Balance discussion on the steppe lancer

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
143

If people want to go down that route, I think you strip the steppe lancer from the Mongols (who didn’t initially have them) and the Tartars (who don’t use / need them with the Keshik) and make it a Paladin replacement for the Cumans

I think the way to do this is to give them a very high attack with a small amount of trample damage but very slow RoF on the attack. This would somewhat approximate the way a lancer relies on a high initial charge. My initial suggestion for the Elite version below for stats but obviously would need to be tested. The heavy cost is because the 1 range and high base attack should let them fight pikeman much more effectively without needing a bonus mitigation like Cataphracts or the low cost / armor ignoring of the Leitis

  • Cost - 80F, 70G
  • HP - 140
  • Attack - 20 Base + 2 Trample
  • RoF - 2.75
  • Range - 1
  • MArmor - 2
  • PArmor - 2
  • Speed - 1.4
  • LoS - 5
144

removal of knight is too hard. Indians could do it because of it’s economy. They were below average back in forgotten when the vills bonus are 5/10/15/20. The one range of SL definitely make them too strong in one situation while too weak in another, when balanced correctly.

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145

Would it be possible to balance Cuman ESL to paladin-level usefulness with a UT food discount, without making them OP?
They already have UT decreasing the TT iirc.

146

knight + xbow already a meta. Not likely to change it by removing knight for more civs

147

I actually don’t like the idea of improving steppe lancers against mass archers. Since all 3 get Camels. OK cumans don’t get heavy camel.
But they also heav really good ranged support. With steppe lancers suited against archers, they may get almost unbeatable unit compositions which can easily be adapted to the opponents composition because there is not much transition.
I like the idea of a more mobile version of the champion which can counter counter units and is also a viable raiding unit, not that cav archer civs need one, but… yeah it’s just designed that way.

148

What about replacing the light cav instead?

Basically a SL civs may upgrade the scout in SL instead of light cav.

The SL could be slightly changed to be a bit worse than light cav in low numbers but stronger in larger numbers. The main change would be SLs as food only units, with large los, bonus vs monks…

This is exactly the point. Balancing removing a meta unit is difficult…

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149

I think this was the initial intention to have a better light cav option in castle age for these civs, which also costs gold. But since the sl isn’t suited a counter it can’t be trash.

I don’t think you need to remove another unit just to make sl viable, just gve the sl a different role, that’s al it need.

I actually considered that sl could damage garrisoned units, this would be very unique, really annoying, but also might turn around if they are killed in this approach.

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150

The problem I see is that a different role is very difficult to find…

151

Since non of these nations gets supplies I think the most natural role is a mobile supplement of the militia line with higher gold ratio and a bit less effective against the counter units.
I think this is also the most weak point of the tatars atm, which i consider is atm also the weakest of these 3 civs in general. I also read, that some already use the sl in that role, at least against skirms.

But of course there are many other roles:
Siege-Counter
Raiding specialist
mass archer counter
cav counter
defensive structure destroyer
…

Which i don’t think it should ever come back to this mass core unit. It was just broken.
Also some of these roles might be either redundand for these civs or would make them at least very annoying to play against because they could not only raid you but also counter all your offensive approaches.

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152

Trash counter sounds cool, still it should change armor class. Maybe it could have just infantry armor, and a bonus vs trash units and eagles (which is non-trivial to implement considering the current armor classes).

You can basically tune it in a mounted champions, but it is important that it is not classified as cavalry, otherwise halabs will wreck it.

New SL

  • attack bonus vs eagles, skyrms, scouts, halabs
  • infantry armor class but affected from cavalry armors (despite it is on a horse)
  • Maybe a small tuning of the cost

This is cool but it non-trivial to implement.

153

If you give them just enough bonus damage against halbs this may not matter much because the additional range will make it very hard for halbs to hit them very often ;). Also SL can just be mixed in in knight or light cav formations to build the second line, which helps destroying halbs, so sl might not even fight in the front line.
But of course, it would need testing, maybe it needs another armor class as you suggested.

Which might be more freightening are camels and elephants, which can actually destroy SL formations and also be a counter to the other units these nations have available. So a slight bonus against them might also to be considered.

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154

If you were to do this it might be better to just give it cavalry resistance like the cata. Otherwise you’ll end up with the super weird situations of things like plumes, jags and HC doing bonus damage…

Whereas if you could give it a small amount of cavalry armour, and just give it bonus damage vs those trash units as casus pointed out it will still do the job. It’s fine of anti cav does bonus damage but cost wise it will perform better than other non cata cav.

Otherwise the SL could become a hard counter to byz until they get their catas out…

155

In line with this I came up with some new ideas.

