Am I the only one who dosn't have a problem with Jannisaries?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Having played the PUP for some time now, I initially thought I would be more lenient towards Mali as I really love the Mali Uniqueness and their soundtrack. And most important of all. Their stickman figure flag.

But The more I play the Ottomans, the more they seem to fit into my playstyle.

And when it comes to the Janissaries, they are the perfect unit for me.Yet I keep seeing on the forums a lot of discontent with the Jannies.Am I the only one who uses them differently from others? Or whats the deal here?

Yes I am fully aware the Janissaries are “weaker” than the contemporary handcannoneer unit/unique units.

However what I find the Janissaries main strenght lies in cost-effectivness + anti cav role.

I don’t mass janissaries in order to hard-counter everything.

Janissaries are also superior in protecting your siege! And I think this is where their game design solely bases on.

Siege heavy composition with Janissary support.

Sepahi for Flanking/Harass/countersiege.

The fact that Janissaries can repair the siege, makes them far more usefull than any other handcannoneer unit.

The fact they absolutely destroy Horsemen and Knights, makes them alpha omega in protecting your seige, leaving only Springalds as an option to counter ottoman siege.

But even they struggle as with the Vizier point of garrisoning your Siege, Ottoman siege becomes a beast.

Crossbowmen are also hugely important for Ottoman armies, as Janissaries + Crossbow, pretty much counters everything the game has to throw at you.

Mix in some Knights/Man at arms /Spears, to add some tankyness, which is where the Military schools becomes perfect as you can focus your main production on Janissaries+Crossbows. (not really needing to build more than 1 barrack for the sake of unit upgrades)

Ottoman army is quite the fearsome army in AoE4.

I don’t know. I just find it silly that a lot of people simply see strenght nothing more than in who makes the biggest boom boom. Rather than overall Utility of a unit.

PS: Ottoman Trade is on crack in imperial age. I’ve started dropping going for Mehmed and instead go for Istanbul Imperial council for the extra Vizier points.

with just 30 traders and 2 keeps + sea gate. you can easily get 6k gold per minute with just 30 traders. The 40% movement speed on traders + 10 armor, makes them almost impossible to harass due to the keeps protecting them and the traders quite literally outrunning any unit chasing them.

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For me Otto are weak in feudal, need a buff in early stages!
But if you reach castle and imperial are very good! And yes, for me Jan are fine in the role that are in. Protect the great bombards from cav! Not very historical cause Jan was a swordman + rifle, so a multirole. Here is a support role. For me is ok anyway. It’s a game, not a documentary

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having Janissaries switching to swords in melee, shouldn’t be a big problem though?
Its just to copy-pasta the damage in all honesty, like they did for the streltsies.
I’ve even seen archers going into melee mode at times, pulling up a dagger. I don’t know what triggers it.

Also I really prefer the Janissaries fulfilling the role of “siege units” instead. Working closely with siege weapons.

I completely agree that their feudal game is weak, but they seem quite capable in playin the early defensive game, as if you get a Military school early enough, you should always have a ok amount of units to keep Harassers at bay and have a small defensive army for hardly any cost, making it far less riskier to go for a fast castle as ottomans.
Early Mether i find is Key in the early game.
Archers + Sepahi with a Mether giving +1 range armor/+15% attack speed easily deals with most feudal armies.
If you get a lot of early aggression then dropping anatolian hills and going for the Mether instead makes ottoman archers king of kiting.

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Jans arent support force. They are main force of the Ottoman army. Supporter forces dont win the battles. Do hre maa supporter force? No they arennt.Mehter doesnt fight, they give buffs. Devs make Jans historically wrong.

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If they were the main force they would only be available in imperial age. you can’t have a unit that counters everything like the typical handcannoneer in castle age. But to make them a more essential part of the ottoman army, it makes sense for them to be in castle age. It’s a bit of a paradox, but overall I like how the devs designed the unit. They made them unique, rather than another streltsy

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Yes, Jan was historically wrong here. Not supposed to be a support role. But for gaming purposes is fine for me. Defend the best siege ever, the great bombard!

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This is not historical. Jans used first units that use muskets. I dont say they will counter everything but also they shouldnt countered by every units.

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kameho you misunderstand why the people complaining janissary can be a different unit and may have a different purpose but their cost is to much they must either lower the cost or make them stronger its that simple my solution for this is :
they must make its base attack 22 for normal and 26 for imperial janissary then they must lower to attack to cav to %50 bonus damage so they will do more damage to everthing else and to cavalry they will deal same damage. %50 bonus to cav and %50 more damage from range attacks this is how it must be
second solution lower their gold price at least 20 and increase their range 1.5 case solved goodbye

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The janissary does not need an extraordinary buff. I would only change 2 things:

  • I give it exactly the same range as a normal handcannoneer.

  • Either the negative bonus is removed (taking 50% more damage against ranged units) or a positive bonus is added, taking 33% less damage against melee units.

The janissary doesn’t need more.

