Potential Feudal Buffs for Italians?

So as most people know, when speaking on how to balance the Italians, I’m in favor of small changes mostly in imp (+2 vs EW for condos, or giving them SE) and strongly against feudal buffs.

But anyway, I had some random ideas the other day about feudal buffs for them, and I thought that it won’t hurt anybody to discuss such hypothetical balance changes and see if they could work. So tell me your feedbacks.

So here is my random ideas:

  • Fortifications are build 15% faster:
    Basically the old korean bonus, the biggest effect is on feudal since you would save time walling, and so gathering more resources. Towers too would be going faster, but that hardly would make Italians a tower rushing civ.
    The other notable effect is on castles, which would go up faster, but hardly this would make Italians on the level of franks or spanish. Still, it would help for massing those slow GC a bit sooner. In the end, is half of what spanish get, and it’s limited on fortifications only.
    The main idea however is that this bonus would help them survive on a moment of the fame when they are most vulnerable.
    Just to give the exact numbers, the second saved are:
  • Palisade tile: 1s (basically pre-nerf palisades)
  • P. gate: 4.5s
  • Stone tile: 1.5s
  • S. gate: 10.5s
  • Outpost: 2s
  • Towers: 12s
  • Castle: 30s

The other idea instead is:

  • Tumb Ring is 33% cheaper, and can be researched in feudal age.
    That’s pretty much self explanatory. It’s overall a bit of resources saved, and a bit of a weaker etiopians bonus (they get the 18% faster RoF for free and then also TR) but it also give the 100% accuracy.
    It maybe strong, but it would still be 200 food and 167 wood, which it’s a lot for feudal. Then if you play standard and tech into it in castle age, it’s 183 resources more saved that stack up with the 158 resources saved from ballistics.

Again, those are more of random ideas, nothing that I want to push too seriously, unless I get a positive feedback, so don’t be afraid of destroying such hypothesis if you have solid arguments.

And if they are broken for Italians, well the suggestion may work for another civ, who knows…

How about a straight building buff starting in Dark Age: buildings are constructed 30-50% faster
(Not including the first town center)

Spanish already have it, Am I right?


Yeah that’s pretty much spanish on steroids… my idea isn’t much original, since it basically give them the pre-DE Inca bonus, but at least is considerably different from the spanish one.

Also, al it should do is helping them walling faster…

dude come on. stop suggesting bonuses other civs already have.


Allot of the time initial walls are with houses in anycase. It would be fine if fortifications includes towers and castles, but it seems fairly limited when compared to the sicilians’ ability to create castles and their Town Centers 100% faster.

@MatCauthon3 I suppose I’m just suggesting bonuses without taking a look at what bonuses exist currently beyond what I actively remember, there’s quite a few.

Italians really like having melee defensive archers and while their unique tech helps them there and the castle’s unique unit has a good amount of it, how about we give them a bonus that increases per age to go alongside with that -

Archery Range units gain +1/0 armor in Feudal Age and +0/1 armor in Castle Age (+1/1 total)

The initial +1 melee armor would help them vs scouts and the later pierce armor would help them in general slightly vs other archer type civs.

If that could be changed to all archer units so it can effect their castle unit as well, would be interesting. I feel it would be nice for the Genoese Crossbow to have 6 melee armor instead of 5.

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Another Bonus could be:

‘Repair costs reduced by 50% and speed increased by 30%’

Fortifications includes every wall, tower, gate and castles, so yeah, towers and castles are included.

And yeah, you usually include houses and other buildings to wall, but unless you have just small gaps near you base, you don’t use just houses.

You build a bit of houses and most palisade. The palisade in fact is both cheaper and take less time. Anyway, italians would wall those sections faster, and this is particularly handy when you have a bad open map (so on the new arabia) and you need long distances walled with palisades (you can add some houses, but if you have a gap of 20 or more tiles it’s about 250 seconds of build time and 250 wood using just houses, countrary of the 40 wood of palisade and 120 seconds of building time, which also translates into more time spent gathering resources).

NOTE: This video is pre-nerf on walls, so the costs estimated here are actually the ones of the Italians of this hypothetical situation. All other civs right now spend more time building walls (1 second more for tile) and so more resources, except for spanish, which take less time.

Italians doesn’t have it on TCs, and on castles yeah it’s smaller, but it’s not its main purpose. The bonus is needed to save a bit of time in dark and feudal age by walling faster, and eventually it help if you are Trushed too, since you can build defensive towers faster. Then in castle age, you get those castles a bit sooner, which isn’t much and that’s fine, but even half a minute can translate into more GC numbers, which is what you need.

Because they don’t need that as they are now. Armor related bonuses were suggested for about a year before the introduction of the university bonus. Now they got that, and Italians have improved a lot, but they still struggle a bit.

My goal was to give them something that would help them survive in feudal (the fortifications bonus) or being able to outech the opponent a bit sooner (the tumb ring bonus) but without giving something that either:

  • permanently improve their units (more armor would stick, and Italians arbs are already pretty strong in post imp).
  • greatly improve their Eco (a bit resources more in feudal is fine, but nothing more) since they already are the best on water maps.

Almost no one repairs, maybe just castles and sometimes TCs, but that’s a thing for castle and imp, so it wouldn’t be a buff for feudal (as the title says…) when there aren’t units that threaten your buildings.

Also, usually bonuses that affects building times or cost also proportionally affect the repairs too… but a pure repair bonus is useless.

