I think Cumans are fine with their strong castle age eco, sure their Lancers don’t get a real stat boost but Tatars need a castle and a tech to pay for it and long term Mongols can’t really invest into them because they lack plate barding, so I’d say it’s all balanced
2 Likes
Radical balance idea: Remove them completely. They’re just knights with an extra range and less pierce armor. “Steppe lancers” were in the game before this unit was a thing (since lancers on the steppe would be steppe cilivzation’s iteration of heavy cavalry) and even approaching a year past release they haven’t been defined into a solid niche - there’s no construable reason to make them over more numbers of light cavalry or knights. Raiding? Light cav/hussar is much cheaper, doesn’t cost gold, and is very fast. Vs infantry? If you’re going cavalry vs infantry, specifically pikemen, you’re better investing the resources you put into steppe lancers into more knights since knights need to have equal or better numbers to snowball a fight against pikemen. Swordsmen are barely in the conversation, but knights are still better vs them since more hp. Vs cavalry? Every civilization that gets steppe lancers has access to camels - two of them even have halberdier.
Aoe doesn’t need gimmick units. If you want a cavalry unit with one range make it trainable from the castle and stat it around the design of being a unique unit, Steppe lancers outright cannot be strong and with a defined niche without that. There’s more design room to make them strong with being a castle unique unit (roll them in with the Keshik since they’re one of the most underwhelming unique units out of the civs that get them) rather than balancing them around the microscopic amount of civilizations that get them. Either there’s no reason to make them over knights or light cav (currently the case) or they’re op (on release where they murdered burmese halberdiers and made fights vs stacking archers look like onager shots)
Definitely not… Good luck chasing with camels lol
3 Likes
50f 40g better cavalier is underwhelming to you?
5 Likes
Steppe lancers will have the completely same identity as light cav. The only difference is that steppe lancers will be used in castle age and light cav in imperial age.
Why would you introduce a new unit if it has the completely same use than another generic unit just with different mechanics?
If all of the changes I have proposed would be live, then steppe lancer would already have a unique identity and we wouldn’t need to bother with giving them a bonus damage versus a unit type. Like I said:
The most unique ability is still the last one which directly originates from the +1 range, but with weak stats, the things has just zero effects.
That is the problem we are trying to solve by giving them an identity (or enhancing the current)
I know mongol SL are weaker to arrow fire but aren’t they substantially better in melee, thanks to 24hp.
But yeah i guess i was considering team play where you’re a lot more likely to fight imperial games where cumans start to hurt more if you aren’t using paladins. Lack of bracer and eco.
1 Like
No they won’t. Its like saying “why do magyar have their own huszars its same identity”
One is more expensive than the other and has more utility.
Why have keshiks? They’re identical to cavaliers with more utility…
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While magyar huszars are really nearly the same as hussars, I don’t think that is a big of a problem since we are talking about a unique unit which can simply be a better version of the unit line, while steppe lancers are a unit-line on its own. Would you introduce the magyar huszars as a unit-line available for everyone? I don’t think so. This also applies to every similar unique unit, like the mangudie
Keshiks are really, really far from cavaliers
1 Like
Let me try some other proposals:
If we want a new identity, we may discuss some of these:
- costing gold only
- trained almost instantly
- they are not affected by blacksmith techs but their stats are tuned as if they were FU from the blacksmith. Basically similar to the condos. Useful as you hit the next age… They may have free elite upgrade or a cheaper version…
Quick idea.
Steppe Lancers available in Feudal Age.
Elite available in Castle Age.
Tweak stats as needed.
I haven’t considered repercussions, just brainstorming. Thoughts?
has potential but would need drastically different stats or would be beyond op in feudal.
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I can definitely see that; countering Spears. They’d be very expensive for Feudal, though. They’d only have Feudal upgrades at best, likely no Bloodlines…Archers would do well against them since you’d likely have a numbers advantage, and it would counter the quickwalling meta of many feudal games and really encourage aggression.
I haven’t used Steppes in a while so I’m not super familiar with stats. Planning on familiarizing myself to take a look at the balance again.
would they? archers do 5 damage in feudal and lack thumbring/balistics, while you could throw armor on your lancers and they have 2 pierce armor, meaning any shot that hits is only going to do 3 damage, and they have 60 health (15 more then scouts) and 9 attack (3 more then the next best feudal age unit). and you don’t have to get in melee range to attack them.
archers also cost the same gold wise.
yeah it would be expensive, but it also literally have no counter play as is.
3 Likes
What about making them a kind of cavalry eagle warrior by giving them high pierce armor but weakness to meele combat? Not only it would make them an anti-archer gold option, but also with high pierce armor they could resist castles and town center fire, allowing them to effectively raid the enemy base.
Also, giving these antiarcher SL to turks (would make sense from the seljuk part of the civ) they could have a gold option to fight archers that doesn’t make them lose their identity.
Of course, these changes must come with proper rebalance for the civs (silk armor for example).
the problem is that the 1 range kind of offsets the melee weakness because they can poke every melee before they get poked back, and they can outrun most heavy cavalry.
1 Like
I think reducing the elite upgrade cost to 700 food and 500 gold is nice, and maybe ROF of 2.2 for standard and 2.0 to elite.
If you want to give them a role, make them to deal damage vs villagers (4 for standard, 5 for elite), this would make them better in design and It really fits the historical theme of Mongols, Cumans and Tatars as raiding civs.
I see. It could be reasonable especially for turks. For instance SL may even have a negative melee armor as rams, if needed.
Light cav already has the role of raiding, I don’t think it would be a good idea if another unit-line had the same role
1 Like
but we raid with knights 
we should scrap them because they have a similar role 
as ive said before the SL will do the hussar “raiding job” better for a higher price, as well as being able to tackle more problems, it simply has more utility, for a higher gold price… with micro it can snipe the units someone sends to chase them away, making them a much higher threat than hussars
but we need lower cost(or something) either way to justify it…
But in imp and in trash wars there is no way of spedning my gold on raiding units when I already have trash raiding units available