I miss Loki hersir speed bonus. Loki / Forseti gameplay in EE / Titans used to be so focussed on Hersir, and the Retold mechanics have certainly nerfed this with no free myth from killing buildings, ballistics reducing ability to dodge arrows, etc. but now Hersir are so slow that HoT Hersir can’t escape an ungraded Poseidon Hippeus to heal?
@@DynastyFBN loki literally destroying so many games right now and having very high win rates on ladder someone comes here and says they're underpowered lmao
It would be cool if Leto gave arcus in classical age from one tech like ares does for hyps since she is the mother of apollo and artemis. Also every other pantheon gets atleast 1 minor god that gives a unit 1 age earlier except atty
@1:02:19 There is a certain number of beserks, where hitting delete on a few of them will increase your damage of the whole group by more than you would have had by keeping them. combined with their bonus to buildings, it could be very effective vs forts and TC's as a raiding tool.
23:30 you misunderstand a patch note, the damage of the special attacks was based on whatever particular unit it was targeted at (e.g. when auto-targeting the ability), since they used that unit's armor for the damage dealt to everyone. Like targeting an axeman with 5% pierce armor but then dealing 95% of the ability pierce damage to any unit in the area, regardless of their actual armor. But the gist is the same. :)
I'm always amused when someone goes "they removed this bit of timing in the macro that every good player had down pat anyway, they removed skill requirement!" And then every single time the good players that had it down pat anyway use the freed mental stack to push the skill ceiling higher.
Commenting for the YT algo gods. Great and entertaining analysis. I just want to highlight that this was mainly marketed as a Multiplayer stability and performance patch rather than balance (which caught me by surprise because they ended including considerable changes still). Having said that I am happy as and probably a lot of other people too because I almost quit MP because I was getting out of sync every other game and as you described it was painful because even if you won you still lost ELO. I am sure that was their priority this release and will focus on a more impacting balance patch for the next release before the tournament.
I'm also confused about why the Berserk conversion was changed for the others. Could have just taken this bonus away from Loki and give him something else.
Greek kinda need to chill especially pos those horses gonna be immortal i feel the devs are bit too scared to nerf popular gods egy unites are super bad only few stuff making egyptian work , i hate that they are nerfing the minor stuff instead of nerfing the main issue which is velly of the king kronos lately been rushing like 3 min age up and they would go promethaos and destroy temple before it's finished and litterelly kill you early but i think atty is soo much strong in mid game to late game so hoping they actually nerf atty they probably over buffed them . Well done naka very detailed balance patch review
They should literally just make the Argus into a WoL Zerg Infestor. Give it fungal growth that roots and damages, let it spit out infested Murmillo, and mind control. Would be FIRE. But on that note, we just generally need more spell casters in AoM, there is so much cool design space for it.
I do agree that old Ra was very oppressive And I'm not fan of putting a flying unit that can carry siege in a game where all factions don't have a flying counter but if you compare it to the old game that would be not as strong. Greek heroes can shoot air unit, Norse got a range hero so even the old Rock would not be as efficient.
This is exactly my stance. As long as there are counters, which as you said now exist for all, then it's fair game to have a flying transport even if others don't have it. Instead, they gave the counters, and castrated the Roc at the same time, which is crazy. It's too many double changes like that.
I think TheMista games and his pre-quing of upgrades was only possible because match became boomy and there was enough resources. I think in close and agressive match you can't afford to do it. At least not by just spamming all upgrades. I think Beastyq presented a lot of good arguments, he said that he is not againts upgrade-queue because it is decision and you need to pay resources eventually that you might need down the road. But he was againts villagers queue, because it comletly prevents player's ability to make mistake and making villagers is always what you want to do, there is no decision to do it, only the ability to make mistake and that part of gameplay is lost with villager auto-queue. Pro players will not forget to queue villagers under normal conditions, but they might when being pressured by a second or two and in close game over time it can add up that eventually one player gets ahead just because of that. That is pretty much nullified. Well, I personally will have idle time of villagers anyway so it's not like I see auto-queue as a problem. :D :D
I don't think it's a very good argument mind you. No halfway strong play forgets to make workers because of multitasking, let alone top players. And the value to entry level players is far greater. In any event, the skill expression of macro is not about making workers. It's correctly allocating them, thinking ahead, good decision making about how to invest resources, and therefore knowing which resources you will need in which ratios, and thus how to use workers. Most bad players will float a ton of resources because of these exact reasons. And the idea that if you're multitasking you might make mistakes, well, that applies to everything. Beasty never really made a particularly good argument on the topic, and I strongly suspect the reason is that he's reasoning in order to justify his feelings. I've played most RTS games, I've been in mid master league in sc2, conqueror in aoe4, i'm not a terrible player. But I cannot imagine a world in which auto queuing villagers produces a negative experience for anyone on ladder that is remotely comparable to the positive experience. I also don't use it. I prefer precise discretionary control over making workers because there are actually times when cutting them, even for a few seconds is the right or necessary thing to do. Automation can pre-empt that decision for you, or simply make it more awkward because you're not regularly interacting with it. So because I'm used to the status quo, I stick with it. But for players in low-mid ladder, they'll all be doing it, and it will be symmetrical and make no difference. The game has so much skill expression no one will ever miss the heuristic of tapping a button every fifteen seconds. And for high level play it's just irrelevant anyway. Finally, there are tons of things that you can only get wrong, and you always want to get right, and which the game automates for you. For instance, workers moving to a new nearby resource after depleting one. No one complains about that. Why? They're used to it, and it would be a headache if they didn't. If a worker on a berry bush didn't go and work on a different berry bush after exhausting it, we'd riot.
