I don’t understand how my take about the houfnice being incredibly overpowered is so controversial… the only two units I can think of that can do anything at all against a normal not even gold-heavy comp you can afford in 1v1 like hc+halbs+houfnice is elite mangudai and the condotierro which are hard counters to all three hc halb and siege (rare thing for a random civ to have).
The units that were nerfed simply weren’t nerfed enough, that’s my point. I’m fine with Houfnice being a thing, I’m not fine with it being so much stronger than any other bbc in the game that it doesn’t matter if you have turks, ethiopians, portuguese or elite longbow, you still die in fights against it lategame. Press button, win game.
Well and the shrivramsha is so unbelievably strong you are never wrong making them against anything tbh.
This is not a franks or poles situation where if you hold against totally normal units until late game, you win… these are civs with special units that have no possible counter unit when in combo with camels, halbs or hc/UU, your opponent just makes half of broken unit half of counter unit to cavalry/infantry and you can’t do anything.
Has Houfnice better range, HP and faster than Turkish Bombard Cannons (And Artillery needs a nerf btw)? No
Has Houfnice better attack than Burgundian Bombard Cannon? No (If anything check out and see that Burgundian Bombard Cannon has better DPS).
Has Houfnice better blast radius than Ethiopian Bombard Cannon? No
Has Houfnice better ROF than Spanish Bombard Cannon? No (And again, better DPS).
Is Houfnice cheaper or with better cannon balls than Portuguese Bombard Cannon with Arquebus? No
Only thing that has better is PA (despite being same as ########## #### and speed with Wagenburg Tactics, but that’s like the whole point for a gunpowder civ.
At best just remove Siege Engineers so Houfnice suffer a range deficit vs other Bombard Cannon.
But asking to have an upgrade that’s just slightly better and expensive just makes Houfnice mediocre.
The path to houfnice-hc-halbs isn’t easy for Bohemians on open maps. Sure you can get that composition on closed maps but they’re supposed to be a closed map civ. And you have civs like Ethiopians with Torsion engines and Turks with artillery that are similarly quite powerful at that stage too. But how will you get there on open maps?
Again its just a post imp pov where u assume those techs are done. They lack so many generic unit upgrades that are important in an open map game and its not easy to get to imp and do wagenburg tactics + houfnice
A very bad exaggeration. Shrivamsha riders are completely useless against melee units. And where will you go for halbs with Gurjaras…they don’t even have pikes. Their uu has been nerfed and are now good only against pikes. Its going to take so much time to get castles, their unique tech and mass that much army. The whole question becomes what is your civ and what did you do all the time? And hold against totally “normal” units? Knight is by far the strongest unit in late castle age, much more than these niche units. You CANT hold against Frank or Pole knight raids if you let them get there and win.
If you’re opponents are easily getting to these military combos it either means you lost a whole bunch of villagers in the early game and you were just pointlessly playing hoping your opponent would throw the game or you just got outboomed or you’re picking something awful like Dravidians, Bengalis, Burmese or Goths. Plenty of civs have such broken combos nearly impossible to stop if they get such an undisturbed boom - Mameluke-hussar-siege onager , Mangudai-hussar-siege onager ,4 relic Leitis-hand canoneers, Ballista elephant-hussar, Turks hussar-CA-bombard tower-canons.
Houfnice moves +15% faster than all Bombard Cannons due to tech. +15% speed gives better survivability than +10 hp, too. Only advantage of Turks’ Bombard Cannon ia +1 range and Houfnice’s +25% damage output and splash damage also beat Turks +1 range.
They have same DPS I guess, both gives 50 damage but Houfnice has +1 range from Siege Engineers, +15% MS and huge splash damage, too. Houfnice is by far stronger than Burgundians’s Bombard Cannon.
This comparison seems to me that “Malians Cavalier is stronger than Franks Paladin because it has more damage output”. This is more correct statement than yours because at least damage output part is true, on the other hand Houfnice has more damage output than Burgundians Bombard Cannon.
It is true, Ethiopians blast radius is 0.5 + 0.45 = 0.5 and Houfince’s is 0.85 but Houfince has +25% DPS against both units and buildings, and +15% speed is big advantage again. Therefore, Houfnice also beats Ethiopians Bombard Cannon easily.
Weird comparison again. Ballistics doesn’t nullify all of Houfince’s advantages which are higher damage output, very large splash damage and +15% speed.
I myself buff Bohemians Halberdier’s bonus damage to 33%, in return nerf Wagenburg tactics’ bonus speed to +10% (+15% a bit too much).
I don’t think Houfnice is Overpowered.
Ofc it’s a very strong unit, but Bohemains are basically completely depending on it. It’s also not so easy to protect as many people inherently claim. Light cavalry can snipe Houfnice almost as well as other BBCs. Ofc the better Halbs of Bohemians make it easier to protect, but only if you pay the attention.
What that comp showcases to me is that we probably have still the potential for better Infantry units. Things like Woads or Condos are really strong against Bohemians. But ofc the civs that field them are kinda rare on clsed maps.
Also units like Karambit (lower pop space), Shotels and Urumi (high damage) can be hard to deal with as Bohemians, despite having HC.
Maybe this opens the chance to discuss how a lategame Infantry unit could look like as a counter to Halb/Siege. Faster, potentially even with a Bonus against Pikemen?
