Advisor Suggestions

With the 3rd Advisors rework coming up, I’m here to post a number of suggestions for various advisors that have been underpreforming for quite some time now in relation to other more meta advisors.

Links to previous Advisor reworks.

https://forums.projectceleste.com/threads/advisor-balance-changes-and-reworks.4453/

https://forums.projectceleste.com/threads/advisor-balance-changes-and-reworks-set-2.4945/

https://forums.projectceleste.com/threads/new-advisors-set-3-advisor-reworks.5123/

A1 Advisors:


1: Lucky Lookout Leucon - An advisor who has seen a large number of buffs over time, Lucky Lookout Leucon is in a rare, awkward position where he doesn’t offer any direct military or economic buff, but instead provides a utility buff by increasing both the power of the Scout - Survivability, speed, LoS, with a recent addition to increasing the LoS of buildings. Despite having one of the larger descriptions with his affect, and having the most number of modifiers, Lucky Lookout Leucon is still essentially one of the worst advisors, really being only useful on Bell Come Home, shaving ~6 seconds off completion time there.

I suggest just removing all the other benefits to Lucky Lookout Leucon, and instead having him directly make Scouts and Watch Posts incredibly resistant to damage - Either via vastly increasing their HP pool, giving them incredible amounts of regeneration, or making them highly resistance to damage - 4x the HP, 35 health/second regen, or .75 baseline armor vs everything.


2: Odysseus - Another heavily underutilized advisor that gives a 15% cost reduction to barracks, he is in dire need of a buff - You have to build an incredible amount of barracks to even beat out advisors like Irene or even Weylin, not mentioning mainstream advisors like Zephyros or Philon. I suggest buffing the cost reduction to 50%, and giving him an additional 50% build time reduction for barracks.


3: Rockhound Erastos - One of the specific-resource A1 advisors, Rockhound Erastos provides the largest bonuses to gathering. Unfortunately, he’s also among the most useless. I personally would suggest upping his conservation to a full 100% - Miner Kleon alone provides 1200 extra gold from gold mines, whereas Erastos only provides roughly 500 stone from stone mines. And unlike Miner Kleon who is quite strong on maps where you can’t make caravans, there aren’t really any maps in which you absolutely need all that excess stone. I would also suggest buffing the amount of stone carrying to 50% as well if not more, since Zephyros also provides 25% extra stone carry.


4: Net Maker Aapep - Another specific resource A1 advisor that’s also incredibly niche. I again suggest similar changes akin to Rockhound Erastos - Vastly increased conservation (Aapep should allow a player to continue to harvest berries and herdables well into A4 purely from conservation), increased carry, and perhaps even increased gathering speed on fish and berries.


Prince Niall Muighmedon - To get his impact to be anywhere near that of other advisors, you have to make an absolutely absurd amount of storehouses. And even though he was altered to affect Ox Carts, he has even less impact on Babylon because - You can’t actually make that many Ox Carts due to their population impact. Thus, I suggest both buffing Niall’s cost reduction (90%), build time reduction (90%), and giving Ox Carts 0 population (Maybe add a build limit to Ox Carts, say 30, to prevent things like ppl making 9000 Ox Carts)


Survivalist Agathon - An advisor that’s almost good. I think buffing the cost reduction to 30/35% would be enough to place him as a top A1 advisor alongside Zephyros/Philon.


Closet Organizer Irene - Once the actual math was done on her economic impact vs Zephyros/Philon, Irene slipped down the tier list - A decent enough advisor for new players, you’ll still eventually want to get Zephyros or Philon instead. I suggest also applying her 75% bonus to the train time of storehouse technologies - It’s not a gargantuan impact to eco, but Irene doesn’t need a gargantuan impact to eco.


Good Shepherd Shahriyar -Clunky in his first iteration, still clunky now. I suggest moving Sheep spawn from TCs to Houses and Longhouses - This solves many issues with the current version such as scalability (requiring A4 for maximum affect, inability to keep up with food requirements for a spamming army, less effective in early ages), smoothness of play (Sheep going everywhere during the early game due to shared rally) as well as opportunity cost (Sheperd is currently in a weird position where early game, Aapep is better, and late game you either can directly trade for food if your food requirements aren’t high, or you have to build farms anyway if your food requirements are high).

