But all civs get the infantry beating cavalry unit. I think this is too entrenched in balance to ignore.
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Yes, and the Lakota already have a number of weaknesses due to holes in their tech tree- lack of walls means their boom is quite vulnerable to raiding and lack of artillery turned out to be so great that they had to add captured mortars via outlaws. The Lakota losing out on anti cav infantry might throw off balance way too much, and not to mention, further disincentives players from using their war huts.
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tehcnically no, hausa doesn’t have any pike style units and neither does otto.
The former arguably because fulani have higher base damage and also the javelin rider- also the outlaw unit
The latter because muskets are the all rounder type of unit.
I do agree that the clubmen is a bit too entreched to ignore, the bowrider is expensive and with their current design means they would not be able to break through walls at all and would kinda require another rework
Nothing about what I suggested implies the Club Warrior wouldn’t still be a tiny siege engine.
Make the Club Warrior a generalist unit with no - or only very small - bonuses into any class of units would be the best route for the Club Warrior, if historical accuracies are remotely wanted.
True true on the siege point.
On the second point generalist melee unit are a scary thing to balance for, especially since it has 5 speed. Rods were apparently like that in the olden days, pre Warchief patch even with just 12 atk and that was enough to make it busted
Iirc there was a period where DE tried to just raise the atk of the club to make it more generalist as well and that made it too much, apparently 11 atk is somehow a ceiling on these kinds of units
And if you cant raise its atk any higher to make it generalist, you will end up with a high multiplier to make it viable
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“Generalist melee unit” is basically every heavy melee cavalry unit in the game. The problem is that those are easily countered with cheap, cost-efficient units like Musketeers or Pikes.
A generalist melee infantry unit is hard to balance because they usually lack an easy ability to be countered - Urumi, for example, lack any tags besides meleeinfantry and infantry, and only the latter has any input on the counters system in the game. There’s only two classes of units that have a bonus into generic infantry - siege units and lancer cavalry units, which are either highly expensive or difficult to get a hold of to be used well, since both have inherent weaknesses to a lot of things that usually surround the infantry-tagged unit they’re trying to kill.
What usually ends up happening is the generic infantry-tagged unit ends up being killed through sheer numbers of enemy units rather than any meaningful strategy meant to kill them.
This is going to sound like a weird solution: Tag the Club Warrior as shockinfantry as well as infantry, it would be countered by generic anti-cav units to an extent while also being capable of being a generic melee infantry unit. Considering the sheer number of things that would counter it, as well, it could do with a stat buff overall.
And, oddly enough, it might be viable to give it a small bonus into generic infantry units as well - something like a x1.5 or x1.25. This would give the Lakota a viable melee composition of Axe Riders (assuming they do gain a small bonus into cavalry units) and Club Warriors.
There was a single unit pre DE that had this tag combo, the native Tiger Claw unit, and it was universally considered bad since they would instantly die to any sort of musk cannon composition since they would take bonus damage from both unit types so it will kinda just make that weakness even worse considering how meager the anti artillery options are. Not to mention it would make lakota really vulnerable to cav+goon comp since there would be nothing that can fight that cost effectively.
as for giving axe rider bonus against cav - that would be busted since axe riders already have high damage but also benefit from the warchief speed aura, so they outspeed their counterparts and therefore can snare and kill any opposing cav mass - goons even - thats why they have a negative multi vs goons. So early game they would be cracked when army sizes are small.
The problem we have to solve game wise is that lakota, as a civ that doesn’t have a musk type unit will need a good anti cav to cover for the light infantry. The problem is that goon type units for lakota are expensive and so will be hard to mass. U then need a relatively cheap massable anticav to cover them, and that role is fulfilled by the clubs.
So however we want to adjust the clubs, a unit has to fufill that role, either we adjust the unit itself or we change its role and another unit has to go into that role, or we have to rework the civ even more to sorta not have the problem in the first place.
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Javelin rider works because of its unique combination of traits. Otherwise all civs have some sort of pikemen or musketeer to deal with cavalry in melee.
I don’t think that any other changes needs to be made to the [Club Warrior], apart from maybe some adjustments. The only thing that the Lakota needs is an alternative Heavy Infantry unit that fulfills the role of a “Halberdier” which is what the Lakota lacks in the Fortress Age and afterwards.
And that unit could be the [Mauler] unit that I suggested in my post above. Adding this unit would be an easy solution to the problems that the Lakota are facing infantry wise, which will function as a population effective anti-cavalry unit.
They don’t need a halebardier type unit in age 3. Once age 3 hits, Lakota generally switches to rifle rider + wakina, which deals with cavalry very efficiently. The problem for Lakota is generally age 2 anti cavalery, which they would only have the bow rider, which despite being a very cool unit, it expensive and pop inefficent to deal with lots of cavalry.
The only glaring weaknesses in Lakota army is in age 2, where all your infantry costs wood and all your cavalry costs gold and you can’t really mix both, so you will want to have infantry succeed on its own and cavalry succeed on its own. But this problem is solved in age 3, where you get the wakina for gold and the rifle rider to obliterate almost all sorts of infantry (except skirmishers)
generally speaking though, clubs are better then halbs because of their speed, so I am not sure why you want to make it. Halbs are good at defending something valuable like cannons or scaring opposing infantry can cav due to that slight speed advantage and the high base damage so that your own infantry can fire back, but they rarely can be offensive without massive resources which is not something lakota can handle long term (unless you are dutch, but that requires a negative multi which makes things complicated)
The reason as for why I want to give the Lakota a “Halberdier” type unit is because they already have bonuses that improves the speed of infantry.
