Buffing some of the underused royal guards

So I was chilling around in vs AI today, trying to compose some new decks for treaty when playing Russia, and I quickly remembered their grenadiers, despite being royal guards, are literally never used (not that their ottoman counterparts are used more often), and are probably the worst in the game.

So from there on I spent some time thinking on how to buff them. And the only thing I could come up with is giving them the grenade launcher card by default when researching the royal guard or to simply beef up their status (like +10% additional damage from the royal guard upgrades).

The Russian cavalry archer isn’t really doing much better either, although they do have some cards that upgrade them, so they are not entirely useless, I think 1 or 2 extra or some extra speed per royal guard upgrade would help (after all, Tatars were known for their mounted raids). Or just some extra 1x modifier against artillery and cavalry.

Crossbowmen and pikemen royal guards could also use some love. Not too much though, maybe +2 range for xbows and some extra speed or HP for pikemen.

What do you think?

2 Likes

I think all RGs should be given some additional bonuses. 10% damage/hp for 800 resources is not worth it.

Some RGs are used because the unit itself is useful and you’ll have to upgrade them anyway. But the upgrade itself is not cost effective.

BTW cavalry archer feels quite useful to Russia actually.

2 Likes

isn’t it 400 more res for an additional 10%hp/attack on top of what you recieve for a normal guard upgrade? seems worth it to me if it’s a unit you use.

Problem with grenadiers is their range makes them bad, but if you give them more range they become super op (look at the peru revolt grenadiers) it’s quite a hard unit to balance, they are also quite expensive and cost 2 population I think.

1 Like

No that’s 800 more resources.
600w 600c for 30% hp/attack
1000w 1000c for 40% hp/attack

I know that the cost of bonuses per unit percentage should grow as you stack more of them, but that still does not look very cost effective, also the additional resource requirement also make you acquire them later than a normal guard upgrade. Something 800w 800c (or 900w 900c) might make them more cost effective, or have some additional bonuses for 1000w 1000c.

1 Like

For tanking damage, yes. But overall they are still very niche for a royal guard unit. Take Britain and France and Germany for example, their royal guards are fundamental to their army. Cavalry archers aren’t really fundamental for Russia. Unless you revolt to Romania.

Lowering the upgrade costs for these underused units might be a good idea though.

That’s the point. Some RGs (or any other generic upgrades/cards) are not used because the unit itself is not useful. You’ll always go for musketeers/hussars/skirmishers because they are very good units, regardless of having an RG or not.
On the other hand, there have been very few RGs (or any other generic upgrades/cards) that turn a very underused unit (to name a few, pikes/crossbows in the mod-late game, most heavy melee infantry, grenadiers) into a useful one. So to make those RGs meaningful they have to do something like that, like the buffs you suggested above.

I agree that RGs need some kind of buff when upgrading to Imperials, especially perhaps to make underutilized units more useful and unique.

Here are some examples that I would like to add.

Imperial Rodelero: x2.25 extra damage vs heavy infantry

imperial lancer: +1 melee distance or x1.50 extra damage vs artillery

imperial third: +1 movement speed and 80 Hp imperial

voltygeur: +1 range distance or +0.75 movement speed

cuirassiers dont need more buff XDD maybe change
damage resistance from range to melee when activating smash mode

redcoats: +1 or 2 range distance

English and Turkish Imperial Hussar: 1.25 damage against shock troops

Imperial Tartar Loyalists: +0.80 damage range vs light cavalry

Russian and Turkish Imperial Grenadiers: +2 range distance, +1 blast area or reduce to 1 popcap Imperial

Legionnaires Port Musket: 2.50 rate of fire

Prussian needle shooter +2 range distance or 2.25 rate of fire

czapka uhlans: +100 hp or +1 movement speed and a long etc …

They are only examples that perhaps you could inspire both users and developers or at least to debate

2 Likes

In fact, Guard upgrade is better than Royal Guard, in almost every case, it is just taht civs that have a RG upgrade for a unit, usually also have 3 or more cards to help it out too.

