I was particularly talking about Feudal TC and feudal boom in my previous post when I said its a risk of losing map control. The siege workshop does give them a big advantage to defend tower rush or for choking up skirms or archers late feudal. I never said that you should or the best strategy vs Cumans is to boom. My point was their early feudal boom if it goes undisturbed will be as powerful as free boom for Aztecs but there’s the added risk associated with it and you won’t have monks or mangonels to defend when opp rushes you in early castle age.
Dude, Mongols are a “cavalry archer” civ. They have the most powerful UU in the game. Their hussars are just a meat shield and you don’t do a stable unit as the primary army with Mongols in imp. However, Mongols missing ring archer armor is a valid point but +20% rate of attack for cavalry archers compensates for it.
Plate barding armor is a huge deal and removing it makes all stable units slightly weak against melee and significantly weaker against ranged units. All civs that lack them are non cavalry civs. It would still be ok to do that if they restore Kipchaks to pre-patch and give them bracer , remove Cavalry archers from the castle age tech and call Cumans a cavalry archer civ.
Btw I feel Mongols are quite powerful in other ways with early eco benefits and are OP on maps with more than usual hunt. Plus the superfast siege units.
If by that you mean that Cumans are the only ones that can boom in feudal? well a 2TC boom yes, why do you want a 2TC boom when you can boom with 5TC?
Just tested:
- Mongols Fast Castle (14:45) into 3 Town Center boom
- Cumans Fast Feudal Boom (9:35) into castle age (19:50) 3 TC boom
Funnily enough got the same exact number of villagers at min 25: 87.
8 sheep, 2 boars, 4 deers pushed. With both civilizations and got NO wheelbarrow.
Cumans feudal Town Center was built with 6 villagers.
Does it seem that they overnerfed the Cumans feudal TC build time?
I see the point of the OP, and I myself tought the December nerf of Cumans would be, among other things, losing an armor upgrade or even bloodline, but the devs have gone another way and maybe we should at least playtest these changes more before discussing them this extensively. For instance, sure you can’t just make a deathball of SL and win, but they are still more affordable than knights so better for early raids, + their stack ability allows them to kill palissade/quick walls super fast. On the other side, removing 1 pierce armor sounds a meh nerf since mass archer damage is lost so fast because of overkill. And we already have some cav like boyars or cataphracts that are weak to archers (even though they have 1 pierce armor like the SL)+accounting the fact that SL are so fast and have range to counter archer staking, giving them their old stats back might not be the way to go vs archers. And the old SL stats allowed them to melt their counters without even getting touched, so an “old” SL - armor = still too good. Steppe husbandry as it is however is a good reson to remove an armor upgrade (it would only impact the SL if it is really that weak, after all paladins are still paladins and camels aren’t a Cuman thing). Regarding the kipchak 4th arrow, they still are really fast and have no delay, with a small raiding party of “new” kipchaks I ended up killing ton’s of Indian camels, so having 3 arrows is already enough to deal with high pierce armor units.
Tldr; The OP suggestion might be the way to go, but the dev’s change are good too in theory, we should give them their chance before asking for another rework
Yes, that would be my claim.
I don’t think the Cumans got the right changes. I think we should have hit their lategame efficiency, not their earlygame efficiency. Why even give them the early options that they have if we’re just going to hamstring them? And why give them these early options that nobody has if you’re just going to give them an absurd lategame anyway?
We all agree that Turks have no good trash options besides the hussar for a reason.
We all agree that Goths get no stone walls for a reason.
We can’t agree that there should be a good reason why the Cumans get castle age options in feudal?
This is really, really simple. You give them the early stuff to emphasize how good their early options are, and to coax you into playing to win on an early advantage, be it economically or militarily. To someone casually looking at the Civ, this would be the natural inference. So why should they have all these absurd lategame options when every single civ bonus they receive is a Feudal Age bonus? My claim is simply that they probably shouldn’t, could do away with at least one lategame tech (I mentioned plate barding and I still firmly believe it should be the one to go) and adjust the Steppe lancer in a way that makes it a more unique, more potentially useful unit than it’s current state, and that would be a far better avenue than doing what has been done in the last patch.
