source needed on this. I know a lot of pros say that they don’t, but when they say this, they probably mean that “they don’t benefit greatly from it because the firerate stays low”.
The tooltip furthermore says “Archers” and Skirmishers are as much of an archer as the Archer-line. Cavalry Archers benefit from Thumb Ring too, so I doubt it’s only Archer-line.
From my anecdotal experience, I do notice Skirmishers firing faster after Thumb Ring is done.
alright thanks for sharing, I stand corrected, apologies.
On the other hand, do every civ need to be viable at imp age? I mean if it is powerful enough in castle age, I dont really mind it being weak on late imp as it is diversity of civs.
Yes, of course. Even MatCauthon3 will agree with me on this one, that all civs should at least be viable at any age.
But we have different opinions of what viable means.
the civ is not weak in Imp, just people are unhappy that the unit composition the Poles run is awkward/not easy to understand and doesn’t fall into one of the usual brainless 3 go-to gold Imp comps like Paladin Skirm Treb or Halb Scorpion Treb etc.
Winged Hussar with 13 attack base, 1 bonus vs archers AND Trample damage is no joke for a trash unit. The only true counter it has is Arbalest which can easily be played around by massing it first as equal numbers of Winged Hussar still decisively beat Arbalest
And don’t get me started on the Trample damage part, just people are unhappy this Hussar doesn’t fit in their conception of “usual” Hussar with high PA, low attack and exclusively used as a raiding unit.
The only tricky part with Poles is that early Imp you have to pre-emptively set up your economy for Hussar spam (60+ farms and growing in early Imp already) which means that as the Poles you might wanna stay in Castle Age a bit longer (and you should get an advantage there to counteract the opponent going Imp earlier than you, but you most certainly have the UT to get that advantage). Your early Imp and late Imp comp will almost always include Winged Hussar and some auxiliary unit, often Arbalest, sometimes maybe even Obuch or Pikeman. You might have to run a comp that is subpar like Winged Hussar + Pike + Obuch but it’s not very subpar and the civ bonuses (Trample damage, bonus vs archers, food bonus etc.) carry you to win with such a comp. If you think about it, getting to Paladins as Franks without Frankish economy would be near impossible, too, and other civs also have big comp limitations, for example Mongols can’t play Imp Age Knight line and Franks can’t mix in Skirms easily or do double gold Cavalier/Arbalest power spike early Imp, the lack of Arbalest in Franks civ is a bit like the lack of Halberdier in Poles.
Not sure if that’s possible unless you’re interpreting too much into the word “viable”.
Maybe you can elaborate more on what is viable? I disagree that all civs need to be competitive at imp age tho, and I dont think I can convince you on that.
Having a reasonable chance at winning, so in a form being able to compete at any stage of the game.
Well, then Poles are viable. I’ve seen a lot of pole lategame victories.