Discuss this idea: (Treaty) Strelet half-pop

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

Why?

Take 50 fully maxed out Imperial Strelets and put them up against 50 Imperial Skirmishers in the Scenario Editor. How bad is the outcome?

Skirmishers steamroll them with more than 30 of them leftover. With 20 range, all of the Skirmishers snipe the front line of Strelets while the back rows of Strelets stand there idle, not knowing they’re in a gunfight.

Already at a numbers disadvantage, the Strelets fire back, but to less effect. This is due to the lesser range of Strelets, having ~80% of them engaged, and having lower attack damage with the Skirms having higher HP. They only manage to kill a few Skirmishers in the first volley.

The Skirms then fire back with the entire squad, and obliterate the next row of Strelets. The Strelets are even less in numbers, and then they attempt to kill more Skirms, to a lesser effect than before. Rinse and repeat, it’s a domino effect until you have many Skirms leftover and no Strelets standing.

This the reality of skirm wars for Russia in treaty games. Even with all the cards and buffs applied, Strelets still suck and they can’t win heads up fights for Russia. So let’s refute the counter-arguments:

“But they’re so cheap, they’re supposed to be weak and cost-efficient.”

Yes, I don’t need to be preached on their costs and original intent of their design again. But look at overall performance in the end - Am I winning economically or militarily with them? No. Are you confident putting up 50 Strelets against 50 Skirms? They’re supposed to counter each other, right? Your “advantage” of cost efficiency is negated because 1.) you have to replenish a lot faster than your enemy since they die fast, and 2.) you aren’t killing the enemy fast enough to make them consume resources to gain an economic edge.

“So then use cannons and Cossacks, duhh…”

Assuming the artillery is equal and the skill in micro’ing the artillery is equal as well, you will still be at a disadvantage. The DPS from your Strelets still won’t match the Skirmishers, and you will still see your Strelets dying faster than the Skirms on the battlefield from the gunpowder fight alone.

You certainly do have an edge with Cossack swarming versus their Hussars. I can agree to that. However, doing this swarming cavalry tactic repeatedly drains your eco quick from food and gold. And Cossacks unfortunately do die faster due to less HP, even with higher ranged resistance. This can also be countered by civs doing the same cav swarming you’re doing, and again, you’re at a disadvantage because the Strelet mass a mere 24 ranged attack per shot. Thus, with weaker ranged attack in general, you can’t kill incoming cavalry alone with a Strelet mass. You are still at a disadvantage on the battlefield.

A little math - 50 fully upgraded and carded Imperial Strelets will have 72 ranged attack (24 x 3) and 202 HP, and will give you a total of:

A possible 3600 damage per shot (to infantry),

And 10100 total HP

Compared to 50 Imperial Skirmishers with 99 attack (33x3) and ~260 HP each, you will get about:

A possible 4950 damage per shot,

And a total mass of 13000 HP.

The difference between 4950 damage and 3600 damage is a lot. If you’re fighting musketeers with 375 HP, that would mean that the Skirmishers could 3-4 musketeers faster than the Strelets with every shot, which will domino as the gunfight drags on.

And the difference of 2900 HP means that it would take about 14 more Strelets (or 9-10 Rusketeers with 300HP) just to even match the collective HP of the enemy Skirms. You don’t have extra pop space! You’re not China with 220, so don’t even think about being able to out-mass them.

Simply said, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage even making infantry units.

So you get the point – everyone already knows Russia has weak infantry, especially their Strelets. Their weakness isn’t truly compensated by their cost-efficiency because of their inability to stay on the battlefield and to kill as effectively as their European or Asian (or even Native American) counterparts.

The buffs were highly appreciated for Russia (+2 Strelet range, +10% attack and HP for Rusketeers, Engineering card, cheaper church Tech, etc.). But still even with these, everyone should try to play a treaty game as Russia versus Sweden, Spain, or Portugal in a heads-up match. If you get a positive KD/R against a good player, I seriously commend you lol.

So what am I saying? Let’s just make the Strelet more viable in the late-game/treaty, since we know it’s really not pop-efficient.

With the intent of its original design (weaker, cheaper, but quick to mass in purpose of swarming the enemy), I want to re-ignite an idea from @Khorix9572 – make Strelets half-pop. However, we should do via the re-working of the Age 4 card: Strelet Horde.

Imo, I think people just use it for the effect to squeeze 10% more HP out of Strelets. However, the half-pop idea fits very well with the name, “Strelet Horde" and 60 Strelets fighting 40 Skirms is more viable.