The issue ofc is that for infantry in the lategame civ bonusses become so much more important/influential. This why I think if we want that option in the lategame to work better vs Halb/Siege we basically need a Mercenary system, so that most civs get a viable option there, even with lacking key upgrades like armor.
These Mercenaries could potentially also be an option for the Cav Civs against Camels + ranged combo.
Ofc the key question is how this lategame Mercenary Infantry should be designed and how it can be managed that it doesn’t makes HC access as infantry counter too strong. Potentially HC could even be tweaked again to be less of an anti-Infantry unit, so that Mercenary Infantry would be equally countered by archers or HC, as long as they still have access to Gold.
Ofc Bohemians have access to both, but that Gold requirement will be a balancing factor in these lategame situations.
I have no problem if the houfnice tech is now 100 food 100 gold or something as long as the unit CAN be beaten by something else that’s possible to do for at least 10-15 civs. Another user already answered to you how no other bbc can do anything to houfnice… my problem with this unit is not how much it costs etc, it’s that it can be made every single Black Forest/Arena game and there is virtually nothing you can do to stop it (maybe convert it? They have heresy and faith anyways so it’s useless to try), not with koreans, not with turks, not with celts, not with britons, not with crenellations castles which are all good civs against bbc…
This gives me the idea, at least remove heresy and faith so mass monks can maybe stall it.
Said user believes knights and scout-line perform the same role…i wouldn’t take their word for much
Fact is that getting houfnice to the point where its as strong as it is, takes a huge investment, and frankly speaking, Bohemians don’t have a lot of options elsewhere
a Castle + Wagenburg + Houfnice upgrade is 1250 Food, 1050 gold, and 650 stone. n2m 140 seconds of research time for the Houfnice upgrade as is.
compare this to say Turks…
who get BBC with +25% HP, Created 25% faster, with free Chemistry, right at the start of castle age.
on top of this Artillery then adds 2 range for the cost of 650 stone, 500 gold, and 450 wood.
Maybe not entirely the same.
But maybe light cav is still kinda too similar to heavy cav still, especially in the lategame… Maybe Heavy Cav also has a bit too high Gold ratio if you look at the midgame and lategame winning records of the cav civs
That’s also one of the things I thought about longer already, but it’s a really tough one. Especially as there are so many factors involved like the Halberdier Powerspike which is really deadly to heavy cav in the lategame.
Well, this just comes down to food eco. Knights are just way easier to make at this stage as it allows you to invest more of your food eco into booming.
This, Turks can go Fast Imp with Catsle, get Bombard Cannons sooner with better HP and get the extra range for a cheap price…
Is pretty clear which civ has more problematic bombard cannons.
yes and no.
Yes more of your food eco could TECHNICALLY go into booming, but you’re also investing 6-7 workers into gold per stable. now imagine those were light cav instead.
The thing is you just don’t have the Farm count at this stage, especially you even will have trouble sustaining that exzessive farm count as your early farms will start exhausting soon.
For 6-7 more farms you need to have invested 360-420 more wood into them already which you often just can’t afford. Especially if you try to safe some of that wood to add TCs later.
On very open, food intensive maps I already saw light cav intensive castle ages. The extra mobility of the light cav was seemingly basically as valueable as the knights sheer power there.
you could easily have the farm count with not needing 12-13 villagers mining gold.
either way the point is though, they don’t serve the same role.
yeah light cav can do “all right” vs archers, but against anything else that isn’t a monk, a knight would be far better.
Whilst I agree there, the thing is… Do you actually want to trade your cav in battles?
The more the current metaplay evolves the less “trades” with cav I actually see. It becomes more and more a macro game where you try to hit the most vulnerable parts of the opponent, which is often the farming eco. That’s how you get the best out of your cavalry.
Ofc Knights CAN trade very well in combat aswell, which is the biggest difference maker between the two units. But Knights are still cavalry which mobility is the biggest advantage you have over the other units.
And in this regard it’s also not suprising why Knights are such a big powerspike in castle age, cause it gives you sheer fighting power to a unit class that is otherwise carried by it’s utility.
And you can see on Elephants what happens if you push that tradeoff fighting power for mobility too far. Knights just sit in a perfect middle ground there as it seems.
A friend of mine mentioned a design flaw in Gujjaras civ. Gujjaras castle age unique tech “Ksatriyas” gives 25% food discount to all military units. Gujjaras also get “Supplies” which should have been removed.
We were talking and he mentioned Devs will buff dravidians by removing supplies and adding Ksatriyas as a civ bonus in place of +15 fishing capacity. The patch did not contain the change which means this patch is probably in-complete. He said Gujjaras “Frontier guards” tech will be split into giving +2/+2 armour each in castle and imperial age. I wonder whether this idea was scrapped or it will be implemented later.
Turk have access to higher range bbc and for a cheaper cost upgrade than houfnice.
450 wood and 500 gold for artillery.
2050 food, 1250 gold and 600 wood for FU houfnice (chemistry, wagenburg tactic, SE, houfnice upgrade).
Let’s not forget they also have instant access to bbc thanks to free chemistry. So when a bohemian player try to get houfnice. The turk one already has it’s own with 14 range ready to shoot your base.
As for the other civ you listed.
Celts is a good civ against bbc. I’m not sure about that.
Crenellations castle can still hit houfnice quite well.
I agree for korean.
For britons it depend on both players micro skill and if the Bohemian player succeed to full upgrade houfnice against a arbalest (or longbow) spam + treb push.