I believe most other A1 advisors are pretty solid, either as a niche (Finnbar, Kleon, Leonnoris, Thutmose, Weylin) or just overall power (Philon, Zephyros)

 

For Age 2, advisor selection is currently heavily influenced by the Caravan meta - Unless there’s a specific advisor for a civ (Audun), or for a specific playstyle (Gaina), or you don’t make caravans for a map, you’ll always want to use a Caravan advisor (Nannus, Dumno, ect). While I’ve made separate suggestions on how to maybe reduce the impact of caravans on the advisor meta, currently the only thing to do is to buff advisors to the point that they can compete with Caravan related advisors.


General Heron - Currently provides 50% increased LoS and Snare Resistance. Unfortunately, this just isn’t good enough to replace almost any other A2 economic advisor. I suggest removing the LoS and upgrading the snare resistance to outright snare immunity.


King Minos - Similar to Heron. Here, I would suggest removing the snare resistance and increasing the snare to 65-75% - Snare simply isn’t as powerful in PvE as it is in PvP on melee units, so increasing the snare value immensely should be fine.



Sergeants - Currently all 3 sergeants give 12% cost and train time reduction to their specific units. Without Caravans both the Infantry and Cavalry sergeants are quite solid and useful, whereas the Range advisor competes with Gaina, where the range increase is simply superior. I would currently suggest buffing Infantry/Cavalry Sergeants to somewhere between 15-20% reduced cost/train time, and the range advisor to a full 30% since it directly competes with Gaina.


Eochiad - Similarily needs buffs. Eochiad ranges from fairly strong (Khephri Elephants) to underpreforming. Perhaps allow Eochiad to affect research as well? The previous version of Amunet gave a full 50% gold cost reduction, and was considered to be garbage.


Village Elder - Remove the portion affecting Caravans and boost the Village train time to 30-40% reduction.


Hyginus/Narmer/Connall - It’s been mentioned multiple times on discord, but Epic Hyginus should be equal to Narmer. As for Connall, I feel that changing him to only give range regen, equivalent to Narmer/Hyginus should be fine, since currently that’s the only time he’ll get used.


Persia: Bardiya currently is “neutral” roughly - On a macro level, the amount of time saved on building is completely canceled out by the increased cost on building - And in some cases such as Wonder or Forts comes out at a macro loss. He’s mainly useful on maps where you have to quickly build and you have a very large starting resource pool - Lots o Rogues/Barbs, ect. However, Ormazdiyar is in a similar position, except that he has a much larger impact. You can simply add more villagers to speed up building speed, but you simply cannot speed up single upgrades, such as A4 or the full series of factory tech. Thus, I feel that Bardiya should be increased to 60% build speed, and the cost reduced to 12% to match Ormazdiyar.


Cels: Cartimandua - Change to increased health and speed. Druids are a very effective Celtic priest, but sadly they are clunky to use with most Celtic builds simply due to their much slower speed - Champions and Bowmen builds are roughly the only comps in which bringing along druids doesn’t slow the entire army down. Making Druids highly speedy should help with that significantly - And druids could also use more health in PvE as they are among the squishiest of units, and are generally up close in combat and taking damage.

Diviciacus - When you have Seed Master Agape, there honestly isn’t any point in Diviciacus - You essentially have to use 2 advisors - Diviciacus and Shepherd in order to get the effect of just Agape. Thus, Diviciacus could use a change, though quite frankly I’m at a lost as to which direction to go. 50% reduced train time and cost on units and tech at groves in addition to the current build cost reduction? Improvement to Celtic Sacrifices? Idk.



Egypt: Userhet - Camel Riders need massive buffs to be viable in PvE. +30% health/damage in addition to the other effects is a good start.


Babylon: Berosus the Wise - Upping the cost reduction to 50% so that it’s more in-line with other temples for priest spam should be a good enough buff, as the other effects are quite strong.


Britomartus - I brought this up on the discord, but what about allowing Britomartus to remove the TC build cap entirely? Population from TCs can remain at 80 pop total, but you can make TCs for additional resource drop-off points, extremely durable static defense, and even solid damage. Combine with a 50% cost reduction and Britomartus could become a powerful A2 advisor to compete with all the Caravan Advisors.

