What the Mountain Royals COULD Have Been (LAVAnilla Episode 1) 

Really appreciate you saying so man! Here's hoping I can deliver more like this in the future.

Yep! I mentioned that in my Flavor Adds -- actually did a video on a proposed Anatolian Architecture set just last week! Persians getting Central Asian arch makes a *ton* of sense but I forgot to add it lel. Has been included in my pinned comment!

Why thank you! Extremely kind of you to say, I hope you continue to enjoy the content!

@@robbylava I hope so too but extremely kind? You invest properly on the matter up to the point of thematic crest, architecture of the given civ, and the top of the top for me, projecting the actual historic attributes of the civ into the game. My dear it's a job all well done.

@kostariusevmenid7289 it really means a lot to hear that from you, thank you

That's pretty much exactly the conclusion I came to in some of my most recent builds!

Hehehehe thanks my friend, love seeing you in the comment section

Willy showed his Willy to me :*

It's an honor to hear you say it my friend. I'm very glad you liked the designs so much! Hopefully we'll actually get to see them in action sometime in the not too distant future.

I was thinking about you a lot while I was making these ones! I hope you feel like I have succeeded in curbing myself while still coming up with some cool and appropriate ideas. And I had no idea that the wisent actually managed to bounce back! That's so cool!

I'd say you have for the most part. A couple of things are a bit out there - but it wouldn't be a RobbyCraft otherwise, haha.

Wow, thank you so much for this great review! I'm really glad you liked so much, and I'm ESPECIALLY excited to see you share your thoughts on the feasibility on some of these! That is unbelievably helpful for me, and I thank you very much for it. I'm not even really sure where to start, but suffice to say I think you have a lot of really great ideas here. Your points about the Armenians are especially good -- changing the imp UT to reducing bonus damage is actually quite clean and would certainly help out their late game power. Per the Ayrudzi, I envisioned them as something of a fast meatshield, getting in the enemies way and being super annoying to deal with. Something that I consider doing for them was to have collecting relics also reduce their gold cost, but I felt like that might be too much. Do you think that would be a good way to help the unit establish more of a clear identity? If you are at all interested in helping me with projects from a modding side, by the way, please do fill out the poll in the description of this video! Or, alternatively, join our discord and drop me a PM. If you are potentially interested in helping me implement some of this stuff, I would absolutely love to have you aboard. But that's completely your call though! Either way, thank you very much for your consultancy. If you would like to discuss any of the topics you brought up further please let me know! There was just a whole lot to go over, so I had to pick my battles in this first comment hehehe. Also happy to discuss over Discord if you prefer.

Actually, I'm already in the discord from the last month, just have been very busy so haven't been active, might start to be more active and present some civ build for fun when I'm free For the Ayrudzi, The unit could lean in into be more tankier, such as innate bonus damage resistance for example. Or may be add crowd control to it such as aura effect to reduce the movement speed or attack speed of non siege-land military units, like a zone control could be another way

@astalastralis oh cool! Good to have you there. I would be personally somewhat reluctant to make this unit even tankier, since I think it would probably stack too hard given the HP relic thing. Making it cheaper seems like a pretty cool option to me, that way it could almost work like a trash replacement, which this civ definitely wants. Maybe could have conversion resistance or anti monk damage, since that's already kind of related to what it's doing with the relic thing? Also, are negative auras like what you describe there actually possible in the game?! If so that's great news for me!

Thanks for saying so! Really glad you're enjoying thus far.

Thank you so much for saying so! Really, really glad you liked them. Completely agree that the Georgian conversion thing is probably the most boundary pushing here heheheh. I do have an alternate proposal in the pinned comment and the speaker notes of the presentation! I don't know if you got a chance to catch the video I did where I talked about splitting the Persians into a bunch of civilizations, but pretty much every one of the proposals I made in that video will eventually be seen on the channel someday! So I can promise you that medieval Persia will be covered very, very thoroughly.

