Thirisadai change is irrelevant. Dravidians are A tier for pure water maps, so don’t need a buff there if that’s what you’re thinking and those units are macro based and too expensive yet tough to micro against fireships for castle age.
Makes them slightly more useful for Bengalis. For Dravidians its still useless as they don’t get husbandry. So you can’t run and snipe siege without losing units.
These are necessary changes which will makes these civs slightly more usable but for 1v1 they still need units and techs either for open or closed land maps.
Rahta is significantly cheaper than Knight-line. It is by far stronger than Knight and slightly worse than Paladin. How can removing Cavalry Archer armor be a nerf. If you remove CA Armor Class, Rahta doesn’t get bonus attack from Skirmisher. It is direct buff but it isn’t huge one I think because Skirmisher give 6 damage per hit to Ratha which is not huge.
I was implying CA armor and Archer armor class both. If OP want to remove Ratha’s range option, it is nerf.
I think this change can be implemented. Skirmisher gives 6 damage per hit after all. For compensation, little cost increase like 70g instead of 60g can be enough.
I think that will again become a nerf. Bengalis units are all so expensive. Ratha is the only one affordable. 70G for 3 less damage from only skirmisher is not worthy.
Do you mean changing them to only-melee cavalry?? I think what he means here is causing the confusion. If its changed to an only-melee unit, that’s a huge nerf but if its a switchable unit with cavalry class armor and no ca class armor, that’s a huge buff.
6 bonus for a ranged unit is huge. Especially for a zero gold trash unit. They become extremely effective counters.
Skirmisher will give only 1 damage to Rathas if both Archer and Cav Archer class is removed. This change could make Ratha OP in late game (that’s why I thought to increase gold cost). However, Ratha is kinda OP in late game currently as well. Currently in Castle Age, Ratha is countered by Cav Archer and Crossbow due to 1 PA.
Ratha has 135 hp and Skirmisher fire very slow. Ratha has Cavalry Archer cost and twice HP. Halberdier and Camels is much bigger threat than Skirmisher to Ratha still.
I realized that I was wrong about saying Ratha is countered by Crossbow and CA. However, Crossbow and CA vs Ratha fights are pretty close. This result surprised me because similar War Wagon destroy other archer units without problem. AOE2’s general sharp countering mechanic isn’t vaild for Ratha as far as I saw.
Game description of Ratha which is “Ratha is countered by Skirmisher” is also exaggaration because Skirmisher is good against Ratha, however it isn’t like Cav Archer vs Skirmisher.
As for Halberdier, Halberdier doesn’t have to kill Rathas. Restricting Rathas movement is enough most of the time. Ratha player must constantly micro to avoid getting attacked by Halberdier as well. When player forget the micro which is common, Halberdier destroy Rathas.
no I meant to change armor type to cav armor so its not too weak vs skirms and also dont need to research archer techs if you already are going for ele
keep them switchable as that is their uniqueness
Arb + hussar is what Bengalis should be able to aim for. That’s a very common and strong meta option to default to in case elephants just don’t work (like in 1v1 Arabia) or skirms show up (sooner rather than later).
Bengalis have a reasonably good eco imo, but it’s not that good thumb ring-less arbs can be justified. Therefore Bengalis badly need thumb ring.
That will impact elephant archers and rathas, yes, but both still keep their issues. Both are still heavily countered by skirms, are expensive or require castles, and need many upgrades to get good. Even the post-imp. version isn’t that good. Ranged rathas are no camel archers or mangudaï (3 atk per arrow vs a paladin compared to 5 atk per arrow). Melee rathas will be overwhelmed and die against any massed production building.
Arb+hussar means hussar upgrade. Bengalis lack that too. Time to fix that.
Thats an ultra boring fix for the very reasons you tried to justify it. A number of civs resort to this. Why would the Devs add another civ that just does what every other civ does?
It would help if you tried to understand what he meant from the get go. It doesn’t help aoe2 is ambiguous with terminology.
He clearly means: ratha benefits from cavalry armour instead of archer armour (from the BS) and in return lose the cavalry armour class (so aren’t affected by CA bonus damage), while retaining everything else.
It’s a big buff
And actually helps them earlier in the game, as well as allowing easier transitions/compositions between LC/eles and ratha
I feel like ratha/FU EA share a similar fate to genitours, being that EA are already a tanky but lower dps archer (for the cost) that is effective Vs other archers, like the ratha and countered by all the same things
ie the ratha or the EA would’ve been more effective for a civ that didn’t already have a similar unit, like giving genitours to Burmese instead of a Camel archer civ.
No. I don’t think so. Who opens with Elephant/LC in castle age? If the blacksmith armor type change maybe player will try that. But that is even worse than opening archer->xbow. Also most important question is
If PT is gone from Ratha, they will be just a terrible unit.
I don’t get why some people want to buff Ratha so badly? They are very good unit, 3rd only to Mangudai and Conqs (maybe 4th as Came Archer is really good). Buffing Ratha means turning them to Spanish with bad tech tree.
I think it’s more to do with how much tech they need( and likely people are still trying to learn to use them) And lack of TR means low numbers of them struggle to do as reliable dps as other CA. Tanky archers(as their primary trait) have never been THAT great. For example WW are only so great on certain maps for example. While plumes, LB are always amazing
Disagree. Ghulam are game defining just like the mangudai. We could make an argument for huskarls(Eg give them to any civ with a better eco and/or tech tree), camel archers, obuchs off the top of my head