I’m guessing this has probably been discussed before but compared to skirms they cost double the food, +3 seconds longer training time, -1 less range and they die much harder to pikes and camels. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in 1v1 games in close to 1,000 games.
What would be the harm in giving them the same range as skirms and/or lowering the food cost to say, 40? Ok they have mobility and more HP than skirms, but I still don’t think they’d be OP with a bit of a buff. Hussar would still be the superior trash raiding unit, so it’s not like their mobility is put to that much use, apart from microing down pikes or avoiding crossbow without ballistics. Also much harder to mass than crossbow, so they never feel worth the food investment imo, especially with the simultaneous investment into knights typically as Berbers. And they’re not that effective at taking out villagers either, so I can’t really see the point of them in their current state.
I suppose I could be wrong about them never appearing in ranked games, that’s just my anecdotal experience, but I don’t recall really seeing them in pro games I’ve watched either. Maybe they could be made available in Feudal Age? Whatever the case, I think they either need a buff or more civs need access to them, because it’s a shame to have a unique unit we almost never see due to stronger units being available like Camel Archers and cheap knights.
I think that they should be given to Portuguese and Spanish for a start, considering that they historically actually used them. I also think it might be good if they had equal base range to a cav archer, but moved faster. This makes them a more emphasized anti-cav archer unit, which was, to my understanding, a major part of their purpose. They were used by the Iberian nations to fight the Berber cavalry armies. That is kind of how I see it.
The only situation currently where you would prefer genitours over skirmishers is against cav archers.
In all other situations it only adds an additional weakness as genitours are even easier to counter than skirms and less effective against pikes.
And guess what the other berber UU excels in.
I think the devs could overthink the whole genitour design as it isn’t even fitting with the historical “unit” if you can speak as it about it this way. I think it would only benefit the unit if it was more destinct from the skirm and also given to spanish and portuguese.
If it was to be historically accurate, the genitour should be a light cavalry as fast as scouts with more pierce armor (like it currently is).
The javelins should deal low amount of melee damage with low bonus vs cavalry (and heavy cav should have resistance against it), higher bonus vs archers and cav archers. This way the genitour would counter archers and also be able to herass light cav but not heavy cav.
That’s how the genitour would fit in historically and also in the game.
No bonus damage vs spears, it wasn’t used against infantry afaik.
non-elite genitour don’t get the same +2 against CA so even they aren’t that good vs CA. Also, Camel archer exist so they become redundant once you have a castle
It’s a design flaw, the whole Genitour saga. The role this unit serves falls between two Fully Upgraded units that do the same job just better, Elite Skirmisher and Camel Archer makes Genitour feels detached strategically, yes it’s harmonic to have multiple units in the tech tree that serve the same role, however an extremely poor and easy way to design a civ. (Teutonic Champs that have extra melee armor are next on this list, and much more, many times it’s not justified)
You address the problem in a reductive manner as if there it’s an independant unit floating around in the editor mode. With that being said, in this singular dimension you’re correct, you’re pointing at the core of the problem, it’s definitely the food cost that makes it impossible to mass during early Castle Age.
The easiest way would be to apply the Cavalry bonus to all Cav units, aka Mounted units, and therefore Berbers would get to have a cheaper Genitours relatively.
The better way to do it would be to address the root of the problem, in order to buff Genitour and make it viable we’d have to remove Elite Skirmisher from Berbers tech tree and/or make Genitour a regular bonus rather than a team-bonus.
This way we can govern the balancing process much smoothly, we could adjust the stats boldly and I promise you, you’d see Genitours every game with Berbers, unlike the current situation where Berbers are so generic til they get to their Camel Archer composition.
Lastly, the repetitive arguement regarding this unit that appears monthly about giving it to Portuguese/Spanish is just another suicidal HJW (History Justice Warriors) that want to ruin the game’s playability for the sake of some accuracies.
Now Imagine having Conqs and Genitours in the same composition, they benefit from the same techs (bloodlines, husbandry, armor that cost no gold) and they roughly have the same speed. It’s ridiculous.
