Advisor Discussion Thread

[gamevideo113]

I'm opening this thread to discuss existing advisors / new advisor ideas. Everyone is welcome to share their ideas
After the second advisor rework we've definitely seen a nice improvement in variety and an increase in viable options for many advisor slots, which is awesome. Some advisors, though, are still quite underused and it's a shame, especially when it comes to legendary advisors! It's specifically on those that i'd like to focus on with this first post, but eventually the discussion will also include epic advisors of any age, not just legendary advisors.
I think currently the "problematic" legendary advisors that could be tweaked to see more use are

- Amytis of Media: An empty siege tower has mediocre damage against buildings, and a full siege tower (16 pop) isn't very effective as an anti-unit weapon for the population cost. I don't think siege towers are a good unit to use in legendary quests, but the devs might already have something in store for Amytis, we'll see.

- War Leader Beorix: Norse bowmen and skirmishers are still lackluster compared to other bowmen (like persian ones or toxotes), both damage and range wise, despite having a dedicated legendary advisor. They aren't completely unusable, but it's by far the worst option the Norse have in terms of unit composition.

- War Chief Comontorios: I'm going to test a bit more quests with him but the impression i've had so far isn't that great. Horsemen feel a bit weak, and their high food cost means you're going to have to keep a very high food gatherer count (like 50 farmers). Carpentoms on the other hand have a very low attack range, therefore they need constant attention and micro to avoid losing them and having to re-train them, which takes an awfully long time. Some train time reduction on these units could really help their viability in my opinion.

I'd also like to ask you your opinion about Sesostris and Rostam. I still haven't played with them enough to form a solid opinion.

Thoughts?

 

[purpleganja]

I like comontorios. I play both horsemen and some carpentoms together. Meat in the front and some good splash dps on the backline. I never make 50 farmers, 25-30 top then i delete down to 20 when I need more troops and i buy food with the gold from the very good celt caravans if needed.

Sobek is very fun to swarm with quickly trained expendable troops in front of the devastating Egyptian catapults. I don't do it often tho, because elephants..

Rostam is very nice too. I completely changed the way I go with Persian cavalry. A principal mass of asabaras with small squads of cataphracts or mounted archers to counter units or create distraction to run the fast asabaras in the back of the base to wreak havoc in the production buildings.

Edit oops I mixed up Sesostris with Sobek!

Sesostris was fun too the few times I played him, but I don't have experimented enough.

 

[coolblade23]

- Amytis of Media: An empty siege tower has mediocre damage against buildings, and a full siege tower (16 pop) isn't very effective as an anti-unit weapon for the population cost. I don't think siege towers are a good unit to use in legendary quests, but the devs might already have something in store for Amytis, we'll see.

I have been having a lot of success with royal guards in legendary quests and i sometimes use siege towers with them. I tend to use the siege tower to soak up the arrow damage from forts as i batter down gates and i also use them when the royal guards push in choke points and can't properly attack , to have them fire arrows from the back from the siege towers. It is a bit micro intensive but quite fun ... the problem that i tend to have is that siege towers do almost no damage to buildings for their pop cost ... the range damage is fine (not terrible, but not great either , but because i use it dynamically and situationally, it works good enough). For this to work i need Zu as the royal guards are the meat and backbone of the assaulting army. In most scenarios the siege towers do little to speed up the process as they end up doing crazy low damage to buildings for the investment(pop and micro effort) and the sluggish speed slow down the entire army; the goal here is to have infantry and siege work in sync for a unique and rewarding mechanic for those who enjoy to micro a bit.

I would personally suggest the following in order:

1. move General Zu to age 3 and have a new effect: infantry units do 10%/15%/20%/25% more damage (contender for the Cowardly Colonel Pamphilos - good effect and can be used in some scenarios to great affect , keep in mind he is Babylon only, so celts can't benefit from this)

2. Amytis of Media new effect: royal guards have 40% bonus damage protection, siege towers cost 1 less pop, move 20% faster and do 50% more building damage.