I like the new Steppe Lancers a lot. I think they’re an alternative to Knights that trades military power for raiding power. Lancers are as fast as Camels (1.45 tiles per second), making them faster than Knights (1.35 tiles per second) and Cavalry Archers (1.4 tiles per second) for the easiest Villager chasing and fleeing from unfavorable fights. With a 24 seconds creation speed, Lancers mass faster than Knights (30 seconds) and Cavalry Archers (34 seconds) for about the same gold cost per minute as Cavalry Archers (113 vs. 106, with Knights at 150) and a higher food cost per minute than Knights (175 vs. 120.) The Lancer’s extra attack range helps fight quick walls and clumps of walled-in Villagers, i.e., mines.
In the Imperial Age, the 20 seconds creation time of the Elite Steppe Lancer gives the Elite Lancer enough of a numbers edge, when the number of producing Stables is equal, to just barely fight Cavalier in smaller battles. A 30 vs. 20 using normal patrol/attack move commands has Lancers winning about 50/50. But in that 30 vs. 20, using patrol + stand ground to stack Lancers still massively increases Lancer survival, to the point where Lancers destroy Cavalier and heavily damage Paladin. A 60 vs. 40 using normal patrol/attack move commands has Lancers destroying Cavalier, but losing to Paladin. But the patrol + stand ground stacking trick also destroys Paladin. Their faster speed also pressures Heavy Cav Archers. Overall, with good micro, Post-Imperial Steppe Lancers in overwhelming numbers still destroy everything. Now, most units in overwhelming numbers usually destroy everything, that’s true. Lancers having a specialization in getting to overwhelming numbers is also true.
Overall, I feel like Lancers have their own identity now as a cheaper, fast massing eco raiding unit that is an alternative to Knights. And I like the idea of giving them to more steppe civs, i.e. Huns, Mongols, etc.
Nice summary of the state of the SL right now. I pretty much agree with everything besides giving them to Huns/Mongols (those are good enough already as they are).
Lmao so they’re basically some sort of collective icefrog and are gonna do the “high level competitive balance, not pub balance” meme? Then how come those balance changes last time were so ham-fisted?
Also how about some proof or something that what you say is even remotely true like link me fam.
Thank you for the tests on the new Cumans Feudal boom vs. standard boom, Boat7. Perhaps the Feudal TC is now only meant to support all-in Feudal aggression? Maybe we’ll see more Feudal Battering Rams now.
I don’t know if anyone here got to see this this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYGlEugV49E&t=12393s but you really should since cuman Steppe lancers get to see some use from both sides (third game and last game in the serie)
Speaking about 1vs1s, did not play/watch enough games yet, but I think that at equal skill level, you have to choose between feudal aggression or greedy 2nd TC; you invest in economy you get behind in military.
I have only seen one game with feudal rams tho, and the cuman player won despite enemy was already in castle age, punishing his greedy build order. Really forward to see next NAC3 tournament games with cumans 
Overall I think devs really didn’t paid attention to details when they decided to add Steppe Lancer to the game. I think they thought they can go away with simple stats nerf/buff. I’m not trying to nitpick here but I honestly think we really didn’t need any civs after Rise Of The Rajas expansion. Now we are dealing with weird bonuses like extra TC in Feudal, relic bonus buffing attack on cavalry(wanna point out that original Ensemble Studios developer actually wanted relics to buff civs and they dropped the concept later on)
Nonetheless I think devs really should’ve focused Steppe Lancer direction like this,
According to tech tree it’s said that it’s Light Cavalry-like unit with ranged melee attack. If that’s the case then,
- It should’ve Light Cavalry like and Elite will be Hussar like.
- Attack should be 7. Elite upgrade will increase firing rate only. It’ll be the fastest firing unit in Stable. Overall damage output should be in mid Light Cavalry and Knight.
- It should’ve no armor just like Camel. Camel is an anti-Cavalry unit but having the drawback of less damage output vs other unit than Cavalry and also more counterable by Archer but has slightly more speed than Knights. As for Steppe Lancer it should’ve been slower version of Camel and speed should’ve been in mid of Camel and Knight.
- New Stable units like Battle Elephant and Steppe Lancer should be more accessible other than new civs only. In pre-DE days we didn’t even had the concept of this stable unit line. Right now these newly introduced unit should be introduced to more civs.
- Kipchak needs some serious nerf. Why 0 attack delay still there?
