Condottiero

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

The only problem I see with the Italians team bonus is that it comes in very late in the game. Italians as a weak civ on land can use some minor buffs. What I am suggesting may be a buff in some situations (and have no change in other situations).

  1. Present Condottiero renamed to Elite Condottiero.

  2. Castle Age Condottiero introduced, which automatically upgrade to Elite when Imperial Age is researched, like how Serjeants are upgraded automatically with Castle Age researched.

  3. Castle Age Condottiero reason - to fight the handful Castle Age gunpowder units, viz Bohemian Hand Cannoneers, Hussite Wagons, Organ Guns, Janissaries and sometimes Turtle Ships. It can also be used when player is stuck in Castle Age, but enemny has Imperial Age gunpowder units.

  4. Castle Age Condottiero stats: 60 HP, 7 attack, +7 vs Gunpowder units, 0/1 armor. All unmentioned stats same as Elite ones (armor class, speed, attack rate etc).

  5. Counter: with the recent Long Swordsmen buff, and seeing these stats, LS are one of the best units to deal with Condos.

All civilization bonuses and technologies which affect Condos previously also affect the Castle Age version, like Burmese have +2 attack, Teutons have +1 armor, Malians have +2 pierce armor, etc

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2

No need to rename to elite condo. Serjeant have stat increase upon castle age while scout cavalry and eagle scout have stat increase upon feudal age.

However, I doubt if condo need to be available in castle age. Condos is more food-hefty than LS with supplies. When facing gunpowder unit, skirmisher or xbow is a better choice which do not hinder booming very much. Facing gunpowder siege, a single mangonel will do a better job. Food cost of condos is the problem in Castle age.

Xbow or knight are far better than LS to murder Condos.

Imo, before buffing condos, the team bonus should be replaced by cheaper trading cart. This avoid Condos to be abused by ally civs. The idea of shared unit limits condos buff.

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Condottieri would have little use in the castle age since it would be a weaker longswordsman (especially since the longsword is quite good now) with a bonus against gunpowder unit, that almost do not exist in the castle age. Unless the very specific case of fighting a couple civs who have early gunpowder units (mainly Bohemian hand cannons and some unique units), they would be pointless.

Even when the enemy reaches IA, he still has to research chemistry to get gunpowder units, so they wouldn’t appear for a while. It would be more common to see a player reaching IA earlier to improve his bruteforce units (typically the knight => cavalier) to steamroll a castle age army.

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Doubt this. Arbalesters win against Hand Cannons mostly because of upgrades, most notably Arbalester upgrade itself and Bracer. Moreover, gunpowder units are more than just Hand Cannons and Janissaries. Organ Guns and Hussite Wagons cannot be countered by non-siege ranged units.

Well the point is having an extra option. You will always have a Barracks no matter what. Having Siege Workshop is kind of sus.

Doubt this. Condos are 33% faster than LS, while having the same survival of LS. They are essentially Woad Raiders, which do not go down to Crossbowmen easily.

Knights win but they also cost more resources. Not denying it, but LS are a much cheaper and universal alternative (4 civs do not have Knights, Many do not have Bloodlines).

It is all about having an option of an emergency unit (Condos are created very fast) in Castle Age. They are not meant to be the backbone of the army, which is reflected by their poor stats in melee combat.

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If castle age condo’s wouldn’t be too useful, there’s no harm in introducing them, right?

That said I have no idea whether Castle Age Condottiero would be a good idea.

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Condos are an anti-gunpowder unit only in the name. In reality, skirms, cav and siege are way better than condos in both castle age and imp.

I don’t really see the point. The actual stats of the condo are weird… as they are now, they would be quite strong in castle age, but still knights and xbows can counter them. Then again, if you are allied with goths for example, it would be incredibly broken…

So the balance it’s really delicate, you risk to either have a useless unit or an OP one.

With those stats, I don’t see a reason to use them over LS, and especially over knights/xbows.

LS are now cheaper to tech into them, and have a lower food cost. The condos are faster yes, but also have a worse attack.

Personally, for now the only change that I would give to condos it’s a bonus damage vs eagles of +2 they are one of the few infantry units that lack any bonus damage (they other being the kamayuk ) and in imp just barely wins against EEW.

EEW should be weak against all infantry units, since they are strong vs archers/siege, and they aren’t bad against cav either, and frankly, eagles are so strong that they could easily take this small situational nerf and still be one of the best units.

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7

Having an option that is never used is even worse than having few options but that have their roles… at least in my opinion…

I mean, italians already have good archers and cav, why go infantry in castle age?

Right now, in imp it makes sense, because you have boomed and got a powerspike with early imp, and you have a unit that doesn’t require much upgrades, and even have one shared with the archers.