EDIT: One pattern that i would love to see in advisors is to not have 2 advisors in different ages buffing the same specific units hence i suggested to have the benefit of royal guards combined with siege moved in one advisors , while the other hero , yes it buff royal guards as well , but not them specifically -> looking at you Esfandiyar and Rohham, along with Tahmineh and Dumnorix/ Zeno )

 

[purpleganja]

One pattern that i would love to see in advisors is to not have 2 advisors in different ages buffing the same specific units hence i suggested to have the benefit of royal guards combined with siege moved in one advisors , while the other hero , yes it buff royal guards as well , but not them specifically -> looking at you Esfandiyar and Rohham )

I like That Esfandiyar and Rohham don't seem to be made to play together. One is for standalone Immortals with Pamphilos and the other is for Palintonon defenders with Timo.

 

[DarkArchon]

Rostam is good, especially if you like fielding diverse armies.

Egyptians could use an advisor to boost Catapults, since Greeks have two for Ballistas, both of which are decent. Catapults are currently a unique unit to Egyptians, but people seem to prefer Elephants.

 

[Unknown Maniac]

Sesostris is good, putting range on priests of ptah makes them look more like a typical converting priest with little bit less range and aoe conversion, the thing is what to use as a tank unit - weaker eles or weaker slower to replace infantry
I think comontorios is good rather than going one or the other I think it s better to use both units, but even one of them can be ok in easier quests
For Beorix I typed it on discord and I would love to see him granting access to him as a unit either trainable or spawning maybe even replacing chief, he could be a nice powerful unit but can die fast in legendary quest if you dont pay attention to him. I think using him to buff ranged units is kinda terrible (atleast the way it is now), skirmishers have the worst base dmg in the game as a unit and even after beorix giving them almost +100% dps still not worth using,
Rostam is pretty good and gives you multiple choices, you can got asa+ma combo or you can go taka with some meat shield. as an option he s much better than before
Instead of Amytis, I would rather focus on Ligeia in age III, lets be honest, how many times have you even considered using him, since he s age III, I think it would make sense if buffed ram-like units (rams, siege towers, farbjordrs), I think it would be nice to get something like MS, melee armor/hp to help rams little bit,

 

[Hawkster]

Amythis may need/change some more buffs in order to use more frequently. The reason why she isn't used by players, is because of siege towers' long training time and less dps compared to other civs' melee siege units. Since siege towers already can get chunks of hp by upgrading into champion, I'd like to say to give siege towers more dps and less training time added to it.
I'd like to buff her significantly so that she can compete with other legendary advisors (Nebuchadnezzar, Sargon)

Current: Siege Towers have 15% more health, deal 15% more damage and cost one less population.

Rework: Siege Towers deal 25% more damage, train 25% less training time and cost one less population.

Beorix is still not being used that much because of lack of buff stats. The movement speed to archer units aren't very useful indeed. I assume that dev team wanted to give that for easy to do kiting, but people would rather go for mass berserker or horseman for easier way to play. It's also a problem that neither bowman nor skirmisher can't out-range enemy fort's attack range.
I really like the idea to buff Norse's unused units which are the norse ranged units. So I want to stick with buffing ranged units. However, I do want to note that Beorix's stats needs to be differentiate between other ranged units' advisors. If not doing so, then it may be looked like mass producing same stats and just make different advisor name. We want every advisor to be unique, and distinct to other advisors.

Definitely I want to give them more range than now. However, since there are plenty of advisor which give boost of either attack or attack speed to their own ranged units, I'd like to suggest to give norse bowman & skirmisher with ignore armor. We could give them range and crit too, but it may look overlap with celtic bowman if we do so. I want to test out if this change will make them much better in use.

Current: Bowmen and Skirmishers atttack and move 12% faster, Skirmishers deal 75% more damage and attack and see 25% farther.

Rework: Bowmen and Skirmishers attack 25% farther and ignore 30% enemy's armor. Skirmishers have 75% more attack range.