Yes. Although the card from grenade launcher do correct the low range problem.

The thing about grenadiers is that they are only powerful in large numbers, but they are a super expensive unit, and they are very fragile since they die from both skirmishers and melee units. Which creates this contradiction that you need a lot of them, but they are super expensive and die easily, so you cannot realistically put larges quantities of grenadiers on the field.

The reason that the Peru revolution shows all the power on Grenadiers is because you can get like 50 of them immediately. You cannot realistically have such a high number of them as Russia (As a example) in a game before it’s became too late. So this become purely latent potential.

yeah and the fact they’re available age 2 is quite useless because you need to spend all the wood on a foundry and will need more housing because they’re 2 pop.

2 Likes

Peruvian Mounted Grenadiers are powerful not because you can easily mass them, but because tehy are a strange Cavalry type that cannot be counted by Skirmishers, Hand Infantry (because they will never get to them) or Musketeers.

They area Siege Unit, and Infantry has no damage multipliers against them, while Hussars and Dragoons just get nuked.

They basically have no viable counter unit, which is why they are so strong.

Peruvian Legions ain’t mounted. I believe you are confusing with the Argentinian Granaderos.

Oh, maybe.
I do not think I have ever revolted to Peru, anyway. I tried Brazil, Finland. Hungary and South Africa, and decided that I still did not like the Revolution system.

Idk. Perhaps Royal Guard upgrade is actually designed as a speed bump so that the stats of units don’t stack up high too quickly (units with Royal Guards typically have 2~3 cards, so they could reach near or even above guard level stats in age 3). The 10% additional bonus is the compensation for the delayed upgrade.

Because of that, they are even worse for units that do not have many card upgrades, or those that are useless.

That implies taht you always use those cards, however, which often is not teh case, and people just card up differently depending on strategy.

That’s why it’s more harmful for less used units. For units like musketeers, skirmishers, hussars, dragoons, etc. (EDIT: maybe not including hussars), you’ll typically include one or two cards if there is any. On the other hand, you’ll need to use and upgrade them anyway.
For less useful units (you won’t intentionally send cards for them), or units with fewer cards (e.g. German skirmisher, despite being an RG, has only one card), that means most of the time you’re even getting worse stats compared to regular.

I have not seen anyone use Royal Guard hussars, in ages.
Almost everyone just switches to Dragoons, even the Britis.

Royals Guard upgrades to Hussars and Grenadiers are the worst RGs. At least the Germans will always use Skirmishers, but no one uses Grenadiers, and seldom does anyone use Hussars past Age 2.

2 Likes

Grenadiers seem to need a rework, which was attempted with the ‘grenade launchers’ card but still comes up short. The Peruvian Legion unit is more akin to the historical grenadier, essentially a musketeer that was also armed with hand grenades (later when hand grenades fell out of use ‘grenadier’ units became just elite guards/shock troops).

I propose to make the existing Euro grenadier unit like the Peruvian Legion, and have them trainable in the barracks from Age 3 onwards. They’d be armed with a musket, as with the Peruvian Legion they would use the musket to attack anything up to 12 range, then between 12 and 18 range they’d have a grenade attack.

Then grenadiers could be used more to pad out your infantry mass with extra damage and siege/splash damage. Historically, grenadiers were the biggest and strongest soldiers, so you could keep them at 2 pop and have extra HP + some additional damage with their musket compared to a standard musk. Kinda like a mansabdar unit, but they don’t buff nearby units. Maybe give them a build limit like Tashunke Prowlers (somewhere in the range of 10-20 maybe?).

This is not true at all… Especially for Brits, but also applicable to Sweden Ports, Dutch and Otto (more situational to Spain and France).
Goons and Huss have VERY different uses. I would never go Goon (even in melee) against a mass of Skirms.

British grens are actually very viable, and in team games usually work as a stalemate breaker.

Boyars should affect cav archers…

Or maybe give Cav archers a smaller lesser bonus against counter-cavalry since strelets to counter dragoons is not pop effective.