The drawbacks are still there: not all Strelets can shoot (16 range). If abused too much, it would drain the Russian player of food and wood. And no other Strelet stats get buffed (training time, ranged attack, HP, etc.).

What do you think? I’m all ears

  • Good idea
  • Russia could use a Treaty buff, but not this
  • No, Russia is fine in Treaty

0 voters

2 Likes
2

You know, this is a thinker. I’m mostly a supremacy player, and I rarely play treaty. But I do agree that Russia biggest problem is the fact that pretty much all their military units are quite bad on late game (Industrial Age onward, and some times even on the Fortress age).

With the exceptions of the Cossacks, their artillery and maybe Oprichicks (Although, the later one is used in quite niche situations), all their other units are honestly quite bad.

The thing that worries me on this proposal is the fact that at half population, a Russian player could potentially put 200 or more Strelets on the field, taking advantage of the low training time that their infantry have (Specially on Forts). And on a game where a card like Suvorov Reforms exist (This card transforms all Strelets on the field to Muskteers), this particular proposal could be potentially game breaking. Of course I’m just theorizing for now, this should be tested before came with a conclusion.

Back some years ago I thought of a rework on the Suvorov Reform card. Let me share that, to see if anyone here sees value on it.

The idea is that, instead of being a card name Suvorov Reform, it should exist two church upgrades, on which the player has to choose on of then; I think this upgrades should cost something around 2000 gold, and their bonuses would be:

  1. Suvorov Reforms: Gives the Russian Musketeer 5.0 Speed and 2.0 rate of fire. And gives then a 10% bonus on the melee attack.

  2. Prussian Reforms: Unlocks a Russian Needle Gunner (A Russian equivalent of the Germans skirmishers) to be a recruitable unit instead of the Strelets, the Russia (But don’t replace the current existing Strelets with skirmishes) and gives the Guard Upgrade to then. This new unit can use the unused Russian pikemen lines.

The reason for my proposal is both historical reference reasons and for balance changes, so that the Russians have least one infantry unit for on the late game, and will give then choice to each one.

Anyway, that’s my ramble on the matter. I am curious to see what other people think about that as well. I’m still thinking on what to vote on the poll.

3 Likes
3

One other card with Strelet Horde that lost most of its significance is Duelling School.

Before DE, this was for the whole team and Immigrant did not give -10% training time.
Now with Immigrants + Fencing School + Church tech, both Musk and Hallb are trained at instant speed, making Dueling School only affect Strelets.

Between both cards, there is certainly options to give better stats to Strelets and maybe change the wood cost to coin.

2 Likes
4

strellets just need a little extra dmg and they are fine.

alternatively make russian grenadiers better, russia really aren’t that bad in treaty.

1 Like
5

The thing is that Russia can spam their units, yes the Dutch can have 50 skirmishers against your 50 strelets, but as soon as his 50 skirmishers killed your strelets and they are now 30, you will aready have the next batch of Strelets against them.

Maybe they should add a card changing the wood cost of the strelet to coin for late game, but the pop is fine.

Also strelets arent meant to be against skirmishers, I know what you are trying to demonstrate here, but its not entirely fair. Strelets are meant to be cheap anti heavy infantry which they are good enough at.

6

I agree that 200 Imperial Strelets seems overwhelming, but theoretically it has its limitations as well. With 16 range, it will be impossible for all of them to actively fight at once (unless you spread them out to assist teammates). A decent mass of cavalry will still put a dent on them, as one Hussar with ~800 HP and 0.20 ranged resist will take ~42 Strelet shots (24 ranged attack) just to kill. With skirms, you can reach a critical mass point where they can pick off 3-4 cavalry at a time to defend themselves before needing goons, but it’s noticeably harder with Strelets. Also, since no other stats would be boosted, they would still fall like paper to skirm shots, cannons, mass cav, melee, etc.

Even if you win gunfights, the siege attack is so awful on Strelets that you can’t really do much to push forward, especially towards gated bases.

I still think a cap of 100 Strelets would be a reasonable (if Strelets were 0.5 pop a piece) before Russia would get too ridiculous.

That’s a good idea. Some kind of substitute skirmisher, just to stop Russia from getting creamed in gunfights

I agree. I did the math -
Fully upgraded Strelets should have like 72 attack, 202 HP, and 0.30 ranged resist.
An average fully upgraded Skirmisher should have like 99 attack, 260 HP, and 0.30 ranged resist.
In this example, a fully upgraded musk will have 57 attack, 375 HP, and 0 ranged resist.
Fully upgraded Caroleans have 375 HP and 0.30 ranged resistance.

