Hello there @Khorix9572. It’s a nice surprise to see you here. I was a big fan of your streams and your play style in general.
On the topic: I agree 100% with you that Russia does not have nothing good against Skirmishers + Dragoons. In my experience, apart from hiring Mercenaries, the best thing they can do against Dragoons are snaring with Cossacks and attacking with Halberdiers (Or Musketeers on melee mode). And neither of those methods are particularly good, because you lost considerable amount of units trying to get the snare, specially under skirmishers fire.
I just don’t think that idea of making cost half population is ideal, because the potential of 200+ Strelets is pretty scary, and would be incredibly hard to deal with.
If is proposed a improvement on the Strelets stats, particular on the their range and attack, so they would have the same range as a normal skirmisher and a less attack to compensate for their being cheaper (Around 10 base damage would be nice, the actual 8 base damage is pretty underwhelming) making they just a weaker skirmisher, I would be in favor.
So, I guess I’m voting on the option “Russia could use a Treaty buff, but not this”. Russia definitively needs some reliable infantry options on the late game. But I fear that halving the population cot for Strelets could be excessive.
I mean, they are supposed to counter Light Cavalry as well. But they just keep getting kitted away because of their low range.
Also, Dragoon-like units can just engage Strelets on melee combat, because Strelets hand attack is a joke. They deal 4 damage, which is even weaker than the Cassador damage.
I would only spam crossbows on the 2 or 3 age, almost never past that, except if I’m playing specifically against the Aztecs, because they don’t have good anti-infantry artillery and questionable skirmishers-like unit. And this is the core of the problem. Strelets are viable only on the beginning of the game, as longer the game keeps going, worst and worst the Strelets would get.
Strelets are better then crossbow, they cost 37.5 food and 10 wood so ~48 resources while a crossbow costs 80 resources.
Strelets have 72-90 hp (idk wiki doesnt explain)
4-5 melee damage (8-10 vs heavy inf or light cav)
8-10 ranged (16-20 vs heavy inf or light cav)
30% range resistance.
Crossbowman have 100 hp
7 melee damage (~8.5 agains heavy inf and 14 against light cav)
16 range damage (20 vs heavy inf and 32 against light cav)
20% range resistance.
(their bonus against heavy inf is 1.25 while the light one is 2)
Seeing the cost strelets are arguable better because they do more damage compared to cost.
6 crossbowman cost about the same as 10 strelets in resource total. This will be ~720-900 hp vs 600 and 80-100 damage compared to 96 (base damage, against heavy inf, 160-200 while crossbow 120) the crossbow does do more damage vs light cav, but strelets have more range resistance and the spamability of the strelet shouldnt make them bad against light cav.
Well, the short version of the analysis is that crossbowman are better at killing Dragoons, are better than Strelets if these two units are confronted to each other and are more effective population wise. Strelets are only stronger against heavy infantry.
The long version needs to consider some things:
The main strength of the Strelets is the fact that they train in batches of 10, taking 30 seconds each to be trained, but they cannot be “cheat out” by having a single unit being training, and shift clicking the full batch when they are near ready, you got train the whole batch, and need to have the resources for the full batch prior to starting the training, which.
The Crossbowman trains in batches of 5, and takes 27 seconds to be ready. But they can be “cheat out” by training a single unit and add the rest of the batch when they are almost finishing.
So the conclusion on this point is: The fact that crossbowman have almost the double stats than Strelets, can be cheat out on the training time, and Russia is a civilization that needs tons of food on the stock, because settlers can only be trained in batches as well, actually makes the crossbowman have better training timing than the Strelets.
On a direct confront between the two units, the Strelet shot causes 6 damage on the crossbowman (+8 of the base attack of Strelets, -2 because the 20% range resist of the crossbow) and you need 17 strelets to one-shot kill a crossbowman.