What, so it’s not ok to have Conqs and Genitours, but it is ok to have Berbers, who never use them, or if they do, pair them in an even better combo, like with knights? Also, your arguments are really repetitive. I can literally quote a few things that I can almost guarantee you will say on most posts:
RIP Civ Diversity
Yes, let’s just Keshikize every unit
We all love the gold efficient fantasy units, so let’s make more of those
We all loved AoC Arabia, and want it back
Sound familiar? The thing is, most of the community doesn’t actually seem to agree with you. You can live in your own little world of how you think stuff should be balanced, but what you think might be good, actually makes the game a lot less enjoyable for other people. You don’t have to shoot down every single idea just because it doesn’t align with your balancing philosophy. Just saying, it does become annoying after a while.
This, alongside a cheaper cost, base speed and bonus vs spears/frame delay will probably be enough.
As for which civ gets them- knock yourself out, I couldn’t care less
Maybe 5 base PA in imp, all at the cost of making them not a team unit and just a regular one available to the civ, like condos are.
Regardless, I still think skirms (also Gens) will see a lot more play in 1v1 and TG especially if archers didn’t have such a ridiculous +3 bonus against spears from the get go, maybe at all.
Very much agreed. @AllergicTable49 just says a lot of words but really nothing to back any of it up. Just his idea against someone else’s, which is cool, just don’t state it as fact.
You’re completely missing the whole point of the post, its that they are never used. Adding them to more civs would be an effort to change that. Mentioning historical accuracy was merely reinforcing the idea, not the reason he mentioned it. You really think your onto something with that acronym huh?
That’s a contradiction within 1 sentence.
The tone you type with sucks and no one will take you seriously when you just disregard whatever anyone else is saying and assert that you are correct & all knowing.
OK, I just design my own Genitour, how I think it would fit in the game (and could actually become a generic unit available to all but ofc the meso civs).
Genitour - 45 F, 15 W, 20 s -produced at stables
Armor Classes: Cavalry, Cavalry Archer, Archer
Benefits from Melee attack and Cavalry armor Upgrades, Husbandry and Ballistics (not bloodlines)
HP: 40
Armor: 0/3 pierce
Range: 6
Attack: 2 Melee, +3 vs Archers, +1 vs Cavalry
ROF: 3
Speed: 1.5
Elite Genitour - 45 F, 15 W, 20 s -produced at stables
Armor Classes: Cavalry, Cavalry Archer, Archer
Benefits from Melee attack and Cavalry armor Upgrades, Husbandry and Ballistics (not bloodlines)
HP: 50
Armor: 0/4 pierce
Accuracy: 100 %
Range: 7
Attack: 2 Melee, +3 vs Archers, +1 vs Cavalry
ROF: 3
Speed: 1.5
This way the genitour would excel against archers and cav archers, can herass low-armored melee units but should be careful. High-Armored melee units like the knight line would pose a big threat to the genitours, as they would take only 1-2 damage per hit.
With the other trash units the genitour would have an ambivalent status as the fights could swing in either direction depending on the masses fielded and micro. The best “trash counter” might be the skirm line with 6 bonus damage and +1 Range.
Damn you’re already a fan I’m feeling a legend. Keep it going bro.
So sorry mediocrity got over this wonderful game, low elo fan base and an extremely pop-attentive developers brought this game to its current shaky state, I’m just trying to stop this proggressive madness.
Btw I set you to “Ignore”, I’m sure you can find someone else to stalk on these forums gg wp
No need to be so dramatic. Current ELO distribution shows that 90% of the player base is below 1400. And the pro players’ opinions carry far more weight than ours; so it’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
I don’t think you are quite as smart as you think you are. By definition the majority of the player base must be low Elo. How could a system that represents skill level relative to other players ever have a majority of high Elo players. It would be a broken system.
Wow, you are a really great guy! Thanks for the help.
