Camel Scout (hype and predictions thread)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
#1

There’s no two ways about it: the camel scout, a camel rider “prevolution” unique to the Gurjaras, is obviously going to be the coolest unit in the entire game, by virtue of it being a feudal age unit, a cavalry unit, and an animal-that-is-not-a-horse unit. But will it be any good in play?

I’ve done some light spreadsheeting, and my prediction is that it will have the following stats:

Cost 55 food 60 gold (camel rider line)
Build time 42s
Speed 1.15 dark age, 1.45 feudal age
Attack speed 2
Damage 3 dark age, 5 feudal age (same as scout cavalry)
Bonus: none in dark age, +1 to cavalry, camels, ships and fishing ships starting in feudal age.
HP 60
Armor: 0/0 (same as camel rider)
LOS: 4

The build time is based on the scout cavalry’s 30 seconds. 42 seconds lets you spend resources on camel scouts just the barest miminum faster than on scout cavalry. Eagle scout takes 60 seconds to build, but that’s to force the cost of a seconds barracks to offset not needing a stable. 40-45 seems like the reasonable range for the camel scout. This does not account for the team bonus of the Gurjaras, where camel units produce 25% faster. Given that there are other civs that get bonuses to their scouts it seems fair to base the 42s on a hypothetical generic camel scout.

Dark age speed sits between eagle scout (1.1) and scout cavalry (1.2). It will be slightly worse for long lames than the eagle, slightly better than the scout cavalry. And exactly the other way around for blocking villagers or boars. The speed in feudal age is the same as that of the camel rider. There is an argument to be made for an extra 0.05 speed on top of that, like the scout cavalry has, but that feels a bit like a weird exception for the sake of an exception. The speed of the camel scout being lower than that of the only contemporary cavalry unit does mean it’s not going to be as good at chasing cavalry down as we’re used to in castle age. Its speed is mostly used for running away from spearmen and archers.

The 60 hp means the camel scout takes about one third longer to die from melee attacks than the scout cavalry. (It’s less bad vs spearmen as well, taking 5 hits to die with the feudal armor in vs 3 for the scout cavalry.) This corresponds roughly with the difference in cost and training time. It’s as much health as a light cav has, but it’s still 40 hp less than a castle age camel rider, so it seems quite reasonable. It also means that in dark age the camel scout can beat the faster scout cavalry (takes 20 hits, needs to deal only 15) but loses to the slower eagle (takes 15 hits, needs to deal 17). Something like 55 hp might based on that be even better for dark age, but 60 feels like a good minimum for feudal age. Because while the survival time against melee units may seem reasonably fair, the camel scout dies faster to archers than either alternative. An archer gets the kill in 15 hits vs 23 for a scout cavalry and 25 for an eagle scout. Skirmishers are a camel scouts best friends.

The camel scout does a little extra well vs scout cavalry, thanks to its bonus damage. The camel scout kills in 9 hits, the scout cavalry takes 15 hits to return the favor. A bonus like +2 vs cavalry would be defendable, but the only civ that gets these things, the gurjaras, already get a bonus to bonus damage, so it might become too much relatively soon, especially as I ignored their faster production bonus earlier. In general I would prefer extra hp or attack over bonus damage, because the feudal meta is small enough without focusing on killing one specific unit.

As a scout, finding resources and enemy woodlines and such, the unit will be the worst of the bunch. Its slightly lower speed makes it slightly worse than the scout cavalry in dark age, and it does not get a line of sight bonus in feudal age. So it might pay to bring one or two regular scout cavalry along for vision. Their higher speed would probably put them mostly in front automatically, so as a bonus they’d also be the ones running headlong into surprise arrow fire.

Do you have different ideas/hopes/predictions? Are you hyped for the unit? Do you want to build a snowman get camel scout rushed? This is the thread for you.

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#2

It’s a feudal age unit, not a dark age one. Bar that, 4 base damage +6 vs cavalry, 75(ish?)HP. No pierce or melee armor. Same speed as camel rider.

Don’t forget it will be extremely hard countered by any ranged units, so that’s why it has to be good against melee ones.

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#3

Gurj apparently start with a scout camel instead of normal scout.

Thought something like this as well, possibly a little lower like 3 or 4. It’s still a feudal unit, compared to castle age knights

Yes

Yeah excited for how different the civ seems. Think your analysis is good. Might be a little slower but do more anti cav dmg but otherwise seems right

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#4

i think either is slower but has anti cav bonus or weaker, lower LOS but faster

#5

4 damage and 75 hp in feudal age would make it a bit tankier and thus better as a meatshield when combined with ranged units. They also survive another tad longer against spearmen. As a trade off they’d become a bit worse at early game raiding, where you want to do as much damage as you can before the villagers reach the TC or the spearmen arrive. This stacks with their line of sight disadvantage So there would perhaps be a bit more of an identity/use case difference between the two mounted scouts. Their matchups in terms of who wins when fighting enemy units without support doesn’t really change. The fights just take a bit longer.