 

Age 3 advisors are, I feel, the most balanced of the lot - You have both powerful military advisors and strong eco advisors. However, there are a number of sadly lacking advisors in A3.


Camel Whisperer Harthor - Used to be a decent advisor for Cavalry, now with Horse Whisperer Lohrasb he needs some buffs. Personally, I suggest him giving Cav 15% pierce and crush armor, since cavalry do not have any difficulty killing Siege and Range.


Engineer Ligeia - A moderate Eco advisor for siege users, sadly the only unit he can really be used with is the War Wagon. I suggest just forgetting the eco portion entirely, and instead causing him to give Siege +30-40% movement speed.


Senior Mason Stephanos - Far too niche. I would suggest either A) He gives a much, much larger stone cost reduction for all buildings, to the tune of 75%, or B) He also gives these buildings some form of defensive bonus - Armor, health, ect.


Lord Viriathos - Another advisor that’s far too niche. Personally, I would completely get rid of his bonus damage vs priest, and instead let him give absolutely tremendous amounts of conversion resistance - 200% at a minimum, and I would even go so far as to say 400% or even outright conversion immunity to all units. There isn’t a single map in which the AI itself spams priests, so priests tend to either be static defense, or in the form of the occaisional boss.


General Ahapitep - Competing directly with Mehrab, slightly cheaper and quicker to train priests doesn’t cut it. Personally, I’d have him give either LoS and range to priest (Both conversion and healing range), or have him give speed to priests - 15-20% of either set is good.


Commander Bolgios/Caste Builder Sostrate - outside of niche quests in which you are building hundreds of towers or forts, neither of these advisors are up to the power found in most A3 advisors. I would boost both the build time reduction and the cost reduction to 50%.


Councilman Onesiphoros - I actually debated about putting him here, since he is solid on a number of maps in which you need to get to A4 as fast as possible. However, in a perfect world, you can use any advisor with nearly any comp, and he isn’t at that point of balance. I suggest increasing his cost reduction to 50%, and have him also get you to the Golden Age twice as fast.


Explorer Pytheas - Honestly I feel that he would be quite solid as an A2 advisor, or as a buffed A4 advisor. As it stands there is simply too much competition in A3 for a ship advisor between him, Batoshipip, and Ammon - And both Ammon and Batoshipip are both solid.


Norse: Harjar Commander Håvard - Akin to Camel Riders, Harjars could use a fairly solid buff so that they can be viable. Personally, I feel that his build time reduction should be removed, and instead give him splash damage and crush resistance in addition to his pierce resistance, making Harjar’s extremely tanky against everything except cavalry.


Celt - King Bathanatos - He is excellent on EMIC, and meh everywhere else. There’s been a lot of talk of allowing for the Keep Tower upgrade for players via advisor or some other method - Here’s an excellent spot to try it out. Allow him to give Celts access to all Tower and Wall upgrades instead of just 1.


Egyptian - King Seneb - Originally he gave Forts a bit of extra damage as well as a bit of toughness, now he gives Egyptian Siege a bit of extra building damage. Except when it comes down to it, the only Siege Egypt really uses in PvE are Catapults, and I’m not sure that a 25% damage bonus to a specific target is what Catapults need. With that said, I’m not sure what to do with Seneb - Give Siege a flat 25% damag bonus instead?

 

As for A4 advisors - ima be honest, there is a LOT of imbalance here, mainly due to Legendary Advisors. Not only is there a good amount of overlap between a number of Legendary and Epic advisors (There are at least 6 examples of a Legendary advisor doing something that a Epic Advisor does, but either doing it better, or adding additional things on to it), but A4 also has the least amount of variance due to the sheer power of Legendary Advisors. If I were to go into it, I would have to call out most of the non-legendary advisors - Out of the 39 non-legendary advisors, only 17 can be said to have no overlap with other A4 advisors. Thus, A4 advisors is likely the most imbalanced of the lot. I can't come up with enough ideas for all the lacking A4 advisors, but I do hope that they can be addressed, and each A4 advisor given a spot in the AoEO PvE meta.

