Skills improved (my idea)

We all know that certain skills (actually, most skills) in EW4 have terrible functions, and some are not even working.
So I decided to re-balance some of the skills here.
Feel free to tell me your opinion on these changes.


Transport
Land unit to sea cost -50% -> Land unit when going onto port can turn into a ship of the player’s choice. After that, when the unit goes back on land, it’s reverted to the original form, but when going back on the sea, it turns back into a ship and yadda yadda.
Note that when you equip Transport general on a ship from the start, this skill won’t work.

20 gold off for one time is just terrible, so instead here is an entirely new ability which is fun to play around with, and potentially powerful for Land-Navy Hybrid units.


Fence/Trench/Disguise (Fence: -20% Inf) (Trench: -10% Inf, -25% Cav) (Disguise/Bunker: -10% Inf, -30% Art)
Cost to build these reduced by half (doesn’t even work) -> General has the evasion of this obstruction all the time

The Mighty Kahia could finally defend himself from Lan on an armored car dealing a whopping 170 damage, reducing 25% dmg from Fence ability. That’s 42.5 dmg cutaway, so Lan deals only 127 dmg. (.5 is truncated) Wait, Lan has Strike so Kahia’s defence(de-fence. haha, get it?) is invalidated anyways. Oops.

Andrade is the absolute jack of all trades when it comes to defense, his abilities stack up to -40% Inf, -25% Cav, -30% Art at the very minimum, potentially adding up even more evasion through hidden/fortificaiton evasion. Sadly, the terrain evasion doesn’t stack. Monseur Bonaparte lands a heavy hit of 50 dmg, but 15 dmg is gone and he only lands 35. Then, Lannes comes in to hit 75 dmg with AA triggered, but sadly 30 dmg is blocked and it’s instead reduced to 45 dmg. Andrade’s health is crippled by 80 dmg, but he defended the additional 45 dmg and that’s what matters. I’m still standin’, yeah, yeah, YEAH!


Infantry Tactics/Mobility/Ballistics
min dmg +1 -> guaranteed +5 dmg

So how exactly this skill works is: After the damage calculation from the output formula, let’s say you got 30 dmg. These skills add a guaranteed +5 dmg, so you deal 35 dmg. All evasion and HP thing is just ignored. But it doesn’t ignore DA, it reigns supreme and everything is still reduced to 1. I’m not sure how OP this would be, please let me know if y’all feel that it’s too powerful.

I guess the ppl who love Grouchy for some reason could be happy about this change.


War Expert/Master + Nobleman
+40/80% rank xp -> Max Rank level cap up by 1/2 (175/200)
+50% nobility xp -> Max Nobility level cap up by 1 (12)

These skills are originally just straight up replaced by superior items… That’s sad. Also, their usages are just unexistent when level is maxed. So instead, I modified them to bring permanent change. Fatimah will be a tankier city defender when maxed at 200 HP, and when combined with double formation heavy cavalry, she has a whopping 350 HP. I guess Maria can level up her nobility to 12, if anyone cares… But hey, if you’re gonna regroup her into other generals, they will instantly hit max nobility at 10. Since Maria has more xp capacity, so transferring only 80% of that xp will still max the upgraded general’s nobility.


Economy Expert/Master
Increase 40/80% of building’s income (item non-stackable) -> Increase 60%/120% of building’s income (item stackable)

These skills are justs replaced by Napoleonic code, so I buffed them a little. However, Econ Expert will still be just replaced, so I changed it to item stackable for both skills. You can only stack 1 item though, so 2 napoleonic codes on an econ expert won’t give you +260% income… it only gives +160%. Great buff for Fatimah.

Why do I feel like Fatimah would become one of the most OP generals in the game after all these changes?


Banner
General can equip flags -> General gets 2 extra item slots purely dedicated to flags, and also the flags’ effective range increases to 2 hex radius.

To be fair, we never use flags because:
1. It is terribly expensive
2. Most of the times we don’t even have banner generals (Sakurako is probably the only banner general f2p players may touch)
3. Its radius is only 1 hex so most times it’s only 1~2 units receiving buff, sometimes 3, rarely 4, almost never 5~6.
4. Precious item slots are taken up when you can equip far superior items.
5. The buff is terrible, only gives +1~2 atk/def/regen

I will not touch the price to fix issue 1. I can’t do anything about issue 2. However, I can fix issues 3~4 by increasing radius to 2 hex and adding specially allocated extra item slots. Issue 5 is kinda solved as you can equip 2 banners for +4 effect. The reason I didn’t touch the price is that flags should be an endgame thing, where you have a bunch of medals. I didn’t want to modify this too far.

The intention of this skill is for ppl to just play around hypermaxing stuff at endgame just for fun. Generals such as Wellesley and Napoleon gains some validity here.


Logistics
Unit doesn’t consume food and morale isn’t affected by hunger -> Reduce total food consumption by 50% for all units

Originally, this was a terrible downgrade of Leadership. It receives this balance so its pseudo-leadership effect is gone (useless anyways for player but annoying on AI side so it’s good) and there is something that’s actually kinda helpful albeit not game-changing. May be useful for some conquests, helping you get a few extra points to reach that milestone for your princess run or max years ruled run.


