I know its too far down the line for things to change, but reading the wiki on the Cataphract, devs repeatedly admitted to Cataphracts armed with bows. (nevermind that total war reminds me of them almost daily)
Imagine how cool it would be if the byz had two UUs. The cata archer being an upgrade to the EXISTING CA. similar to imp skirm or imp camel
Would effectively be something like a cross between CA and ele archers. Partly make up for the lack of bloodlines…
Rough draft :
Compared to HCA:
+30hp (make up for blood lines)
+2 dmg to spears (lack of parthian tactics)
+5 cav arm / +1 cavalry archer arm
Logistica gives +3cav arm
So a similar concept to the imperial camel upgrade , but with different draw backs compared to other FU HCA. Lower natural arm, dps vs spears and hp compared to turks HCA.
I think we don’t need second nice unit for Byzantines. Like Turkish Sipahi Tech just effects Cav Archers when sipahis were both melee and ranged.
Also Mamelukes still throwing their weapon.
You mean a ranged cataphract that shoot arrows and do bonus damage against infantry? Besides, that cataphract archer has extra cavalry armor? It’s like a mounted plumed archer.
The Roman or Byzantine Cataphracts never used bows. They were armed with spear, heavy armour, they were using special type of horse and were very expensive so the emperors use them as bodyguards.
The unit that you mean are Clibanarii. Clibanarii were heavy cavalry that were armed smilliar to Cataphracts but they were using bows too.
That’s not necessarily true, while roman heavy cavalry is unfortunately poorly documented, there seems to have been both heavily armored larcers and cavalry archers during the late roman empire (see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1KD_LJwFZQ).
Yes, Clibanarii were Lancers too. Whats more - they were lancers that were used mostly to counter other heavy cavalry like Sasanids Cataphracts that gave many troubles to Rome to conquer Persia.
But still Clibanarii were also using recurve bows.
Roman and Byzantine Cataphracts were not using bows, but Armenian or Parthian had Cataphract Archers.
But as you said, the late Roman Cavalry was poorly documented and it depends on historian.
It needs some niche to be unique and useful. Your idea (harder to be countered like cataphract) seems good.
At the first glance of the post, I can’t think of a role it can fill. For example, anti-infantry, anti-archer, anti-cavalry, anti-siege, anti-building, anti-high-pierce armor, harder to be killed, lower frame delay. But there is at least 1 archer unit for each role.
Elephant archer, Genitour, genoese crossbowmen, mangudai, chu ko nu, rattan archer etc.
Longer range or faster speed (on par with Hussar) seems to be OP. Ignor pierce armor or dismount when killed like a Konnik is too OP. Perhaps just a tankier cavalry archer will be good.
Im in the boat that says sipahi should affect melee cav to some degree, possibly only scout line +10hp… It helps turks without changing their identity or being too strong…
I think it could fit in the tech tree if it was some kind of heavily armored anti-archer cavalry archer unit. So maybe lower DPS and mobility than standard cavalry archers, however more armor and some bonus armor against anti archer attacks. Could be cool, though I am not quite sure how viable it would be.
but what I’m talking about is an antiarcher unit, not an anti cavalry archer unit. It would offer a more mobile and effective counter to archers (albeit more expensive) compared to skirms.
Anti Archer unit much OPer than Anti Cav Archer unit. And it think you can use your cheaper skirms for countering Archers. And it sounds like description of genitours.
The issue is it should have a bonus damage against Spears and the spears shouldn’t have a bonus damage against it. The second one isn’t the case for Cav Archers
See, the thing with people that get hate is that they decide to shape an existing and balance unit to their own liking
So having an idea for a new unit isn’t bad as long as it isn’t supposed to replace another balanced unit
This aside,
I’m not an expert in balance, so I’d like to not make a comment on the unit stats as I’m sure there are people like @TriRem with actual balance experience that know a lot about balance.
