He's more off target then the other youtuber. Devious watcher is the worst trait ingame.
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As a PVE player, he underrates some traits severely, while overrating others.
Underrated:
Chosen destroyers. The buff finally made this one viable on large maps, especially for barbarians, reavers and oathsworn - strife. Combine it with Ruthless raiders, and you will have tons of draft from all the fights allover the map delivered right into your capital. Always. With this skill, you get VERY good bonuses for razing, though potentially worse than if you absorbed a city, but hey! You can't absorb them all! When you play a map which has DOZENS of cities, you will certainly like that you get 80-160+ incomes from their razing, rather than just nothing or much worse income from vassalizing. The skill is really, really good even without the "big сity-states" (or how is it called in-game, i forgot) realm trait not only because it allows for huge incomes from razing everything you see, but also because with this trait you don't need to invest imperium into absorbing cities (and gold to develop them), instead using it all to get as much heroes and units as possible. As a result, on a large map, you will end up having much more income and more heroes at any stage of the game past early, and by the late game your incomes will be totally overpowered. The only downside of the trait is that you have to roam around a razed city until its ruins are removed, in order to spam its territory with your outposts... which is completely negated by barbarians, who can just leave "the dirty job" to the scouts, while their heroes continue snowballing without slowing their pace at all. Reavers, instead, just declare wars on sight, not only saving their time and resources on fabrication of grievances, but also earning their swords to build cannons (which potentially saves even more gold). And oathsworn, though still need to slow down (though not as much as all other cultures), get imperium for razing and pillaging, which is another interesting option to play with the "Chosen destroyers". All in all, for these 3 cultures on large maps, this is a huge S+ tier trait. For others, depending on map size and settings, it's somewhere between C and A.
Merciless slavers. Just two words: new feudal. Though it's actually super funny to build a free snowballing army of umbral tyrants, direcasters and umbral mistressess by turn 15-20, aristocracy does well too. Merciless slavers trait is the only way to recruit an umbral tyrant, btw. Not even talking about ending up with all your cities on the map having 30 population.
Ruthless raiders. Basically, when I decide not to pick them in a PVE game, I almost always regret this decision. Instant armies are just way too strong, and gold is just too important. It's pretty strange to see this trait evaluated so poorly in the video.
Umbral disciples. This trait encourages you to spend as much time as possible in umbral layer, since all umbral provinces award extra +2 knowledge right from the start. Umbral flesh makes it possible to painlessly enter the umbral areas as soon as possible, and the altar of marching gloom ensures that all provinces of your cities will be providing you with +2 knowledge. Basically, this trait reads like this: all gloom provinces on the map provide +2 knowledge, your units also get buffed (instead of being debuffed) in gloom, and you can spread gloom from the start to ensure that you will cover your territories with it as soon as possible. Also, your leader gets a free summon every combat. If you don't pick this trait, you can expect to unlock these bonuses by turn ~35-40, even if you regularly sacrifice stuff to umbral dwellings. Umbral provinces provide very strong bonuses - much stronger than the regular ones - and their early (and massive) acquisition, combined with an extra +2 knowledge bonus per province, can be very rewarding. The "Umbral disciplies" is one of the strongest knowledge-bumping traits in the game, and it's significantly underrated in the video.
Overrated:
Prolific swarmers. An economy-boosting trait which is much weaker than fabled hunters and ruthless raiders - both in the long term, and in the early game. The two others i mentioned not only make you start like a rocket, but also scale extremely well into late game, while all the three traits serve the same purpose. There is no reason to consider the swarmers an S-tier.
Ritual cannibals. You will be happy with them, unless... oh, damn, another astral dew. Another unicorn. Another reaper. Another... meh. Fine. At least, there are SOME non-MO units there to get resources from. In the end, around 50% of enemies are still made of flesh and blood, right? Right. Unless you enter the umbral abyss. Where you will receive exactly 0 resources from any combat, because all the umbral demons are magic creatures. Too many "buts" and "ifs" for an S-tier skill, isn't it?
Adept settlers. Capturing cities is almost always better than building your own ones. Because you can get a t3-t4 one with 6-10 pop instead of having to build it up from 0. In the end, you just win an empire skill worth of 200 imperium + 50 imperium and around 60-70 food per founded city. If you captured (not founded) all your secondary cities, then you don't even win food and extra imperium. Devotees of good/evil will provide you with the same (or even more) imperium during the game, while offering other (and pretty noticable) bonuses aside from that. As such, the "Adept settlers" trait is a pretty mediocre one, definitely not an S-tier.
Great builders. Not worth picking in any scenario, since its bonuses are too minor to take this trait instead of any other economy-boosting trait, regardless of build.
Runesmiths. On average, this trait equals ~15-17% faster research speed combined with reduced unit upkeep. Seems solid, but not enough for an S-tier. With superstrong niche traits like experienced seafarers or chosen destroyers exploited by appropriate builds, there is just no room for runesmiths to be picked. Because... instead of what? Fabled hunters? Nope. Ruthless raiders? Nope. Swift marchers? Hell, never.