Sailor
No atk reduction for land unit on water

IDK how to save this one. Maybe just replace it with the new Transport skill? I mean, it’s not a bad skill… it’s just not used very often…


Fireproof
Immune to fire damage -> Immune to fire damage + Extinguish fire on the path of movement of the general

This change obviously won’t work on water, but works on land. Since fireproof on land is considered bad, this rebalance will improve fireproof on land. Still kinda situational though. Would be useful on a campaign stage with fire like Expedition Russia, but it’s a pretty easy stage anyways to start off with. Same goes with with Siege of Mantua.


Architecture
Decrease resource consumed for upgrade by 40% -> Upgrade building level 2 times in one go
Costs the same. For ex, city lv1 to lv3 costs 65 gold and 1 turn.
When 1 lvl is needed for maxing, same resources consumed for 1 lvl. Ex. lv3 factory consumes 60 gold and 20 industry to become lv4.
The catch here is that when upgrading lv5 city with this new architecture, you can make lv7 city. But not lv6 sadly. Lv6 city just can’t be upgraded at all. Why? Because I said so.

Architecture isn’t a horrible skill at all, it’s actually quite decent. The problem comes where architecture is not valuable enough to replace the combat skills, especially with limited general slots. But this change will maybe make it more worth to keep an architecture general?



Well, that’s about it on balancing terrible skills to become decent skills. 16 skills modified out of 32. We can see that statistically, about half the skills are terrible. Btw, I excluded the 7 trainer skills.

Now I’d like to review some generals with these changes.
Of course we’ll start off with the princesses.

Starting with Fatimah!
Fatimah has Econ/War Master and Architecture.
This makes her a pretty tanky econ general, the best econ general in the game. And as a princess, I think every princess deserves to be the best in their niche areas. So, I like how Fatimah became pretty powerful in this way. The skill rebalance drastically improved her economic capabilities, which were usually outshined by items. While she does not have any direct fighting skills, War Master’s +50 HP is more than enough to compensate for that. To be fair, econ generals aren’t meant to be combat-heavy, so it all makes sense now.

Then we have Maria with Nobleman, Formation, and Mobility. Not much to say here, just that since mobility actually does something now, Maria can be used for cavalry as well.

Isabela’s Ballistics work now, so I guess that’s additional dmg.

Sakurako’s Banner will be intereseting once we are rich enough to spoil her with flags. She will be a pretty powerful buff provider. Imagine having 10 units get +4 atk, that’s +40 dmg. Sakurako can do it. Imagine you surround Sakurako with a horde of Artillery in her 2 hex radius, and imagine the bombing that’s about to commence. Banner actually becomes somewhat usable and we can have fun with it. Since it’s 2 hex radius, it would be best if we have infantry/cavalry row in the front with Sakurako on her artillery + more artillery units behind. Actual war tactics going on here.

Kate… fireproof is a little better… but that doesn’t really change much for Kate… Kate’s pure navy… Yeah.

Now we start off with some IAPs. With none other than Napoleon himself. He has Banner, Infantry Tactics, Engineering, and Siege Master. Napaoleon can do the same thing with Sakurako about Banner, and Infantry Tactics is a more viable infantry skill, so Napoleon can work out on Infantry.

Blucher would be tankier and have a working cavalry skill, redeeming his qualities a little, but not enough to deserve a slot.

Archduke Charles would just have 12 regen and banner, but he’s more inclined to inf/cav to lead the way with his cronies following him. Improved but not too much.

Moreau and Lasalle would have 4 valid skills, Lasalle maybe 3 because of sailor, so they have more value in our slots. If we have plenty of slots, they are viable options now.

Jackson would be more helpful in US1775 runs by saving food. Sometimes a few pieces of food can save the run.

Murat would now have 4 valid skills and have 175 HP. Now he’s really decent.

I guess I can go on and on but it will pretty much a repeat of what I said in the past. One note will be that tier 1 generals, the weak 1~2 starred ones, will be harder to kill because many of them have Fence/Trench/Disguise- especially Andrade- so you need Bugle/Strike/Accuracy to effectively counter them. I guess this is an indirect nerf for Sophia and buff for Bugle/Strike/Accuracy, especially Bugle since it now has more usage.



Extra.
Just for fun I decided to make good skills even more OP.


Navigation
+1 hex on sea -> +2 hex on sea

Bugle/Strike/Accurate
Deprive Evasion -> Deprive Evasion and deal extra 5 damage

Formation/Surprise/Explosive
+1 max dmg -> +3 max dmg

AA/DA
10% chance to trigger -> 20% chance to trigger

Steersman
10% dmg reduction for ship -> 20% dmg reduction

Engineering
+2 artillery movement -> +4 artillery movement
(Now Isabela can move 6 hex on all artillery)

Siege Master
Eliminate evasion when attacking city -> Deal 50% more damage to units in city

Spy
50% more damage on forts -> 100% more damage on forts

Geography
Every hex costs 3 points to move -> Every hex costs 1 less movement point to move
(Some hexes need 4 points, but some may only need 2. This change is more balanced compared to others in this batch.)

Mass Fire
Mass Fire on Infantry -> Mass Fire on all units
(Basically you’re equipping a snare drum but you have 2 more item slots.)

Leadership
Morale can’t drop -> Morale is always +1


This post got way too long eee