Changing Samurai to a cavalry unit?

Here I come with another idea from a topic made a time ago:

The main idea is to give Japs an unique militar building, the Dojo.
Dojo is available from Castle Age and cost 225 W.
In Dojo you can train Samurais, Samurai Archers and Mounted Naginata Samurai. Yes, they would have 3 UU.

Samurai: remain the same stats as nowdays

Samurai Archers (SA): A little more expensive than generic archer line (30W 50G) but with little better stats, 5 more HP, 1.05 Mov speed, 1/1 armor, 90% Accurate -1 attack but +2 vs UU, 30 TT

Mounted Naginata Samurai (MNS): 65F 80G, 105 HP, 8 Attack (+4 vs UU), 1.38 Mov Speed, 2/2 armor, 35 TT

Elite Samurai Upgrade is still only available in Castles but affects Samurai Archers and Mounted Naginata too, sounds huge, but the Elite version should be slightly worst than the generic similar unit.

This mean: SA>Crossbow, but ESA < Arbalest and MNS>Knight, but EMNS<Cavalier

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I like this idea as a unique mechanic for Samurai. Really leans into the agile, light armour warrior.
(And it should replace the anti-UU mechanics)

It could work regardless of whether Samurai are infantry, cavalry or ranged units.

Actually, it would be more historicaly accurated if they represented them as cavalry archers.
During most of the history of the samurai, the Japanese bow (called yumi) was their main weapon and the sword was only used when descending from the horse and engaging in close combat. This only changed with the arrival of gunpowder weapons.

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I hope (and dont think itā€™s likely) that the developers will completely overhaul a classic unit like that.
A realistic change for them would be small cost and/or stats improvements
a more drastic change might be adding a resistance against unique units (if thatā€™s possible to code)

there is no presedence for completely changing a unit like that and I think it would alienate a large part of the community

I donā€™t think itā€™s particularly likely. And in general Iā€™m all for small tweaks rather than drastic changes. However I do think the Samurai does present an especially good case for a rework so as not to have its gimmick wasted on 50+% of the units itā€™s supposed to be good against, but for which the limiting factor is being an unranged melee unit of average-ish speed.

In some of the civ design threads, people have proposed ranged or cav UUs that also have an anti-UU gimmick, and itā€™s hard not to see those as just much better versions of the current Samurai. So while I hear the people concerned about not changing OG units or civs, Iā€™m personally more concerned about having a unit that is rarely used due to what I consider to be a design flaw, and would benefit from a significant functional update. If you look at some old interviews after AoK or AoC, a lot of the devs significantly over or underestimated how useful certain units would be. Perhaps in the samuraiā€™s case this could be addressed via a small stat tweak, but the fact that the devs originally planned for it to be a toggle unit, as well as the current existence of a ā€œMounted Samuraiā€ in the Editor, definitely get people thinking of those ideas as plausible solutions for the clearly visible problem of a low utility UU, and probably more so than any other UU.

Those are my two cents anyway. Mainly I just want to see the Samurai be good in its supposed role, and be differentiated from the swordsman line by more than initial convenience. TBH Iā€™d probably be pretty happy if it got +1 PA and or a little more speed. I think the idea of resisting UU damage is good as well (and even a small amount would make it much better vs. UU archers). Not currently possible AFAIK, but Iā€™m sure it could be worked out. My bigger concern is that devs donā€™t try to do anything about it on the basis of them and/or people in the community thinking ā€œitā€™s fineā€ because itā€™s useful in 10% of cases. Just like how militia line ā€œwas fineā€ for ~20 years.

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This is a ridiculous topic. Infantry bad. Therefore make unit Cavalry. Apply that to all the infantry in the game. Suddenly, archers are bad because their advantage against infantry is nullified. So make all archers mounted as well. Why stop there? Hun and other nomadic civs should have there TC mounted on a horse as well.

Yes, because advocating for a change to 1 unique unitā€¦ya know, a unit that only 1 civ getsā€¦to better fill its intended role, will inevitably cascade into radical transformation of all other units that already do fill their roles wellā€¦

Donā€™t like the idea? Thatā€™s fine, many people think itā€™s too radical. But no need to build a Colossus of Rhodes-sized Strawman Mounted on a Horse.

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I would prefer this as new UU instead of replacing samurai. Samurai as infantry can be affected by the civ bonus while as cavalry lack final armor.

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By civ bonus do you mean the faster attacking infantry? Also keep the regular samurai as is without tweaking they would still see little play for the aforementioned problems.

New unique tech to japanese, after researching samurais are cavalry. At first you have infantry samurai, bonus vs UU. After research your japanese units start with horse, same bonus stays. Remove tower UT or siege one.

Iā€™m not sure this would work out. The current UTs both have situations where theyā€™re useful (+theyā€™re fun). In addition to that changing them to cavalry after youā€™ve massed infantry samurai changes your gameplan and comp and requires you get cavalry black smith upgrades which can be awkward, but I suppose manageable. The bigger issue comes when you want cavalry samurai from the get-go. Not only do they require castles but now they are locked behind a UT. They would need very good stats for all the trouble to be worth it but that risks making them op on super closed maps and team games.
Iā€™m not sure if all the balancing nightmare is required to solve the issue at hand. There are simpler solutions in this post (and the post itself :)).

What if I want train infantry samurain after research your proposed UT?

Or instead of elite samurai, there is cav samurai upgrade. You get 2 separate unique units from castle, which would be also kinda cool. So you could do both. Or even, keep the regular and elite samurai, when you make it to imp, you can do cav samurais from castle as a different unit. Similar to condos, but only for japanese and from castles.
Balance wise its maybe hard, but you never know, many civs have more than 1 unique units.

I mean you can add mounted one but keep infantry one. If you have seen my post before , actually I support a buff on samurai.

But thatā€™s the whole pointā€¦ UUs shouldnā€™t be able to beat samurai. Thatā€™s their whole purpose.

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I would change Samurai to have a Charge Bar like Coustilier and their First attack will be a Ranged attack with maybe half their UU bonus damage applied to UU units if thatā€™s possible, if not adjust the recharge timer to be longer to compensate.

The rest of the unit is staying the same, maybe give their Arrows the same buggy mechanic as Chu Ko Nu with having melee damage in them so Rams can say goodbye.

Iā€™m onboard with this for two reasons
First we have too many ā€œslightly better champions with a small niche and higher costā€ type UU. Some of these are good, others are bad and Samurai fall in this unfortunately.
Second, the current Samurai is based too much on pop culture, medieval Samurai used horses and often used bows

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The first part I kinda understand but the second seems unnecessary, especially if they retain their melee attacks after shooting arrows then they can kill the rams up close and donā€™t really need to be good vs then in ranged too.

I am also support the idea of adding new UU of mounted Samurai.
It is also for adding new dimension to Japanese civ. Japanese current design is bland after introducing new civs with 2-3 UU and new gimmicks. They are only good at early game and quickly falling behind in mid-late game with weak eco and weak units (Just generic FU archer and good infantryā€¦ which is not amazing).

Their cavalry is weak for not having final armor but giving usable mounted Samurai with decent stat (might be slightly weaker than Paladin but having large bonus damage vs UU) can give new dimension to the civ, which become one of new Jack-of-all trade style civ.

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i dont want the samurai to change, but iā€™d like to have that unit in the game 11