Maybe it’s something offtopic, but the only thing that the ottos need (apart from what has already been mentioned) is that the free production of units be a little faster (it is very very slow even with a blacksmith).

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@Kameho3743 Thanks for your opinion, good discussion.

Unfortunately, mathematics and logic is wrong, see my reply here:

https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/jannisaries-shouldnt-be-like-this-they-are-absolute-useless/213982/15

For a civ lose ~90% pro matchs, mathematically a little faster produce can far not solve problem. It’s a dream.

I liked your reply in mistake.

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They did that in the original beta, but it was removed. You can still see it in campaigns I believe.

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The issue (that I see) is that Janissary has many potential units that counter or deal with it.

With a range equal to the hand gunner, he would shoot cavalry and melee units better, with a melee damage resistance, he will trade better against units like men-at-arms and spearmen.

It doesn’t need to be more expensive, or have more attack, or more HP (perhaps the Janissary tech in Imperial upgrade could be in Castles).

P.S: A faster production of the Ottoman free military units would have a very positive influence on the civilization and compensate for the lack of economy.

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Since 2 TC meta is godly (THIS IS A PROBLEM DEVS), Otto feudal is fine as long as you play 2 TC in so semi FC (very boring
 and its what you see the pros do every FREAKING GAME
VERY VERY BORING).

I will say EVEN THOUGH I LEARNED TO TESTING that the game treats Jans as RANGE units (despite not being classified as a range unit in the tooltip
), I think the only things that should be change absolutely is the extra dmg they take from Mangos; they take 1.5 times 1.5 times base dmg 12??? (81 freaking dmg if a direct hit
just stupid dmg).

If the devs want this unit to be treated like a range unit and suffer the penaltiese of being range THEN something has to be done the mangonel shot.

ATM if u wanna steamroll a jan composition; make MAA+Spears+ mangos and maybe some springs to protect your mangos, IMO.

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Ottomans as a whole are not a weak civ. They lack early agression but have very safe early boom and get alot of miliage out of it with the age 2 sipahi/mehter/archer comp. Its not the outright strongest age comp, but it is up there.

In later ages they have more options than most civs - sipahi are much better raiders then generic horsemen, mehter/knight is a really good general comp, and then theres that good ol seige deathball. Military schools are weak early, but pick up later and allow for some greedier play. The eco has no extra food bonus like most other civs, but they do have the best trade and thier endgame comp need more gold than food so the super trade works out well enough.

But Janissaries are a big derp moment for the devs. They pretty clearly wanted to make it similar to the landscknecht in term of power - trade splash for range but the final stats for damge and cost are similar. Then the devs noted that jans dont take bonus damage from arhcers due to being classed as ‘counter infantry’ like the handcannoneer they replace instead of ‘light melee infantry’ ala landsnake. I genuinely think they added that 50% ranged damage while thinking of archers and the landsnake equivalence, while completety forgetting things like xbows, camel archers, the new javelins, srandard handcannons, springalds
 you get the idea. We dont like jans cuz it seems like a true mistake of epic proportions. If it just performance, I would just quiety make ribbauldequins.

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I love the concept they’ve created for them. They’re anti-Calvary and meant to be paired with your powerful siege. Great, unique concept that we should encourage, not the other way around.

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I haven’t tested but I guess mangos do siege damage, not range damage. So Jan take standard damage as ranged unit. The malus is vs ranged units like everything made in archery range

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It might be a bug but you can go, heck you shoukd not take my word for it; please go setup a game vs friend or ai with max resources and just make jans to increase the likelihood of getting horsemen melee attacked and eating mango shots; then rewatch your replay for before and after hp. I repeated the experiment at least twice. Jans took bonus dmg from horseman as if a range unit AND took bonus dmg times penalty dmg from mango (hopefully a bug or maybe they patch it out).

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NO , i also have same feeling , i just mass them brutally followed by sipahis and some greta bombards , that combo its just wow , finally great to hear im not the only one jeez , hey maybe a buff


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Bruh, jannisaries are expensive, ranged spearmen. Why the hell would you waste 100 gold (and 60 food) on a ranged spearmen that is countered even harder against archers? Speaking of which btw, your xbow/jan comp is hard-countered by just archers.

Jannisaries are extremely underwhelming because they took the strongest, most well-rounded unit in the game and turned it into an expensive ranged spearman. When you can simply
 produce
 spearmen.

On the other hand Malians get infinitely stacking poison with their regular archers, turning them into an anti-everything specialist for less than 100 resources a pop.

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I agree that the 50% bonus damage from ranged units on jannisaries is likely too much.

I don’t understand why people keep going on about “stacking” poison damage as if that’s a problem. I think they haven’t really thought it through.

It would be completely worthless and pointless if it didn’t stack. The “ignoring armor” component is also mostly irrelevant.

It’s almost identical to just giving archers plus 3 damage. Except it’s mostly worse because it’s delayed and therefore easier to heal through and easier to waste on overkill.