Magyars could really use an alternative answer to high pierce infantry zerg stuff like Huskarls and Eagles.
Huns haven’t had a lot of love in many years. They’re not the top tier power civ they once were.
Would be a lovely quality of life improvement.
I think magyars, turks, and Bulgarians should get the regular steppe lancer. They had nomadic roots, but at the height of their imperial power, nomadic warfare wasn’t the centerpiece of their military strength.
I don’t think Magyars or Turks NEED SL from a balance standpoint (or at least so I thought before double-checked aoe2stats.io, seem like both of them have nose dived in the civ rank since about april when both were fringe top ten and now they’re fringe bottom 10. IDK what changed, and that data is specific to 1900 elo 1v1 arabia so as always take with a grain of salt, it doesn’t represent their performance on all elos, maps, or team games), tho Bulgarians seem like they could use something. IDK if SL is the something they need but it couldn’t possibly hurt.
Huns and Cumans could lose the Paladin and get some third tier steppe-lancer.
I don’t like it for magyars. Strong Cavalry Archers are enough nod to their nomadic roots.
You could make a similar argument to Sipahi CA for turks. If you don’t like SL for Magyars I can respect that, but if that’s the logic then I think it’d also disqualify Turks, which again I can respect.
Three thoughts -
Magyars have plenty of decent answers to pierce armor units, including a fully upgraded knight line and Onager with siege engineers.
Good Halb options fair particularly worse against Steppe Lancers than against other cavalry options, and given they already have strong CA with parthian I don’t know that we want to make them even worse against Magyars than they can already pan out.
Not every civ needs to be good against eagles and Huskarls.
For Huns, it would fit nicely. Less for the others.
I like the idea for Huns.
I do think issue with Huns is more that their UTs and UU are a joke, so Id look into those first.
Magyars are already menacing in same ways Steppes are, so I wouldn’t really want to buff them there.
Turks began their transition to a sedentary society way after Magyars. As far as 1200, most turkish tribes in anatolia were still pastoralist societies. Along those lines, I’d give turks only regular steppe lanceres (no elite).
What’s the point of giving just regular steppe lancer but not elite, that’s a bad design and we have Dravidians and how clownish is currently such design.
Cumans - Glad no one remembers my Camel Rider with +5% speed but no elite upgrade.
I see what you’re saying, but I think your methodology is fundamentally flawed and consequently completely irrelevant. I don’t think it is helpful to judge what Magyars should have relative to the timeline of the Turks. If we attempted to do the same with the Huns, then we’d conclude that either then Huns shouldn’t have anything since by 1200 AD, the Hunnic Empire had been disbanded for 700 years, or in Imp we’d have feudal/maybe castle age units cause that’s congruent with Turk timeline.
I don’t think any reasonable person would conclude that Huns shouldn’t get the steppe lancer because 700 years later the Turks still had them. But that is fundamentally the same argument you’ve employed for the Magyars. The two couldn’t be less related.
I think the question that needs to be answered is how removed was the practice of employing steppe cavalry that in game is represented as the Steppe Lancer, from the height of Magyar, not Turk but Magyar, power, and that removal being measured not strictly in number of years but by proportion of the relevant historical period.
If you believe that the use of nomadic Steppe Cavalry by the Magyars is sufficiently removed from the height of Magyar power as measured by a proportion of the relevant historical timeframe, then I can appreciate that argument, but what the turks were doing in 1200 AD is completely irrelevant.
I kinda agree, it does have that Dravidians Battle Elephant, Saracen Knight, Persian LS, kind of feel, though honestly with the current balance, the steppe lance is the only useful unit in the line.
However, even if the Elite Steppe Lancer was the best thing since sliced bread, the SL is pretty good in early castle at breaking through palisade walls because of their ranged melee attack, something other units that have similarities to the SL, like scouts, knights, or CA, don’t possess.
Even if a civ only has access to the SL it does open up some options.
So why give Crossbows to non archer civs or cavalier to malay or even knights to Saracens?
It makes tech trees look more interesting
It’s a completely normal part of the game that civs have useless units. Think about Cav Archers of many European civs, e.g. Teutons or Franks, both without Bracer.
Somehow rarely, the same logic isn’t applied in the same way to Battle Elephants (except Dravidians) or Steppe Lancers. So, I completely support diversifying the tech tree patterns by adding such units where fitting.
The opposite way to proceed would be to take away useless units from existing civs, e.g. Spanish could lose Archers etc.
Taking away Feudal Archers is a great way to put a timer on your head for Feudal Aggression.
Just an example, and perhaps not a good one. Take Cav Archers for Teutons instead. Would removing them change something? Hardly for competitive play, because they are not viable. But for campaigns and diversity, it’s better to have also non-viable units.
That’s why I think Steppe Lancers (and Battle Elephants) could also be spread more.
Most people say tou cannot be viable as a civ that has Eagles if you dont have elite eagles and I cant see how thats so must have or be D tier
@DynasticPlanet5 i once saw a game where Spanish beat gurjaras, back when they were OP, using archers. The Spanish player used archers to win against OP gurjaras.
Had the gurjaras player expected that play, it probably wouldn’t have worked, but cause it was so off meta it actually was very good.
The potency of any given strat is its on paper viability multiplied by the inverse of how expected it is.
I heard of another game where viper won with Persian Longswords.
No you won’t be winning games left and right with “unviable” options, but it’s nice to have a few off meta options in your back pocket.
So in summary while yes, having eagles but not elite eagles (and presumably you’re drawing the comparison between SL and Elite SL) wouldn’t be s-tier, it could still be situationally useful.
i recall there was a time when Celts were using Crossbows in Caslte Age despite lacking Thumb Ring and only having Chemistry as their one Imperial tech besides Monastery stuff. So too its possible Eagles without Elite could see good use in Feudal and Castle age combat even if dead ended as well
Even just regular Steppe Lancers for Magyars would be perfectly viable. It’d be an excellent option for Castle Age and something they could viably FC into since they’d be automatically upgraded with the free 2x attack from the blacksmith.
The Magyars are the people of the Pannonian Steppe. I don’t think a historical reason against giving them the Steppe Lancer really holds up.