I think you are hanging yourself up too much about the Vidar Berserk tech. Not everthing has to be an "active" thing you control. Funnily enough it is actually more controlable than say for example unit upgrades or ringgiver. Delete one and gain the effect. Now that seems to be bad, but to in a fight this will just behave like any passive stat increase. Berserks have low HP and it will trigger. Just as the Odin tech that makes them faster and gain attack, when they lose health. It just happens and is a passive of the unit.
Its abundantly clear the devs are neither playing or watching games being played, they're just guessing. Changes like giving Gaia creep tumors are great, but there is a ton of stuff they just need to straight up nerf or buff.
I would really like units with crush damage to hit buildings on attack move like siege weapons. In general I think attack move works better here than aoe4 but microing obviously siege myth units could be improved. Am I the only one who wants this?
59:00 This is incorrect. Odin does not get food gathering bonus from anything but hunting since the previous patch. You might have missed it. It used to be 10% on all natural sources including berries. This was also the case in defintive edition. Im not a aom veteran, but I got to try it out when I saw that retold was coming out and this was one of the features I noticed on Odin. So in actuality this is the second patch that touches on Odin's food income.
It was OP for the following reasons: - You used to be able to reset the catapult animations for increased DPS. - Norse didn't use to have a ranged hero. - Greek only used to have 1 ranged hero. - Atlantean didn't use to have a relevant late game. - Egyptian building pushes used to be nearly unstoppable. - Caravans used to be cheap and generate a ton of income. - Mercenaries used to push into YOUR territory, overwhelming you. None of those factors apply anymore. It would be easily manageable in the context of Retold.
@@NakamuraRTS I’ve always hated transport hoping in rts so I kinda like the roc needing to land to load and unload. The implementation is jenk as hell and needs significant cleaning up but I just prefer the concept.
the patch is terrible! no poseidon nerfs(actually more buffs) they indirectly nerf ra and give a berry bush (?) buff to ra. they buff contarious for some reason evne though they're already strong and meta. no big odin/loki nerfs. crazy coco!
And they marketed it as a multiplayer stability and performance patch which I am extremely happy because I was really affected by it and made MP almost unplayable. Balance patch should be coming sooner than later after this one.
Many of these balance changes make no sense at all. Ok, so Kronos rush is a bit too strong. Why nerf the units involved instead of Kronos himself? They could have made his 2 free myth units spawn with a delay between the first and the second one. Idk, some really strange decisions being made. I'm happy for the QoL and fixes though.
The valley of kings is so obviously broken, in the first beta that was the thing that jumped out at me almost immediately. It's not hard to do the maths on how much resource generation it gives you, in addition to being a huge production bonus. There are so many numerically strange things, like, again, peltasts being cheaper and better than slingers in every dimension at launch. Leaving aside his idiosyncratic factors like changes in the relative value of rain, Ra was sort of left in the dust of huge minor god imbalance internal to the Egyptian faction. Egypt is, frankly, inherently weak and seems contingent on specific very strong options, all of which sit in a mutually exclusive zone with respect to Ra. Nepthys and Thoth being the specific standouts. Sekhmet was really left out in the cold in retold. The Ptah slinger change is really big, which is why I don't like it. The slinger should really be a better unit baseline. The 1 damage is obviously massively variable in how significant it is, depending on pierce armour and how many upgrades you have. As the slinger ranges from 3 to 5.7 damage, but even if it was at 6, 1 extra damage would be better than 15% base damage (0.45) or even multiplicative with total damage. And it will scale with the coefficients, so you go from 9 damage base vs archers to 12, and from 5.25 base with slings of the sun vs infantry to 7. Against units with high pierce armour such as huskarls, cav, heroes and myth units, or indeed buildings, it's a huge damage increase, but those aren't use cases you want for the slinger. However even archers have pierce armour, and even if it was +1 pierce damage it would never be inferior to the previous version of the upgrade. And of course, with a lot of slingers, which would be the ptah-sekhmet scenario, they deal with all barracks units in the mirror + CAs, and spears have 15% reduced pierce vuln against CAs and deal with camels and elephants. And the divine damage makes mass slingers contribute far more damage vs suboptimal targets, which makes massing them safer. I don't like it because it's too good for a classic bonus, and being applied to a unit that is too bad baseline.