Hey! Thank you so much man, I really appreciate the compliment! Completely agree with you about the towers, they are certainly pretty but I feel like people fixate on them way too much. And another commenter did recently tell me about that motto being used to inform the monaspa ability! Extremely cool piece of trivia, and it definitely makes me like the current one better, though I still feel like it's not the best way to handle the unit personally. Thanks very much for taking the time to share your thoughts. Glad you enjoyed the build and hope to see you in the comments on future ones

I'm honestly not sure! I ran the numbers a bit and, considering that they would only cost 45 food each and zero gold, I think they might have a little more impact than might be initially anticipated. Especially because they technically are fully upgraded in Castle! Being able to spam your opponents with a flood of these guys before Imperial age even hits could unironically be pretty solid. If it ended up feeling too oppressive then I would be happy to adjust though. And since these builds are far more implementable, we are likely to be able to actually test them out in a mod hopefully in the not too distant future!

Thank you very much for saying so! Given that people seem to be enjoying this format I fully intend on continuing it.

Don't hate that idea! I did something similar with my Jurchens build. My main issue with putting them on Georgians is that they weren't really all that important to medieval Georgia from everything I could find -- I'd much rather see them on a proper Svan or similar native caucasus mountain civilization

Couldn't agree more! Any of those three would have been fantastic additions. But as you rightly say, I'm trying to reinvent rather than add... For now!

I think a good DLC to add them would be a Balkans one as the Wallachians, alongside the Croats, Serbs, and Albanians. It would be more geographically correct.

I'd love to see them, regardless of what other civilizations they were paired with! I do wish that we would get back to the model of DLCs having three civilizations added instead of two, though. The Alans/Alani would have been another cool Caucasian civilization to add in this expansion as a third! I should have thought of that

@@robbylava How would you design them? Would you focus only on Wallachia or make like an umbrella civ for Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania?

@@robbylava I would top it to 4! The Conquerors gave us 5, The Last Khans gave us 4, and Dynasties of India more or less gave us 4. They can totally do this.

@catalinmarius3985 I am honestly not sure, I would have to see the history first. But I can assure you that they are quite a high priority for me right now, so I reckon I will have time for a proper video on them on the channel before too long. How would you personally go about it? I know almost nothing about them as of now, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

So my original idea with the fortified church was that you would only upgrade a SINGLE building at a time! Currently unprecedented in the game, but I think it would work well! If that ended up proving on feasible though, it would be a technology at the monastery kind of like a tower upgrade, improving all of your monasteries on the map and for the rest of the game. I modeled the Monaspa effect off of the current Ghulam, which from what I understand is actually very good when it comes to destroying clumped up archer balls. This unit should be even better at that while also doing work with other units that tend to cluster like Steppe Lancers. I also wouldn't be surprised if, like the Kamayuk, it also gave a lot of incremental advantage in big pitched battles, even if it wasn't exactly obvious while you were looking at it that it was helping. Either way though, if we ever got a chance to implement and test this stuff out then it would be very fun to see how it actually worked in practice.

Ohhhh yes, I do mention that in there

I mentioned that a little bit earlier on in the video. I'm honestly not super sold on the unit and think it was implemented somewhat clumsily, but I think the proposal I made of it being a trainable unit that is weaker, cheaper, and doesn't research technologies but still act as a drop point would probably work fine. Resource carts like this were used pretty much all over the world, so I would personally be pretty liberal with who I gave a unit like this to, especially considering I don't envision them being super duper impactful in the form that I proposed. Maybe for certain nomadic civilizations or similar there could be another version of this that was a little more exciting.

That sounds familiar! I did debate keeping the double HP, but I felt it was more fitting to just boost up the civilizations defenses more broadly instead. Saves more room in the bonuses for other stuff. I also didn't love the dock elements of that particular bonus, given that I couldn't find anything remarkable about the sasanian Navy whatsoever, nor indeed did I see them having any sort of maritime economy that would merit such a bonus, so I felt it would be prudent to remove that outright. Their dock should still be pretty decent overall though.