The crossbowman shot does a little bit over 11 damage on the Strelet (+16 from the base attack, -5 from the 30% range resist), you need 7 crossbowman to one-shot kill a Strelet.
Also is worth to mention that crossbowman’s have a range advantage towards Strelets, so they might even be able to throw a volley maybe even two volleys, before getting into a fight.
On direct confront between the two units, crossbowman’s have a big advantage.
Strelets do 13.4 damage per shot on a Dragoon (Dragoons have 20% range resistance). You would need 15 Strelets to one-shot-kill a Dragoon.
They do 25.8 damage per shot on Dragoons. You need 8 crossbowman to one-shot kill a Dragoon.
Crossbowman’s performs much better against Dragoons.
A strelet shot does 16 damage against a Musketeer, and you need 10 Strelets to one-shot kill a musketeer.
A Crossbowman does 20 damage against a Musketeer, and you need to have 8 crossbowman to one-shot kill a Musketeer.
Strelets are better against Musketeer and heavy infantry in general than the crossbowman.
The real cost of a batch of 10 Strelets on the early game are 375 food and 200 wood, because you need to count the 100 wood that you need to build houses to accommodate the high population they cost on the early game, and each batch requires a house to be produced. You don’t have to build a house every time you want to produce a batch of crossbowman, so that’s also something to consider.
Crossbowman have more health than strelets, which means that individual Strelets always will die first than individual crossbowman’s. So the attack from a Strelet mass will decrease before a mass of crossbow, because the individuals shots are dying faster.
In short, 7 crossbowman performs better than 10 Strelets on about 70% of the situations and are more population friendly. So this crossbows are actually a much more useful unit in most cases.
Strelets that are trained for batches on the blockhouse are weaker than Strelets trained individually on forts and triremes. That why the two different numbers. The first number is from a non upgraded Strelet from a blockhouse batch, the second from a non upgrade Strelet from a Fort or Trireme.
the 10 number is an advantage in later games were I am pretty sure this argument was about, even then 10 strelets are considerably cheaper then 10 crossbowman. 10 strelets will take longer to make then 5 crossbowman yes, but in your examples you use 6-7 crossbowman which means you have about the same train time, not to mention Russias extra bonus on training infantry making in the end train strelets faster then crossbowman. I also have almost never had any problem for the food really. It also doesnt really matter if you can make one crossbowman and later add 4 more as yeah it gives a bit of an train advantage, but the strelets will still have the nummer advantage and cheap cost setting this off.
examples of strelets against other skirmishers doesnt matter, they arent meant for that, its like comparing pikeman to halbediers, halbediers are more expansive so more logical to outdo them, not to mention its not the pikemans job to counter halbedier.
Early game you are right that strelets are not as good as crossbowman against light cavalry, but you are forgetting that in later stages you need actual age up politicians to make the crossbowman upgradeable which is often not worth it as crossbow civs usually have either skirmishers aswell or have other units which can do the job. This means the strelet will usually have 90% more hp and attack then crossbowman in Imperial. Russia also has multiple shipments which upgrade strelets while usually crossbow civs have a few with the exempt of Spain. Besides the arsenal doesnt give upgrades to crossbowman but does to gunpowder strelets.
Also the resource difference between 8 crossbows and 15 strelets is under 100. Which makes the strelet still pretty cost effective.
Thats exactly the purpose of strelets and further on in game they are even more effective with shipments like Boyar. While they have bonus damage against light cav they are almost everywhere advertised as anti infantry not anti light cav.
5)This is a weak point, you will also need a house for the crossbowman not to mention that a blockhouse actually gives pop space.
Thats because strelets are cheaper so you can have more of them
10 strelets costs about 480 resources while 7 crossbowman cost 560 its normal for them to do better in certain cases otherwise it doesnt make sense to be more expansive. Seeing they do actually better against infantry makes them already better in what they are supposed to do, counter inantry.