Okay so this is a very long video. Feel free to jump around using the chapters! The juiciest stuff is in the balance sections for sure.
Intro: 0:00:00 - 0:01:10
Stability, Performance, Graphics, Audio: 0:01:10-0:04:40
UI & Crossplay Rant: 0:04:40 - 0:13:10
Hotkeys & Prequeue Rant: 0:13:10 - 0:17:50
Gameplay Fixes & Greek Favor Rant: 0:17:55 - 0:24:25
General Balance & DM & Naval Myth Unit Rant: 0:24:30 - 0:28:00
Greek Balance & Poseidon Rant: 0:28:00 - 0:34:40
Egyptian Balance & Ra Rant: 0:34:45 - 0:57:50
Norse Balance & Odin/Loki/DM Rant: 0:57:55 - 1:05:20
Atlantean Balance & Hyperion/Misc Rant: 1:05:25 - 1:27:40
Awesome Modding Changes: 1:27:41 - 1:29:50
Outro: 1:29:50 - 1:30:49
I'm surprised they didn't buff Forest Fire. It went from being underpowered in the original to completely useless in Retold.
It doesn't need a buff. It needs to become a different god power altogether. One that is actually useful in more circumstances.
I miss Loki hersir speed bonus.
Loki / Forseti gameplay in EE / Titans used to be so focussed on Hersir, and the Retold mechanics have certainly nerfed this with no free myth from killing buildings, ballistics reducing ability to dodge arrows, etc.
but now Hersir are so slow that HoT Hersir can’t escape an ungraded Poseidon Hippeus to heal?
@@Chungy96 I absolutely agree Loki used to be cool now it's a bit underpowered, the hersir spam rate seems to have gone down
@@DynastyFBN loki literally destroying so many games right now and having very high win rates on ladder someone comes here and says they're underpowered lmao
It would be cool if Leto gave arcus in classical age from one tech like ares does for hyps since she is the mother of apollo and artemis. Also every other pantheon gets atleast 1 minor god that gives a unit 1 age earlier except atty
That’s actually a very good idea. Might make Atlanteans too op tho. 🤷♂️
@1:02:19 There is a certain number of beserks, where hitting delete on a few of them will increase your damage of the whole group by more than you would have had by keeping them. combined with their bonus to buildings, it could be very effective vs forts and TC's as a raiding tool.
23:30 you misunderstand a patch note, the damage of the special attacks was based on whatever particular unit it was targeted at (e.g. when auto-targeting the ability), since they used that unit's armor for the damage dealt to everyone. Like targeting an axeman with 5% pierce armor but then dealing 95% of the ability pierce damage to any unit in the area, regardless of their actual armor.
But the gist is the same. :)
Finally Atty buffs.
I'm always amused when someone goes "they removed this bit of timing in the macro that every good player had down pat anyway, they removed skill requirement!"
And then every single time the good players that had it down pat anyway use the freed mental stack to push the skill ceiling higher.
Commenting for the YT algo gods. Great and entertaining analysis. I just want to highlight that this was mainly marketed as a Multiplayer stability and performance patch rather than balance (which caught me by surprise because they ended including considerable changes still).
Having said that I am happy as and probably a lot of other people too because I almost quit MP because I was getting out of sync every other game and as you described it was painful because even if you won you still lost ELO.
I am sure that was their priority this release and will focus on a more impacting balance patch for the next release before the tournament.
why nerf all the north ? if Thor and Frey weren't very strong. And Ra's problem is gold, not food. They should reduce the gold cost of something
I'm also confused about why the Berserk conversion was changed for the others. Could have just taken this bonus away from Loki and give him something else.