Comontorios is doing his job well and I don't ever think he is weak these days. I'm thinking people who thinks he is weak is because of Finnulfr. But that's because finnulfr is really op, it's not that Comontorios is weak. Expensive training cost isn't too much problem in pve, because we can make plenty of resources by caravans. (We can spam mass berserkers too, thanks to the caravans' trading even berserkers are highly expensive.) Also, notice that Finnulfr only buff norse horsemen, whereas Comontorios buff 2 units. Carpentom's short range is inevitable, because of its default range is short... actually this kind of thing are apply to all anti-ranged ranged units. But still, AoE (in its champion upgrade) with Comontorios make carpentoms decent to use in legendary quests.
I think he is just adequate right now. I don't think he really needs to be improved.

Rostam is one of my most favorite legendary advisor in latest reworked advisor. Buffing asabaras and mounted archers fit really well in legendary quests, even at hard ones.
Also, using asabara with mounted archers combine super good. This composition redeems each of their flaws. Asabaras are all-around units have bonus damage against ranged units, but can't kill cavalry and large amount of infantry units quickly. Mounted archers have fast movement speed and have bonus attack to cavalry, but they lack hp and have short range compare to the bowmen. However, asabaras cover up mounted archers' flaws by tanking in front and make mounted archer dealing safely at the back, and mounted archers counter enemy cavalry units with its cavalry bonus damage and they can also kill infantry units too if geared darkness arrow (arrow that have damage, range and infantry bonus attack). I evaluate Rostam rework is one of the best rework that dev team have made in latest advisor rework. I'm not using Rostam a lot than the past. Thumbs up for the great buff!

For Sesostris, I think he is okay right now. Giving more conversion range to Ptah solved his short conversion range, and I can see the different when gearing it.

Sobek is being used on easy legendary quests, and it gives players alternative to elephant. However, I'd like to add Sobek to buff slingers too, so that she can buff all egyptian barrack units. Buffing slingers can match good to enemy ranged units who are attacking from far away while spearmen and axemen are fighting against pack of enemy melee units. This can lessen the loss of melee units because we have ranged units who doesn't affect to the crowd in front, attacking from distance. I'd also like to give spearmen and axeman little bit of more hp, because despite of less training time, they don't survive that long, and this makes Sobek reluctant to use in hard legendary quests which players needs survivability to play them. (If not, people will struggle playing it while enemy fierce forces are coming into your base.)
I hope this buff can make Sobek use in hard quests in the future.

Current: Spearmen and Axemen have 50% more health, train in 25% less time and move 25% faster.

Rework: Spearmen and Axemen have 75% more health, train in 25% less time and move 25% faster. Slingers deal 50% more damage.

 

[gamevideo113]

I tried Comontorios on Valley of the Kings, and even while mixing armies the result was quite unimpressive :/ in the end i just switched a big carpentom ball with druids that seemed to do better than the mixed army. Unfortunately on VoK you can't even use rites, and i think this combo suffers a bit more than other celtic combos for the lack of rites.

@DarkArchon all good egyptian players will almost always implement catapults, regardless of the unit they are making. Catapults are one of the best egyptian units and i love the fact that they are somewhat viable already, without needing an advisor to buff them.

@Unknown Maniac i agree, ligeia definitely deserves a buff, although now it isn't dropping which is a shame :/

I think Rostam-buffed Asabara leave a lot to be desired, since they have the same population cost as many other cavalry units while having lower damage and only decent hp. They aren't too bad with mounted archers, but it's a bit of a weird combination to use imo. You still need siege to kill buildings because asa+MA has really low dps vs buildings, and they aren't that amazing vs units either. You need lots of micro for a mediocre result as far as i can tell. Not really worth using rostam over timo or something else. Even Xerxes with a frontline of asabara would seem a bit better to me than asa+MA, but idk. Takabara on the other hand are pretty good.

@Hawkster Sobek is fine even in harder quests imo. Egyptian infantry is definitely underrated. As long as you keep your catapults safe in the back you can spam spearmen for days and clear basically any quest in my experience.