TR gives them 100% accuracy but it doesn’t increase the RoF if I’m not mistaken…
You know that TR have several different effects for different units, the slinger case should be among them, and anyway a 10% buff in attack speed shouldn’t make the unit broken, but still it should incourage the Inca player to use its UU more than the standard arbs.
And I’m always in favor of incourage UU use over standard units…
My though process was that since this tech is tailored towards skirms, it should have a bigger impact on them First and, since they are not affected by thing Ring, 20% ROF would have an impact while still not be OP since dravidians skirms would still be better and for free
Slingers on the other hand with 20% faster firing could be a lot stronger in top of thumb Ring which i believe affects their ROF and while i would favore a buff for this unit, i would much rather have a “elite slinger” upgrade in Imperial
Slingers aren’t listed as getting a ROF increase from TR, just 100% accuracy (which shouldn’t be understated, to be fair).
I don’t think Slingers attack slow, their attack speed is much higher than the equivalent Hand Cannoneer’s, hence why they’re more effective against Infantry than Hand Cannoneers, just they are much worse against anything else unlike HCs.
One thing I’ve noticed with them is that they have a slightly slow firing animation, but I don’t know if that’s just in my head or a real thing. It’s at times made it awkward to micro. The fandom page (aoe2 wiki more or less?) shows that frame delay is faster for Slingers, but attack delay is slower, so I’m assuming that’s due to the firing animation. Maybe Andean Sling could buff that up, too. 11
10% is still a lot of an improvement, combined with the removal of the minimum range, they would get better at fight archers and especially spears, in the late game it would snowball quite fast.
As for slingers, since the UT now equally affect the both units, I would stay on the same path, and a small damage increase would make the unit better at counter all units.
Right now the slinger is better than the HC because it have higher accuracy and it’s available an age earlier, but the HC still have more attack, so increasing the RoF would close the gap… but +20% it’s probably too much…
I don’t really see this consistency as something that has to be preserved (Incas aren’t Meso anyways), so much as a lack of creativity on the part of the devs. If we eventually get another American civ, do they also have to have some Atlatl knock-off/Skirm UT? I sure hope not. I agree with you that the tech is boring and could be reworked, but I find literally all of the other ideas far more enticing (couriers, switch 10-15 gold cost to food on Eagles, reduce scorp minimum range.) And 0 minimum range skirms would make for a more interesting team bonus than the current or past Inca TBs.
Yep, which is why their design as an anti-infantry specialist that is more accessible than HC but weaker as a generalist is great, and fits Incas’ identity. Incas have plenty of strong options to deal with the units that Slingers are bad against.
The desire to buff slingers seems like a solution begging for a problem, rather than the other way around. If Incas performed poorly vs. infantry civs, or slingers were generally not good within their role, I’d be a lot more amenable to suggestions to buff them. This just seems like a desire to buff things that appear weak in isolation, but that weakness is justified in the context of their counter-role and the other options Incas have, and is indicative of good, not poor, design.
Well yes, if they also lack cavalry entirely like current meso, otherwise their trash-unit roster would suck if they do not have strong skirms even.
I find it an odd equivalence that having no stable should equate to having a Castle Age UT that buffs skirms specifically. Think outside the box. There are plenty of ways to compensate for having 1 non-existent or unusable (Turk spear/skirmline) trash unit. There are also ways to buff other units besides skirms that can fill the vacuum left by lacking a stable. People have proposed American civs with trash eagles (gold cost turned to food, but weaker than Aztec/Maya/Inca eagles) - to me, that would be a lot more interesting than another McMeso Skirm UT.
I think if there ever was gonna be an Eagle civ with ‘trash’ Eagles, they’d have to not get EEW at the very least, maybe not even last armour. It’d be a cool late-Castle powerspike if locked behind Castle UT as well, similar to Poles with their cavalry spam.
I do think currently, all three meso civs having a Skirmisher tech as Castle UT fits the ‘design’. It’s their thing, so to speak. Sadly there’s only so much you can do with improving one unit. I think a much funnier change would be that they lose their frame delay, rather than no minimum range. 11
All the civ concepts I’ve seen that include trash eagles, and one I proposed (Zapotecs) miss EEW, (although there might be a way to justify EEW if it misses both IMP BS upgrades and Squires or something). I suppose there is a sort of symmetry to the existing triple arrangement of Skirm/Eagle UTs, I’d just prefer for more creative designs on any new American civs - trash eagles just being one example, but buffed spearline, unit gold discounts, or a UU that fills the cavalry void - are all options, among others. Even given the constraints of American civs generally not having gunpowder or cavalry, “being good at throwing spears” doesn’t have to make an appearance in every possible design.
quiet sad kamayuk noises (yes, I know, gold-costing UU yadda yadda . . .)
I mean, Slingers already fill that void for Incas, so technically if they wanted to, they can absolutely create a Meso civ that fills a different void.
Given the game’s symmetrical design of the civs, it does limit your options by removing essentially a third of your units from the game. And several ways to buff the rest of the units have already been covered by other civs. There’s only so much you can do with Halberdiers and Skirmishers before you’ve covered every single possibility, so the only difference would start being combinations of bonuses together.
Or you’d have to invent completely new ways of changing the units that hasn’t been seen before, like maybe changing Skirmisher’s attack into melee through UT - which is something I’ve thought about as well, but I’m not sure if that’s always a good idea, since several units have more MA than PA. 11
This is true, but it’s arguably an issue (or on the verge of becoming so) for most unit lines, and even for eco bonuses and UTs, such that the devs have seen fit to reuse the Leitis ability and several others on top of adding new bonus types that some still consider gimmicky (Shrivamsha). It’s hard to dream up more than a couple bonuses even for knights, infantry or archers, that don’t already strongly resemble existing civ bonuses or UUs, which may come to be an issue for new civs even if they have broad tech trees.
In any case, I prefer at least entertaining different ways of doing things before resorting to overly generic patterns of civ design, even if generic is ultimately chosen as the tried and true method. As much as I think the current Dravidian/Bengali designs could use a little more love, I appreciate that the devs are at least trying to make those civs viable by working around the absence of a near-critical unit rather than working under the previous “design expectation” of civs with stables having either knights or very strong camel riders.
Also, there’s plenty of room for American civs to be differentiated via a variety of Eagle bonuses.
Considering that most infantry civs lack Eagles, there’s no direct unit overlap even if new civs were to have eagle-only bonuses that were shared with the generic or UU infantry of other civs (cheaper, faster, faster attacking, regen, etc…maybe even an anti-archer bonus in lieu of an über-skirm tech). There’s even the possibility of Eagle variants with different characteristics, just as there are stable units with various functions. As for melee skirms, I think the concept is perfectly valid - the (sometimes) extra damage being likely balanced with their slower attack rate and perhaps missing the last armor. Biggest effect would be on rams and huskarls, which would be strong but probably not near game-breaking territory.
cant wait for that +1 damage on slinger. its good enough for me
Wait why are we assuming slingers get +1 damage soon? Was there a pup?
nope but it’ll do wonder for that unit
Yeah i can make suggestion too, i can agree it’s not very interesting too, but it’s Just the way the balanced and design of meso civs is right now, and it’s Independent of me or you liking It or not sadly. Of course DEVS can change this and make whatever they want, but would still be strange in terms of consistency between the meso civs