- Feudal TC and Siege Workshop is completely against AOE2 meta rule. This bonus should be replaced with something more sensible. Otherwise I think this civ will turn out to be Portuguese 2.0
- Last but not least price should be 80f and 30g as it initially was.
What does this mean?
A HUGE question :
is the creator of this topic a Cuman picker ?
It might not be seen as a "dirty word " these days , so I am just asking. But even if he is, he might not tell us. Cuman pickers just love the Lancer abuse. But he might be correct in one aspect /not that I care so much but … / - the Lancer now is too much weaker than it was, I mean - it is supposed to be weaker than it was since it WAS TOO OP but to what extent ??
Problem is he said what he said in a not very suitable manner. See the first answer to this topic, it was well commented 
+1 for the first answer here
And btw I play Bulgarians a lot /but not only Bulgarians /, but I do not post things like " OMFG WHY nerf the Konniks ?? " Be objective , people.
Portuguese Feitoria bonus. Awkward building costing pop space.
I don’t agree with quite many points in your post.
1 First, in-game descriptions aren’t always accurate so when they say the Steppe lancer is light cav it’s not meant literally (and in game they aren’t light cav, steppe husbandry and silk armor do not affect the steppe lancer, only the scout line).
3 For the pierce armor, it has the same value as the cataphract and basic boyar, wich are cavalry more susceptible to archers than average (ie.it shows this value makes them weak enough to range).
4 Giving battle elephants and steppe lancer to more civ would cause a mess in balance, because civs like Indians, Huns and Mongols are strong enough as they are.
5 Kipchaks are still very strong when microed, but in exchange for this 0 frame delay they have really bad HP and low damage outpout (remember the additional arrows can miss). So they absolutely NEED to be microed to not die instantly and be useful. They basically are old Mangudais done right and don’t need to get nerfed any further
6 Those bonuses are sure unusual, but it’s not a reason to reject them in the name of a “meta”. Even before getting nerfed there was counterplay to the second TC, now there’s even more counterplay. And they didn’t need to nerf the workshop/rams thing because you know it’s sinking tons of wood and gold in a unit that dies to villager if you are careless, even spearmen stand a better chance. (Btw a Cuman player can’t use both bonuses and have a good chance to win against an equally skilled player. Being the only civ that get a bonus disabled by another one is the most “out of the meta” aspect of the whole thing)
7. No, 30 g is definitely underpriced, even for the current lancer (wich is fine imo)
And to finish, I think they made really special bonuses not because they were running out of ideas but to avoid repetition/boring modifiers, you see the thing.
- Now here comes the issue of design choice. Introducing something but having no clear idea of what to go for. Simple stats nerf/buff won’t just help.
- Steppe Lancer should’ve been more of a massing unit that works well in crowd but not in few numbers like Karambit Warriors. From ingame tech tree description they are supposed to be weak vs Archer still no idea why they have +1 pierce armor.
- Aren’t we are having balance mess already with 35 civs? Huns got no house bonus and that’s where the most strength goes. Especially making Cavalry Archer and booming. If Steppe Lancer becomes a unit choice then I hardly doubt if any civs recieving would make it any strong. In 200 pop games it’s not like you can mix Steppe Lancer and something and change the result completely. Now for Indians they are a booming civ. Their cheap vil bonus helps in fast aging or res banking. That’s where they get strong. Otherwise I find them suffering in strong military choice. Age spike and booming where I find Indians strong. Still I find cheap villager bonus is a bit too strong and deserves small nerf. Last but not least I will say Indians are one of the worst civ in design choice ignore balance now. Multiplayer guys won’t care about this sorta stuffs. But from a Singleplayer or someone who wants to play with their culture it’s disappointing. Female Villager doesn’t seemed to voiced by a female. Still I doubt Indians would become a broken civ with generic fully upgraded Elephants. Burmese and Malay are a civ with good eco bonus but they still have their spot. Especially Burmese. Now about Mongols their only strength in AOC days was get a Castle and mass good amount of Mangudai. Which made them very strong. But now in DE days they have their own spot still but very weaker than they were. Feels like in mid A and B.
Last note is it’s a shame that you are introduced a unit-line. Not even Unique Unit but limited to very few civs and other civs not having it even it is to their culture. - Kipchak is still broken at a quite number. Just small delay nerf is needed. It is way too strong to counter about.
