Buff the Elite Conq

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I didn’t say in which direction the difference is, I’m 1600.

Regardless, I think at my level we kinda know what the game is about too, especially considering most of my games are on closed maps and longer than 20 minutes.

I mean Dragonstar completely botched his reaction by going 3TC eagles against all in Conqs that he knew was coming. Not sure why he made the calls he did, but as I said, Conqs die to xbow with ballistics just like any other ranged cavalry unit.

“everyone just dodges ballistics anyway” is a truly bizarre statement, I don’t think there is any dispute for how strong ballistics is in certain situations as it either forces your opponent to micro his heart out on 5 units or just leave it and take bad engagements and suffer from retreating.

Train times are one easy way to nerf or buff UUs due to most of them requiring a mass. The thing with Conqs is that they are good if there is no mass though, so train time isn’t as relevant.

Regardless, I think that fundamentally we are on the same page with Conqs, I said they should be nerfed in castle, and buffed in imp. But this should come alongside major changes for the Spanish early game. If you in the current balance botch castle age Conquistadors the winrate of Spanish will drop to maybe 40% across all maps. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it even lower as aside of faster building and blacksmith techs costing no gold they will have literally no bonus before imp. Ports with 20% cheaper units on the gold, and FU arb line, had, what, 42%?

So, yeah. Sure, nerf Conqs. But give Spain some other things to compensate. The thread is about their imp balance anyhow, the argument “well it’s normal for such a strong unit not to scale well in imp” shows bad design, although I do see the design approach with the civ and the reasons the devs don’t want to change how Conqs perform across the ages.

As I said it’s supposed to be the unit you hold onto with your dear life once you get to it, it’s why the castles are built faster, and the generic imp tree is presumably to put emphasis on “do whatever you want, but have conquistadors behind it”.

Those past few months since the HC buffs I have used predominantly hand cannons as my backline support unit over Conqs. Easier to mass, take less space, more accurate, have a sweet bonus against inf to support the hussars…

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82

IMO best solution for spanish:
Incresase Building Speed bonus to 40 %, with exception for TCs, Castles and Wonders which are build only 20 % faster.
Reduce Conq Damage to 14 (from 16).
Reduce Elite Conq Damage to 16 (from 18) but decrease the ROF to 2.5 (from 2.9).

Would make Spanish have a better opening (outside nomad) but a small nerf to the conqs. Elite conqs have considerably better ROF (at the same DPS) which makes them much stronger.

83

Nicov once posted here.

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84

This is a nerf, what are you talking about? The reason gunpowder units perform “ok-ish” despite their awful DPS is the fact they deal much better with units with high armor like Paladins. Their overall DPS would be lower, they would lose on a lot of important breakpoints (such killing an arb in 3 shots)… You are nerfing them even more

A better and more consistent solution would be massively increasing the accuracy of gunpowder units on Elite. I am talking like… 100% maybe. Literally no balance wise reason against this all things considered, on top of maybe something else for the elite conq. Like benefitting from Parthian tactics.

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85

No, that’s a huge buff. Especially in the lategame. ROF > Damage with the same DPS in almost every situation, cause it leads to less overkill.
Cav archers are so much stronger than Conqs in the very lategame as they have that higher ROF but less raw damage output.

Even worse, the low accuracy actually benefits elite conqs in mass unit battles cause it leads to less overkill. Or better said some kind of splash damage effect.

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This isn’t some MMO where that can be measured properly due to other units also attacking, on larger scales the battles having a lot of randomness and many other factors that make overkill considerations nonexistent unless I don’t know, your unit was dealing 10000 damage per shot and reloading every hour.

It’s not like you use conqs by themselves in imp, you use them with hussars, so what now, we have to calculate the DPS of the Conqs and the Huss combined to read in how much time the opposing unit will die and both units will move onto the next one, taking in account bullet travel time and hussar repositioning? Please…

It’s a nerf. I do also think Conqs could use a faster reload time, but not at the expense of damage.

Also stray bullets dealing damage is mostly relevant with Arambai, Gunpowder shots work in some weird different way and don’t actually hit targets the way they are supposed to if they miss their main target I have noticed. It’s maybe because Ara shots come from above and Gun projectiles come from the front.

It’s a cute way of thinking that you have, unfortunately the game mechanics don’t favor this type of units. On top of that it would be wildly inconsistent between focus firing and large battles making it even tougher to balance.

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And exactly that comp loses against cav archer + hussar. Because Cav archers have better Rof. That means you can have more cav archers as damage dealers in the backline as they cause less overkill.
A hussar dies from 8 conq bullets but 19 cav archer shots. That means that you can have more Cav archers in the backline that not only produce less overkill but fire in more rapid succession.

That’s one of the major issues of the conq in the very lategame. It is actually still one if not the strongest unit at that stage. But only in small numbers, not in lategame mass unit battles. And the design of raw damage but bad rof is the reason behind this.

88

True

More like +1 range, ballistics, 100% accuracy and better DPS in the generic variant, sprinkle in either even more DPS and range, or extra armor, or extra HP, or whatever else for the unique ones.

I… don’t see how rate of fire and the amount of CA is related.

8 Conqs bullets are produced in about 22 seconds, accounting for the first shot already being loaded.
19 CA shots are produced in about 28 seconds with the first shot being already loaded. Now account for all the misses that a Conq is going to have, probably about 40% at max range which puts you up to 14-15 Conq shots that you need, and also they clump up worse due to the less range, so they don’t actually all fire at the same target. In this case less range means overkill. Regardless, 15 Conq shots are produced in 42 seconds or something so why would you even compare. And then your solution is to make hussars die in 10 shots instead of 8, with the 60% accuracy you actually need 18 shots for this so you end up with an ever longer kill time of 44 seconds. On top of having a lot less micro potential.

