Now this is less an issue in 1v1 games and more in team games where players tend to focus on heavy lategame siege.
Now russians have an upgrade that increases their springals range, making them able to destroy their enemys siege weapons before they get into position. While every race gets some unit bufs usually those units aren’t intended to counter themselfes - HRE get better MAA, so you don’t built your own MAA but you built Crossbowmen to counter them. The issue is - if your opponents have siege, your counter are springals. And those are siege. So Springals counter springals. And higher range springals counter springals HARD.
I feel like there is no counterplay, especially if you are forced to attack into a choke point and can’t get cavallery across. (or there are simply a few mangonels with spears guarding the springalds, taking out the cavalery quite quickly.
Let’s look at the counter-possibitys for springals:
- Other springals. Now usually that works due to them having the same range, a springal will kill a springal. A russian springal will kill all other springals before they get into range tho.
- Anti siege canons: Way more expensive than springals, and have the same (or even a bit less) range than russian springals. In my experiance russian springals still win out against those, especially since you are not able to spam those as much as russian springals (which are even cheaper with the Age IV Landmark)
- Bombards: Just no.
- Cavallery: While this does get buffed, and the siege speed nerfed this MIGHT be a fix… but there is one big issue: What do you do if russians defend a choke? Cavallery can’t get through. Your range units are strucken down by mangonels. Your siege is killed by springals. A lot of multiplayer games end with a wonder and are defended on chokepoints, especially on certain maps. Russians who manage to mass siege and whose team built the wonder first to “autowin” due to their siege superiority feels wrong.
Is this just my feeling as a ~1300 Elo noob or is this shared by others?