Won’t be enough. 10 spears cancel 10 charges from FL so basically front row. Not second, third or fourth row.
If it was gold it would have made sense since gold is limited resources and if they fail rush it would hurt their eco but food? really? Even if they increased cost 20 more gold it would have been much better so you could stop FL rush by isolating gold just like french you can stop knights production if you can isolate their gold. Also gave more HP. Only Keeps or TCs could reduce the mass and now they are useless as well.
BTW I played chinese for the first time and was able to easily win match without knowing anything about how civ works. I hover over the fire lancers and it said this dynasty, I went in, made 30 FLs (dirt cheap) and destroyed both infantry civs (Abbasids and HRE) which are supposed to counter cav. You don’t need any skills to mass FLs, you just need to delay match which is very easy in TGs.
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FL do now 2 times the torch damage of scouts and cost almost 3 times more. The scout mass for the same price is also more tanky.
Why you should make FL? 
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Not really true.
Dark age scouts do 10 torch dmg or was it 13. Imperial was 20?
FL was already more expensive than scouts begin with. 80 food 20 wood and gold. 2x more expensive yet alone the fact they needed 2x castle landmarks.
If you go for mass scouts at castle age it most likely wont work because scouts are inferior versions of FL and easier to deal with also scouts cant really kill villagers.
Imp 20 vs 40 so exactly twice (scout vs FL)
Castle 16 vs 36 so 2.25.
If you go for landmark snipig scouts are just the better units. You can start to produce them early, you dont need a 2 landmark, they are more cost effecive and they are also faster.
Summarized you will have earlier 60+ Scouts than 30 FL and they will kill buildings faster.
For sure FL is the better raiding unit and can also take skirmishes but for landmark sniping it is significant worse. And in pure combat after this nerfs I also dont see FL in a strong spot.
I think FL are not useless now but for almost every job there is a better unit.
Actually you can stand ground spears (attack move might work, haven’t tested) and they will cancel all fire lancer charges that come near them. Also any fire lancers that have to walk around will not charge since they are pathing around.
scouts do same as other military, 10/13/16/20. So now they do half the damage as FL but you can make more than 3x as many for the same cost. Ironically scouts are probably better for landmark rushing (excluding vs keeps or abbasids or post-imp HRE/Delhi cause of 5 fire armor)
Never experienced single time where spears been able to stop mass of FL charges
Everyone still forget the Spirit Way cost reduction
Speaking of effectivity against units.
Fire lancers aoe charge are now really weak against armored units now. They do 23+2 charge damage and half of that in area meaning 12.5 damage. M@a and knights have 6 armor meaning charge attack does 6.5 damage against either.
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FL didn’t get buff. They got nerf. FL is a unit for raiding buildings, not for tanking!
Higher cost = nerf
Reduce charge damage to area units = nerf
Reduce damage to buildings/Siege = nerf
Higher HP = buff
At least the team decided to add a little HP to it. Otherwise it would just become a useless unit (unique to Chinese)
However let’s see how it goes… (PEACE! I don’t even use FL in the game.)
I can tell that FL is still pretty viable, just not right away at Castle as they will need to wait until Imperial to compensate for the higher cost which give people longer time to prepare for their incoming. The cost reduction from Spirit Way is still significant, thought at competent players can fit 12 Stables around it + IO, it could some extra tuning on Spirit Way bonus (not totally nerf but real tuning)
I feel like spirit way is fine as it tbh
The discount is scaled to the new cost, so even with it they still cost more than their previous discounted price. How much more? Maybe not quite enough, but I think that would be a base cost issue, not anything to do with spirit way.
Start messing with spirit way and you start messing with every single unique Chinese unit, not everyone uses spirit way for FL, I use the bonus for grenadiers
Normally, you’d want to build Spirit Way in the safety of your base away from the main battlefield, that’s why Fire Lancer get significant more benefit from Spirit Way than the other 2 dynasty units because they are cavalry and can arrive to reinforce the battlefield sooner while the other 2 have the movement speed of heavy infantry and will takes awhile. I’d like to see it effect reduce while apply to all stables/archery range instead of just those built around it.
I found it weird as well, considering how overpowered firelancers were (especially in team games). But take into consideration:
- Total cost from 120 to 160 (+ 33%)
- HP from 160 to 180 (in IV) (+ 12,5%)
- Torch damage from 55 to 40 (in IV) (- 27%)
You don’t need to be a math genius to see that the overall nerfs are more substantial than its buff. Before this patch, their total damage per resource was 55 / 120 = 0,45. After this patch it will be 40 / 160 = 0,25. Meaning their raiding effective is 44% less. Only to be offset by them having 12,5% (or 20) HP more.
Assuming fire lancers need 10 volleys to destroy specific landmarks (pre patch) they now will about 14 to 15 volley’s on equal resource basis. I don’t think they will sustain 40 to 50% more damage while only gaining 12,5% HP.
The above ignores the fact that their gunpowder charge will now no longer deal 8.500 damage per volley to clustered units because more distant units now take less damage. Just like is the case for demo ships, mangonels and landsknecht.
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To each their own I suppose, I slap that sucker right on my front lines most of the time to speed up my unit spam
Good maths 
I’m still unsure the torch damage nerf will be enough, but hopefully it will be.
If you or anyone has some free time, I’d be happy to test it out in a custom game just to experience how well it works and at what numbers.
Also keep in mind fire lancers now only do double damage of regular units, meaning if you have 80 scouts or horseman vs 40 fire lancers, they both are just about as good at landmark sniping (unless it’s Abbasids cause fire armor)