So what I’ve heard people say so far is to give the SL a role either as:
Anti Archer
Full Raiding
Anti infantery, as i.e. Tartars don’t get good champions
Anti Camel, to get a Rock paper scissor cavalry triangle with Camel counter knights, knights counter SL, SL counters Camels.

I already made suggestions for the first 2 (+1 pierce armor on elite upgrade, and lower cost, bonus damage against palisades, houses).
So I try to integrate the latter two:
Let’s first see what stats the steppe lancer had before it got nerfed:
30g (45 now)
10(12) attack(9(11)
1.9 Attack speed (2.3)
1.5 movement speed (1.45)
So next to it’s stacking, which was the real problem, it’s DPS got nerfed by 25%.
One could try to revert some of these changes back, as I think the stacking was the real problem, but that still would not give it a role.
As it stands right now the Steppe lancer has one of the slowest attack speeds of cavalry units in the game. Together with the +1 range that would make for a nice micro intensive unit, that needs to hit and run to be effective, However it is not really rewarding if at the same time you have low Damage and do not stack.

So, what I would suggest is to simply increase their damage to make them microing more rewarding (11(14 with elite) Attack at 2.5 attack speed, that would just be an 11-14% DPS increase, so still lower than before the nerf)
And give it a slightly higher Cavalry armor, such as the cataphract.
Like 7 cavalry armor as standard, and 9 As elite. (Cataphract has 12 and 16, so the Steppe lancer won’t replace the role of the Cataphract)
That means it takes 8 instead of 5 hits for a spear man to kill a Steppe lancer,
5 instead of 4 for a Pikeman.
And for Elite Steppe Lance 6 Pikeman hits vs 4. and for Halb 4 instead of 3 hits.

A Camel Rider would need 10 instead of 6 hits to kill a Steppe lancer and a Heavy camel rider would need 7 instead of 4 hits to kill an Elite Steppe Lancer.
It would also perform much better against Eagle Warriors, taking 12, instead of 8 hits from Elite eagles, and could therefore become a real surrogate of the Champion.

So what this would do is to give the Steppe lancer something between 25-75% higher sustainability against anti Cavalry units, although statwise he would still get countered by them. However, with the higher micro potential, abusing its longer range it should be possible to cost effectively win fights, at least against Pikeman and Heavy camels. And completely counter slow infantery units.

Im still not too sure how much this will actually do, as the Elite Steppe Lancer will take the same amount of hits from a Halbardier as a Cavalier, but needs 3.5 seconds longer to kill it (same amount of hits as Cavalier, which has 1.8 attack speed).
Maybe it would be necessary to additionally give it a small anti Infantery bonus. (+2 for Elite Steppe Lancer, don’t think the non Elite version needs it, it already needs one less hit to kill pikes than knights do). That would be enough for it to take one less attack to kill a Halbardier, so it only needs 1 second longer to Kill than a Cavalier. It also won’t make a difference against Pikeman, not putting Civs that do not get Halbardier in too bad of a position. Also makes no difference against generic or even goth champions. It also won’t make a difference against Actec eagles, but Mayan and Inca eagles both will take one hit less than without the bonus damage (6 hits to take down Mayan, 4 hits for Aztec and Inca eagle)
In addition, one could increase the Speed of the Elite Steppe lancer back to 1.5, so they can outrun camels, making hit and run tactics against them more useful.
So in Summary I propose the following Steppe Lancer stats:

70 Food
45 Gold

60 HP (80 as Elite)
11 melee Attack (14 elite)
(only Elite +2 attack vs Infantry)
2.5 Attack speed
1 range
0 melee armor
1 pierce armor
Cavalry armor class +7 (+9 Elite)
1.45 speed for now, maybe increase to 1.5 speed for Elite in a future update.

Both in sustainability as well as in time to kill the Elite Steppe Lancer will perform against Halberdiers the same as a Cavalier. So the whole difference comes from the players micro ability. Both because of same (or higher) speed as camels and simply taking one hit more from heavy camels it also will be the better option against them. In addition the Elite upgrade will give much more value than before (1 more attack increase than before, +2 vs infantry, +2 Cavalry armor and potentially +0.05 movement speed) solving the problem of it feeling completely overpriced.

Just an idea, i’m not too sure if this will give it a proper role, as it will just be stronger against units that still counter it. However, it will perform similar to the Cavalier against those units, while being much cheaper on the gold costs. So it might be a decent unit, and especially useful against meso civs and goths. It might remain a niche unit, but at least will have a niche.

Disclaimer: During the calculations I forgot, that the FU Attack increases the stats by 1 more, than FU Armor, so some of the tiebreakers for hits received/needed might be wrong for fully upgraded units.