- Feudal Age was supposed to make up defense in your small base. Cumans bonus feels very anti of it. Up until now no other civ got this bonus for a good reason. Castle Age onward something where you expand more and got more choice of units. Earlier they were able to make more TCs and now with double delay time this bonus becoming pointless at the same time. Like said it’s becoming Portuguese 2.0. Getting unorthodox bonus and nerf it to the point which becomes something totally useless.
- Concept wise if it followed Light Cav with extra range attack then it’s quite good if you think. If feel underpriced then 80f and 35g instead of 70f and 45g now. Just my thought to the concept that game tech tree.
Now we are getting to the moment of truth. Game didn’t need any civs after Rise Of The Rajas expansion. This game is following one type of playstyle only. If the game offered more than one playstyle like Age Of Mythology then adding more civs wouldn’t be that much of issue than what we are having now. I really felt the same when DE is adding more civs.
Thank for your polite answer, but I still think these points are meh (and I also didn’t detailed mines well enough either. My bad)
1 I don’t think the devs have “no clear idea”. It just really was a small mistake in the description
2 Ok I’m not sure I understand, “few Karambits” will never work, those literally need to be twice as many as the enemy to be useful. Anyway, 1 pierce armor is bad for a cavalry unit, for instance if you compare how the Elite Cataphract (1 pierce armor) and the Byzantine Paladin (3 p.a) fare against archer, both will likely win but the second will be much better. Same goes with the Boyar/Knight (1v2). Take into account the fact that Steppe lancers have much less HP than these two, and you will see the only thing giving them an acceptable matchup against archers is their lesser gold cost and their speedy creation at stables.
3. Actually the devs imo did a pretty good job at balancing everything, (even tho Bulgarians and Cumans could use some toning down). However I didn’t explain why I said Huns, mongols and Indians don’t need additions: giving steppe lancers to Huns will make the Tarkan completely overshadowed, Mongols are designed to be somewhat be weaker in the castle age, SL would take that away (and Mongols are still top tier, no matter what, they haven’t been 'weakened"). Your point about the Indian is actually OK but you forgot they already got an elephant unit with the Elephant archer. And while it’s rarely used in multi it’s crazy good against the AI (tanky + best archer against buildings+ can’t be kited like other elephants)
4 Ok I didn’t explain why the Kipchak got nerfed enough. Its HP make it the frailest mounted unit ( along with the missionary . Of course it has better armor, but it should say something). And among ranged mounted units, only the War chariot and Elephant archer fire slower (and those 2 are super hard to kill). And the unit is weak to other ranged units (even before the nerf it lost to Mangudais, FU cav archers and Skirms) So basically the Kipchak needs the 0 delay to survive (and it will insta-dies if you look away for like 2 secs)
5 Hmm Feudal age can be about this (btw the second TC is also a defensive bonus) but it can also be about rushing (like with the siege workshop). So nothing unusual here. And I’m sorry but even before the nerf the Feitoria was only useful in super streched out Black forest games. Infinite ressources are useful when everything runs out (ie.almost never) while you will almost always have a feudal age in each game, te Cuman bonuses really can’t be made useless unless it’s the cost of a wonder or some meme stuff like that.
6 Actually increasing its food cost that much would be a nerf early on since they would be too food intensive for an early castle age eco, and the gold reduction would be too good for late game, since it’s a medium cavalry
Actually your opinion is quite close to that of the designers since they won’t add any civ anymore. Comparing that with AoM is interesting but not the best idea. Consider this instead: in vanilla AoE3, where there were only european cultures (like if AoM only got Greeks), they decided to make the portuguese get a free Town center upon aging up, wich means for the second age that 1- they have 2 TCs unlike the other civs and 2-it’s completely free. You don’t even need to send a villager to build it since it’s a “prebuilt” in a TC wagon! And the best about this is that, as far as I know, it has never been an OP bonus, and the Portuguese have never been top-tier either. Really, all the difficulty we have figuring out the new civs is because we had them in an OP state first, I’m pretty much sure if they released the game with the December patch balance we would much better ideas
- Umm most of the tech tree mistakes are in stats. Like 25% bonus doing 33% bonus. +1 attack is +2, etc. Not it’s behaviour. Only example is probably Scorpions countering Cavalry. Tho it was a Readme Document mistake only. Steppe Lancer was overbuffed with pre December patch it ended up way stronger than Knight-line. Literally having 0 counters. The game never said it’s Knight with lance. Current behaviour feels same.
