What if they cost gold instead of wood? 170f 70g instead of 170f 70w
Intro : camel archers are very strong as for today’s meta (in season 8). Their weakness is that it takes time to mass them since they are expensive (in terms of total resource cost) and they produce slowly.
However, once the eco has boomed and several archer ranges are dropped, it becomes very easy to mass and most importantly they are mobile, high dps units that counters everything even versus castle age units. They are soft countered by archers so they are often complemented with horsemen. This makes a very mobile feudal composition which is very hard to deal with. And moreover, they don’t cost gold (as for now). The game designs ressources so that in general gold units are better in stats and should be more effective vs non-gold aka trash units. Based on how good they are, it makes more sense that they costs gold instead of wood.
Imagine a civ where their crossbows costs wood instead of gold. Do you think their crossbow would be OP? You would probably be highly convinced that this would break the game. Well, this is a bit how camel archers are as of right now. They are effective vs man at arms and knights than crossbows except they may even be better than crossbows.
Making them costs gold will make them less overwhelmingly spammable as they will not longer be “free” when eco is set up. Opponents can have a counter play by limiting their gold access.
Just like how people play against French by controlling their gold. With this change, the early stages of massing camel archers wouldn’t be affected as gold and wood are both directly gatherable and kind of unlimited in early games. However, with this change people need to make a decision about whether to spam camel archers as it would deplete their gold instead of wood which is easier to gather and secure.
I completely disagree with your viewpoint. This will result in no one using it. The reason why Abbas is currently strong is that its farmland is very cheap
The bulk of their power is that they’re a ‘trash’ unit.
This idea is like reducing regular archer hp and giving them a gold cost on top. You know they cost and deal as much damage as 3 archers, but with less hp right?
They’re nowhere near xbows in terms of performance vs heavy units.
vs light units they may be as powerful as three archers indeed. However vs armored units they are way better due to how calculation works.
Assuming +1 attack researched, against feudal age FU man at arms having 3+1 armor, a single archer deals 6-4 = 2 damage per shot ; A camel archer deals 13-4 = 9 damage per shot. And they kite man at arms easily even against HRE.
versus castle age man at arms it is even more extreme because archers deal 1 damage per shot while CA deals 13-6=7 damage per shot, seven times as effective while costs only three times as much and produce faster than 3 archers and take less population and they camel unease the cavalry.
Yes, I can do basic math and I know how the armor in this game works.
It remains that they’re a ‘soft’ counter to heavy units, and are ultimately easily countered by horsemen and regular archers - both of which are ALSO gold less age 2 units every civ has.
The problem with your idea is that if you make them cost gold, they will become a gold unit that is countered by thrash units. They are far better against Armoured units than thrash, it is true, but they are countered by all feudal units. In late game, when microing many units at the same is not easy, spearmen, horsemen and archers are pretty cost-effective against camel archers.