Guecha proposal

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

As of right now the Muiscas Guecha warrior is in a pretty bad spot.

For 50wood and 60 gold it’s very expensive and therefore beats almost nothing cost effectively.

I would propose that Guecha warriors benefit from monastery techs. Obviously not all of them can have the same effect but I’d be thinking about something like:

Sanctity: +15HP

Redemption: +2 Attack vs. buildings and Siege

Atonement: + 2 Attack vs. Monks

Fervor: + 15% movement speed

Illumination: + 50% attack speed (would be on a level with a non thumb ring archer afterwards)

Herbal medicine: doubles their lifegain upon death

Theocracy: The healing effect stacks

Block printing: +3 Range (maybe this is excessive, but on the other hand the unit costs quite a bit. maybe loose the +1 range for Elite upgrade in return)

Devotion, Faith and Heresy keep their effect

This would not only fit within the “spiritual warrior” theme, but also in my opinion more interesting than straight up buffing the unit. I decided on the monk tech effect in a way that they kinda align with a similar effect for the Guecha, however on the other hand I could see them give different effects, just make you pick up some of the lesser used Monk techs, as this way, the best monk techs are also the best Guecha techs, apart from Redemption. Anyway I like this having a subpar unit, but with lots of investments it can be turned into a real powerhouse progression.

At least until the latest patch Muisca didn’t have a good winrate, however since then they (+Slinger & Champi) got some buffs, so depends on where they settle now, they would need to be nerfed in other areas. However I feel like no matter what the Guecha needs more buffs regardless, because I feel like thats not good civ design, to balance a civ around their UU being useless.

2

Instead of indirectly increasing their upgrade cost, I think just minimizing their cost will be enough, especially the gold cost. I’ll say 40 gold will be a good start.

3

I think any one of these buffs—reducing the cost by 15 or more, increasing the range by one for both the Cage and the Imp, or reducing the attack interval to 2.5 seconds or less—would be sufficient.
In fact, the dev should have done that from the start; choosing to increase HP instead was a mistake.

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4

Reduce cost from 60g to 50g and increase its range by +1 in base and elite version.

5

Would ring armor be so bad for them? It kinda would uncheapen their armor bonus too

6

I second everything you have said.

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7

Interesting idea. Would make them much more viable, though may end up needing some nerfs afterwards. And doubles down on Muisca’s monk focus.

Of course, simply reducing the cost is still a simpler fix, but with some work adding effects from several monastery techs is more interesting.

8

Won’t work as Muisca already have 3 amazing ranged units and one of the problem of Guecha is they are not any better than generic Archer line in 95% cases.

9

They might be with 2 more pierce armor

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10

I don’t like the idea.
Guechas are from their design and Gimmick extremely snowbally already.

And this would only add to it.

That’s also why they are so expensive, cause devs know how snowbally this is. And I don’t really get it.

They should change the Gimmick to something that’s a bit more controllable. My idea was that they just pick up mummys from their dead companions. And for each mummy they get just a flat +1 attack. This would make them way more managable and allow the devs to reduce their price - which many others pointed out already is still way too high for the unit you get.

(I want to remember that phos already showed that guechas can be extremely tough to deal with, so just a flat buff to them could end in a cheese disaster)

11

It seems Guechas are intended to be a premium skirmisher. The problem is skirmishers are an anti-premium unit, they are a true trash unit. So trying to turn a skirmisher premium is hard. However, I don’t think it’s impossible.

I think I would rework them (elite) like so:
Attack: 6 (8) → 4 (6)
Bonus vs archers: 3 (4) → 10 (15)
Bonus vs cav archers: 2 (3) → 5 (6)
NEW: Bonus vs skirmishers: 4 (5)
Range: 3 (4) → 5 (5)
Elite upgrade cost: 750w 600g → 400w 350g

This way they would 3-shot or 4-shot nearly any archer unit but they would struggle against melee units. So you could actually mix a few of them in with your crossbows or Temple Guard to counter enemy archers and skirmishers.

Additionally, I think I would rework the “gimmick”. At present it is more annoying than useful. I think the HP regen is the proper stat for a buff on same unit death, but the current value is far too weak and situational. So perhaps I would make it a permanent buff to a single unit with practically unlimited stacking. At the moment I am thinking either 1 HP/min per stack or floor(3(√(stack count)) HP/min.

2 Likes
12

I’d love it if they just bit the bullet and went with the insane option of them just healing any friendly unit nearby rather than just guecha when they die.

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13

Either make it more powerful to justify the cost : +10 hp, 4 base range, 2.25 rof, +3 archer class armor OR just make that unit cost 35 wood 25 gold which is its real worth, same net resource as skirms but lower burden on food to keep up vill production.

14

So they would become a strong gold skirmisher. Sometimes you really need sth with an umpfh to kill those pesky cav archers. :stuck_out_tongue:

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15

I really like this concept. I think it makes so much sense for Muisca to have a gold skirm that counters other Skirms.

Only thing I would change is that I wouldn’t give them so much bonus vs Archers but instead some Archer Armor, to make them more specialised against Skirms (and CA).

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