Assuming the HP doesn’t change between dark age and feudal age (as it doesn’t for the other two scout units) and the speed rankings stay scout cavalry > camel scout > eagle scout the dark age setup could still work if the dark age camel scout had 2 base damage and at least 1 bonus damage vs cavalry. The matchups become less even, it’s clearer that in both cases the slower unit wins the fight. This dark age camel scout would also be pretty weak when defending against a drush.

Interesting idea… Looks a bit more like an upgrade line up to the camel as well maybe, stat-wise. (Even better maybe if the hp is rounded up to 80.)

So the stats would become something like:
Cost: 55 food 60 gold (camel rider line)
Build time: 42s
Speed: 1.15 dark age; 1.45 feudal age
Attack Speed: 2
Damage: 2 dark age, 4 feudal age
Bonus: at least +1 to cavalry, camels, ships and fishing ships starting in dark age
HP: 75 (80?)
Armor: 0/0
LOS: 4

(Also: what the duck said about the dark age.

)

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#6

Stats partially revealed.

55 food 60 gold
70hp
2 attack no bonus in dark age, 4 attack plus “some” (?) bonus in feudal age
1.2 speed in dark age, 1.45? (or slower than scout cavalry anyway) in feudal age

Apparently 70hp and 2 attack is enough to beat a dark age scout, just. (Should have done some better calculating on that second version.) The slightest tad weaker than I was hoping for maybe, but on the plus side there’s the slightly higher speed in dark age, and we don’t know how much the bonus damage is (looks like the camel won 1v1 with about 3/5-2/3 of their health remaining), and the upgrade to camel rider is confirmed to be free. Also I don’t know the creation speed yet, just that the cost is unchanged.

(The other Gurjara unique cavalry unit that “dodges arrows” has a rechargable shield vs pierce damage, by the way, for those wondering.)

Edit: So 3/5 of its hp left, that’s roughly 28 damage taken, and 45 damage dealth to the scout cavalry. Assuming no armor or damage upgrade in that video so the scout cavalry is doing 5 damage a hit that means the camel scout should be doing around 8 damage per hit, and the bonus damage is 4. Which should mean a kill in six hits. From the video it looks like… the camel gets in 11 hits. But the scout only gets in 7? So… I don’t know. On the order of either 4ish (3?) bonus damage or something something attack speed something.

#7

I don’t understand which might be the role of feudal camels, that gold cost kinda screws them since unlike scouts you are going to need to invest into a mining camp to produce them, the lack of pierce armor means they don’t really even counter skirms, low Attack makes them a bad raiding unit and to counter scouts I think usual ways (spearmen, walls) should be way more efficient than camels except maybe for some super open map with extended feudal fights.

The only scenario where I see some usage for them Is when opponent gets to Castle Age earlier and goes for a knight rush , having the chance to mass camels earlier in this case can definitely help holding.

Plus another potential advantage relies in having the initial camel scout to mix in a regular scout rush, which can help with some additional DPS against enemy scouts, with the possibility of mixing a second one by gathering only 10 gold with long distanze mining

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#8

I am more worried about the Camel Scout being unbalanced in Dark Age.

#9

According to the tests it only wins narrowly vs a scout, by like one or two hits, so it’s worse than eagles in this regard.

#10

But it does still win.

That said, it might actually pay to be agressive with your scout when up against this civ. They know their camel scout will have a much bigger advantage in early feudal age, so they might actually run away from the scout cavalry despite tedchnically having the upper hand.

#11

There’s absolutely no need for that. With 2 damage it’s useless vs vills and you can always run with your Scout (and even if you don’t, the fight takes extremely long).

#12

Don’t they always beat Scouts and kill a villager without Loom 1v1 regardless?

#13

The fight takes so long, and the victory is so narrow it will only happen if you just sit and watch the fight instead of doing something.

#14

They win by one hit against other scouts and are just as good vs vills as scouts. Also, they lose vs eagle scout

#15

That’s reasonable then.

#16

Except they kill them slower, giving the vills more time to run away or bring friends in. In dark age in particular they’re not great if your goal is to kil the vill.

Good at annoying them though, with the extra health.

#17

No, they are far worse if Vills have Loom (dealing 1 instead of 2 damage per hit).

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#18

40 hits to kill a villager with Loom in Dark age. That’s a 78 seconds fight, you can die of old age before it’s over.
Ugh :disappointed:

#19

Camel scouts get 5 LOS. Probably not in Dark Age, but they do get it. And the entire Camel Rider line for all civs gets it too. Another minor incentive for taking a few camels along when knighting about. (Not with Gujaras of course, as they don’t have knights.)

#20

He was talking about pre loom villagers