- That’s probably the thing I said? Make large in numbers? Now to Cataphract they are slightly weaker Knight. Because they are designed to be a Knight and only to be fought with raw strength. It flips the whole Halberdier counter. Still with Knight like stats they have their spot. Boyar have their own spot but Halberdier still counters this because it doesn’t take away all of it’s bonus damages. Steppe Lancer have low HP. Like said according to ingame tech tree it is Light Cav with range attack. Also it says weak vs Archer. With tests it looks like that isn’t the case after all. They are nerfed but still can put up with Archers which Light Cav fails. Another thing to point out Light Cav can’t beat Knight in large numbers with same number on both but that isn’t the case for Steppe Lancer and flips the result. With overbuffed Steppe Lancer stats it has become a myth that it replaces Knight-line of the game.
- Portuguese, Khmer, Vietnamese still isn’t that good unfortunately. Portuguese with weak Feitoria bonus… it has become a pointless unit now. Cumans seems to going same route. Mongols are good average civ. You can check the stats. They got 50% win rates and have their own spot. In fact in AOC they were a very strong Castle Age civilization compared to now. Even now still a strong Castle Age civ. You have solid Light Cavalry and Cavalry Archer option. Castle Age Cavalry Archer much superior. No way they are weak. Now to Huns I still don’t get it how it overshadows Steppe Lancer. Tarkans are anti building and now better anti Archer Knight now. Tho it’s more like medium Cavalry than Knight. Steppe Lancer meanwhile not a replacement for Knight and supposed to be anti Cavalry in numbers and with range a good raiding unit. It won’t change a thing. Ok so why Khmer got Battle Elephant and Ballista Elephant? There is no rule that a civ can’t recieve two Elephant unit. Earlier there was DLC exclusivity was a thing and it was understandable. But right now those exclusivity no longer exists. They got a bit more cheap eco bonus to balance out weak military but right now giving Elephant won’t just make them a op civ with strong eco bonus at all. Elephant got nerfed a lot and very easy to counter. If Ele changed the game so much then RoTR civs would’ve been in top spot.
- Just small delay needed. Even being the frailest unit it simply kills anything with hit and runs. Make slightly less delay than Mangudai and all good.
- This bonus is pre patch days was very strong but right now with nerfs bonus is becoming pointless. Giving a op civ bonus that’ll become pointless bonus with nerfs…not a good way to handle. Feitoria like said was super useful in Black Forest. But now with nerfs it’s just bad and pointless. Doesn’t live upto 20 villagers’ collection rate which it was supposed to do. You got my point. Let me give another example, suppose a civ is able to steal villagers with scout. It turned very op. But you decided to add delay to kidnap villagers. But delay time become so strong to the point where this bonus rendered useless. Hope you got what I said.
- Hardly doubt it’d change much. Swordsman line got 20g and with small amount of gold it can change stuffs to gain small pace but nothing in large run. You still prefer them to save gold for Siege. Besides with 0 armor Skirms can kill them and Hussar with similar damage output stay with them for a fair amount of time. But with current balance instead of mine then yeah it becomes a bit too strong. A bit more strong.
I heard that. AOE4 seemingly going for that AOM direction. But it offers more balance idea then with simple one playstyle. Not in AOE3 scene much but as far as I know there is this weird City option where you get stuffs at free. You need to do some sorta card grindings to get op units and ecos. If I remember correctly vils have no drop off points and eco collection rate is a bit different than other AOE titles.
As far as I saw Portuguese Feitoria bonus and Arambai stats had issues since the release. I still find RoTR civs very weak since the beginning. Now even more. I always find new civs’ UU are way stronger in early release.
Not really a fan of most of your ideas.
You are making SL something between a Camel and a Light Cavalry.
This was never the point of their design.
Yeah, because they want people to try them
I’m not making it in mid of Camel and Light Cavalry. If that was the plan then I would’ve suggested extra bonus damage for Steppe Lancer. I’m pointing out the whole design decision from the tech tree. It literally says it is Light Cavalry with ranged attack.