Do all civs simply have the same potential? Not like, just maxed out mythic potential, I mean at one 1v1 for equally skilled players, throughout all skill levels, do competing civs always stand a fair chance? Is that the goal?
Or is it only measured at one skill level, let's say the majority, or the top players, is it then aimed to be balanced?
If you put those things together, you see that maybe it depends on the difficulty of a civ and not the power of a civ. Maybe TA's aren't weak, Norse are just harder to play because of more micro. Look at the evidence, the evidence, I say is more like reasons and speculation, only because that most of this stuff I remember being said here at this forum, and so some of this might be debatable and not actually true.
First, someone brought up a point that, maybe why Eggies far better versus Norse than other way around is because of view area. When you are aggressive, you have a moving army, away from your "base". And the defensive player isn't away from their base. They only have to view 1/3 of the view area then. That means quicker reaction time; means better micro of both army and eco, which means better stuff overall.
Secondly, Atties minor gods don't seem to have chains to get a very powerful specific type of unit. Each one focuses on one thing, unlike many chains available for Greek. This persons ending point was, so atties have a really good unit, but they don't have much to make it much better than what it already is, so it acts kind of is another thing to make Atties easier to play.
Atties easier to play, there we go. Atties have received many complaints of being OP. Comments like, 'I was 1750 in AOM vanilla with hundreds of games and now I am loosing to a new player just because they are playing Atlanteans."
So atties are easier to play, it seems. Super eco, its said they have; even though they literally are mathematically just multiplied their stats to be equal other civs. In some cases, they have worse things; such as herding rates are just lower, and building rates. So if they are nearly mathematically equal, with only the veritable aspects are drop sites possibly putting them slightly ahead or behind, why is their economy uber, or OP? Most likely it is because of the ease people can use it. Just move a couple vils to a different resource. Just keep pumping them with auto-que, and you can easily do what used to take a lot of practice.
Norse, have occasionally been said to require a lot of micro in battles, with more flanking, and running away, and raiding, because they aren't designed to just battle away on equal military units. I have to agree that flanking, running away, and raiding all require more micro, and is more of what Norse are meant for with their higher unit speed, yet weaker units overall. If your military takes more micro, and your opponents takes less, you will have a more difficult time, yes?
For Norse, I have also heard here, that the differences of autoque have made make them less powerful than before. Before, they were aggressive, and with their eco easier to balance because of the vil-dwarves option, they would effectively get ahead eco wise because they would make the opponent flutter out and forget to continue with vil production. But, since Norse have dwarf-vil mix to balance there economy, but since that degrades the usefulness of autoque function. Now Norse loses out economy wise when they are played aggressively, because of the difficulty to micro it all.
We have more problems. If a civ has more potential, but that means throughout the entire game, it goes to show that some civs are better in early game on aggressive than others, and others better on defense in early game, and late game, and all possibilities. Does a powerful early game make up for a weak late game? Do a weak start but powerful later game make up for it? Egyptians are designed to be defensive until they get some more power. Does that effectively balance with a civ that is the other way around? I feel that, since defending is easier until attacking, and that late game power is more magnified than early game power, that defensive is currently the easier in this game. Is this a problem for balance?
Ranged units, are easier, and more effectively microed. This means, Norse have a disadvantage more so than others. Priests have a advantage. Chiero's have an advantage. Tox have an advantage. Eggies lose out with axmen, but do have slingers, but those can be argued less effective because their range makes little difference. And so forth. So, are the differences always correctly made up for, since it isn't just a balance ratio?
To be clearer, let's use an example. 10 hops v 10 murms outcome; then take 20 hops versus 20 murms and compare the 2. The outcome is not going to vary hugely in proportion to the original 10 vs 10, although it will vary slightly. By having the victor of the smaller one win slightly more so in the second one. This makes sense then to keep units in little groups and with counters and how well they are supposed to work and what not mathematically.
Ranged units shall make that difference much more dramatic. 1 tox vs. 1 hop, I believe let's the hop win. That is because 20 tox vs. 20 hops, hops loose by a lot. It also goes for ulfs vs. chieros.
So, it could be seen that maybe, you don't have some ranged units nearly on target with the right stats because of that. That is so much harder to balance ranged units than melee units. Maybe a big reason why TA isnt working is that, in mass, the take on all to many units; and in smaller numbers they don't do enough. If this is the problem, at least I can think of many fixes off the top of my head, I won't bother to share them though, that isn't the reason for this thread.
I will bold this for you lazy people who don't like to take time to read but will respond. All responses welcome except one, and that is anyone who says the game should be completely realistic. Game play >
That is life, life isn't fair, and our game can be. Life doesn't get any patches to make things fair.
Nick: Eten.
Gods: All of them!
Vanilla.