For skirmishers (the “baseline”), it takes:
9 shots to kill a Strelet
4 shots to kill a Musketeer,
6 shots to kill a Carolean.

For strelets, it takes:
16 shots to kill a Skirmisher,
6 shots to kill a Musketeer, and
8 shots to kill a Carolean.

Fully upgraded Musketeers and Strelets both take 6 shots to kill each other, but

Fully upgraded Skirmishers only need 4 shots to kill a Musketeer, while Musks need 7 shots to kill a Skirmisher. Skirmishers take 12 shots to kill each other.

It’s no brainer that Strelets can’t kill well, unless they out-mass the enemy. But in treaty, people are always throwing maxed out military populations at each other. Your plan to “outmass the enemy” with more Strelets can’t work. And the trading is awful, as explained in the scenario in my original post. If strelets need some kind of ranged attack buff, their endgame ranged attack needs to be at least 78 (26x3) damage.

Reason being, with at least 78 damage, they can:
15-shot a Skirmisher (instead of 16), and
5-shot a Musketeer (instead of 6)
7-shot a Carolean (instead of 8). Compare that to what a Skirm can do above.

They would still be weaker than Skirmishers by far, but they would at least trade and kill and stop their treaty KD/R from being so awful.

Agreed, grenadiers last longer on the battlefield and soak up shots, but in my experience, they aren’t great at killing to make them reliably used, even with cards and upgrades

Yes I know, but you are literally saying the training speed and cheapness justifies the insane negative KD/R that Russia takes if they keep pumping out Strelets. If it consistently takes 50 Strelets to kill 20 Skirms, you can rinse, wash, and repeat it for 30 minutes in treaty with that ratio. 2 kills for 5 deaths → 2000 kills, 5000 deaths. It’s ridiculous how weak they are. You still have a lot of eco from these trades, but what’s the point if you can’t beat the stronger skirm/musk mass in front of you to push. You can try to split, but once the opponent gets a wall of units ready, you’re still back at square 1 with infantry gunfights, which Russia sucks at

I agree that they are decent at countering heavy infantry due to being able to spam them out, but 90% of treaty games are skirms shooting at other skirms man. And since that is the case, Russia fails at it

7

Just dont make strelets if the enemy is spamming skirms… Russia has cossacks for that.

I can tell you now that if you make a unit to counter a unit its not meant to counter you are going to have a tough job.

8

Well obviously. But I already explained that in my original post - no matter what you do in treaty, you’re still gonna see massed infantry fighting massed infantry.

And you can send mass cav to wreck their skirms, great. But it’s costly. And if they respond with musks or goons, you lose your cavalry and it’s gonna force you to draw out your skirmisher unit anyways (Strelets), since they have bonuses against both types of units. It’s not so simple.

Ideally you just want to keep a strong standing army in front of you, win the gunfight, and push forward

9

To flip this on its head a bit, how about instead of half pop strelet, strelet have no pop, but is capped at 50-100 almost like a native unit?

That would give the Russian army the ability to be much larger then the opposing force, and works very well with insta-spam, but limit its scalability and also makes russia more reliant on musks, which are a bit crap in lategame/treaty

10

sounds completely and utterly broken, this is WAY beyond anything russia needs.

1 Like
11

Ok I can see that 100 would definitely be broken, but how about 50? cause having to rely on musks that late into the game I think would be a major weakness, especially russian musks

12

russia doesnt need free pop.

russia gets forts, fast training and superior cavalry, that is already enough in most games.

13

Yeah, again, I don’t disagree to the fact that Strelets are a pretty bad unit on the lategame. But 200 strelets divided on 6/7 spread around control groups could possibly fire 6/7 volleys each time, against 2 or 3 volleys from skirmishers mass. That’s whats worrying me.

Of course there is some micromanagement involved on spreading strelets on various control groups and getting all of them involved in the fight.

I will do some testing on the Scenario editor to see if this is utterly broken, or playable against it.

The problem is that Russia has a some rush build order that are sometimes difficult to deal with. I don’t disagree that their late game is pretty bad, but if we simply make their units stronger it will make their early rushes become even stronger, and possibly break the game balance.

If is the case of giving Russian troops some sort of buff (Like more attack on strelets), I think it should come on the later ages, so we don’t take the risk of their early game push become too strong.