You're not the first to say it! But I sincerely disagree. If you have any ideas on a different bonus that still keeps the feel of the civilization as I described it I'm all ears though. For example, do you think just getting free redemption without atonement would be enough?

No it isn't.

Yeah, I acknowledged in the video that I think the Georgians are a top three official civilization in the game for me in terms of their design. That doesn't mean I think they are perfect though, for all the reasons that I listed in their section of the video. Your cataphract cavalry archer is a pretty cool idea. Is there any specific piece of history you're drawing on to get that? If so I'd love to hear it and may well adopt it into the build!

@@robbylava not particularly in the case of Armenia but Cataphacts tended to have both bows and lance, and Being between the Sassanids and the Eastern Romans they used super heavy cav like Cataphacts as well. Frankly I just think it's a unit we should have gotten given how much bonus damage CA is suspectable to and it would have fit them well. In the Rome At War mod their UU is a hybrid horse archer melee cav that takes half bonus damage from all sources. Also they had Cataphacts Horse Archers in Rom Total wat On another note I feel a lot of your concepts go do hard on some ideas like the converting Churches. There have been several RTS with building that can convert and they tend to be busted or bad. In general I feel you try to push to many unique concepts on one civ which would make them very hard to approach.

@raynightshade8317 oh I definitely do, no doubt about that. It's very much my style as a designer. But in this series I am trying to tone it down a little bit, at least to the point where my ideas are generally implementable! In the converting building example, for instance, I know that such things have been tried in other games and don't tend to work, but my idea here was that the church would be shooting you at the same time! So it's still serving its core purpose as a defensive building but also will occasionally nab a weakened unit, which I think is not nearly as scary as other iterations might have been. Unfortunately for me though it's looking like this particular idea will be almost impossible to implement lol. So I'll probably have to use a backup idea instead anyways.

@@robbylava well your original Persian proposal was way over the top, this feel a lot more measured so you definitely improved. As for the Church maybe just a healing aura though I think the official one is the best since it really encouraged you to put up lots of defences

@raynightshade8317 I don't know about improved hehehe but thank you! I love boundary pushing design, but enough people have asked me for a measured takes that I felt like this series and new pivot in direction was the best decision. Got more conventional builds like these planned, and I'd love to hear your thoughts if you decide to stick around to see them. Got another one dropping a week after tomorrow!

Brilliant review, thank you so much for taking the time to watch and leave your thoughts! I'm really glad that 2/3 of the video seem to have landed with you, so I'll just focus on the stuff you're concerned about: 1. I could maybe be convinced to return the TC HP bonus, but I think that having dog play on this civilization simply makes too little sense for me to be comfortable with it. My design for them does have a pretty decent dock in general, but given that my focus is on history I just don't think that's something I would bend on unless I was given concrete evidence. 2. Archers with bracer actually have identical DPS to crossbowman without, so if you think the latter is a decent ranged option then the former should be too! They are a good deal less tanky, but in my build here they are also dramatically cheaper, which coupled with 100% fully upgraded cavalry archers I'm hoping should make for some pretty viable ranged options even in late game! I will happily admit that I may have gone too far with the Man at Arms, even if they are the cheapest sword line in the game, so if that ended up being too weak in practice I would happily change it, but I do think you are sleeping on the potential of this late game army comp! It's even completely viable and available as early as Castle Age! 3. I was pretty certain I would get pushed back on blast furnace. I have a bunch of historical reasons to give if you are interested, but on a more pragmatic front I legitimately think their cavalry would be much too overwhelming in late game without it. I really love the feudal to early imperial power window for this civilization, and in my opinion blast furnace would take it over the top. In summary, I am neither surprised nor at all offended that you prefer the current civilization! My design here is a pretty big departure from what it is now, simply because historically speaking that's what I would strongly argue just makes a lot more sense. But liking what you're used to isn't at all a problem -- I've gone on record as saying that the Persians are a top three favorite civilization of mine to actually play, even before their rework. I just didn't feel like their current playstyle was historically grounded enough for me to want to be faithful to it, you know? If you have any further thoughts though I'd love to hear them! Great to see you in the comment section

