Cavalier +1 Pierce Armor

In Castle Age,
Fully upgraded Knight has 120 HP and 4 PA
Fully upgraded Crossbowman has 7 attack
A knight can bear 120/3 = 40 hits

In Imperial Age,
Fully upgraded Cavalier has 140 HP and 6 PA
Fully upgraded Arbalester has 10 attack
A knight can bear 140/4 = 35 hits
However, Arbalester will even has 1 more range due to Bracer. Cavalier become much more exhausting against Arbalester. If Cavalier has 1 more Pierce Armor, it can bears 140/3 = 47 hits, which is more reasonable.

Skirmisher cannot further upgrade (except Vietnamese), Skirmisher become less effective to against archers in Imperial Age. On the other hand, not all civs have fully upgraded Skirmisher. Unfully upgraded Skirmisher is not a threat to archers. Also, Skirmisher is not strong enough for offensive.

Onager may good to against archers. However, it is expensive to create, expensive to upgrade and very low fault tolerance. Once your Onager get close by a few cavalry, you lose everything. Onager maybe good in 1v1 game for against archers but become very useless in 4v4.

So in most of time, using Cavalier become the first choice to against archers. However, upgrading to Paladin is too expensive, upgrading time is too long and even the civ do not have Paladin. They can only rely on Cavalier.

More power for lesser cost (Cavalier upgrade costs 300 gold, 300 food).

HUGE buff to the Berbers, Bulgarians, Burmese, Khmer, Malians, aKa all Cavalry civs.

There’s a reason why the Paladin upgrade is so expensive and any AOE2 player understand that.

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Agreed. Cavalier upgrade is already very inexpensive for a reason and the Paladin upgrade is expensive for that same reason. A lot of the Cavalier civs benefit from some special bonuses that make them atypical and bumping the pierce armor of Cavalier broadly would be a mistake quickly capitalized on by these civs. Malian and Bulgarian Cavaliers would be raiding nightmares immediately in early imp and it would be disasterous.

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I wonder why claiming skirmishers don’t work is so trendy.

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It may be a very good UT/civ bonus, but if it works for all the civs is another story…

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