I wouldn’t increase the bonus dmg vs cav. In good numbers they already melt any cav units like no other units in the game. Recently played italians vs sicilians on arena and really wondered how genoese xbow perform here. Result is reduced bonus dmg and hauberk doesn’t really change much. They still die in one shot with medium sized archer numbers.
If anything make the elite upgrade a bit cheaper. But Irrespective of that the elite upgrade is still worth it. +2 attack especially makes a huge difference when you stop focus targeting units. Also the faster training time of elite addresses one of the major drawbacks from playing gc.
True, stat for stat, and price for price, one of the worst UU in the game. It’s a cool idea though, they need to give it more range or damage, it’s ridiculous.
Ratan is one of the best, and Genoese isn’t even close to it.
I would agree for janissary, since there really is not that much of a point for tossing so much cash when u can use a unit that is unlocked instantly at imp (HC), even with how much stronger it is than HC.
Longbow Man are good though, I don’t see much need for a buff.
Italians already have a very strong lategame.
And I also think GC never was intended to be a standalone unit like rattans or Plumes.
But there was one more point in the old thread that I wanted to talk about:
Eagles.
I think with eagles being somewhat the “cav replacement” of the meso civs it would make sense for GC to also have a low amount of bonus vs them. As I remember this was a good point in the other thread and should not be neglected. I think Italians in general have some probs with the mesos and could need a little bit of help there.
Ofc nothing to crazy, we don’t want to reverse the relations.
Imo, thats no point to make GC when facing meso. Why not spending on cheaper HC from range instead of GC from castle?
Besides, investing in Castle is not rewarding for Italians in 1v1. Italians is deprived of halbs and forced to rely on GC in 1v1 while GC is not very reliable and harder to mass than other foot archer UU. It is very hard to replenish the number when you spend to mass GC and they die hard to mangonel shot(even civs with bad siege).
Maybe because HC is only accessable in Imp? And GC are accessable in castle age?
As I said, the GC isn’t as the other archer UUs. It’s an addition that just adds some extra punch against cav. Italians don’t need to rely on GC, but it is a nice addition against cav civs.
Ofc it could be debatable to make GC a more rounded unit so it is massable. But imo the actual power of GC comes that you actually don’t have to make as big of a mass as with other civs.
truly one of the most worthless elite upgrade in the game, most of the time I would just go for their cheaper hand canoneers instead because they are cheaper and easier to mass while still hit cavalry just as hard and on the top of that, counter huskarls and eagle warriors The buff is you suggested is reasonable, but I would swap the +1 pierce attack with +1 range.
No Genoese doesn’t need extra range, they are balanced in TGs so enemy arbalests can beat them, with extra range then will be harder to deal with, as they counter cavalry really well.
imo, they do need +1 range, we are talking about imperial age here, lacking 1 range imperial makes them really bad to use, why not just use their cheaper hand cannoneer instead? they do high damage vs cav as well and even easier to mass and less investment to upgrade. Also +1 attack for the elite is redundant, they don’t need any extra attack. If you want the arbalest to win, then I suggest reducing their base attack by 1 but give them extra +3 vs cav to compensate.
+1 range works ofc. But I still think the real issue is the fact you need a good mass of them. That is why I would give a huge boost to the training time of the elite version. (Much faster than a ckn)
However, the unit per se is a bad concept:
only anti cavalry option of the civ
need mass
need castles
from one of the worst eco civ
Probabily it would have been better if the unit had been design like a trash unit weaker vs non-cavarly units.
I still think that the easiest fix would be to give Italians halbs since GCs seem to not work…
In low mobility situations that can work but once you get surrounded you’ll lose. Unless you find a chokepoint but then eagles will raid you. The best answer to eagles in imp actually is condotiero. Really good unit here. And in castle age you got knights and xbow with all upgrades. So Italians actually have all the tools vs meso civs.
Well in practice you can’t simply add gc into xbow army. When you transition from one into another you can play that as long as you sit under your castle but at some point you need to decide if you go arb or gc. Microing an army of both is horrible because of different range. When your archers shoot your gc will still run forward and not get the shot in unless they’re in first row.