This is the exact same description of skirmishers. If you go check on skirmisher they are meant to deal with infantry not light cav. But due to their range and being strong. then skirmishers can deal with goons just fine.
I wrote this above:
If that is not enough, Russia is known to lose hard to skirm/goon by the Fortress or Industrial age where those games get to that point.
If complaining about Half pop or Range increase changes that could be made to the strelet. I’m pretty sure there should be no complain for a weaker skirmisher. it literally solves most of russia’s problem when it comes to dealing against army compositions.
Has 20 range
Cost food and gold
will be weaker but will be lot better than a strelet
I believe that having an unit closer to a skirm by this I mean making strelet scale into lategame to be close to skirms or giving weaker skirms. Opens the door for russia to be able to deal better vs other civs in treaty and in supremacy it allows for Fortress age gameplay if weaker skirms were to be an option
Cav archer is decent against dragoon, I had a ottoman game where enemy spammed dragoons and I could kill them with my cav archers. Also the Russian musketeer is cost effective against dragoon as dragoon doesnt counter them.
Strelet is just a decent cheap unit good at what he is meant to counter.
You’ve clearly not played a good player. Dragoons can hit and run Cav archer and cav archer loses shooting animation when their target gets out of their line of sight while goon is instant fire.
Russian musk is so weak you have to spam it thus you drain your eco to be able to kill a dragoon who is not drainig their eco. Besides in a whole army composition Musk are prone to die faster than goons as they have to go closer while goon can just Kite and run and you don’t make only dragoons. Unless it is russia I think against russia it is viable to only spam goon xD
It is clear that you don’t like strelets. But they’re very weak in their current state after game goes Post Fortress age
Man, I am reading your posts and I am not confident at all believing that you play Russia enough in treaty to write off Russia’s weak infantry problem in heads-up fights. If Russia really didn’t have an issue with weaker infantry, then why do the pros still set Russia so low in their treaty tier list? If instant infantry and cost-efficiency really overcome the weak infantry problem, then Russia would be much higher on the list, broken even. But it’s not, and that’s because Russia can’t win heads up.
Even in supremacy, people know that Strelets struggle against skirm/goon comps. Their Age 3 is still very difficult to hold up. And someone already made the point - what are you expecting if you have weaker units and have the same amount of pop as the other guy?
I invite you to play Russia numerous times in treaty against good players using Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and France and see you if spamming and cost-efficiency really does compensate for weak infantry. Cause trust me, hardcore Russia treaty players still try to this day and struggle. I’m not asking for Russia to have infantry on equal footing as other civs (because obviously that would be OP). But from playing Russia so much in treaty, I know that the Strelets need to be more viable, no matter what cost-efficiency/training time speed arguments you want to throw.
Smh I even did multiple runs of the 50 Imperial Strelets versus 50 Imperial Skirms to show how bad it is. I’m astonished you don’t see 50 deaths for 20 kills as something dismissible… really??
That’s true, but we’re not talking about that. Why is it that when you watch pro treaty streams on Twitch, why are they continuously massing skirmisher units, even when the enemy doesn’t have heavy infantry?
Well if you really do play treaty a lot, you would know that you want to win gunfights, using strong, pop-efficient gunpowder units with long range and ranged resistance. Skirmishers fit that bill, literally within their name. And even if you say “Strelets should just be used against heavy infantry” - it’s just not the nature of a treaty game. And we’ve already said before, pumping out cav isn’t the answer either, as it drains your eco fast.
Honestly, play Russia and fight head on with Spain or Portugal for 40 minutes in a heads up fight. From your arguments, you have to tell me you can win against those civs via out-spamming them to get an eco advantage
No, my arguments was on early game. As I said before I would never spawn any of these on fortress age onward.
Looking back, when I said that “Strelets are weaker than crossbowman’s”, I was pretty vague and should have being more specific and said something like: “Both units are bad on fortress Age onward. But crossbowman’s are better than Strelets on the second and early stages of the third age.”
