Burmese don’t have 2nd archer armor which made her one of the worst civ to use Skirmisher to counter archer. Therefore they should have some kits to fill the role and I think this is Arambai. I always consider Arambai is a cav Mangonel. In small fight it lose to archer but in scale fight like 20 vs 20, Arambai shine and its attack like a mangonel which kill group of archer instantly. You may say that Arambai do not resist archer shoot well but Mangonel also not resist archer well with a little bit average micro.
Therefore I think the Arambai buff should be focusing on this role which maybe higher speed to close to gap to kill archer, or higher HP to withstand archer attack before the fight, or lower the cost to mass them easier. Adding bonus damage on archer is okay since it will not increase its damage on buildings but most gunprowder unit UU does not have bonus damage on usual unit so it may not be great. Maybe increasing the projectile hit box so that it can be easier to hit the archer, especially the cav archer.
I keep using the term Mangonel but not Onager becauase yes they are meant to be fall off in imp since it is a gunprowder unit.
1.40 speed like other Cav Archers and effected by Parthian tactic (+1/+2 armor and +2 attack vs spearmen) and decreasing 1 PA of elite would be enough probably.
I would actually like if devs or maybe even some other guys try to look deeper into why these units like arambai, conq and to some degree even jans fall of in their utility in imp so dramatically.
And do something to compensate this.
Cause in my eyes these are really cool units that would be nice to see more often. And them falling of in imp is just a bid sadge and hurts them overall. Cause it effectively sets you on a timer when you use them in castle age.
Just guessing, as far as I know, the Elite upgrade for the units typically don’t give as much of a boost as other UUs get, while being pretty pricy to upgrade. Conquistadors get +2 attack and +15 HP. That would sound great on other units, but they already have 16 attack, so is it really worth it to spend 1200 food and 600 gold for those main stat upgrades? Arambai gets +3 attack, 5 hp, and probably more importantly +1 PA. Is it worth it?
I think this design choice is kind of neat, that you have a powerspike in Castle Age but not completely overpowered onwards, or other types of powerspikes afterwards. And it’s not like neither of those units are unusable in Imperial Age either. 16 attack is still 16 attack, and you have a mobile unit that is devastating for raids and can ambush other units very effectively in small numbers.
Whilst I agree that the FU versions of the units (especially arambai bec of missing some general techs) hurts, I don’t think this is the main reason for it.
I think they are also so powerful in castle age because they have a high ranged damage output for their cost at this time. So they are usable in low but aswell in smaller numbers effectively. But this high damage hurts them then in imp with the bigger army sizes and generally more macro requirement.
So it would potentially make sense to overproporionally increase their stats with the elite upgrades. I’m just not sure in which manner.
Increase the Atk? Seems like making them strong where they already shine which isn’t much at that stage. Increasing the HP/tankyness? Could potentially overbuff them so they become dominating. Reduce ROF? Potentially an interesting approach as this would make them more fitting to the lategame .
It’s jsut a bit weird cause afaik we don’t have any units that signivifantly change the ROF with their elite upgrades.
Comparing Arambai to units like Conqs and Janissary doesn’t match. Arambai is F tier comparing to Conqs, Mangudai and Janissary. You can also add the useless Mameluke to the Arambai.
As our friend @Nerathion said, about answering your question for these units in imp, he is directly hit the truth, upgrading those units in imp is not worthy at all, actually if you got a deathball of them in castle age nothing would stop you anyway.
No, Both are cheaper than mamelukes. especially on the gold side, before DE was hard to counter Conqs when they weren’t taking anti cav archer bonus damage.
With the recent changes in the meta I actually don’t think conqs are so good anymore as they used to be.
All UUs suffer from the sheer fact that you first need a cstle to make them. And in maps like arena you usually use other units like monks vs the conqs or make your own defences to defend.
Go and check Nomad/African Clearing stats, Spanish have soo high WR here and Conqs contribute to that.
By being UUS you just can’t justify removing counters otherwise that units become impossible to deal with, Arambai at Rajas release was soo OP, to the point Burmese was a top arabia civ just because how strong Arambai was.
Conqs are definitely still very good, even if slightly nerfed post-DE. You can simply run away from Elite Skirmishers (and even then their pierce armor is not enough so they’ll still die vs Conqs).
It’s kind of the same situation with Arambai, only worse as you don’t have the range so you need to tank more hits if you do want to attack. A HP buff (or maybe reintroduce the +2 cav archer armor?) might be fine, though I also wouldn’t mind a cost decrease to 70wood maybe?
I still think that it’s fine if the units aren’t equally as strong in Imperial Age as they were in Castle Age. It’s a fun design idea where some civs have a really big powerspike in Castle Age where they want to maximize their advantage. ‘Being on a timer’ is true for many match-ups that don’t even use their UUs. Many civs are weaker in Imperial Age so they’re on a timer to kill the other player before reaching post-Imp, etc.
My suggestion is reduce their Elite upgrade cost. They don’t scale as much as other units. Trying to raise the scale will obviously cause some imbalance at first. So stay safe and don’t touch any unit stat.
I disagree. It is just Spanish that are not as good as they used to be. New civs, different map generation, new meta - and a lot of other factors contributed to this.
I think this is a great concept at the civ level, but feels like a poor design for units - especially ones that don’t have any major timing advantage, and especially UUs, which shouldn’t be punished for being strong in Castle Age with a thoroughly unimpressive Elite form.
How so? Organ gun starts from a lower ledge than Conq or Janissary but is still a decent CA UU. And only gets better with added range and smart projectiles in Imp, either of which would make Elite Conqs/Janissaries significantly better.
Regarding Arambai, lowering unit cost and Elite upgrade cost somewhat seem reasonable. Supposed to be kind of a swarm unit.
