In AoE III trash units are basically cheap units, wood is in early game harder to get but the upgrades makes it eventually just as fast to get, also 100 wood for 10 units is barely any.
There are no Trah units in AoE3, except Mercenaries, because those only cost Gold, and Aennas because they cost only Food.
Any unit that costs Wood, is expensive by default, in AoE3.
Wood is the hardest resource to get, at ANY stage of the game.
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Man, I think the point is: Strelets just blatantly donât do as well as their Skirmisher counterparts.
I understand that you keep saying âthen donât use Strelets against skirms, thatâs not their purpose, use cavâ. Well theoretically yeah. But thatâs expensive, and in my experience, thatâs more self-damaging against common skirm/goon armies, especially with goons scattered in the rear. You canât reach the goons with 12 and 16-range gunpowder units, nor kill them with such weak attack. Your cav archers have to get up close and get targeted by skirms to reach the goons. Even with Cossacks tanking, Russian gunpowder units are so weak with their lower attack, that they wonât kill enemy units fast enough for the cav charge to be overwhelmingly successful. Artillery is average, so good luck trying to get an advantage there. Goons shred the lower-HP Cossacks.
Itâs an expensive, losing trade, and the enemy still keeps a lot of their goons and skirms after it. I know youâre gonna argue âwell spam those units again, Russiaâs good at that.â But why spam again a combination that doesnât win? Itâs insanity. If Russia had a strong skirm/goon comp in Age 3, then Russia wouldnât be so infamous for having such a hard time in Age 3.
Treaty is no better as weak Russian units struggle to hold their own.
âJust use Strelets for heavy infantry onlyâ. Yeah, but Age 3 hits and everyone is busting out skirm/goon compositions. Similar in Treaty. Should Russia then make a musketeer-based army against an enemy skirm-based army?? No, thatâs illogical. Enemy skirms will eat the lower-HP Russian musketeers. You ought to use a skirmisher-type unit because of:
1.) Longer range to reach the enemy skirmishers
1.) Skirms donât have multipliers against other light infantry
2.) Ranged resistance against skirms and goons
4.) A multiplier against goons.
Even if the enemy doesnât have enemy heavy infantry, there is the unspoken role that Strelets ideally should fill, but the whole point of this post is to say that they absolutely suck at filling that role (scenario editor proven in original post). You say that âNot every unique unit needs to be a wonder unit possible in doing everythingâ but people are constantly putting Skirms against other skirms and light cavalry no matter what game you play, not only against heavy infantry.
I know your big end-argument comes down to saying âitâs cost-efficient thoughâ to justify this Russian skirmisher unit weakness. But it doesnât win. Are you hoping to drain them out by using eco advantage? Thatâs Chinaâs game in treaty - Russia canât play that game as well. Especially when you play enemy opponents with micro skills as good as you (flanking heavy cav, microâing cannons, replenishing army fast, etc.), you canât win gunfights with Russia using the same pop with weaker units. Itâs the pop cap that stunts Russiaâs original purpose of âoverwhelming the enemy with numbers, using weaker and cheaper unitsâ.
Russia could have an edge if they had the ability to outnumber their opponent per their original design, hence this suggestion. But with the same pop, itâs null in treaty. You are just pumping a wooden ram into an iron wall, hoping one day it will break. Well, against superior unit quality and a limited pop, good luck
Iâm not advocating for Strelets to be a wonder unit, just a actually usable one.
As I was pointing out on other posts, crossbowman can kill heavy infantry, Dragoons and are decent against other skirmishers. And Pikeman are good against buildings and deadly (Not decent) against the unit they are supposed to counter. While Strelets are only decent against only one of the units he is supposed to counter it.
Pikeman and crossbowman are nowhere near as bad as Strelets. And even if they was, the fact that there are other bad units on the game donât justify Strelets being terrible. All bad units should be buffed instead of ignored because there are other bad units on the game.
Ok. Letâs discuss army compositions, that actually will help my point showing that Strelets are a pretty useless unit.
Imagine that I am a British player and Iâm pushing with Musketeer, Hussar and Cannons.
What do you do? Strelets + Cossacks + Culverin will lose to the Hussars.
Musketeers + Strelets + Culverin still will lose for the Hussars and Musketeer mass.
Strelets + Cav Archer + Cannons will see the Hussars on top of the Strelets, the Cav Archer will be forced to fire on the Hussars and the Musketeers will melee mode the cannons. You cannot pull trick the cannons with the cav Archer whiteout losing your Strelets.
Full Strelet + Cav Archer will not deal with artillery as efficient as Dragoon + Skirmisher, because skirmishers can shoot from a long range of distance to support they Dragoons dealing with the artillery. This is something that Strelets cannot do because of their low range.
There is no good army composition that involves Strelets. The best compositions for Russia is either Cossacks + Cannon + Musketeer or Cossacks + Cannon + Halberdier, and this is for a good reason.
This is irrelevant. Players donât keep the Dragoons stale, they move they away using the extra speed after they fired they shots, and donât give the Cav Archer the opportunity to shoot a second time. This is know as âkittingâ.
