Peace? Yes, that sounds about right. I’ve switched to Japanese and intend to go full defence on my wonders. I probably won’t even bother upgrading my offence until I have some sort of surplus — that means perhaps not even a blacksmith upgrade — because it’s just so reliable to use only raiders and loot everything I need, I mean, it’s exponentially faster. Archers get one-shotted by towers that are a full age below them and probably don’t even have all the boosts of the Towers library technology behind them (shouldn’t matter), supply carts have stupid AI that makes them a constant liability and forces me to run Germans to compensate for their terrible strategy with rallies, ballistae run off in their own direction (though I guess that happened before and the only reason they’re less effective is because buildings have more HP), and horsemen get hit hard by castle and some towers, so if they get hit by a ballista it’s basically a death sentence.
Keep in mind that many of these problems were present prior to the rebalance, just that the improvements to defence buildings have made my troops even worse. Now I understand what people mean when they say that barracks troops are now irrelevant. They really are, and I’m quite honestly impressed with Tin’s insolent declarations that “we are pleased with the way the reforms have affected the game;” it just goes to prove that the developers have a blinding lack of understanding for the playerbase’s concerns. Here’s why I say that.
Dropping horse raiders near resources is one of the most brainless strategies that you can employ, much like the HT “strategy” popular after the rebalance. It’s not even due to “lazy players” that these two are so popular, it’s the fact that the cost so heavily outweighs the benefits when using barracks troops other than horse raiders...meanwhile, I can drop raiders and occasionally a wall miner down and loot hundreds of thousands per battle. That gives me no incentive to compete for medals in the slightest, and my base is well-constructed enough to the point where nobody with a serious army even considers attacking me. I log in frequently and collect from my farms/caravans, meaning that nobody’s going to hit me with raiders because there isn’t enough to be raided without trying to go for mills and markets, which are heavily defended. I didn’t even separate my farms or spread them out to dissuade potential attackers, I just plopped them all down in one area, and I still haven’t seen a serious attack since I began playing on this account. My defences are still Classical, apart from my castle with max-level medieval generals (it’s only level 5, though), and I’m upgrading them now.
Hope you’re happy, Nexon, because my strategy probably won’t change for a while. I don’t have to put in any effort to win loot, only stars, and I still get to watch my city grow as quickly as time allows. Multiplayer is dead, and the rebalance directly killed it.