Devious watchers. Heavily overrated in the video. There were times when this skill was useful - in combination with another nowadays worthless "Perfectionist artisans", because it made your outposts PRODUCE gold instead of draining it. But, since this was changed and this combination no longer works, both traits are completely useless, unfortunately.
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I dunno. Devious Watchers at least doesn't make you worse off like Perfectionist Artisans. It's a bit of a do-nothing, but doing nothing is better than punching yourself in the balls.
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Watched the whole video. Very stange feeling tbh. He clearly knows strengths and weaknesses of individual perks, mentions key facts about them, but the resulting tier list looks cursed.
I just can't take a guy seriously if he places Runesmiths and Reclaimers in one tier with Prolific Swarmers, and Ancient Wise Ones in one tier with Mana Addicts.
EDIT: quoted the wrong post, I meant the one in the OP one. The quoted one isn't just cursed, it's pure nonsense.
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Tier lists are only useful for the influencer that is using them to farm engagement.
To get meaningful data on balance you'd have to actually either construct a mathematical model with a baseline to compare numbers against or have a match-up database that you then do expert data analysis on. That influencer is just doing a vibe check and calling it data.
Like, just considering his Banner Lords analysis, which he rates as C-tier (...which he basically refers to as 'bad', which isn't even consistent with his scoring metrics he initially outlined). Well... percentage-wise, Banner Lords provides absolutely massive bonuses. Literally 2x Rally of the Lieges, and as guaranteed Free City that you don't even need to scout for. These are play-warping bonuses. But he vibe checks it by just discounting the usefulness of Free Cities without actually quantifying his opinions. It is a mid choice because... well, because he doesn't rate Free City play very much. But what happens if you do lean into Free City play? Well, we oon't know, there's no match-up data and no model to plug it into.
People just click tier lists because they want to know what traits are BiS and (somewhat reasonably) expect that the tier list consensus opinion is likely to land on approximately the right answers. But that also means an individual tier list is useless for analyzing what is most or least powerful.
To get meaningful data on balance you'd have to actually either construct a mathematical model with a baseline to compare numbers against or have a match-up database that you then do expert data analysis on. That influencer is just doing a vibe check and calling it data.
Like, just considering his Banner Lords analysis, which he rates as C-tier (...which he basically refers to as 'bad', which isn't even consistent with his scoring metrics he initially outlined). Well... percentage-wise, Banner Lords provides absolutely massive bonuses. Literally 2x Rally of the Lieges, and as guaranteed Free City that you don't even need to scout for. These are play-warping bonuses. But he vibe checks it by just discounting the usefulness of Free Cities without actually quantifying his opinions. It is a mid choice because... well, because he doesn't rate Free City play very much. But what happens if you do lean into Free City play? Well, we oon't know, there's no match-up data and no model to plug it into.
People just click tier lists because they want to know what traits are BiS and (somewhat reasonably) expect that the tier list consensus opinion is likely to land on approximately the right answers. But that also means an individual tier list is useless for analyzing what is most or least powerful.
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I think both youtubers videos are valid points of view and both make some mistakes on their tier list. I personally don't think Devious Watcher is a B tier more like a D, for example.
Overall from all I'm reading in this discussion, and watching on youtube, it seems that most people agree which are the most egregious 4~7 traits are (either too good or too strong). Also, most seems to agree that a mix of small buffs and small nerfs for those on the top and bottom are the way to go.
Overall from all I'm reading in this discussion, and watching on youtube, it seems that most people agree which are the most egregious 4~7 traits are (either too good or too strong). Also, most seems to agree that a mix of small buffs and small nerfs for those on the top and bottom are the way to go.
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YouTubers often make one or two intentionally controversial picks to farm engagement. Like, I doubt this guy actually thinks Devious Watchers is good. He doesn't even make an argument for it. He just popped it into B tier knowing the consensus is that it's bad, because he knew people would comment on the video as a consequence.
The nerf / buff cycle based on consensus vibes is, IMHO, bad for games. I'm tilting at a windmill to say that, but the best games and best mods I've played have avoided those cycles and were better for it. Leaving the supposedly 'overpowered' or 'underpowered' stuff as is, and letting the players decide how to adapt to it rather than seeing it as a design job to flatten out all of the design space.
UMVC3 is one good example. 'Vergil is broken!', right? 'Doom is broken!'. And they are - but the margins are much smaller than what players think, and there are glaring holes in their kit that you can exploit, and when you're forced to do that you learn fundamentals about the game that really dispel a lot of myth that people rely on when talking about X or Y thing being too good or too weak. The reality is that most players don't know what they don't know about a game they are only engaging with at a surface level and cannot make an accurate assessment of what is too powerful or not, even if the overall vibe of a statement like 'Vergil is broken!' isn't wrong.
