No, the price of the Chinese Banner Armies comes from literally combining the costs of the units. It’s how the Banner Armies are coded.
Keshiks literally cost 115, per the game files. If the Chinese could train them individually, they would cost 115 food.
Keshiks are the most cost-efficient cavalry archer in the game, easy.
Cavalry Archers are also better against heavy cavalry, have significantly more health, 15 less gold (which means a lot more than you think, considering the Lakota have a hard time collecting gold as fast as other civs) and train faster.
Cavalry Archers are good for what they do - Being a tankier dragoon replacement that can get into melee combat with heavy cavalry without suffering. That is not the main goal of Bow Riders, which are intended to be fast moving raiders. Bow Riders don’t fare so well put in the same situations that Cavalry Archers want to be in.
You got it wrong mister, yeah they have slightly less HP but they still have the 30% melee resist and can stand and fight.
“Cavalry Archers are also better against heavy cavalry,”
Here’s why you’re wrong:
Bow riders: 20 atk x2.25 vs cav = 45 dmg
Cav archers: 13 atk x3 vs cav = 39 dmg
…
Thing is they’re basically just like rifle riders (without the downside) in that they demolish HI and other cav.
Cavalry archers are better because they can tank heavy cavalry. Unlike bow riders. For now riders you need some front line, typically axe riders.
cav archers are cheaper and tankier. Cav archers also shadowtech, so that’s something worth mentioning. They’re not exactly identical in design to bow riders.
Cavalry Archers have significantly more health. Bow Riders can’t tank heavy cavalry on their own. They will die if they try.
Cavalry Archers do slightly less damage by design because of how much more health they have, as well as being significantly cheaper and faster to create.
Plus the shadowtech is important, that’s 200 wood and 100 coin the Cavalry Archer player doesn’t have to spend.
Cav archers don’t destroy its counters though. The OP is right, bow riders are overpowered.
I think just adding negative multipliers to that unit it could work, i agree that are broken, but if the devs cancel all the damage for other units that are not hand cav it would be enough for a “quick balance”.
isnt adding a penalty vs “all units” the same as lowering the damage? lol
Have you tried CA in melee against skirmishers? It’s fun.
when dealing with the counter units buffs in attack and Hp are pretty closely linked.
take a generic unit for example. give a musket 15% attack and other 15% Hp, and they still take each other out equally.
So Bow riders with more Attack, vs cav archers with more Hp, are really about the same unit.
Also the counter system in aoe3 is double bladed, since all ranged units also have a melee attack, and in many cases, the general counter system only works in either rangee or melee combat.
Skirmishers typically counter muskteer in ranged combat, but lose in melee. Dragoons counter hussars, only at range. So there are many more faces to the counter system and this leaves room for skill and micro. Nerfing all units into always losing to their counter is really dumbing down the game. We have aoe4 for that.
That is what I like about aoe3, good positioning and micro can cause some interesting battles. Such as musket charges, that lose a lot but can overcome situations where they should lose entirely. It really makes balance not just about the units but how they are played.
Even though the ERK acts like a skirm to muskets, when muskets do get into melee they shred the ERK, so units like fast dopples and be really good in hammer and anvil type strats, where units are flanked and forced to fight in melee.
This is also why I prefer cav archers to dragoons, because they are one of the few counters that kills cav in melee and range (when can hits them) so they can hold a battle and not have to kite away from protected assets.
agreed on the Aoe4 part, the countering system there is just so boring and so poorly done that units either have no ability to fight counter units or kill others near instantly.
bow riders are overpowered. just like the age 1 4 villager shipment and age 2 4 axe rider cards, rather than fix the need for these things in the first place they just cover up the fundamental problems with the civilization. the argument that without these overpowered elements the civ would be too weak and must stay for them to function is deeply flawed. with this thought process the Lakota will always be a gimmicky and frustrating civ to fight against that can never be a top tier civ without breaking the game, ruining it for everyone else.
worse, as ottomans you end up paying for a more expensive building that makes only 1 unit age 2, a unit that trains slower, is more expensive and costs twice the pop compared to skirmishers, that has less range and ranged hp, only for it to deal 7 more damage compared to skirmishers against bow riders before dying.
you can test this out yourself right now. a skirmisher will drop a bow riders hp to 112 before dying, compared to the abus dropping them to 105 hp. that’s what more resources, less range, double the pop space and an age 2 foundry gets you as ottomans. 7 more damage dealt before dying and giving 30% more bounty xp.
2 falconets perform better before bone pipe armor against 5 bow riders than 5 abus guns. your counter unit performs worse against their target than the unit that gets countered. even 5 hussars do better. how does this make sense?
the trouble you’re expressing is with abus guns moreso than with bow riders. abus basically lose to every ranged cav. howdah, eagle runners and war wagons are also especially noteworthy. Abus are so sad 
I agree Bow Riders “overperform” but I wouldn’t call them overpowered. they are attached to an absolute dumpster fire of a civ design and they are essentially the “vill with every house” or “6v and 2 uhlans age 2” of civ strengths and identity. Without them performing at least moderately well, Lakota is pretty much bottom tier in 1v1. You can’t ship bow riders, they train quite slowly and are tied to one of the worst performing economies. The civ itself is more problematic than the one unit. If a civ with a fast scaling powerful economy (such as brits or germany) had access to bow riders they would indeed be extremely overpowered. Because Lakota has relatively poor economy the unit sorta balances that out. Its a symptom of a tired and annoying civ design, truthfully.
yeah i agree, even in treaty the unit has backdraws like the fact the rest of the roster does a pretty poor job at protecting them, a musketeer+light infantry combo is more or less unbeatable for lakota esp once you add in artillery to knock out houses.
and yes i know lakota is considered pretty OP in treaty atm, but its not wakina and bowriders fault.
did DE nerf Abus? in RE abus/ otto are one of my strong port counters as they shred light cav in that game.
they dropped the rof to 3.5. The consequence of which is that opposing ranged cav returns two shots before the abus fire a second volley. this has the result of snowballing quite hard, especially with the 1.5rof goons like erks and the extra punchy ones like war wagons
ouch thats a pretty big nerf! effectively reducing the units effectiveness overall almost 20%
I think the TLDR here is that if you want to fix the Bow Rider - which absolutely does overperform, but is not OP - the entire Lakota civ needs to be redesigned.
The Lakota are too gimmicky - they’re an early/rush civ that is skewed heavily towards using cavalry. They cease to exist past about Age 3 and can’t use anything but cavalry because of the complete lack of artillery and useful infantry.
(Don’t give them artillery in a rework, though, I still hate that they have Howitzers. Horse Guns or Gatling Guns would make more sense.)
This needs to be fixed.