@PerseusLegends4 idea involves a Age IV card, and my ideia involve researchs locked behind a big resources-cost wall. How this attack bonus would come?

14

I don’t think half-pop strelet is a good solution (I find it ugly to introduce half pop unit in this game, I know it exists in aoe2). I believe Russia should just have more pop than the other civilization (like 220). To me, one of the most unbalanced things in late game, is dutch with 150/140 military pops, japanese with 125, french with 120… How russian can win against dutch when they have low quality troops and less numbers…

1 Like
15

could just be an improvement to imperial age upgrade or to the “strellet horde” card. doesnt have to be base dmg.

16

On treaty game, you generally just spam a single unit? I’m legitimately asking. I play mostly supremacy.

But the thing is, on supremacy Russia does not have nothing really good against Skimisher + Dragoon compositions. The best armies composition for Russia is Cossack + Cannons + Musketeer or Halberdier. And the lack of mobility on either the Musketeer/Halberdier and on the cannons makes it very difficult for the Russian player to fight the high mobile Dragoon + Skirmisher composition.

That’s why I tough about that Suvorov Reforms research. The historical context of the Suvorov Reforms is that some of the Russian army officials wanted to copy the Prussian army methods to the core, and other, including the General Suvorov, preferred to make some other changes to the army. Those changes would be:

  1. A new reloading method for the Musketeers that reduced the steps for reloading their guns. (That’s why I proposed a reduce on the rating of fire as one of the bonus for this research).
  2. He stopped the parade exercises for the army, and replaced for marching drills to improve the speed and endurance of his army marches. (That’s why I put a increasing speed to be one of the bonus on that research. And taking out the fencing march animation from the musketeers after this, would be a nice touch).
  3. Surovov liked to do bayonets charges, and implemented several drills for his army to be able to do this charges more effectively. (That’s why I proposed the 10% increase on the melee attack on the musketeers)

So the idea of my proposal was to give a choice for the Russian player to either adapt the proposals of the officials that wanted to copy the Prussian Army to the core, and unlock the Russian Needle Gunner, a exact copy of their Prussian (Germans on the game) counterpart. Or to go to the Surovov’s Reform, and grants the player a super fast musketeer, that (My theory is) can throw one or two volleys on the enemy, and then do a bayonet charge using the improved speed and melee attack they were granted.

17

Yes, that’s a interesting idea too. A change the Strelet Combat card to 30% attack and 20% HP could be possible too.

18

Strelets are meant to counter heavy infantry, and basically only that, they are cheap for it.

And no generally you dont spam 1 unit in treaty. Depends first on the civ you pick and second what the enemy is doing.

If you are British you cant spam musketeers as the enemy can spam skirmishers and you will lose hard. Then you will have to make hussar etc. Its a cycle in reaction on eachother and unit composition.

And at last you would spam crossbows would you? Strelets are similar to them.

19

One of the reasons as to why having strelets at half pop would help russia be able to reach the cap through other units othern than strelets . As strelet is a unique unit which even at half pop loses fights this is to help other units like massing more cossacks or musks because when you need strelets which can’t really kill even their counter per seen here. They arent useful and drain your eco fast

And they counter musks they say. In treaty where players are always maxed out it is impossible to break a fight between 2 knowledgeable players the one who has stronger skirms will always have the advantage as this is russia’s main weakness in the late game

This is the main reason asking for strelet half pop is for. If you were able to have more strelets in between you could use them as meatshield vs skirms instead of your musk which die fast. In treaty it is mostly about Canon micro and whoever has more skirms while throwing cav/anti cav here and there

The post asks for strelets to be half pop at late game. But if we look at russia army composition even before late game they struggle like no other civ to kill skirms on good hands. Skirm/goons out damages and out runs cossacks and strelets

To this we add strelet are crazy bad vs Dragoons tell me of a single unit russia has to properly deal against dragoons without losing more than the oponnent [ Unit and economic wise ] ( Treaty )

I’m still strong on my idea of giving strelets more range so they’re able to fight other skirm civs. Or just give russia a weaker Skirmisher like we have weaker musk and it solves it all.

Something to notice. If we take a look in one of the patch notes they allowed all Civs to have access to Mortars now. Because some civs were really struggling so the smartest choice was to give equality to all. Then it comes down to micro and mechanical skills rather than my unit is just much more stronger than yours. Giving equal chances to most civs after Imperial age should be a focus

4 Likes
20

good ideia this is good for russia