Of course they matter. The problem with the Strelets is exactly this: The fact that they are not good against Dragoons and other skirmishers units make they have a pretty bad cost-effect.
I think you are confusing Strelets being cheap with they being cost-effective. They’re not. Skirmishers are cost effective, because they can kill Dragoons, Heavy Infantry and trade with the enemy skirmishers. You get a lot of value from Skirmishes. You don’t get almost nothing from Strelets, as they only trade decently with heavy infantry (And skirmishers does much better against heavy infantry) and sucks against everything else.
It does not matter that you have a cheaper unit when this units when you don’t get almost no value from it. I much rather have a expensive unit that does a lot of work, than having a cheap unit that does almost nothing.
I’m not forgetting. You asked me if I would spam crossbowman’s, on which I responded that I would only spam crossbowman on age 2 and early age 3 and that neither Strelets or Crossbowman are good pass those stages of the game.
I was only vague when I said that crossbowman are stronger than Strelets and did not specify that is only on these early stages of the game. I will also like to add now that the only type of Strelets that are more cost-effective than crossbowman are the fully upgraded and carded (Boyars, Strelets Combat and Strelet Horde) Imperial Strelets, which takes a lot of resources and card shipments to happen.
That’s was my best point of the whole bible that I wrote. (God, I realized I write so much )
The crossbowman batch cost only 5 population, this means that you can do 2 batches before needing a new house. 10 Strelets, you need a whole house every time, and this causes domino’s effect. Let’s make some calculations:
Two batches of 10 Strelets cost 850 food + 400 wood (200 from the batches, 200 from the houses you you need to build to support the population), which gives a total of 1250 resources.
On the other hand, 2 batches of crossbowman’s cost 500 food + 600 wood (Counting the 100 wood you would need for the single house), giving a total of 1100 resources. Considering that wood are gathered at a slower rate than food, I would said that that are more or less the same price. But I would take 10 crossbowman over 20 strelets at any given time.
And this just keeps scaling worst for Strelets at every new batch.
And finally:
Realistic on the early game you would probably being taking batches of Strelets from blockhouses. So you would be training the worst version of the Strelets on batches of 10, and the calculations above explains that, and you need to consider that every single new batch requires a house.
Also 8 crossbows are more cost effective than 15 Strelets, because 8 crossbows get much more work done.
And guys, I promise I will try not to write a whole book on my next post.
Skirmishers costing 110 resources is expected to do better then 48 resources strelet.
Again strelets should only be used against heavy infantry and in certain cases mixed with other units against light cavalry.
Also lets take musketeer for example here, they are 100 resources, strelet being 48.
A musketeer has 150 hp, less range, but does 23 damage.
Strelet has 72 hp, more range, has 16 damage against musketeer and has 30% resistance to range which musketeer doesnt have.
Musketeer will do, because of the 30% resistance 16.1 damage so basically the same as strelet. The strelet will have initiative because he has 2 more range doing about 1 time more damage.
1 strelet will have to shoot 10 times, while musketeer 5, so strelet will do about 96 damage before dying to musketeer. This however is one strelet.
If we equal costs its about 2 strelets against 1 musketeer, which results in a strelet doing 32 initiative damage and then from both 4 more shots killing the musketeer, while the musketeer kills 0. This is cost effective. Now when scaling the battle to more Strelets and Musketeers the strelets will have an even bigger advantage.
I know this comment is 3 days old, but I just logged now into the forum and read it on my notifications.
But the fact that Strelets are only decent (And I mean decent, because skirmishers do a much better job than they do) against heavy infantry is exactly why they are so bad.
The fact that they are cheap does not matter when they are such a bad unit. Ok, they are cheap, but they don’t kill Dragoons, they get easily killed by other skirmishers, they are not as good as skirmishers against heavy infantry and they have a low range.