I made this post a while back talking about my thoughts on Genitours being a regional UU for Iberia and North Africa which is relevant to this thread’s topic:
Berbers: The Team Bonus never really did anything for players allied to the Berbers due to trash units and especially Skirmishers being generally very weak in Team Games (They get countered by the omni-present KTs, Mangonels do the same thing but better, weak offensive capabilities compared to gold unit, etc ), Even in the rare situation were Genitours would be strong the person going for them would most likely be just the Berber one anyways given they have a decent CA focus and are only missing PTs. This is also an issue shared with the Vietnamese TB as well, but that is a different discussion
Overall the TB mainly translated to just a 1v1 bonus for the Berbers and a non-existent one for Team Games, were Genitours to become a regional UU avaliable to Berbers anyways, they would absolutely love having their TB removed and replaced with something that provides a relevant bonus in Team Games (A commonly suggested one I agree with is 25% working Castles and replacing the meh Kasbah UT with something else)
Spanish: This Civ is overall underperforming, a bit weak against Archer Civs and with little strong going for it outside of Conq Castle Play and okayish Tower rushes civ, the addition of the Genitour could serve to alleviate these issues whilst also reinforcing the mounted unit (FU Paladins, Hussars, CA only missing PTs, two mounted UU in the form of Conqs and Missionaries) and trash (Only Civ with every generic trash unit fully upgraded) themes the civ has in an manner that would be perfectly historically accurate. Overall I feel giving Spanish Genitours would be a net positive in almost all relevant ways
Also for those wondering whether 2 UUs and a regional UU would be too much, we already have precendent of such a thing being fine with Incas (Slinger, Kamayuk and Eagle Warrior). Missionaries are also overall a meme unit and not relevant in most situations anyways
Portuguese: A VERY badly performing civ on open maps (43% in Naive Winrate on Age of Statistics, sub 50% winrate against all Civs aside from 10), that also suffers from having an very uninteresting identity on land maps, due to their only unique quality that is consistently relevant on such maps being 20% cheaper Gold Units, as everything else is either too weak (Both UTs, Faster Researching bonus), only relevant for water (Castle UT, 10% Ship HP, Caravel UU) or very niche (Feitoria, Organ Guns).
Genitours would give the civ more interesting and stronger options to go for on open Land, reinforce having both good Archery Range and Stable units theme of the civ (Genitours benefit from both their upgrades), strong late game theme, and just like with Spanish in a manner that would be perfectly historically accurate.
Even if you give them to Portos or Spanish they won’t be seen in any 1v1 game. That’s not the point, it is about to reduce the cost of the unit to be worth it to train instead of the Skirmishers
IMO, reduce the attack bonus against the Archers to +3 (from +4); give +1 bonus to CA; increase the base Attack to +4 (from +3). Cost change to 40 food, 40 wood (from 50 food, 35 wood) and increase the speed to 1.4 (from 1.35). Not sure about the tt.
Attack bonus: +3 vs Archers, +2 vs Spearman, +1 vs Cav Archers,
HP 50, Att 4, Armor 0/4, Speed 1.4
Elite Genitour would be the same but with +5 attack
I think even this wouldn’t make them viable because they have cheap knights as a food unit which are the much more effective and aggressive unit. And Camel Archers are a better counter to CA, which are also more dangerous to villagers and other units than Genitour. Even in the late game when gold runs out and you can’t make knights or camel archers, I would always go Hussar as a raiding unit.
So without a more significant food discount, Genitour still wouldn’t be viable with such a small buff. And I don’t think that speed boost would do much either. Fastest units in the game are Cuman scouts in imperial age which are 1.79 speed. So maybe Genitours could be more like 1.6 speed and food cost 35 or 40. Or give them to other civs like we said before. All civs except meso civs makes sense. And it would make just as much (i.e. just as little) historical sense as all civs having skirmishers.
I’m feeling a legend. Keep it going bro.
Current ELO distribution shows that 90% of the player base is below 1400. And the pro players’ opinions carry far more weight than ours; so it’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
Thanks for the help.