And design wise it’s totally a standalone unit. But usually only in late game because you need several castles. Hussar, gc and bbc is one of the most powerful compositions in the game. But hard to get to ofc. That’s why on open maps you often see them going for arb instead and playing for early imp advantage.
Gc do work but the problem is indeed protecting from raids. So unless you have a nicely protected going on offense with gc is somewhat risky. So yes I agree with that one. Otherwise the civ is really fine for land maps.
GC would be still preferred in TG, while halbs in 1v1.
The other even better option is providing Italian Spearman line some bonus making them a good alternative to halbs while also helping the civ in the early stages.
Can everyone please stop acting like stone walls don’t exist? I swear people bring this up every thread. 600 stone in late castle age or early imp is nothing when you’re generating around 50 resources a second. If someone is going to use slow units and not stone wall then they have a massive gap in their strategic thinking. Similarly if someone is avoiding adding 600 resources to the thousands of resources they spend on an army something is wrong with that picture.
Even pros grossly overestimate the cost of stone walls post mid castle age because objectively it is analogous to the cost of walling with palisades on a much smaller eco. Spending X to wall at Y villagers is perfectly analogous to spending 4x to wall at 4y villagers as the alternatives don’t change price or are scaled commensurately (e.g. maa → rams). The assumptions required to make palisades in feudal optimal but stone walls post mid castle age suboptimal to the point of near-zero use are unreasonable. Fortified walls protect ~4x as many villagers for ~4x the cost from ~4x the anti wall investment. E.g. it takes 3 maa 24s to breach a palisade for a cost of ~200 res. It takes 3 capped rams w/ siege engineers around 28s to take out a fortified wall for an investment of ~700 resources. Exceptions are petards which are relatively vulnerable and bombard cannons which are just great units for taking out walls.
Regardless siege is slower than any unit which allows for the ability to force fights with a wide array of units one would otherwise be unable to use. For some civs this property is critical to using them optimally. Stone walls are a critical strategic tool and if you ignore them tons of civs end up being less than.
I look forward to people who try to counter my claim that 600 stone is not a big deal by stating that stone could be used on castles or repairs. This claim ignores that saving 600 stone gives you 600 extra stone after you would have run out which happens only in mid imp or later (many games end with stone still in the ground). From a time preference standpoint you’re going to have a tough time claiming that you need to save that stone for 15m while simultaneously claiming that the hit to your current eco isn’t justified by the return in the form of cheaper defense. You’d have to simultaneously value the future alot (that stone 15m later is valuable) but not value the future a lot (that saved resources on defense doesn’t justify the present cost of the walls). It’s inconsistent.
Literally none of this makes sense. If you are using GC with xbow it’s because you’re not fighting foot archers so just micro 1 tile closer. Problem solved.
Also pros will often use the same flawed reasoning you just did, that you have to make a full transition. When they make claims like “full arbs is better than 1 castle gc + arbs vs magyars” (which Viper once directly implied when he had 1 castle already built) you know something is wrong with their reasoning. All tests indicate this is an incorrect conclusion.
This whole community needs a lesson in correlation vs causation and optimization. Just because certain behaviors are correlated with other behaviors doesn’t mean there isn’t an exogenous variation which can be made to one behavior which fixes particulat weaknesses which arise due to the correlation. For a bunch of people making changes which can only have their efficacy estimated through causal inference this community makes a lot of pretty rudimentary errors regarding causal inference.
I actually have seen pros stone walling in KOTD late castle.
Was quite surprised by that, but I think it’s absolutely the right move. Otherwise you are just too easy to raid with that expanded eco you have at that time.
Can work sometimes but super risky. One hole or some siege units of your opponent and all the investment is for nothing. Also you might be giving up a large part of the map and you need some map control to get them down in the first place. That’s why you rarely see it.
Have you even played that comp? Even against cav this is super awkward but most importantly your opponent will have mangos if you play xbow and gc comp in castle age and then micro becomes hell. It’s simply not a good idea to mix these units unless you are in your base defending.