What’s the diff? They look pretty similar. The Dragoon has less health, 240 vs 320 to the Hussar.
The Hussar has a ‘Guardian Attack’… what is that? I assumed one of these would be melee and one would be ranged. The Hussar has a ‘siege attack’… I’m guessing that means it can attack buildings? But the Dragoon cannot?
It looks like the Dragoon, a second age unit, is weaker than the Hussar.
Oh, another thing. Is one of these ‘light Calvary’ and one ‘heavy Calvary’? I assumed light vs heavy would have something to do with hit-points, speed, whatever. Not sure about that at all.
Any comments / suggestions on this topic welcome.
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Hussars are hand cavalry and dragoons are ranged cavalry, so hussars attack with a sword and dragoons can shoot.
Hussars are good at killing light infantry so units like skirmishers and crossbow, they also do well vs artillery.
Dragoons are good at killing hand cavalry like hussars. In general dragoons are not available until age 3 but some civs have dragoon type units available in age 2.
Dragoons are light cavalry and hussar heavy cavalry. All it is is their unit tag so explains what they counter or get countered by. Light cavalry like dragoons beat heavy cavalry but lose to light infantry. Heavy cavalry beat light infantry and artillery but lose to light cavalry.
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Dragoons are light cavalry and are countered by light infantry like archers, crossbowmen, skirmishers etc.
Dragoons counter heavy cavalry like hussars. Other units that perform the same role as dragoons are cavalry archers, war wagons, Howdahs, Javelin riders…
Hussars are heavy cavalry that are strong against light infantry but weak to light cavalry and heavy infantry like pikemen, musketeers etc. Hussars are melee units but there are a few units which are ranged heavy cavalry, like Hakkapelits.
Some units in the game (like the Lakota Rifle Rider are classified as both heavy as well as light cavalry and are countered by both light infantry and by light cavalry).
All units in AoE3 have a siege attack (that does damage to buildings). All Ranged units also have a melee attack in addition to their ranged attack(for example if you get too close to an archer it will attack with a knife instead).
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A dragoon is faster, ranged and counters both cavalry and artillery. they are vulnerable to pretty much all infantry and dont have a lot of hp, so they have to be used carefully. The range and speed are their advantages. they combine well with skirmishers to form a well rounded army composition.
hussars counter ranged infantry and artillery, have a decent siege attack, and are pretty well rounded units that can tank a lot of damage.They combine well with musket units to form a well rounded army.
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This thread tells more about problems with the AoE3DE UI then anything.
Hussars and Dragoons have completely different roles in AoE3.
The game needs to better communicate how the counter system works.
There is only 5 main unit types but many people get confused because the game doesn’t communicate that well.
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Llevo jugando el juego un tiempo, si bien la primera vez no entiendes nada, ya en unas pocas partidas le entiendes
Disagree, it is about learning what this game offers. It simply works different than other games and offers some more complexity. The descriptions of the units are very clear. “Dragoons, Ranged Cavalry. Good against cavalry”.
There are the light description and the heavy stats description. OP sounds like he is very new to the game and that is good, but it does take a few matches and some digging into the game.
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There is a long list of tags in many cases.
Also you need to hover over parts of the UI and that hover over doesn’t work half of the time.
In SC2 you can click on the icon of the unit and it shows you an article about that unit in the ingame wiki with the icons of all units they get countered by and all units they counter.
AoE3 has more units so maybe listing all would be a little much but still the most common ones like Musketeer, Skirmisher, Hussar, Dragoon and Falconet.
Starcraft 2 doesnt need it, it works on a much simpler system and as you yourself said, lower amount of units.
Also AoE3 has different counters depending on stances aswell. Everything can always be improved upon and if they find other ways to make information more clear, great! But I don’t agree that it needs to be like SC2 and that every game should use it as a template, even for UI etc.
But this isn’t really the place to discuss this topic further, the man got the explanations he was seeking.
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I just prefer this one to AoE2, where I keep without understanding the units…
The simple version is that
Infantry>Cavalry>Artillery>Infantry
And there is counter units for all
Riflemen and Foot archers=Infantry that counters infantry at the cost of sucking vs Standard cavalry
Counter Cavalry=Cavalry that counter cavalry at the cost of being countered by riflemen and foot archers.
Culverins=Artillery that counter artillery but don’t do good damage vs other units.
Then there are heavy cavalry like lancers and cuirassiers and special exceptions like rifle rider. But there aren’t that many.
Basically
The counter system in Age of Empires 3 is quite simple with only European units.
It is also well explained in the tutorial of the art of war.
But when you add units of the DLCs it becomes complicated. Each non-European civilization has its unique units.
I advise beginners to play against European civilizations to be able to learn the basic counters well, and then to learn the American, African and Asian civilizations by playing them one by one.
As SamuraiRevolution said
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SC2 is more complicated because the units don’t fall into roles and because the 3 races have very different units.
SC2 definitely needs it. How can you instinctively know how one type of alien is countered?
You can easily figure out that Pikeman are countering Cavalry without having played AoE before though.
That is more confusing then helpful.
Light Infantry are a core unit and the player will encounter them a lot more then artillery.
The simply version would be
Heavy Cavalry > Light Infantry > Heavy Infantry/Light Cavalry > Heavy Cavalry
Artillery > Infantry
Heavy Cavalry > Artillery
Shock Infantry = Heavy Cavalry
Eagle Warrior Knight = Light Cavalry
This is 90% of units you will encounter.
I am dropping this again over here
Clockwise from the top : Artillery , Heavy Infantry , Light Infantry , Heavy Cavlary , Light Cavlary
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theres the sort of general
cav > artillery > infantry
and then
cav < anticav < anti-anticav (skirms)
since skirms are essentially the counter to all anticavalry units, which is a broad class including different infantry, shock infantry and cavalry units. But regardless of what class it is, if a unit counters cavalry, skirms counter them.
Cav is good against essentially everything which doesn’t specifically counter cav.
Anticav is, well, good against cav.
with the exception of culverin type, generally all artillery counters all infantry, and all cavalry counters all artillery.
Then you include lancer units which are heavy cavalry, but counter infantry or at least break even to heavy infantry and lose to regular heavy cavalry.
Lancer units are Cuirassiers, Lifidi Knights, Mamuluke, Elmeto, Shotel Warriors and anything with “lancer” in the name and that Ottoman one I’ve forgotten the name of.
lancers are a sort of hybrid of artillery and cavalry. good vs all infantry and bad vs all cavalry. ever run some lancers or sowars into some huss or axe riders? they get absolutely destroyed
cuirs are… well, stupidly strong. i wouldnt class them anyway other than just very very strong cav
I’d argue that Sowars are closer to hussars than lancers. Faster hussars that are counters to skirms harder.
cuirs aren’t that strong I beat them with Cavalry in melee, they’re tough enough don’t clump up as much and since they’re fighting in melee avoid the range resist.
sowars have 20 base damage, pretty similar to lancers, they just are terrible vs heavy infantry and devastating vs skorms. they have speeeeed to make up for it though.
within the heavy cavalry class there is so much diversity in stats so cav vs cav is actually not super straightforward