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Nobody who either noted or considered the early discouted TR bonus…

I onestly thought that most people would say that it’s OP…

I mean, the faster building fortifications is quite minor as a buff (though it might be too much for Italians) but the TR I thought that it would appear as stronger and create more dissent…

Meh, probably people by now are used by early chemistry for bohemians…

NOTE: There is a correction that I have to point out. Previously I stated that the faster building fortifications was an old Inca bonus, I was mistaken. It was actually a old Korean bonus, that I confused with the 15% cheaper stone cost of the inca, basically I fused together 2 bonuses. Still, the idea is more than worth to analyze in my opinion for civs like Italians who are at risk of being broken Trush civs.

Are you really sure about this? :sweat_smile:

Cheaper up (= potential for faster feudal up and better transition out of the trush later) + faster tower building bonus + eventual cheaper guard towers and ballistics, or even bombard towers later, feels quite good to me. Expecially on maps where they’re already quite strong (water, arena).

Well, onestly, there are way much better Trush civs:

  • Spanish: saves double the time on building towers and have goldless attack upgrades.
  • Koreans: gather stone faster and have free tower upgrades, with potential extra range.
  • Incas: have a great dark age eco and cheaper towers.
  • Sicilians: have better towers, a feudal UU and starts with more stone.
  • Byzantines: their towers have more HP and work well with cheaper trash.

Italians on comparison, have half of the spanish bonus, and less than a third of the Korean bonus (since they don’t need the university and saves time also). Yeah they age up faster, which helps, but that’s it.

Yeah, their Trush would become above average, but far from the Trush of the civs above. And if the bonus is added, and it’s seen that it makes italians Trush too much, it could be changed into “towers are affected from castle age onwards”.

In post imp instead, italians are fine, but far from the best civ. And BBT that goes up 12s faster doesn’t seem to be broken.

Mongols should have a way better Trush then, since they can age up way faster than Italians. And like them any civs with a dark or feudal eco bonus should abuse such strategy.

Not saying italians would be the best trushing civ, but you’re just adding potential to a civ that is actually not weak.

And try to think what that bonus would do on islands, where italians are already the best civ and it would help both landing the opponent and defend from opponent landings, and also getting up castles and fortifications for map control (which is the absolute key on islands games) later in the game. Would it be a good idea for you?

Do you like making castles impossible to push?

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Not sure if Italians need any more buffs at this point. They might not be a great arabia civ but aside from water maps they have been entering the arena top civs recently. Not the very top maybe but top10 for sure. They might even be the single most well rounded civ here since you virtually don’t have any bad civ matchup here. So a civ that performs great on closed maps and water while being okay on open maps sounds fine to me. Only thing that is really annoying for arabia and the like is that you don’t have halbs. Actually imo if they had halbs instead of gc they’d be a better arabia civ because oftentimes you rely on pikes to defend your base if your gc are used offensively. On closed maps that doesn’t matter which is why they are so strong there but on open ones it’s so bad if your main archer army needs to head back home bc you have no other units to defend heavy cav.


Meh… on arabia they aren’t that great… castle age forward they aren’t bad, but their feudal age is pretty weak, and not much rewarded in the later ages.

They would become a minor Trushing civ, I onestly don’t think that towers will be more viable than archers or scouts, but yes, they could be added to a scout or archer rush.

Meh, again, they could do a slightly better Trush, but is it worth? Italians are still better a contesting water, and their landings won’t that much better…

The key usually is to get ship numbers. Castles have an important role, but not a key. And again, they would saves just a few seconds for each castle.

They are above average, but not top tier on arena (no SE…).

Then of course on water they are arguably the best civ, but on arabia and arabia style maps lag behind a lot in my opinion.

It’s enaugh to see in the most recent wololo tournament that italians weren’t drafted not even once until now (I might be mistaken though, I haven’t seen all games).

Definitely not that, chinese and even franks are for example way more well rounded, even with more restricted tech tree, because they have very few bad matchups.

Italians on the countrary, have bad matchups against all civs that can apply feudal pressure.

Won’t help at all in feudal age… and since this is more about discussing buff for that age, it’s off topic.

Yeah, they are ok now on open maps, I admit it, but they aren’t still good.

As I said, I too think that there might be some other later changes, but I wanted to discuss the feudal ones here, to see if it was doable.

Anyway it’s incredible how people are so worried about Trush strategies and nobody considered the cheaper and/or earlier TR…

The way that prospective and perception works… I was sure that the fortification bonus would be the most minor and harmless bonus, while people would have been outrageous on the TR bonus.

Maybe it’s because it’s the one listed first, but there are just 2 of them, so I didn’t thought that it might been a problem.

I’m almost tempted to made another identical post but switching the position of the 2 bonus, so to see if there are any differences.

Lol human mind and interaction always surprise me…

Well if you look at how they performed and when they were picked in drafts in the last arena tournament you can very argie they are a top civ here. The are guys casting the tourney also suggested that multiple times. There might be 4 or 5 civs that are stronger on average but thats about it.

And what’s particularly interesting here is that they are great vs some of the top civs like Turks, Teutons or Byzantines. Gc, hussar and bbc is one of the if not the most powerful composition in imp. The only civs that can give them problems is civs like Ethiopians, britons or Vietnamese but that’s about it. Amd vs them you still have fu skirms and condos. Btw condos are really strong nowadays on arena and perform great vs eagles. Also you have great monks. There isn’t really much that holds the civ back on arena.

I was still talking arena ofc where feudal aggression doesn’t really matter and civ like franks or chinese are pretty average. Italians imp composition completely destroys these two civs.


Yeah, they are low A tier, not S, not top A, probably a bit less if you add the new bohemians.

I saw those tournaments too. Italians were drafted at the end, and only near the finals, when you neto choose more civs.

And bohemians, burgundians, portoghese…

The BBC thought lack SE, and that hurt a lot.

But anyway, that’s not the point… feudal matter less on arena, and that what I wanted to talk about.

Ok but my goal is to talk about feudal age on arabia and arabia-like maps.