 

That would be more along the lines of buffing Royal Guards. As an Advisor, General Zu is actually quite solid, providing both a significant cost reduction on an expensive unit, as well as providing a very large defensive buff. Additionally, it seems that the Devs want to stay away from giving Melee units splash if they didn't have splash beforehand due to animation issues - Unlike range units which don't really have splash animations, all melee units with splash due have animations indicating said splash, meaning they would have to give said unit a animation to go along with splash.

 

Instead of simply dismissing ideas, could you actually come up with alternatives?

It's pretty much solid meta that the top 2 A1 advisors are Philon and Zephyros. All other A1 advisors are either useful in niche scenarios (Thutmose, Finnbar, ect), or outright useless.

So, please, give alternatives. This is what discussion is for.

 

Yes, and there are many other older A4 advisors that have become redundant with the addition or occaisional rework of Legendary Advisors.

 

They are underpreforming in that either A) They support the build of a single unit type, but in PvE you never, ever use that unit, or B) They can be used with any unit build, but their effect is weak enough to the point that you don't use them.

Since you used Erastos as an example - On most maps, you can only safely mine anywhere between 3-4 stone mines, and there are generally an equal number of safe gold mines. Erastos gives 500 extra stone per mine. Kleon gives 1200 extra gold per mine. Via market trade, Kleon actually gives more stone if you were to trade that 1200 extra gold straight to stone - You get 714 stone this way. Thus, there is not a single instance in which you are better off using Erastos - And given both the significantly reduced amount of stone on any map (Generally only having 1/3rd the stone compared to gold), and the much reduced impact on stone (Name me a single map in which you simply turtle up and do nothing else except make a shit-ton of towers - No units, no pushing army, ect), using Erastos is simply outright gimping yourself compared to using Kleon or even Philon, even if you need to build a ton of towers. Thutmose is better even for tower building.

Note that while I included Erastos, Aapep, and other similarily underused A1 advisors, I did not include Kleon, Thutmose, ect - This is because this advisors are useful and can be used as an alternative to Philon/Zephyros, as long as it's with your specific playstyle (Kleon is great when you can't make Caravans. Thutmose is strong if you are going for a range deathball build).

You would know exactly how I felt that advisors are underpreforming as I give a brief overview of nearly every single advisor and how I feel they currently underpreform.

 

Heron - Yea, you have a point on Snare Immunity not scaling through rarities, so should be fine to add the LoS back - LoS doesn't have any combat benefits. Now he scales via rarity.

Minos - Could also just give snare immunity, though there are more infantry with snare immunity then there are cavalry with snare immunity.

Leucon - While making him more about Watch Posts would be a buff, unless it's silly numbers (+100% LoS on Watch Post, Watch Posts build 75% faster/cost 75% less, Watch Posts have 100% more health), these changes simply aren't enough to make Leucon viable.

Odysseus - As example, a 75/75% cost/build time reduction on Barracks gives you 150 wood and 45 seconds of saved time for each Barracks you build. Infantry based civs are going to make at least 30 barracks per game - This is 4500 wood in saving at least - A macro benefit that blows out nearly every other A1 advisor completely out of the water. Thus I feel that 50/50% is strong enough - 3000 total wood saving is still incredibly strong, but he's only useful for Infantry builds.

Eochaid - First and foremost, if you can use Eochaid that means you can also use one of the Sergeants. Thus, we need to ask, is the 8% increased gold saving worth the loss in train time, as well as the loss of food? (Wood as well for Immortals). The only 2 units where you save more resources with Eochaid then you do with a Sergeant are Khepri Elephants (Since they are pure gold), Sappers (Again pure gold), and Berserkers (Where you save exactly 3% more resources due to their much higher gold cost compared to food, and is 3% more resources worth the loss of train time? idk). Thus, Eochaid needs a buff, otherwise he's a niche combination advisor. Thoth, which is similar to Eochaid but with food instead, is a completely different matter since he also affects Villagers and especially Caravans, and currently he's even considered to be a strong alternative if you can't afford Nannus.

Bardiya - While reducing the increased cost to 10% would help to shift Bardiya more towards an overall-beneficial advisor, keep in mind that the shift only results in a 10-15 additional wood saved per building built, which is fairly minor especially when you have Combutis, who offers 20% wood saving per building with no penalties.

