening... And you're good to go! Defend your home with archers and push out when you advance to the castle Age. Attack the French players eco during the advancing time, specially their gold and stone depot.
Now there are 2 paths:
1) if you sense your enemy is going full Castle age boom as Franks, you should boom too and make a lot of Xbows continuously and in Imperial Age, turn them to Arbs. And don't battle the Franks cavalry in open field, always find such places which block the Paladins from surrounding the archers... So that they can hit 4-5 archers in a group of 40.
2) Castle age aggressions: Use your Xbows and Pikes. Xbows are a great counter to the Axeman. Concentrate on making crossbows and pikes till 140 pop and then advance to Imperial... You'll need a big castle age army to hold off Imperial French troops.
Cav Archer beat both Knight and Throwing Axeman but it needs 12+ numbers and a lot of micro.
Both comments include some type of micro, so I guess I need to study microing 11, ty for comments.
If you don’t want much micro, and I assume you want to fight in late game, you can always pick.
1. Saracen and mass Mamelukes, this unit destroy both paladins and throwing axe men by simple A move.
2. Burgandian and mass constillier, these guys have charge attacks and can wipe out paladins. Very quickly. You can pair them with your hand cannoneer or halb.
3. Lithuanian and mass Letis. This unit is melee specialists, they will wipe out paladins quickly as well, leaving axemen vulnerable.
4.Khmer with mass battle elephants and scorpion or arbalest to support. The frank has no answer to this comp.
5.Teutons and mass either their own superior paladins or Teutonic Knights. Paladins and axemen can’t handle Teutonic Knights.
double gold units are a powerful combo esp in castle age.
Love this sort of videos from you!
More of those videos! 😊
ya characters designed for beginners are always op
Easiest nerf possible? Just reduce their bonus hp on cav just to knight line.
They did exactly that once back in the old day and the result was horrible, almost no one played Frank.
that really weakens them hard though because they dont get bloodlines. The higher HP knights are all they've got. Other civs have effectively superior paladins based on the circumstances like teutons, but its all about the combination of eco bonuses, castles and knight hp. Pull any brick from that tower and it collapses hard.
No Hussar, no bloodlines. Their cav is a literal one trick pony, its just a very good trick.