Not coherent, what? How does a Conq win cost effectively against WW or Camel archers or Mangudai in imp?

It’s the low accuracy, range, no ballistics, indeed low ROF and I have thought about Thumb ring affect gunpowder units for the Spanish but that bonus should probably be used for another civ and the EC issue addressed in a more personal manner, also Conqs still cost food which would rather be used for Hussars, on top of needling Castles unlike CA. Also they are a worse support unit for hussars because they don’t have a bonus against halbs. And on top of everything else the elite upgrade costs some ungodly mangudai tier resources.

Trust me, I mained Spain for like 6 months when DE came out, having maybe 3 games that didn’t go to imp as I played exclusively FFA. I know how the civ stacks up against others and I know how they perform and why they perform the way they do, including all of their units and interactions. And I do remember the day I swore out of the civ after I couldn’t touch, I mean I physically couldn’t get to another player’s Mangudai SO deathball because he was spamming his Huss and flattening everything with SO, because, surprise surprise, BBC with 12 range don’t counter speedy SO, and neither do monks because of the hussars.

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89

That is true, but less relevant in this lategame mass battles.

What? Even against 0 PA targets Conqs have higher DPS. Against FU units with 1 base PA, Conqs already have higher DPS in terms of Cost efficiency. Especially against high PA units conqs have way higher DPS also in terms of cost efficiency.

It is related as these big Cav archer balls (like 60 +) we see are only viable due to the good ROF. When microing you can only kill one unit per shot, that’s why you need that good rof for Cav archers to form these big balls. And that’s also exactly what is prohibiting the Conq to be massed in the way Cav archers can. It’s something you also only learn from experience. It’s hard to explain here in the forum, it just works like this. Good ROF => Unit good in mass battles, Low ROF => unit bad in mass battles.
(also one of the reasons why units like HC suck).
Edit: And tbf it took me a while to figure that out. For a long time I thought the HC could be solved by just giving them more bonus damage. Man was I wrong with that.

I don’t say it’s unbeatable. But from the sheer power of the unit if there were still these castle age battles with low amount of units involved the elite conq would actually perform overall quite nicely.
Ofc the conq is designed to die in a direct fight agains ranged units, so your comparison is quite off. You wouldn’t use the conq to fight war wagons, camel archers or mangudai. You would use another part of your unit comp at least as a meatshield.

Yeah, how many civs can stop that? ^^

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Non elite conq does not need a nerf. Massing them in castle age is not easy. Turning them into a generic cavalry civ is not a good idea.

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My personal idea for Spanish is to change their blacksmith bonus so that it applies to all military techs, not just blacksmith ones. So “military technologies don’t cost gold”.

  • Minorly buffs their m@a rush as they can simply long-distance mine 10 gold to afford 3 militia, then research the m@a upgrade and follow up with skirms that also require no gold for Fletching
  • Minorly buffs their scout rush as it does nothing for early feudal but means they can research Bloodlines without having to mine any gold, which can be big for scout-heavy feudal ages
  • Makes Elite Skirmisher and Ballistics a fair bit cheaper, which helps them deal with xbows early castle age (also discounts Long Swordsman and Light Cavalry, although by a very small amount).
  • Could be potentially overpowered to save 600 gold on the Hussar upgrade and also 600 gold on the Halberdier upgrade, but Spanish are kinda ■■■■ in early imp at the moment (no strong power spikes) so I would like them to have a huge buff here. Onager upgrade would be cheaper as well which would help them against arbalester in early imp.

To compensate for those buffs I’d decrease the castle age conquistador’s attack from 16 to 15. It wouldn’t affect their performance against xbows (except Vietnamese ones) or elite skirms (except unupgraded ones), but it would prevent them from being able to kill vills in 3 hits and would slightly nerf them against knights, camels, pikes etc. Then increase the Elite Conquistador’s range from 6 to 7. EZ PZ

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92

I don’t really like the suggestions to increase Elite Conquistador range or RoF.
I feel like it changes the nature of the unit to be more similar to other units (HCA) when there isn’t really any necessity to do so.
The nature of Elite Conquistador seems fine already, even if the unit is weak compared with other Imp units.
With a range that’s less than a HCA but more than a Paladin, it deserves to have more DPS than a HCA and less than a Paladin, and more hp than a HCA but less than a Paladin.

Increasing the damage and/or hp will buff the unit without changing its nature.

Also @Tocaraca’s suggestion above sounds cute.

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93

The food only techs could be applied only to bloodlines, arson, supplies and thumb ring (food only or left as it is as it doesn’t require gold already?) to keep it simple.

Or maybe just upgrade until Castle Age. Maa+longswords+eskirm+light cav+pikeman

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94

Good call. It seems too strong if it worked for every military unit upgrade (save 1050 gold on Cavalier + Paladin XD), but saving 100 gold on Bloodlines or 125 on Supplies + Arson would be a decent early/mid game boost. Spanish don’t get Partian Tactics, and nothing else at land military buildings costs gold. No need to include Thumb Ring IMO, it’s not like Spanish are going crossbows and it already has no gold cost so removing wood would be an unnecessary exception.

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95

Buffing conq damage or rate of fire in imperial age/elite upgrade may be the way to go - I tend to just build 20 and roll with it from there - 20 garrisons in castle, is a small yet efficient raiding group and may be used in the spanish version of the healing fortress formation - 29 paladins, 20 conqs, 11 missionaries - square form, stand ground - and if spread out into patrol towards the enemy the formation maintains a top performing offense formation with a solid retreat backup plan and decent heals/gunpowder support as well as a great way to keep the missionaries safe while converting additional recruits.