There is no counter to bow rider. That’s the problem. Lakota just need to make this one unit. They beat all other ranged cav, they beat musketeers, of course they beat melee cav.
Their supposed counter, skirmishers—let’s do some maths. Skirm has 15 attack with 2x multiplier, that’s 30 damage. Bow rider has 20 attack with 2x fire rate, that’s 40 damage per 3 sec. Deducting the skirm’s 30% range resist, they take 28 damage per 3 seconds from bow rider. So bow rider and skirm do about the same damage per second. Then skirm is 115 cost (mostly coin) and has 120 hp. BR is 175 cost (mostly food) for 225 hp. BR has more hp per cost. BR also super fast especially together with the war chief. And BR has more upgardes, cards, big buttons, community plaza buffs etc, in later game. So even skirms don’t counter BR. What counters them?
On top of that BR don’t have negative multiplier vs villagers, unlike other dragoons or cav archers. They can raid while other ranged cavs can’t. They can eat buildings with fire dance. Lakota doesn’t even need to make another unit!
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skirms have more range and cost only 1 pop
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Skirmishers are 1 pop, bow rider 2.
/thread
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Lakota cavalry has terrifying base stats and a high cost because the Lakota’s only option towards victory is early rushing with cavalry.
It’s literally all they do. They can’t do any other strategy. Their economy and military don’t allow it.
Also, this core problem is one of the reasons they need to be reworked.
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bow riders were stronger on tad but lakota/sioux was long considered quite a poor civ in most matchups.
on DE they’re strong units but because they have the fire delay they always have to face tank a musket volley before returning fire and skirms vastly outrange them.
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For early to mid game pop is not that big a problem you won’t reach full pop anyway. Lakota doesn’t even need houses. Skirm player will need houses. BR is faster than skirm. They’re going to catch up and stay in range shooting the skirm, skirm still lose. Skirm is supposed to be the hard counter to BR
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Lakota eco is good, unlimited hunt from home city, fertility dance + adoption make vills create almost instantly, doesn’t even need a second TC to boom to 99 vills lol.
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I’m with you. I’m getting slaughtered by the lakota bow riders. It’s very hard to get any traction. In addition pop doesn’t even play a factor w lakota in a 1v1.
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The 1 Pop was more as a response to your lategame complaints (upgrades etc).
20 range is huge compared to 12. Bow riders dont want to come close and stay in prolonged fights… the defender has some benefits: the skirms get the first one or two shots. they dont have to move, also you can hinder the mobility of the BR by placing walls and buildings in strategic locations (not always an option i know). if the BR comes to close you can chase them away with pikes or snare them or encircle them even. Also the defender has most of the time numerical superiority, because of the lower distance between production buildings and battlefield - this snowballs. depending on the situation also defensive buildings like blockhouses/towers/…
Bow riders are best at raiding and are concerned with killing villagers → its not rellevant if they 1v1 skirms. they are very microintensive and cost a lot, so they wont appear in giant masses. the Lakota suck at gathering coin and BR cost 75. Yes, Skirms are more coin-heavy, but the civs that use them (especially Dutch, when we talk about early-game skirms) can afford it.
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Next time a big cloud of bowriders show up in my town I’ll remind that player that it’s not supposed to be possible and to remove them.
Brits are now at a huge disadvantage against them. The wood demands for pikes,bows and manors makes it a uphill fight.
Well I understand what you said. But think about that, skirm is a counter and only counter to BR, and it doesn’t trade cost effectively. Equal resources of skirm and BR fight out, skirm actually loses. That’s insane.
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funny enough, the same is more or less true of euro cav archers. Range is extremely important, in small fights those first hits snowball, in big fights larger ranks of skirmishers are able to fire. It also depends on the skirm and civ behind it.
longbows are the longest range and highest dps age 2 skirm. Traditionally britain has been referred to by top players as the strongest counter to lakota (musket longbow is essentially unbreakable when well executed)
gurkha actually do less damage than sepoy do to ranged cavalry. thankfully the combo of both is quite tanky to ranged fire and generally very effective.
russia is kinda messy, but streltsy are so close to free its hard for lakota to take good trades
regular skirms win by range and mass. germany can utilize war wagons alongside their skirms and utilize that range advantage on both. dont stay age 2 as germany vs lakota. thats a really good way to lose games.
yumi are awesome vs bow riders, especially when carded
chu ko nu are stupidly cost effective against bow riders, especially with repelling volley.
aztec has fun in this matchup by hitting with huge timings early before lakota has decent unit counts. if you want to complain about a goon beating skirms, its eagle runners.
abus are trash, rip otto, dont play this matchup.
all in all you shouldn’t be having too much issue with bow riders if you are kiting effectively and playing your civ at a decently optimal level.
final notes: i hate playing against lakota but its not bow riders that makes me crazy, its that dang warchief stealing my treasures
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Last time I checked Gurkha does more damage than sepoy. Gurkha has 16 attack and 2x, so 32 damage, sepoy has 25 damage. Also eagle runner is less strong than bow rider vs anything. Per pop space eagle runner is stronger but not per cost. And lakota doesn’t care about pop they don’t need houses anyway.
no, gurkha do 1.5x vs goons, you can test for yourself. 0.75x vs cav 2x vs goons makes for 1.5x net
you have to care about population, thats what units are balanced around. if you try to ignore it and just count units total you’ll never get consistent results in the aoe3 counter system. 5 hussars beat 5 musketeers, but not 10.
Lakota generally only has the eco to make 5 bow riders at a time early on, and you should be able to push out batches of 10 pop worth of infantry, such as musketeers at the same time. if you’re making 5 pop of infantry against 10 pop of cavalry and expecting to win you will always be disappointed, almost entirely ignoring matchups. Nearly any unit will beat its counter if it has twice the population, thats intended.
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One of the advantages Bow riders have is getting to choose their fights, if a few musk are walking not together or far forward, they can be picked off quite easily.
Or they can just be run around to get musks to go to one position only to totally evade it and raid in another.
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I am talking about equal resources of skirm and BR, BR wins.
And the skirm player has to spend wood to make houses for the skirm, Lakota doesn’t need to make houses for pop
You are only focus on the pop, equal pop 10 skirm beat 5 br, yes, but 10 skirm is 1150 res + 100 w for house. 5 BR is 875 res. That is not an even res spent