If this [Mauler] unit has 4.25 movement speed at default it could be bumped up to 5 by sending the [Moccasins] card and using the speed aura from the Lakota War Chief, if my calculations are correct.
This could make them viable for offensive purposes, but maybe this needs to be tinkered a bit first.
The Lakota do not need a Halberdier-type unit. Historically, even at short range, the warriors preferred using bows and pistols. The original purpose behind war clubs was often to knock an opponent to the ground to shoot them, not to kill with them. They’re not really heavy enough to deal substantial damage - Sure, you can kill someone with a police baton if you try hard enough, but the whole point of them being used is that they aren’t inherently highly lethal weapons.
The only two highly lethal weapons the culture employed at melee range were lances and daggers. Lances were less used because they were intended for use from horseback, which made using them - with all their adornments - rather awkward on foot, while daggers are not really the type of weapon you give a unit in a game like this.
The Lakota do not need a Halberdier-type unit.
I still stand by my opinion that the lack of a good anti-cav unit in Age 2 should be an intended weakness of the civ. When cavalry first came to the plains, the Lakota were terrible at fighting them and had no weapons or tactics they could effectively use against them.
But then they got horses themselves and became highly skilled warriors that were especially good at taking down mounted soldiers, largely due to the prioritization of marksman skills from horseback - an expected skill of a child in Lakota culture was the ability to fire a bow accurately at full gallop from horseback. By the time teenagers were starting to understand the warrior culture, they were capable of firing accurately from horseback at full gallop with any weapon they were given.
Fighting cavalry on foot was never done. If it makes the civ harder to balance, so be it, but I think this distinct lack of a unit type would make them and their military composition more interesting.
Impressive, even by today’s standards.
If you want to capture that, you could make Lakota start on foot in age 2 and only gain cavalry in age 3. But lakora already starts with cavalry, so it doesn’t make much sense from a historical accuracy perspective.
You could argue it would be an interesting weakness in age 2, but they are already pretty weak as is without the fast age up double axe raider card all-in, so they would surely need a buff in age 2 to survive.
as respectfully as i can say this, there’s no way to make a war club unit as anti infantry for lakota without it just being redundant to cetan or axe riders. if its strong enough to replace cetan than its gonna be op and otherwise it would just be kinda awful. whether its a coyote unit or a urumi unit it will be redundant. shame really
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It would also be redundant if the [Axe Rider] were given multipliers against cavalry, because then the Lakota would have 3 cavalry units that would counter other cavalry, which is what AnaWinters proposes.
Both the [Bow Rider] and the [Rifle Rider] already fulfills the role of being mounted anti-cavalry units, so there is no point whatsoever of giving that role to the [Axe Rider] as well.
after much thought on the subject, maybe the war club in theory (and im not exactly thrilled about the idea) could fill the role of a grenadier or more accurately, like a melee mantlet, with decent hp, good ranged armour and poor attack, with good siege. this is the only way i see them being used in the roster is as a siege unit like that.
As for the other units, idk i think the rifle rider should be more like a Crabat (a mounted musketeer if you will) and less of the extreme and counterintuitive unit that it is right now. bow riders probably would need a revisit with all these changes as well. Its a lot to consider.
From a historical standpoint, the Lakota should demolish cavalry, be good against infantry, but suffer against artillery. Having 4 anti-cavalry units isn’t a bad thing - their main thing is cavalry, and the techniques used to fight were geared towards fighting cavalry. They are a cavalry civ, they should have strong units against cavalry, but it creates an interesting weakness to not have a cheap anti-cavalry unit, despite having multiple anti-cavalry units.
Making the War Clubman into a tiny siege engine is a cool idea. Just give it a shield and it’d work just fine.
The Lakota have four units good into heavy infantry - Cetan Bowman, Wakina Rifle, Rifle Rider, and Tokala Soldier. Their military is already redundant.
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It is indeed redundant that the Lakota has 4 units that are effective against Heavy Infantry, but that didn’t stop you from proposing that the [Axe Rider] could be turned into an anti-cavalry unit when both the [Bow Rider] and the [Rifle Rider] already fulfils that role, so I find that to be very hypocritical coming from you.
And secondly, the “Halberdier” type unit that would be the [Mauler] that I suggested can be a Cheyenne warrior and NOT a Lakota warrior. But somehow you forgot that I said that in the comment I posted the 8th July, even though YOU read it. And then you started going on about that it wouldn’t be historically accurate if they used these said weapons, even though Cheyenne warriors that would be available to the Lakota would use them.
So I find your recent behaviour to be coming off as strange to me.
This is what I wrote specifically to you the 8th July:
I see. If that is the case would it be “okay” if the Lakota were able to train an infantry unit wielding this weapon from the [War Hut], but make it clear that they are warriors from the Cheyenne tribe and not from the Lakota?
By doing this the Lakota civilisation will have some kind of a “Halberdier” unit who will replace the [Club Warrior] that counts as a [Pikeman] to the Lakota in-game.
I think that it is absolutely important to represent each civilisation in the game from their own culture, but if they happened to be allied with other people who helped them in their cause, such as the Cheyenne with the Lakota, wouldn’t it then also be important to represent that as well to some degree?
If we take a look at other civilisations in the game such as the [Swedes], they can train a cavalry unit called the [Hakkapelit] who are not Swedish but are [Finnish] soldiers who served Gustavus Adolphus during the Thirty Years’ War. And the [Russians] can train the [Cossack] who are apparently people of mixed ethnic origin, descending from Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Turks, Tatars and others who settled or passed through the vast Steppe. The Russian government established an alliance with them were they served as their soldiers, by giving them their own land and property.
Lakota doesn’t need anything other than mega* nerfs. They are a free ELO lame civ.