Why everyone says cav archers need a frame delay buff?
On the contrary those foot archers that load and fire arrows in nanoseconds should get a higher frame delay…
Moving-stopping-shooting like an automaton is really “strange” both in looks and function.
Fix this and Long Swordsmen (that everybody also wants buffed) are perfect.
you think knights would be over-powered then? reduce hp by 5 or 10…
But anyways the counter to knights should not be “Make MOAR archers”
because a unit that is supposed to be about hit and run tactics can’t hit and run…
it’s called micro, and its a core mechanic of pretty much every RTS game there is.
and yet i don’t see you mentioning how to fix the longswords.
no i think we should leave knights and crossbows alone, stop trying to reinvent the wheel.
it isn’t since pathing has been getting better, look at KotD3, best civs aren’t using archers for the most part, which means archers isn’t countering cavalry as much.
Makes more sense to fix two units instead of 3 units anyway.
Sorry man, although this is a logical solution, a lot of the older players are set in their ways so won’t change it. And the balance team in charge of these changes consists purely of those types of people…
you are microing archers not stormtroopers with laser rifles, they should have a delay in firing.
If this stop-instafire is resolved then LS are golden
yeah because archers are totally dominating everything right now, its logical to nerf a unit that isn’t a problem.
oh wait, looks like cavalry civs, and eagle civs. how were the civs reliant on archers doing?
Britons? 3-15
Chinese? 17-20
Vikings? 14-18
meanwhile those archer eagle meso civs?
Aztecs 13-7
Mayans 18-11
meanwhile those cavalry civs?
Franks 22-20
Khmer 22-16
Lithuanians 21-21
Malians 14-11
yeah that’s why they haven’t been fixing pathing, which nerfs archers. and there aren’t rumors going wild about cav archers getting a buff in a few weeks.
a couple months ago i agreed that the archer line was a problem, and that stacking probably needed nerfing. with pathing improvements i now disagree, the Archer line isn’t performing as well as it used too.
they do, it’s just very small.
not really - LS got wrecked by archers even before the near instant shooting they have now.
LS aren’t supposed to compete with knights and archers though, its literally in the tech tree that they aren’t.
the Militia line literally takes no bonus damage from any trash unit, something the archer and knight line can’t claim, and they literally wreck trash hard. they also destroy eagles and won a few games against meso civs in KotD3.
the only change i would make to the Militia line is a slight speed improvement for LS onwards, and making LS upgrade cheaper.
if the answer to knights is to make more archers, how come we recently watched almost pure archer get overwhelmed by pure hussar, which is even weaker then knights against archers.
the fact is you need to mix in an actual anti cavalry unit.
People (and several pros too) complain that CA are now too sluggish to micro due to their high frame delay, that was increased in DE from HD for various reasons.
Now I don’t think that people in general want to get back to HD CA, but maybe a middle ground frame delay could work.
Because foot archers have different qualities, first of all, they haven’t the CA speed or mobility, so increasing the frame delay on foot archers would mean to make them impossible to micro.
Consider that even if the frame delay is very low (not 0) faster units (cavalry, eagles…) can still catch up during the time that they FIRE.
Also, CA have more HP, and can take more punishment, while foot archers have to fire quickly if they want to avoid being squished by manganels shots.
But it’s not necessary, the relationship between knights and xbows is one of the most balanced aspects of the game, granted it’s not perfect, but miles ahead of other balance problems.
And what should you do? Mass pikes to run around all the map trying to chase the enemy knights and force an engagement forever…
actually mass archer doesn’t work against mass cavalry anymore. you actually need to mix in anti cavalry units, go look at yo vs lieerrey game 7.
High frame delay just makes the game overall more clunky and less enjoyable to play, at least when microing is concerned. I think foot archer frame delay is fine, it’s CAs which are way too slow, hindering thus proper micro.
What imo should be changed about foot archers is their stacking ability, you shouldn’t be able to clump together in a tiny space dozens of archers.
i’m not sure if this is even an issue anymore with pathing getting better, it could be, but i don’t know.
I was referring to early castle age engagements, when you have a good mass of archers (partially from feudal) and the enemy have small groups of knights, and you can actually focus fire, even with good patching this is still achievable.
Of course on equal number archers alone aren’t enough, they need pikes or monks.
Probably it’s not a big problem as before, but still it wouldn’t hurt to reduce it a bit and see how it plays out.
well that’s more of just having an advantage though, and they should trade well in that situation.
It’s much more situational now, because archers are not the only meta anymore. Still, I think that this is something which should be addressed at some point.
Exactly, both are a potential counter to each other (not a hard counter though), it depends by several factors.
Gotta admit, the idea is pretty radical, but has a huge potential to actually work
i think if anything it would utterly neuter any civ that uses the archer line as its staple.
But you are the person to know better and judge what is a logical solution or not?^^ Then please explain to me how that is the case.
Seriously, if you do that the result will be that everybody only plays knights in castle age except maybe archer civs with huge military or eco bonus. Improvements on melee pathfinding and map design (in case of arabia) already shifted the archer/knight balance to a point that archers don’t dominate knights anymore. Instead atm, it’s rather that xbows beat knights in early castle and knights beat xbows from mid-castle age onwards until archers have another power spike in early imp but fall off again when there is lots of trash units on the field. I don’t see you’d need to nerf archers against that background.
I just really dont like the idea of adding a frustrating stutter making the unit less micro friendly, and less smooth. The issue I have with CA are just how clunky and glitchy they feel, more then anything else. If archers need a nerf I think stacking, cost, or stats in general are the area to address, rather then frame delay.
I think the proposal has the potential to make the meta a lot more interesting without powercreep (shout-out to ask those people who missed the part about nerfing Knights, or lacked the imagination to extend that logic to eagles /sarcasm), however I don’t like the way this proposal clashes with realism.
Part of the point of xbows was that they could fire instantly. I’m not sure they could reload whilst moving, but fixing that might be hard. I don’t know what the effect would be of giving them a longer attack animation, but I suspect the attach animation could be interrupted by a move-command.
i proposed they could trim knight hp by 5 or 10
and you don’t see the problem with nerfing 3 units instead of just buffing two?
by the way - 5 to 10 HP isn’t going to make up for the fact that you’re literally REDUCING micro in a RTS game.
AoE2 is already relatively slow on the speed/micro end compared to other RTS games, isn’t any reason to reduce it further then it is.