While i think it would be nice to change things up. I don’t think this forum has the power to implement such a radical change. They might have listened to a simple 1/1,1 buff on condos but these SL changes are far too radical.
Also you realise however strong you make the new SL the mongol one will be even more of a monster… Meaning you would then have to fine tune their civ bonus as well…
I still don’t get why yall keep trying to make the SL compete with knights?
Its not a knight. It should never trade effectively with no micro vs knights. It has more utility in other areas than knights and now you want it to have the power to beat knights as well? It wil simply become OP vs certain civs again.
I think the Steppe lancer does not need very much of a Buff honestly.
It is not a great unit in castle age, but it has a small niche for raiding.
Right now it has I think two problems:
It is a raiding unit, not for battle BUT it costs a lot of food, which is not available in early castle, while still costing gold making it not a good throw away raiding unit. So when to use it?
One option would be to reduce the food cost by maybe 5 to make it more attractive to go for in early castle.
The other nice thing it can do is, that in big fights it does not have the problem other melee units have against stacking units. However the units that usually stack are archers, and the Steppe lancer does have only 1 pierce armor making it still not good against archers.
So what I would propose is to add +1 pierce armor to the bonus the Elite Steppe lancer upgrade gives.
This would mean that the Steppe Lancer will still be countered by the Knight Line, while finding it’s niche as being an anti archer cavalry.
In addition I think the food cost of the elite upgrade could be reduced from 900 to 800. Right now it gives the same bonus stats as the Cavalier upgrade while being three times the food cost. Maybe this is not necessary though if the general food cost is already decreased by 5 and the elite upgrade gives the +1 pierce armor.
I like this concept of steppe lancer as an antiarcher. While knights beat xbows in low numbers, after a critical mass crossbows can defeat knights with proper micro. Same for cavaliers and arbalests.
Given their +1 range, steppe lancers gain strenght when massed in numbers. Therefore they could fill a role of antiarchers stronger in groups, while being weak to melee.
Except the +1 range and speed gives them a huge advantages against melee, they can outrun almost every melee unit in the game just based on speed alone, and due to their very fast training time they can outmass almost everything else. coupled with the extra range means they ALWAYS get in the first hit, and they can stack to attack too, allowing far more units then normally would to attack.
does that sound like a unit that is weak to melee?
When I say that they “could fill a role” I don’t mean that all of us as a community start using them as anti-archer. I’m talking about a rework by changing its stats.
By giving it high pierce armor but low HP and low melee armor, yes. Why not?
And about outrunning enemies. How many units can you hit and run with until it gets clunky and ineffective? Just a few. I’d say no more than 10-12. They should be beaten by knights and higher numbers of light cavalry.
then give me example stats to work with. because unless it has insane pierce armor, the fact that it has low health is going to make them weak to archers. especially mongols who lack the final armor upgrade.
considering all the crying about archers right now? i’d say quite a bit of hit and run.
Actually making steppe lancers very strong against archers can be a good idea, but it has several problems. How would you balance melee battles? How will the mongol steppe lancer perform if they miss the last armor upgrade? What exact buffs would you give? If you have a good answer for all of these I will support the idea.
As I suggested: Elite upgrade +1 pierce armor. They would then have the same pierce armor as knights, while being faster to bridge the distance to archers and more effective against the massive stack of them. In addition you would have the Tartar Steppe lancer that has an additional +1 pierce armor, giving it the same armor as Paladins.
considering all the crying about archers right now? i’d say quite a bit of hit and run.
Archers start with 4 range, increasing up to 8, while you can stack an infinite amount of archers in one tile. Steppe lancers do not stack that well, especially during hit and run, and they can only attack 2 tiles far. Against chasing pikes, I would be very surprised if you can even use 10 Steppe lancers without getting hit. (I personally cant, even in Scenario conditions)
I think if you just increase pierce armor of the elite version by 1 and make the upgrade a bit cheaper (maybe by 100-200 food) this would be a good way to start. Maybe it won’t be enough, and I think it would only make the Tartar Steppe lancer viable, but it would be a start and it’s better to under buff than to over buff anything. If this is not enough one can think of additional options.
I think the Mongol Steppe lancer will always be quite terrible tbh. Lacking the last armor upgrade just cant be made up for on a gold melee unit imo.
This proposed buff will not change anything about their effectiveness in melee battles, where they should still be outperformed by knights, even in big numbers.
so you’re saying they have 6 pierce armor fully upgraded, and their current health?
they’d get wrecked by archers so hard. 4 damage a shot from an arb, 100 health = 25 shots to kill. to put that in perspective, cavaliers take 30.
and only 80 less health…
the fact is this unit would still get wrecked by archers at those stats. even tatar ones.
While having a much lower gold cost and upgrade cost. Of course they don’t tank as much as a paladin, but paladins are rarely an option in 1v1 anyways.
But yes, I agree with you, that the Steppe lancer still looks weak statswise, but the 1 range is really hard to address imo, so I think this would be a buff that definitely doesn’t make the Steppe lancer too strong, which is good. Any buff that does not make a unit too strong is a buff that’s worth it imo. One can then further see if more buffs are needed.