@@robbylava I guess what it boils down to, there are some instances where I prefer gameplay to historical accuracy by a long shot, as discussed at other points before. Also don't worry, I didn't think you'd be offended or anything, nor am I offended, but out of the official 2 versions of the Persians and the like 4 we had on this channel, this is the one that I like the least from what it offers gameplay wise, even if I like the 3 UUs a lot. 1. The TC hp bonus has been in the game for 25 years and is iconic, just like the douche strategy that comes with it. I can tell you that he AoE2 community will absolutely lynch you if you take it away. I also think it's historically justifiable, as the Sassanians had a large network of well fortified community and government centers, as we've seen in your Persian build. The dock thing may not be historically accurate, but It will turn the Persians from an S tier civ to a B or even C tier civ on Hybrid maps, if you are going to take that away, on top of Gunpowder and good Foot archers and Inf options, I do think they should be buffed even more in the few areas that are supposed to be their strong points. 2. DPS means absolute jack shit if your units die in one hit to everything. There's a reason most Feudal armies become useless the moment someone hits Castle Age because they will get swept by a couple of knights. Castle and Imp blacksmith upgrades help a bit, but they will still absolutely die in Imp. I think for this to work out, they really either need the Castle age upgrades or, to keep with your civ design, Paighans should add a Perfusion like effect on top of removing the gold cost. The exact number would have to be tuned out for it not to become op, but I feel like without it, you will struggle to get the numbers you need for this design to work unless you build like 20 Barracks and Ranges every game. To my understanding, the Sassanian army was pretty much Elite Cavalry + huge numbers of light foot soldiers and archers that could be summoned in a quick manner if needed, so it would fit historically as well. 3. Persian Cav should be FU, at least the elite ones, that's one point im absolutely not willing to compromise. They were wildly known and feared for their elite Cav and literally had it all, heavily armored Cataphracts with Spears, Clubs and Bows, even multi shot X-bows like your UU, both light auxiliary and heavily armored cav archers, Elephants, vast contingents or auxiliary light cav and I even read some instances of Camel Cataphracts, although they are controversial. I can see them missing Blast Furnace from a historical point of view as that is a middle age process, but in game, the thought of not a single Persian Cav being FU is doodoo. Maybe you could make Asabar Nipik give their cav UUs (Grivapanvar and Tower Elephants) +2 Attack on top of the minus 15% pop effect. Yes it's very strong, but it would be locked behind an Imp UU and as the enemy you are on a timer to attack the Persians as soon as possible before they get to their strong late game eco and units. That's true with the current in game Persians as well, if you wait until they stroll into your base with FU Savars, War Elephants and Gunpowder, you are doing something wrong. I can live with Camels, Steppe Lancers and Hussars missing Blast Furnace, and I'm admittedly not the biggest fan of replacing the effect of blacksmith techs with UUs, but in this case it feels like a reasonable compromise and I think Persian Elite Units and Elephants having +2 attack because they are, well elite and literal Elephants, isn't completely historically inaccurate as well. I really love the 3 UUs of your Persians and the basic design of Elite Cav + mass trash units, which is accurate for the Sassanians. But I feel like in order to compensate the current Persians for taking away so many of their staples (Gunpowder, strong Castles, great Trash units, strong Hybrid map play and possibly the TC HP bonus), you really have to crank what they get up to 11. I'm really not sure if Feudal age trash units with partial castle age upgrades and cav missing Blast Furnace is enough, even with the amazing UUs and strong economy. Maybe my ideas would overbuff them in return, it obviously would have to be fine-tuned. Another fun idea that might be too strong, Husbandry affects attack speed, so all CAV units attack 10% faster. Just my 2 cents. And it's always a pleasure to talk in the comments. I keep thinking about joining the discord, but I fear I have just so little time to really be active.