But in castle age, knights already fill that spot, so condos wouldn’t make much sense…

8

True. Italian knights are no worse than anyone else’s and whether you’re facing Bohemian hand cannons, janissaries, organ guns or conquistadores, knights is one of the most effective options. While being considerably more all-rounded. Or mangonels if the enemy is trying an early pike-and-shot

I means, by itself the option doesn’t hurt anyone but it would only appear as a sub-par option against one tenth of enemies.

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I mean, the condo is in the champion category, it’s faster and tanker but with less attack.

You also trade a lower food cost of the champ for a heavy saving in the upgrades cost, which can be helpful in the short term.

The problem is that the condos can’t actually fill the champ spot… they win against trash but are actually quite meh cost effective, and so not viable i the long term. Against eagles is even worse, since they win barely, and for their cost they aren’t viable (unless the enemy eco is way worse than yours, and so you know that the savings on the champ upgrades are enough to cover the gap). Even against buildings they aren’t that great.

Both archers and cav in imp and castle age defeat condos, and they aren’t great against siege either. Lastly as already said, they aren’t that useful against gunpowder…

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I knew I was missing one castle age gunpowder unit. Thank you.

11

During the whole discussion, you forget one important point: Condos are the team bonus. Italians have A tier knights - full upgrades in Castle and Early Imp, but no bonuses, I get that. But many civs can use an extra option.

Indians and meso - do not have Knights

Aztecs - neither Knights, nor good Crossbowmen, but have great Skirmishers in Castle Age itself (UT required)

Malay - bottom tier Knights

Teutons - their Condos are faster than their Knights and they lack Light Cavalry. Teuton Condos are the fastest land unit Teutons can train, after Scout Cavalry.

Celts - basically Anarchy for Woad Raiders (65F 25G vs 50F 35G), with some minor differences. Gold is easier to collect in mid game than food. The Castle Age Woad Raider isn’t an amazing unit, so it kind of feels meh. Nonetheless, the unit sets the stage for early imp transition to Elite Woads.

While it seems like they have a low attack, they have the same attack as Light Cavalry and Heavy Camel Rider, and Hussar (Hussar the most since both units have the same 1.9 attack rate).

Moreover, in Castle Age Condos are faster than Eagle Warriors - 1.20 vs 1.15

And as said again, many civs won’t have a stable ready most of the times, but except Khmer, all of them will have Barracks

Italian Condos also benefit from their UT, which makes the armor feel like 1/2, making them more resiliant to ranged units.

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So your point is Condos can somewhat replace cavalry role against archer and siege? Imo, this is partly correct. Condos can replace knight to fight siege without facing trash counter. But for archers, condos aren’t really that great. But archers should be Condos weakness, or else they will be like huskarl without gunpowder counter. For civs that lack good cavalry, they usually have fast infantry for compensation. Imo, their fast infantry are usually better than Condos to take archer fire as FU Condos only has 4 PA for allies. (lower than swordsman) Those allies fast infantry has higher PA.

Besides, I would argue FU cavalier and hussar without bonus is only average, at most B tier. But this is good enough for an archer civ.

I really dislike the idea of shared non-trash units, which makes it hard to balance in TG.

Condos need to receive less damage from gunpowder units to be a counter unit. There is negative melee armor for Rams. Will the game mechanics allow negative bonus damage against Condos class for all gunpowder units?

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This suggestion makes absolutely no sense. The strength of condottieri is basically that they’re a unit that don’t need to be upgraded so you can quickly field them in emergency situations or when you can’t afford to invest too much time and res into military upgrades.

If you give them a castle age version, you would push condos out of their niche and the castle age version would be completely outclassed by knights or even LS probably.

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He means stat increase like scout cavalry upon reaching feudal age. His suggestion keep the feature of not needing upgrade.

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Italians have FU Arba which is nothing special. for sure, it’s not enough to classify them as an “archer civ”. Yes, they do have Pavise, but they are missing Halb upgrade, which is a staple to archer civs, forcing them to counter mass Knights with Genoese Crossbowman which is a very awkward unit that you must produce from Castles, costs a ton and overall sucks vs everything except cavalry (vs which it’s not great, either, unless you have BIG numbers which is a ton of resources invested and also gets bottlenecked by how few Castles you can afford early on).

If you think they have “good Knights”, you are also mistaken, unless you believe that Spanish are a good civ, Italians are probably not great, either. Having FU Cavalier is nothing special, compare to like Britons (a VERY good Archer civ), the only thing you have over them is Bloodlines. Bloodlines is a good upgrade, but not enough to make you a cavalry civ. Meanwhile, Britons have TWO eco bonuses (sheep and TCs) vs the 0 of Italians. Italians on land maps advance ages faster, in Dark Age that’s like 50f, in Feudal it’s like 80f 30g, very meager eco bonus overall. Compare even tk Byzantines, at least there you get savings on making counter units, and in Castle age, you likely will be spamming a ton of Camel or Skirms.