Not to mention that you can miss the first shot that you did because of the set-up animation that they have. And the fact that you need to babysit your Cav Archers individually so they shoot at a decently rate, and this consume your time on battle.
This is just funny. Are you talking from a math perspective or from a abusable perspective? Are you aware that if I use dragoons and move them before you shoot, the cav archers have to re do animation again to shoot? That is a huge exploit you can do When facing cav archer and thereâs nothing you can do but sit back and wait. And while you wait Russia has nothing in their army comp that beats other comps.
Would you imagine cossacks costing 2 pop with their current stats?? that would make them as terrible as strelets. If developers want to keep the design Russia has which is Overwhelming the opponent then gotta work on making those weak units be more than your opponent through making them cost half their current pop that if we only decide there is a limit of 200. That is a healthy way of keeping current balance as youâre not really buffing any stat. If that is a NONO then everything Russia struggles against, goes away by simply giving us Skirmishers by fortress age And Iâm pretty sure Russia then gets an opportunity in fighting all civs
Current russia design would be OK and maybe becomes good if there wasnt a pop limit of 200. if it was unlimited Iâm pretty sure russia wins all trades but as there is a limit and there are unit which then are same Population costs and offers more is what makes it even harder for russia.
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There should be a card for buffing Strelet speed, perhaps the Strelet Horde could add this. Adding more speed would improve the value of the unit and it wonât interfere with the resources involved.
Eh. Strelets already walk faster than most infantry at 4.5 speed compared to 4. I think 18 range or an endgame of at least 26 ranged attack would make them viable (math done above). If balance is needed, just make the Strelets cost more in F or W.
You overestimate the amount of people microing their dragoons in teamgames or treaty games. If they attack your base with dragoons just make cav archers and keep them near your base. Also in treaty where massing is easy or just late game in general people tend to not micro that much. Next to that I said they are decent, not the best, so use them defensive and the dragoons will lose.
I dont remember if it was you or someone else I proposed to play a game, again I am not OP or anything, but I just dont believe you in what you are saying so then I think its better to see it in game because that beats anything then math and words on the forums if you want to play a game.
Iâm online again, lets goo
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I have to do some studying are you able to play in about an hour?
Sure thing, just got off of work man
Okay Im now starting up the game
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Look in the casual lobby and youâll see a game with your name
See, strelets are great meatshields and filler.
And because they are so cheap they were easily replaced before you could even make new skirmishers
GG btw.
Yeah gg. I got lazy and didnât make enough barracks near base to counteract the insta-spam, so it got ridiculously hard to keep max pop. But it was a good Russian snowball after that. Cassadors kept trying to pump out, but they were always outnumbered and died before killing.
KD/R was still 2700 to 1600 for Portugal, but Russia won by pressing the advantage and keeping enemy pop down. GG
I reflect now back on my games with Russia and think I shouldâve pressed harder once I saw the tipping point in population.
Yeah Russia is spam nation, their greatest strength is their ability to instant spam infantry and for treaty they even have the nice bonus of only having to press ones in ablockhouse for instant units of 10 etc.
Also Although indeed you killed more, thats because I spammed a lot of strelets which your cannons killed a lot off. However the price for one strelet is nihil compared to horse artillery.
I also discovered that the strelet actually has x3 bonus against heavy infantry. I dont know if it was a card or an addition in DE which isnt shown in the wiki, making them by far superior to crossbowman in my opinion.
Also I saw you were spamming Musks at one point, when one strelet of mine will basically kill 2 musks of yours.
Also I think the cav archers showed their value against your dragoons and the spamability for russia showed even that I didnt need walls, although probably if you microed a bit more it would have been more devistating.
Yeah, it was the insta-spam that won it. Once my military pop got lesser than Russia, it was just straight pressure from Russia keeping it down.
Itâs mainly in NR60 Orinoco games where I developed the feelings of disparity between skirmisher quality. Usually playing Russia ended with negative K/DRs, not getting much anywhere (like 2000 kills with 3000 deaths). But I think the key difference is on Orinoco, was infrastructure. People donât really have problems keeping max pop with a developed FB already there behind walls.
Counter Rifling gives them the x3 multiplier
And yeah. The horse cannons blew away a lot of musks and strets left and right, but they just popping back up fast like a wack-a-mole and to contribute constant DPS. I couldnât pump out cassadors to save my life, and they kept getting shot down by the bigger mass
I also had to switch to a musk core because the Cossack swarms were taking cassadors out of the fight. I put in some goons, but when Cossacks massed over like 13+, it was kind of unspoken that the goons couldnât kill them fast enough to save the cassadors. Drained eco a lot trying to replace the cass
And I never really thought cav archers had a problem against goons in treaty. Itâs really in supremacy itâs an issue where people micro goons better there, while I let sit them in the back of my army to shoot incoming cav. I guess the disparity between goons and cav archers really depends on who microing the goons
And also, I could have sent flanking cav or the native units into your base, but I wanted focus on the main topic: Russiaâs head-on game and Strelets. It was a good game, and I guess if youâre really willing take on a negative KD/R, you can push games and win with Russia like that. I still think Russiaâs skirmisher unit is still bad, but the instant infantry wins the game, if you manage to take the pop-lead
That is a lovely romance. 