Userhet - Ok, you know Sarrisphoroi? Greek Cavalry unit, same age, similar cost to Camel Riders? Sarrisphoroi have overall better armor, more health, and more damage then what Camel Riders have when fully geared. Camel Riders need a ton of help to become even viable, not even mentioning optimal. That's why I suggest giving them increased health and damage in addition to their already existing bonus damage and cav-armor - They need all of that in order to compete with not just in-civ alternatives, but cavalry across the board.

 

If you have strong general-purpose advisors, then niche advisors have to be even stronger in their niche to be worthwhile - And the strength of said niche can defer greatly.

Philon, for instance is the most general purpose advisor in the game - With only a handful of exceptions (Unite the Tribes and similar quests), you will always have to build, you'll have to build constantly from the start of the game to nearly the end of the game, thus giving Philon constant value. With that said, Philon's actual macro impact isn't quite that large - Referencing your math's analysis spreadsheet, Philon is roughly the difference between Kaveh and Divine, and the total resource difference between Philon and not having Philon is roughly within the 500-1200 resources saved range. However, Philon also has high micro impact - The time saved of being able to build a production building and get out units just 12 seconds faster can sometimes be the difference of dealing with an attacking wave easily, and struggling with the attacking wave, if that makes any sense.

Furthermore, given how niche advisors all affect different baselines, this is also something to be heavily considered. I used it earlier with Erastos vs Kleon - While Erastos gives larger percentags then Kleon, in terms of pure resources gained over a map Kleon is superior even for Stone gathering, simply due to there being far less stone on the map then there is gold. Thus, even with 1 niche advisor vs another niche advisor, Kleon beats out Erastos even in his own niche!

There's also the question of when an advisor can be considered niche vs general - Thutmose, for instance affects only wood gathering, which can be considered niche. However, every civ needs a huge amount of wood when building up, and continues to need wood even with food/gold comps simply to build production. So is Thutmose considered a niche or general advisor?

Then for actual niche advisors, their strength varies significantly - Finnbar is far stronger then Aapep, and both have a very specific niche - Finnbar is only useful while there are fishing schools on the map, and Aapep is only useful while there are berries, huntables, and also villager-accessible fishing schools on the map. However, Aapep is nowhere near Finnbar's power. Finnbar gives 250 additional food on every single node he affects. Aapep gives 300 extra food on fishing nodes, yes - But he gives only 90 extra food on berry nodes, and 22.5-150 on huntable nodes. Additionally, Finnbar provides at anywhere from +.32 to +.64 food/second/pop, whereas Aapep provides only +.102 to +.21 food/second/pop - Thus Finnbar being far superior on maps that suite his niche. Heck, I can even refer back to Kleon - Is the amount of additional food Aapep yield more then the amount of traded food that Kleon will yield? If the answer to this is no, then again, Kleon is better then Aapep in his niche.

Thus, my point - There are currently specifically niche advisors who underpreform to the point that advisors that do not directly affect that niche still outpreform them in that specific niche.

And I feel that these advisors MUST be looked at for the next advisor rework.

Which brings me to a second point that I feel some posters are missing - There is another advisor rework coming, and now is the time to found out which advisors need additional buffs. If we simply kept the framework of "all advisors are currently perfect", Weylin would still only provide 15% cost reduction to houses, Dunmo would still be at 50% cost reduction and 15% speed boost, ect.

So stop saying that all these advisors are fine, and start looking for where they obviously aren't fine.

 

While I haven't mentioned it in this thread, the issue with A2 Caravan advisors is thus : Caravans are strong, most quests are currently balanced around Caravan's strength, and you'd effectively have to nerf every Caravan advisor because otherwise you'd just wind up using, say, Zeno if you flat-out nerf Nannus (And overall all the Caravan related advisors - Dumno, Zeno, Nannus, and even Thoth, Elder, and Supply Specialist are actually within like 10-15% of each other in terms of economic impact, with Nannus simply being a bit ahead on 20-30 minute maps with high resource starts - Zeno/Dumno are actually close to equivalent to Nannus on longer maps with lower resource starts to my understanding - VoK, Trouble, ect).

Thus, nerfing ALL Caravan advisors is essentially a nerf to Caravans, which, in turn, is a nerf to most quests. Is it a possiblity? Yes. But I don't think it's the correct way to go about this.