I’d still love to see a change that causes Cumans to prefer ESL over Paladin, so:
Question: if Cuman’s Steppe Lancers cost half pop space, would Cumans prefer to use Steppe Lancers over Paladins in boomed-out team games?
Another Question: how much would this buff Cumans?
If it’d barely make ESL viable, I’d love to see it as a civ bonus. If it’d make Cumans stronger than Franks if implemented as a civ bonus, perhaps it could instead be balanced as a rework of the imp UT (Cuman Mercenaries).
Sounds interesting, because big numbers always are epic to see… But SL should lost some upgrade to balance it
100 vils and 200 steppe lancers. How can thaz be balanced. Don’t think this is a good idea.
I don’t think SL are as bad as their reputation.
And I think they are also just with the wrong civs, the unit just doesn’t fit with cav archer civs. It doesn’t offer them any utility they they don’t already have.
More unbalanced than 100 vils + 100 Khmer Elephants?
Or the even more extreme case, 100 vils + 100 Persian War Elephants?
All these cases seem unlikely. I might see 120 vils + 80 paladins or 135 vils + 65 Elephants maximum. Here you’d see 140 vils + 120 ESL.
Compare with 80 vils + 120 Arbalesters, which is also a viable composition.
Literally never seen 80 vills + 120 pop arbs
Insanity.
I friggin love it
The steppe lancer is cheaper than many main force units so 100 villagers + 200 steppe lancers is definitely easier and earlier to come true and harder to counter than 100 villagers + 100 elephants or arbalesters or paladins.
By the way, a hussar is weaker than a steppe lancer, but now the former costs completely 1 pop and latter costs 0.5 pop…
You can consider just buffing the steppe lancers, like bonus attack against buildings, villagers, monks and trade units, etc.
But you frequently see (cav) archer civs playing with 100 vills. It’s not that uncommon. Ofc you don’t need/want to have 120 arbs (cav archers) cause the critical number is about 70-80 (or 60-70). It doesn’t make sense to have bigger archer balls. Better you have some kind of meatshield. (Also very hard to afford 100 + archery in most maps).
I think the steppe lancer would need some specific role. My best idea would be to reduce the HP but increase the damage output. This way it would make sense to mix them in your cavalry for some extra punch or use them to snipe siege (when you play cav archers).
But the way they are currently designed just doesn’t allows them to be buffed further, it’s very likely they will become totally OP again.
I’d say it’s uncommon to see 100 vills. Normally I see 110 to 130
Well currently I am happy if my arabia games get to this number of vills, actually…
Well yeah. Normally games end before 200 pop is actually a thing.
I am the first oen that would rebalanced elefants to be 2 pop. So adding step lancer to the list of Pop efficency broken units doesn’t seem good
I think the devs should really let people make any change they want to the game. ESL half pop, that’s fantastic and not broken at all. here are some more ideas: Persian elite War Elephants can fly, mamelukes breathe fire, Rattan Archers have a pet lion each, Huskarls use elite teutonic knights as a shield, villagers can ride herdables to farm faster, siege towers fire cannonballs like a bbt, i could go on but you get the point!
I personally prefer to go to 100 and just use more military at the right times.