ESL costs 900 food and 550 gold. for that cost i’d rather sink the resources into cavaliers who have more health, faster attack speed, and are a more well rounded unit then a 100 health 6-7 pierce armor unit that would get shredded.
but it doesn’t address what hornet wants, to make it an anti archer unit. even at 7 pierce armor, its only going to take 34 arb shots to kill. that isn’t a whole lot. especially for a unit that has such a slow attack speed.
and you also have to remember, mongols lack the final armor upgrade, so theirs would just be a pincushion.
Honestly the way i would fix the dang unit is just make it a pure raiding unit. make everything about it scream “Raid with me”, after all the extra range makes it superb for picking off villagers.
60 food, 20 gold.
600 food/500 gold upgrade.
+4/7 bonus vs villagers.
+1/2 base pierce armor (For a total of 0/2 and 0/3 baseline).
it would pretty much stink vs anything except siege, and villagers.
Yes, they will die quicker from crossbows, however right now tartar steppe lancers aren’t even doing terrible against chocked up cross bows when compared to cavaliers. They were quite comparable actually, though my tests were not perfect and I might be wrong about that.
So what you want to do is to give them even more pierce armor, reducing the upgrade cost, give it bonus damage against villagers AND decrease the overall cost? I think with those stats it would become way too strong again. Maybe it will need more than +1 pierce armor, maybe 2 base, 3 elite is necessary. With 3 pierce armor as elite(or tatar lancers with 2 pierce armor as elite) they would soak up 0.3 arrows per ressource. Cavaliers take 35 shots which is 0.26 arrows per ressource (15% more cost effective in tanking). With elite 3 pierce armor the tartar one would then take 50 shots, so 0.44 shots per ressource, that would be the same as the Paladin. So yes, compared with the additional range I think they would find their niche as anti archer cavalry.
So I think either: +1 pierce armor through elite upgrade and reduce cost of elite upgrade, or +1 baseline +1 elite upgrade and keep the cost of the elite upgrade.
Well tbh I don’t think steppe lancers can be balanced around making them an archer counter without huge reworks. The mongol and the tatars steppe lancer has 3 pierce armor difference. You should give mongols the last armor but then you should also remove or nerf their HP bonus. You should also probably remove the pierce armor bonus for tatars. And after that you should buff their stats very carefully. It is a huge rework that I don’t think will have that many advantages considering that the knight line is already pretty good versus archers, and with the improved pathfinding, even more so.
I agree, that it is very difficult to balance because the mongol lancer just has vastly different stats. However i would go with just ignoring the mongol lancer. I think it is beyond redemption for actual fights and mongols as a civ have been working out really well for a long time. They never needed the lancer to begin with. Tartars on the other hand are pretty mediocre. An archer killing steppe lancer would help them out quite a bit, while it also adds to the options of cumans. I think if it makes the lancer better for these two that is enough. I honestly think you dont need to Balance a cav unit for a civ that lacks the last armor upgrade for cav.
However, if we want to make the steppe lancer a pure raiding unit I would suggest to reduce the food cost from 70 to 60, or even 55 and give it bonus damage against palisades (maybe like 7 bonus damage, that would reduce their time to kill from 32 to 17 hits with forging).
The elite upgrade could then add bonus damage to houses as well and reduce gold cost of the unit from 45 to 35. This way the unit would be useful for all three civilizations as a pure raiding unit, while each of them has their unique bonus that makes it better at this task in some way. However, this is unfortunately not possible in the current game (i.e. won’t happen) as there is no unique armor class to houses, or palisades.
Rate of fire (=reload time) decreased from 2,3 to 2,0
Cost decreased from 70 food 45 gold to 65 food 40 gold
Cost of the Elite Upgrade changed from 900 food 550 gold to 500 food 650 gold』
Good chance they would be slightly OP again. Mongols are fine, they don’t have last armor, while it is hard to mass in castle age.
Cumans: 9s per one in imperial. Too easy to mass with decreased cost? Become Stable version of Huskarl
Tartars: Now they will melt archers in terms of gold, while should do quite well against melee units too due to the high DPS. Personally I would take the speed and cost decrease first.
What you are suggesting might be an overkill. Steppe lancers already provide semi-decent powerspike in early imp, where they obliterate cavaliers and can even hold against paladins on equal resourses. Steppe Lancers, in my opinion, are a flawed design and need a rework rather then buffs or nerfs. The issue is that they are basically knights with rebalanced stats. They are a strong and fast melee unit for mass fights, and they are countered by roughly the same list of units as knights. So they are knights, and always have been knights, but either worse in every way or better in every way depending on the patch. What devs need to do is either to add some kind of bonus against certain units or completely rebalance the cost. If their cost is changed to, say, 110 food 15 gold, they become a completely different, semi-trash unit. Another option is to make them insanely gold-heavy, but cost-efficient, say 20 food 80 gold, but that would require adjusting their upgrade time and other aspects.
I proposed a small bonus vs villagers, the civs that have them have a historical reputation of killing people at nearby towns as raiders.
AOE3 have the infamous Oprichinik which is even more extreme since they can be obtained by free shipments