@Edelweiss1102 so looking at the ideas you've proposed here, I can tell you which ones are most appealing to me personally: - return TC HP bonus - Make the Imperial UT give +2 attack specifically to the grivpanvar - give them back long swordsmen (but remove gambesons) - make Paighans improve training speed for those units The other ones I am not sold on, but these changes all seem well grounded to me and at least historically plausible enough to not hurt my soul. If I implemented these updates, how would the design rise in your estimation? Are there any other pieces that you would still be really loathe to lose?

@@robbylava I'll be brutally honest for a second, the "muh historical accuracy" argument is getting a tad bit annoying at this point. I'm a big history nerd myself, and usually I appreciate focus on historical accuracy, and obviously in your own builds you can do whatever you want, but I do feel like in what are supposed to be viable builds for the current game, some compromise will have to be made. At the end of the day this is a fantasy RTS game based on an engine that was programmed in 1999, and we play it for the fun, and I think there is a balance between historical accuracy and game design and fun. Nobody enjoys micromanaging their villagers to build a siege engine for a couple of real life hours, even it would be historically accurate. I apologize if I come off as aggressive, but I am a bit annoyed. I don't insist on implementing all of my ideas or complaints if it came off like that, the intention was to show why some things are important game play wise and will have an impact on how the civ performs on certain maps, historical accurate or note. Writing these comments takes a good amount of time, so hearing "muh historical accuracy" as the answer to most of it, even if that wasn't the focus or intention, it's a bit annoying. My main fear is that the current Persians finally are fun to play and viable in many situations, after being stuck with a boring play style and just bad in many situations for years. And if we are going to remove so much of what makes them fun and viable in many cases, the replacements better be damm good. If you give me the TC HP bonus, FU Grivapandars and faster training trash units, I'll be content, and then I have much more faith in the build working the way it's intended to. Overall, I really do like the amazing UU and cheap trash play style and it feels fitting for Sassanians, but you need a way to reliably get the numbers with such weak trash units and the elite units better be not missing some vital stuff. In faith of historical accuracy, I'm looking forward to your Tahirid, Saffarid, Samanids, Buwayhid, Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Khwarezmid, Ilkhanate, Timurid, Aq Qoyunlu and Safavid builds to replace the current Persians! (this is a joke!)

@Edelweiss1102 I'll be honest with you in return, I'm more than a little disappointed reading this screed. This series is not purely about competitive balance, nor have your arguments thus far had all that much to do with competitive balance -- it's been more about what you want and expect out of this civilization based on your past experiences playing it. This is not an invalid angle to take, but carrying on then to denigrate the entire basis for my channel is not a good way to make me take your arguments to heart. I try to respond to as many comments as I possibly can, and I am very grateful to you and other commenters who put so much effort into writing them. But when I receive dozens of such comments, responding to all of them in anywhere near the level of detail as the original writers is simply not possible. Would you prefer I not respond at all? Or would you prefer I spend less time taking care of my wife and children in order to give your comment about a fantasy RTS from 1999 the extra half hour it deserves? It is intensely galling to read through your ideas, talk about the stuff that you mentioned which I am happy to work with, and then be told that I am both blowing you off somehow and that the core premise of work on this channel is invalid. Please hear what I am saying here. Up until now I have really looked forward to seeing your name in the comment section and would like to continue to feel that way.

Would you like to hear my reasons for that decision?

@@robbylava sure, doesn’t make historical sense though, especially knowing that you consider historical accuracy important

​@@sams8302it's a game. Aztecs Eagle Warriors fighting Japanese Samurais on tundra terrain is not historical accurate. :*

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Really glad you like the Armenians overall, and I'm glad you took a few stabs at justifying in-game bonuses right now -- the Monaspa effect being based on a Georgian motto is actually really cool. A couple quick thoughts in clarifications though: first off, my iteration of the fortified church actually has only six range, otherwise you're right it would be ridiculous. Additionally, I sincerely disagree with the idea that atonement plus redemption for free is broken. Redemption is a very good technology, no doubt, but I don't think I have seen atonement researched once in game, whether at a pro level while I am watching or in a game I am playing myself (though admittedly it's been quite a while since I followed competitive). If it ended up being strong enough that only redemption should be free then I'm fine with that though. Beyond that, unsurprisingly, I completely disagree with you on just about every front. But there's nothing wrong with what you're saying, I can totally see the appeal of the current civilizations. I just happen to favor historical authenticity above everything else.