Strelets have such a underwhelming effect on the battlefield, that you would be much better off investing your resources somewhere else. Does not matter that they are cheap, when you don’t get any return from your invest is bad, even when your investment was small.
Also, Musketeers don’t fight against Strelets at distance, players shot a volley or two and them put the Muskteers into melee mode and get the snare on Strelets, taking advantage to the fact that Strelets have the lowest melee attack on the game. And they cannot do this with neither crossbowman and skirmishers because those units have a much better range than Strelets. This is also a exclusive disadvantage of Strelets.
And I was wrong when I said that Strelets are good against heavy infantry. They are ok against Muskteers and Pikeman, but they get shredded by Halberdiers.
This two range is barely going to matter if you put your musks into melee, also Id like to see you do that when someone is spamming strelets.
Go spam musks vs strelet spam and see who is going to be more cost effective.
Strelets are not meant to be doing anything else except fight heavy infantry thats their whole idea. Simply dont train them vs skirmishers. Halbediers are purely for anti cav, dont train them vs skirmishers like what do you expect. It doenst matter Skirmishers do better as they cost more, simple thats it nothing to argue here.
Want to counter skirms? make cossacks, want to counter dragoon? A 180 resource unit? Your strelets will still be cost effective here, but you better try cav archer as in my experience they actuall do pretty good against dragoon.
It does, because a Musketeers will be kitted away by skirmishers and crossbowman indefinitely. This don’t happen with Strelets because they have such a low range.
And I don’t understanded exactly what you meant by:
If I’m pushing into blockhouses into a later stage of the game when the opponent has the has the hability to spam Strelets constantly I will have cannons together with my Musketeers.
I didn’t said that Musketeers will win the fights cost effective. I said that Strelets are much worst against Musketeers than skirmishers.
Yes, and this is why they are so bad. They will get killed by anything that is not Musketeers or Pikemans.
Not really, they have a pretty good hand attack. They can kill light infantry pretty well if they can get in melee combat with then.
They do have a hard time against skirmishers, because skirmishers have a long range and shoot then from a big distance. Strelets have to shoot from a small distance because of their small range, so the problem of being snaring into melee mode is much more common than with skirmishers.
No, they won’t. Strelets will be kitted away and die without barely killing any of the Dragoons, or the player will put the Dragoons on melee mode and kill the Strelets taking advantage of the fact that they have the smallest melee attack on the game.
Does not matter that they are cheaper, because they will lose the fight badly and you won’t get return from your resources invested.
How? Cav. Archer has melee resistances instead of range resistance and a much lower attack. Not to mention the annoying set-up animation that they have that forces you to constantly babysit this unit in battle, and the fact that they have a lower speed than Dragoons, which means that they will be kitted away. This is even worse because of the annoying set-up animation that Cav. Archer have it.
And what is your solution against skirmishers + dragoon composition?
Not every unique unit needs to be a wonder unit possible in doing everything, what I mean with strelets are meant for heavy infantry is that they are trash units just like crossbowman and pikeman, they shouldnt become more then they are.
Also musketeers and cannons, well if we are going to use compositions then strelets can be compositioned with culverin taking out the cannons. And mixing strelets with musketeer.
Also cav archer has more hitpoints and fires twice as fast dealing about same damage, its not a effective counter but can do the job not losing that much from my experiences.
Edit: one on one cav archer should actually beat dragoon as the faster firing makes it 26 damage for dragoons 22, even with the range resistence it becomes 21 so almost the same. Seeing cav archer has more hp and costs less they are cost effective.
There are no Trah units in AoE3, specially not Wood costing ones. Wood is the premium resource in AoE3, and any unit that costs Wood, is more expensive than one that costs Coin.
Trash units are only an AoE1 and 2 concept, because Gold is rare there.
In AoE3, Coin is infinite, and easy to get by the thousands, while Wood is not.
In this game, a unit that cost 40 Food and 35 wood, is harder to afford than one that costs 120 Coin, for example.