I’ve been noticing that grenadiers seem to be underpowered in Age of Empires 3. Typically, I can win games easily by mass-producing grenadiers, or by using strategies like the French church trick or the Argentine revolution. If my opponents don’t catch on early or rush in blindly, they’re usually doomed. However, when I play as the Ottomans or British and reach the later ages, I’ve found that grenadiers are not effective against certain units.
For instance, I can usually take out heavy and light infantry with ease, and artillery is manageable due to the high health of my grenadiers. As the Ottomans, my grenadiers even have a bit of siege resistance, which helps. But when my opponents mass-produce heavy cavalry, I struggle to counter them cost-effectively with grenadiers. I can still win, but it’s a challenge, and I have to rely on quickly taking out their buildings to gain an advantage (it helps that otto grens are pretty fast, i dont know the exact movement speed, but over 5 I think?)
It’s frustrating, because I feel like grenadiers should be more effective against heavy cavalry. Perhaps a slight buff to their stats would make them more viable in these situations? Does anyone have any tips on how to counter heavy cavalry with grenadiers more effectively?
Are you sure it is supposed to be a counter? Because I do not consider it a hard-counter, it’s just annoying sometimes.
EDIT (with more explanation): I understand that heavy cavalry might be intended to be a counter to grenadiers, but I don’t think it’s a hard counter. In my experience, it’s more of a nuisance than a game-changer. I’ve found that with proper micro and positioning, grenadiers can still take out heavy cavalry, especially if I’m playing as the Ottomans with their higher HP. That being said, I do agree that heavy cavalry can be a challenge for grenadiers. Perhaps the issue is more about the cost-effectiveness of countering heavy cavalry with grenadiers, rather than the counter itself.
Not everything, but I do agree that the Umbaraci is a very strong unit that can ignore cavalry while demolishing an entire base. (Or rather the ulufeli)
I agree that Humbaraci are quite strong, but I’m not sure I’d say they’re overtuned. In any case, I wasn’t suggesting that grenadiers or Humbaraci should be able to hard-counter heavy cavalry. My point was that it’s frustrating to have to sacrifice a rather large number of grenadiers to take out a bunch of heavy cavalry units. It feels like there should be more cost-effective to deal with heavy cavalry, everything else dies much quicker to my grenadiers. And grenadiers are a high-investment unit.
Cavalry is not cheap either. You are suggesting to win vs everuthing with grenadiers, which is a terrible idea. In fact, only being able to counter them with cavalry is annoying and some civs suffer a lot vs them.
I see what you’re saying, but I think the issue is that grenadiers are such a high-investment unit. I feel like they’re supposed to be able to counter a wide range of units, including heavy cavalry. And in practice, I can usually take out enemy heavy cavalry if I have a large enough mass of grenadiers. The problem is that it takes a while and I have to use smaller groups of grenadiers to harass their economy while they’re trying to stop my advance. It’s not that I can’t take out the heavy cavalry, it’s just that it’s a slow and costly process. That’s why I feel like grenadiers should be a bit more effective against heavy cavalry, or at least have a more cost-effective way to deal with them
You said yourself that the way to do it is harras their eco and take out buildings to complicate their response. Or just make the counter units to what you’re facing.
Every unit needs to be countered by something no matter how expensive. Cannons are even more costly than grens, but that doesn’t justify making them effective versus heavy cavalry. Many civs already have cavalry that greatly underperforms against grens due to them being specialized against light infantry (Steppe Riders, Naginata, Sowars, ets) so making them more effective against heavy cav would make this even more lopsided.
I understand your point and I agree that taking out buildings is a good way to kill them regardless. From your response, I take it that you seem to think that grenadiers might be slightly overtuned? (I don’t want to sound ungrateful, only massed heavies like cuirassiers or imperial huss can really stop me before blowing their entire eco to cinders)
At first i thought this was just an innocent nub trying to understand why this unit cant counter its counter unit(with out knowing it was it’s counter), but now it just seems like a troll post OR is trying to turn it into one as cover.
Regular Grenadiers are fine, their cost keeps them in check so they’re only situationally viable. Humbaraci are absolutely OP since they outclass regular Grenadiers by pretty much every metric.
But they are guard units, too. I think it’s worth considering that Humbaraci are meant to be elite units, with higher stats and abilities to reflect their guard status. It’s not necessarily a matter of them being overpowered, but rather that they’re intended to be a more powerful and specialized version of regular grenadiers.
What do you mean trollpost? I have had great success with the very expensive grenadier unit. I just wondered about their place, as they seem to be positioned to counter almost everything (balanced due to their high investment cost, res AND cards wise)
So are Russian Grenadiers, but they they’re not Ottoman so they don’t need to have broken stats for no reason.
Normal unique units have an atypical role with unique drawbacks or are overtuned but held back by other weaknesses in a civ. Unless of course the civ is Ottomans, then every single unit gets to be overtuned without any drawbacks. It’s kinda obscene how Humbaraci outclass normal grens by nearly all metrics:
why should a 180 res unit be able to beat [checks notes] everything that moves, including its direct counters? Make anticav and don’t complain you can’t monocomp a single unit into everything?
No. Heavy cavalry are meant to hard counter grens. That’s why grens have large negative multis vs them. Grens are made to counter most infantry and beat buildings while also doing ok vs light ranged cav. Cannons and heavy cav (not cannons if you’re Otto’s) are meant to counter them.