Injustice 2 is another one, albeit more narrowly. People still say that Zod has a 10-0 match-up against Lex Luthor, and they will point to a specific clip from a tournament match where Zod absolutely destorys Lex. And they do this while not realizing that Lex actually won that set they clipped from. The first loss is just so devastating that it creates a bias in the viewer where they assume the rest of the set must have been just as miserable, when in fact a single correct guess for Lex very handily rewards him with a win.
Dominions used to be my favorite strategy game example, but unfortunately these days it has also been dragged down to nerf / buff Hell by Discord culture. It used to be, though, that Dominions just told players to figure it out when it came to overpowered stuff, which led to cool strategies and ridiculous, hilarious, mind bending play space. These days people just wait around for a patch when they don't like the current meta.
We don't need these incredibly excessive and reactionary nerf/ buff cycles. They are bad for the game and bad for players. Instead, players should just stop prowling the webt for BiS and enjoy the game and do their own experimenting with it. Instead of taking authoritative direction from some influencer farming engagement, try builds yourself. Discover thngs. Play! Isn't that why go got the game, to play it?
If you do that and put hours into what you find fun and tune out the social media noise, I think you'll genuinely be shocked when you go back and tune in and see what people are saying about what 'needs a nerf' or 'needs a buff', and that shock will be your first step to realizing how ridiculous and needless the nerf/buff cycle is.
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I have to disagree with you at least partly @Kevin Ross Brown. The part that I agree is that I don't think the game needs to achieve a perfect balance were everything is Tier A, but there should not have anything in the game that go so far off the curve that reduces the choices (either by being too strong or by not even being a consideration).
Also I play and follow some others games that the nerf and buff constantly improved the games as well, either by refreshing the meta, or by removing toxic experience, or by increasing variety. Example: Current Hearthstone after a couple of years of nerfs/buffs, some rotation and some reduce of power level finally hearthstone is so diverse that most classes (9 out of 11) are playable and even in high ranked game there are at least 15+ decks viable to compete. And also, FUN! The most important part.
Also another example? AoW 4 current buff in Feudal culture made that culture an option! That is what I want options! diversity, so I can play replay and re-replay this game, lol. I am already waiting to see the result of the Dark Culture when it pass for the same treatment.
Also I play and follow some others games that the nerf and buff constantly improved the games as well, either by refreshing the meta, or by removing toxic experience, or by increasing variety. Example: Current Hearthstone after a couple of years of nerfs/buffs, some rotation and some reduce of power level finally hearthstone is so diverse that most classes (9 out of 11) are playable and even in high ranked game there are at least 15+ decks viable to compete. And also, FUN! The most important part.
Also another example? AoW 4 current buff in Feudal culture made that culture an option! That is what I want options! diversity, so I can play replay and re-replay this game, lol. I am already waiting to see the result of the Dark Culture when it pass for the same treatment.
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Should Call of Chaos affinity skill be able to do this too? (talking about recruiting a Tyrant)
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As mentioned by Azktor I highly disagree with the sentiment that buffs/nerfs are not needed. This is simply proven wrong already.
Reworks (like Feudal, Heroes, Mystic) also fall in the category of buffs and nerfs, as they eventually equate to one of these in the end.
Many previous changes have opened up new gameplay, widening the amount of choices available to the player without feeling bad.
All changes made to the game should be made to improve the overall gameplay experience first and foremost.
How, you ask? By making as many choices as possible feel equal in power, equal in fun and removing toxic gameplay.
Every choice I make should feel good and not like I just weakened myself (within reason, as there are synergies).
If 2 Society Traits, or 2 Cultures, or 1 Ruler are always the best choice you cannot say "well, just don't play them".
That's the most absurd reasoning I've heard people give. That's sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the issue.
And as proven many times, you can simply adjust numbers to maintain theme and gameplay, and thus also fun.
Everything should start with adjusting numbers first. Only resorting to reworks if that option will absolutely not work.
As for your argument about other games and with things having glaring counters, this is already kept in mind for tier lists.
If you genuinely think Dark can compete with the other cultures or Perfectionist Artisans is fine, you are lacking experience.
The same is true for anyone who thinks Wizard King isn't objectively the worst ruler and Tome of Prosperity isn't OP in T4.
Let's say I look at a Society Trait, do my very best to find the most optimal build for it, the highest value scenario I can imagine.
But no matter what I do, there is always a better choice I could've made. Then clearly that trait is in need of more power.
The reverse is true as well, if there's a trait that I can slap in any build and never feel like it was a bad choice, it is too powerful.
And this is true for anything in the game. Rulers, Cultures, Tomes, Form Traits, Society Traits, Units, Spells, you name it.
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If it works for any affinity aligned monster, I don't see why it shouldn't.
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I definitely got a bunch of new T5 animals with it, but I never tried it with Umbral Infestations so mb there are some limitations.
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We need a way to get a 3'rd culture trait ingame like stellaris has with it's civics.
That would be a good way to rework the current 'Mark' system, which honesty doesn't feel impactful and is very random.
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