Greek kinda need to chill especially pos those horses gonna be immortal i feel the devs are bit too scared to nerf popular gods
egy unites are super bad only few stuff making egyptian work , i hate that they are nerfing the minor stuff instead of nerfing the main issue which is velly of the king
kronos lately been rushing like 3 min age up and they would go promethaos and destroy temple before it's finished and litterelly kill you early but i think atty is soo much strong in mid game to late game so hoping they actually nerf atty they probably over buffed them .
Well done naka very detailed balance patch review
They should literally just make the Argus into a WoL Zerg Infestor. Give it fungal growth that roots and damages, let it spit out infested Murmillo, and mind control. Would be FIRE. But on that note, we just generally need more spell casters in AoM, there is so much cool design space for it.
I have no problem w Poseidon’s centaurs out classing Zeus’s centaurs, but the life steal upgrade seems unintelligent
I do agree that old Ra was very oppressive
And I'm not fan of putting a flying unit that can carry siege in a game where all factions don't have a flying counter but if you compare it to the old game that would be not as strong. Greek heroes can shoot air unit, Norse got a range hero so even the old Rock would not be as efficient.
This is exactly my stance. As long as there are counters, which as you said now exist for all, then it's fair game to have a flying transport even if others don't have it.
Instead, they gave the counters, and castrated the Roc at the same time, which is crazy. It's too many double changes like that.
I don't understand why the lush is only spread by economic buildings, it should be all buildings!
Units heal when garrisoned?
time to cook with gaia leto 2tc spamming spiders on cooldown in defensive posistions and reviving automatons
I think TheMista games and his pre-quing of upgrades was only possible because match became boomy and there was enough resources. I think in close and agressive match you can't afford to do it. At least not by just spamming all upgrades.
I think Beastyq presented a lot of good arguments, he said that he is not againts upgrade-queue because it is decision and you need to pay resources eventually that you might need down the road.
But he was againts villagers queue, because it comletly prevents player's ability to make mistake and making villagers is always what you want to do, there is no decision to do it, only the ability to make mistake and that part of gameplay is lost with villager auto-queue. Pro players will not forget to queue villagers under normal conditions, but they might when being pressured by a second or two and in close game over time it can add up that eventually one player gets ahead just because of that. That is pretty much nullified.
Well, I personally will have idle time of villagers anyway so it's not like I see auto-queue as a problem. :D :D
I don't think it's a very good argument mind you. No halfway strong play forgets to make workers because of multitasking, let alone top players. And the value to entry level players is far greater. In any event, the skill expression of macro is not about making workers. It's correctly allocating them, thinking ahead, good decision making about how to invest resources, and therefore knowing which resources you will need in which ratios, and thus how to use workers.
Most bad players will float a ton of resources because of these exact reasons. And the idea that if you're multitasking you might make mistakes, well, that applies to everything. Beasty never really made a particularly good argument on the topic, and I strongly suspect the reason is that he's reasoning in order to justify his feelings.
I've played most RTS games, I've been in mid master league in sc2, conqueror in aoe4, i'm not a terrible player. But I cannot imagine a world in which auto queuing villagers produces a negative experience for anyone on ladder that is remotely comparable to the positive experience. I also don't use it. I prefer precise discretionary control over making workers because there are actually times when cutting them, even for a few seconds is the right or necessary thing to do. Automation can pre-empt that decision for you, or simply make it more awkward because you're not regularly interacting with it. So because I'm used to the status quo, I stick with it.
But for players in low-mid ladder, they'll all be doing it, and it will be symmetrical and make no difference. The game has so much skill expression no one will ever miss the heuristic of tapping a button every fifteen seconds. And for high level play it's just irrelevant anyway.
Finally, there are tons of things that you can only get wrong, and you always want to get right, and which the game automates for you. For instance, workers moving to a new nearby resource after depleting one. No one complains about that. Why? They're used to it, and it would be a headache if they didn't. If a worker on a berry bush didn't go and work on a different berry bush after exhausting it, we'd riot.
I think you are hanging yourself up too much about the Vidar Berserk tech. Not everthing has to be an "active" thing you control. Funnily enough it is actually more controlable than say for example unit upgrades or ringgiver. Delete one and gain the effect. Now that seems to be bad, but to in a fight this will just behave like any passive stat increase. Berserks have low HP and it will trigger. Just as the Odin tech that makes them faster and gain attack, when they lose health. It just happens and is a passive of the unit.
Its abundantly clear the devs are neither playing or watching games being played, they're just guessing. Changes like giving Gaia creep tumors are great, but there is a ton of stuff they just need to straight up nerf or buff.
atty was struggling so hard was it not? the buffs make sense
Atty yes. Kronos and Oranos with Hyperion, no. Buffing this is super dangerous.