Really though the core issue with Italians is that although they are good on water maps, on land maps they lack Halbs which for an archer civ are a must have and on top of that don’t really have a power spike unit/play at any point even in Imp, as their UU sucks also and their Gunpowder savings bonus is super situational and overall not very relevant (in Imp, saving resources on BBC is not that relevant as you are likely fully boomed anyway).

In a way, a good comparison for Italians is Chinese: both have a very wide tech tree, but Chinese get 2 eco bonuses on top (cheaper techs and 2 extra vills).

I think on land maps, if you exclude like Spanish and Goth, Italians are bottom tier. At any point in Feudal/Castle, you don’t feel like you you use any of the civ’s strengths and for example even if you want to go Stable play, you wonder why you didn’t pick Tatars who also have very decent Stable and many eco bonuses throughout the ages and in a way are also an “archer civ” (as Tatars, you can play Crossbow until mid-Castle without feeling you are doing something wrong)

Italians is a fully generic civ and play with no power spike or signature play. Even Malay, which are considered “meh” on Arabia, are stronger/more interesting with their early Elephant flood and faster advancing through ages (which is stronger than cheaper advancing for sure), on top of being able to do the classic strats of 20 pop Scouts, 21 pop MAA → archer etc.

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And cheaper ballistics and chemistry…

Like having FU arbs is nothing…

It is. Having the possibility of going both cav and archers is huge.

No but their cavalry is way above average for an archer civ. I mean, 20 more HP is great tech, usually a civ that lack it never use any cav unit.

It’s actually 75 food and 120 food, but yeah I agree, they don’t have a great eco bonus for arabia.

You point is? Because we were talking about condos…

I mean, we can call their archers and cav generic, good, decent, bad, average and discuss until tomorrow what those words mean, but the point stays.

Condos un castle age are still a worse option than knights or xbow both stat wise and cost wise.

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Genovese xbow actually work pretty well if you get the numbers up. Sure you need castles but that’s also the case for every archer UU. They counter cav extremely well and if you engage with 5 vs a huge mass of cav ofc you don’t do anything to them, that’s how it should be. Vs infantry they perform almost as good as standard archers and vs siege you have bbc. Once you get hussar in that’s one of the deadliest compositions in the game. Which is why the civ is very strong on closed maps.

The only issue with them is protecting from raids. That’s why lacking halb really hurts on open maps. Except this there isn’t much to complain about with Italians on land maps.

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never seen Italians picked on Arena or Black Forest in past few years. There are civs that are not great on Arena like the top dogs Turks, Burgundians, Britons but still sometimes picked, such as Chinese, Vikings. You never see Italians.

this is just wrong, given infinite resources, every unit is good, even Turtle Ships. In truth, Genoese cost like 2x the Wood of an Arbalester which is HUGE for massing them and a BIG bottleneck and are far worse than Archers due to 1 less range, which is a BIG DEAL, just like Thumb Ring-less Britons with extra range are a top tier Archer civ for the same reason. You also need a moderate mass to counter cavalry, sure vs cav they do better than pure Arba, but even then there are critical mass considerations to be made.

ok sorry, I think Condos should stay an Imperial Age unit and get +5 anti bonus dmg armor so that Handcannoneers do only 12 dmg, which together with reduced RoF would make the opponent massing Handcannoneers transition out of them instead of trying to outmass you which is how you see Condos vs Gunpowder play out right now the rare times you see it.

Also, yes to that guy who suggested bonus dmg vs Eagles, Condos should definitely win.

19

My bad I didn’t read carefully enough. By the way I don’t see a good reason behind the change, condos are fine as is.

Then you don’t watch arena, italians were picked in almost every set in master of arena 6. They are a well above average civ for arena and condos are part of the reason why italians are good there

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I saw Italians on arena quite often. They aren’t S tier, but at least A tier. I think that viper even won a tournament once.

You can’t do that. The condo already negate the whole bonus damage of the HC, the rest of the damage is given by their base pierce damage, which means that the condos would require more base PA, which would buff them against all archers units.

I mostly see skirms and hussars against HC, the rare times when you see HC in action, even as Italians.

Good for me then.

I agree on the first part, but the latter statement is a bit of a stretch… condos can be useful on arena, but only if you really caught the enemy off guard, or if you need something to add number.

I mean, hussars are simply better for Italians on arena on every aspect.

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