@@robbylava Thanks! I also kinda dislike the current Armenians quite a bit so we start on a common ground hahah Apologies if I am quite direct, my purpose was never to diminish your theorycraft My bad, I thought it had eight, I probably misheard I guess the problem with free Atonement is that is something on top of free Redemption which is kind of the more troublesone part hahah. They can convert siege right away and monks right away so you kinda can't never do both vs them I know it can be dumb to imagine them in a competitive environment but when I theorycraft I like to consider it as well as if it was there Yeah I feel like we have very different approaches when it comes to this, I also want historical representation but for me is more of a secondary thing over the civ feeling grounded while still having flavour while you prefer more defined/unique bonuses and full historical faithfulness. Is kind of two ways to see the game hahah

@Mattroid99 no need to apologize at all my friend! I think competitive viability is important, and it's something that in this new series I actually want to address much more than usual. But I would still want to have historical authenticity come first wherever possible, just cuz that's what I prefer. It's kind of the niche I feel, you know? Removing atonement while keeping free redemption sounds completely reasonable to me. Were there any other specific balance points that you were concerned about, or was that the main one?

​​@@robbylava I definitely feel like the problem is free Redemption, as is such a big saving right from Castle age and is one of the strongest techs in the game, Attonement is more of an icing on the cake as it's a tech very specifically impactful. And that in conjunction with long lasting berries means you could in more closed maps just abuse berries with like 8 vils, never seed farms for a while and just go more on wood, stone and gold and full clown in maps like Arena, is like a bonus that has its impact in Feudal/early Castle age but nowhere else (So it's going to be hard to afford the other expensive lategame options for the civ while it helps low eco approaches like crazy) I guess one way to balance it out would be removing Sanctity or make it avaliable one age later, but still it feels too degenerate and snowbally of a design for my taste. Other things are a lot more minor but are not something I consider huge problems, if that makes sense. The only other one I REALLY would change is Armenian team bonus as +1/1 armor within range of buildings it is too impactful of a thing in both offense and defense (Imagine if you have scouts or knights as Armenians vs a ball of archers, with that bonus crossbows do only 1 damage vs knight and they can never ever engage. It can turn precarious positions for the defender way too advantageous or strong positions ten times harder to break for the defender) I get you, I study history too and was I making a game from scratch I would also prioritize historical accuracy as much as I could. But for an already estabilished game like AoE2 in particular I think it needs a lot more compomises in order to make a civ "feel" like it belongs in the game

@Mattroid99 completely understand your point about it being different to design a game from the ground up with history in mind versus trying to bring historical accuracy to an existing paradigm. Conventions are powerful things! And of course someday I would love to be able to try to make a full game from scratch, but I need to work with what's possible for me as of now, and a mod that pretty heavily overhauls the game to have a general focus on history would hopefully shift the conventions enough that people might be able to stomach it more! So back to that Georgian bonus, I would be willing to remove atonement but would be very reluctant to touch redemption. It just feels like two important of a bonus for what I have in mind for this civilization. Plus, there are many other civilizations that have bonuses that look extremely overpowered on paper but aren't too impactful in practice (Britons +3 Archer range in post Imperial age would be mocked to no end if I proposed it lolol). If you really think that free redemption is absolutely not feasible, is there another suggestion you might have that would minimally spoil the general flavor and themes I'm trying to accomplish with this civilization? As for the Armenian bonus, I'm quite sold on the team bonus being some sort of defensive aura, and I don't think HP Regen would be appropriate. Do you think an offensive boost like attack power or rate of fire could work? Still very strong, but since it could only be used in a defensive context maybe it would be less oppressive?... If that sounds like too much as well, I'd love to hear some other thoughts you have on that topic as well. Thanks again for taking the time to share your ideas, I hope this is an enjoyable conversation for you.