I hate the greek favor calculation formula : it just feels weird and counterintuitive that way, if it's too strong just up their costs in favour
I would really like units with crush damage to hit buildings on attack move like siege weapons. In general I think attack move works better here than aoe4 but microing obviously siege myth units could be improved. Am I the only one who wants this?
Did they fix the fact that Centimanus just nuke entire armies with their special attack?
59:00 This is incorrect. Odin does not get food gathering bonus from anything but hunting since the previous patch. You might have missed it. It used to be 10% on all natural sources including berries. This was also the case in defintive edition. Im not a aom veteran, but I got to try it out when I saw that retold was coming out and this was one of the features I noticed on Odin.
So in actuality this is the second patch that touches on Odin's food income.
Thanks for the correction, I did miss/forget that! Very good.
The Roc needed to be nerfed because the ease of catapult spam to take out TCs was broken as fuck.
It was OP for the following reasons:
- You used to be able to reset the catapult animations for increased DPS.
- Norse didn't use to have a ranged hero.
- Greek only used to have 1 ranged hero.
- Atlantean didn't use to have a relevant late game.
- Egyptian building pushes used to be nearly unstoppable.
- Caravans used to be cheap and generate a ton of income.
- Mercenaries used to push into YOUR territory, overwhelming you.
None of those factors apply anymore. It would be easily manageable in the context of Retold.
@@NakamuraRTS I’ve always hated transport hoping in rts so I kinda like the roc needing to land to load and unload. The implementation is jenk as hell and needs significant cleaning up but I just prefer the concept.
the patch is terrible! no poseidon nerfs(actually more buffs) they indirectly nerf ra and give a berry bush (?) buff to ra. they buff contarious for some reason evne though they're already strong and meta. no big odin/loki nerfs. crazy coco!
well at least they're trying, better than no dev support at all 😂
And they marketed it as a multiplayer stability and performance patch which I am extremely happy because I was really affected by it and made MP almost unplayable. Balance patch should be coming sooner than later after this one.
Many of these balance changes make no sense at all. Ok, so Kronos rush is a bit too strong. Why nerf the units involved instead of Kronos himself? They could have made his 2 free myth units spawn with a delay between the first and the second one. Idk, some really strange decisions being made.
I'm happy for the QoL and fixes though.
They can't seem to successfully and properly balance anything in Retold
I still hope that they will revert the chimera nerfs + give the Centimanus more Hp. He is just way too slow...
Also Hypaspists are still op...
if the next patch doesn't have actual Leto buffs I call bulshit.
I honestly feel like atm egypt is underpowered (theyre just too weak and too reliant on gold), atlanteans too strong
I want my Prometheans fixed they suck.
Maybe valley of the kings should instead buff the pharaoh empowerment to make units train twice as fast and cost 25% less or something
Then you aren't very patient
The valley of kings is so obviously broken, in the first beta that was the thing that jumped out at me almost immediately. It's not hard to do the maths on how much resource generation it gives you, in addition to being a huge production bonus. There are so many numerically strange things, like, again, peltasts being cheaper and better than slingers in every dimension at launch.
Leaving aside his idiosyncratic factors like changes in the relative value of rain, Ra was sort of left in the dust of huge minor god imbalance internal to the Egyptian faction. Egypt is, frankly, inherently weak and seems contingent on specific very strong options, all of which sit in a mutually exclusive zone with respect to Ra. Nepthys and Thoth being the specific standouts. Sekhmet was really left out in the cold in retold.
The Ptah slinger change is really big, which is why I don't like it. The slinger should really be a better unit baseline. The 1 damage is obviously massively variable in how significant it is, depending on pierce armour and how many upgrades you have. As the slinger ranges from 3 to 5.7 damage, but even if it was at 6, 1 extra damage would be better than 15% base damage (0.45) or even multiplicative with total damage. And it will scale with the coefficients, so you go from 9 damage base vs archers to 12, and from 5.25 base with slings of the sun vs infantry to 7.
Against units with high pierce armour such as huskarls, cav, heroes and myth units, or indeed buildings, it's a huge damage increase, but those aren't use cases you want for the slinger. However even archers have pierce armour, and even if it was +1 pierce damage it would never be inferior to the previous version of the upgrade.
And of course, with a lot of slingers, which would be the ptah-sekhmet scenario, they deal with all barracks units in the mirror + CAs, and spears have 15% reduced pierce vuln against CAs and deal with camels and elephants. And the divine damage makes mass slingers contribute far more damage vs suboptimal targets, which makes massing them safer.
I don't like it because it's too good for a classic bonus, and being applied to a unit that is too bad baseline.
To bad yo din't cover the campagin