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156

Personally I’d like to see the Steppe Lancer filling more of a support roll, in other words more similarities with light cav then with heavy cav. Thinking about the civs that have them, the backbone unit is typically Cav Archers, Kipchaks, or Mangadi. I think the Steppe Lancer should be a unit that pairs nicely with these units.

The Hussar/Cav Archer is a great unit composition, but I’d like to see the Steppe Lancer acting as an improved version of this, for just a little more gold. I’d leave all the stats the same, but lower the gold cost from 45 to 15, and increase Castle age training time to 26, and increase imperial age Training time to 23.

So what would their roll be? Support unit to CA and UU CA. Here’s how:

  1. Higher stats then light cav, with range that makes them a good raiding unit albeit in a different way. In early castle you could go for steppe lancers quickly to raid your enemies while you build toward your late castle transition to CA and SL.
  2. In Imperial you would move into Elite SL and Heavy CA which would allow you to clean up skirms with Elite SL, have a little more damage output then Hussars would against Heavy Camels and Cavaliers (while not countering either unit), and have good utility against Siege, huskarls, or Eagles which are all weaknesses of Heavy CA.

Overall I think this is the roll that SL were really always supposed to fill, so while they wouldn’t replace hussar which are still arguably better late game eco raiders with better pierce armor, they would be a better option in a support roll for your primary unit composition.

157

That’s what i already proposed, just give them bonus damage against spear line and a bit against camels, then they can fill the role as a more mobile variant of the champ.

These other proposals look for me too much like “let’s make it broken again”, adressing too much the known weaknesses of the unit and/or buffing it almost to the state it formerly was. This can’t end good.

As you said correctly, this unit in it’s design can never be the core unit of any civ, it’s just not possible. So atm they have the role to snipe vills which is ok, but not quite enough yet. Just one little thing is missing, so it can be a part of a unit comp of these civs,

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158

I think they could get some bonus against infantry. That way they will be useful to mix with heavy Cavalry

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159

I actually can’t imagine this to be true.
A unit with originally high damage stats and low armor stats, that does cost gold and has high microing potential seems to be much more to be fit as the core of your army than as a support unit, because similar to Mangudai and Archers you can lose them easily if you dont pay attention, but if you do you can keep them alive quite long.
Im also not too sure, why people think that the Steppe Lancer is better to clear up Skirmishers, than the Hussar. They can be, yes. But that requires Microing. If you just patrol into Skirmishers they will probably perform worse than Hussars, as they have lower pierce armor, and the one range, meaning they will if not microed stay in attack range of the Skirmishers, not forcing them to move.

That’s pretty much what my changes would do. Giving them the same fighting power against Halbs and Camels as a Cavalier, at a lower (gold)cost and with high micro potential to make them work even better, while still being vulnerable to Knights and Archers. (knights actually being a better counter than non heavy camels.
I actually think this would be the best way to buff them, because unlike other changes that I, and others have proposed before (like the additional pierce armor) none of the Civ boni will make it broken, and just be supplementing it’s role to make it a bit stronger at one of their weaknesses.

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160

Not sure about skirms, but they are better in fighting archers mainly due to the range. But with cost consideration, there is hardly reason to justify using SL atm. Maybe mongols could use it to replace Cavs due to the lower gold cost and extra HP.

Again IMO, 65f 40g, 1.5 speed maybe already enough buff. The slow attack rate may not bother too much unless it is melee vs melee.

161

The slow attack rate, however means that the Steppe Lancer has almost the same damage output as the light cav (235 dmg./minute vs 210), while having higher overall costs (although cheaper on food), same HP, less pierce armor and lower movement speed. As comparison for how little that difference in damage is, the knight has a damage output of 333/minute.
With your suggestion, they would still have only marginally higher DPS and lower pierce armor at slightly higher cost.
The elite upgrade is more expensive than the Hussar upgrade but at least after that you have 5 more HP and your damage output increases to 287, while the hussar increases only to 221, so at least then it is a bit better concerning the damage.

I don’t know, it might be worth trying, and it definitely is better than not doing anything, but I don’t think making the Steppe lancer 9% cheaper will do anything.
Why do you think attack speed doesn’t matter against ranged units? Steppe lancers get shredded by archers with their 1 pierce armor. They are basically a glass cannon, or rather a glass handgun at the moment. I would say the slow attack speed matters much more against archers, because in theory Steppe lancers can outmicro other melee units. Also archers have lower hp, so there is higher overkill potential than with knights, making high attack speed even more important.

162

Something they were supposed to be good at, archers are their counter, not the other way around. They’re way worse than knights against xbow with their low HP and pierce