This is true, which is why Italians have one of the 2 only cost-efficient HCs in the game (the other being the Indians HC after Shatagini, because +1 Range is actually a huge deal for Ranged units).
Their strong point is that they are easy to transition into them/add them to your army (few techs), so lowering their the cost and the TT would make them more spammable than arbs.
Think about it, their main disadvantage is that they come in late in imp, and on top of that they cost more and takes more to be trained, this would overcome this problem.
More HC ā better at countering infantry
+10% Fire Rate (small buff)
+50% Projectile Speed (to help against moving targets, also to be more realistic.)
Thatās it.
Btw another unit that needs a āprojectile speedā buff is Cannon Galleon, itās ridiculousā¦
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Iād say Portuguese and Turks have better HCs (ballistics and lower gold cost for former and faster access and production+HP bonus for latter)
Yeah how are we supposed to believe those slow azz moving cannons can destroy stone castles
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Yeah, itās so slow that it is ridiculousā¦should be the same speed as the BBCs.
I donāt think that this will help the HCā¦
On that I agree, but then the Spanish would be without a bonus.
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Buffing HCs would be very reasonable, but I do not think it is a cost issue. I would rather make it just stronger.
Question. What about making HC affected by TR?
I like the idea of HC as a stronger counter to infantry.
The problem is, Infantry is not Population efficient, it falls down in feudal to archers and in castle to knights. The only way it is viable is itās lower effort to tech in.
I rarely see games where is any need to a late-game Infantry counter. If infantry is a problem, itās most of the time before you have even the chance to get a viable counter like archers or siege.
So HC are somehow useless in the current game. Of course they can be changed in their purpose to be stronger in general, but it wouldnāt be historical correct. They changed infantry warfare.
Also it would disbalance the game, because only about half the civs get HC.
My conclusion is: Yes, the HC need a better state. But for this to happen, the units they counter need to be a real thrat in lategame. The only way to do so is making Infantry in lategame population efficient and reducing the options of other viable counters. To make it pop efficient there could be a āmodifierā tech which makes it possible to train infantry with much more hp but at also higher cost. Then you can give HC a really strong bonus like +25 against infantry, to make it the strongest late-game counter to infantry. But then you also need another counter against cavalry because halberds would be so hard-countered that the combination of cav + HC would almost be unstoppable.
To change this i would change scorpions to a cav and heavy armour-counter (OK-ish in castle, but good in imp). This would also be historical correct. Lower rof and attack but armor piercing, bonus dmg against cav and faster and a bit further moving pojectiles. I would also remove the bonus dmg against buildings, because they were primarely used for defence.
With all this changes the whole game would be better balanced and HC had a useful state in the game, also historical correct.
Itās just so many things, but i would like to see the developers changing their mind about the current cav dominance in the game. Pop efficient, fast, almost no counters and if, the counters are easy to counter themselves and can easily be avoided. No wonder Franks hold still first place in win rate. Iād like to see a bit more variability in the current meta.
Guns actually changed Infantry Warfare, by destroying Heavy Cavalry charges once and for all!
Pike & Shotte became the definitive tactic in Renaissance warfare, because those pesky plated Knights could be shot right off their horses, if not just one-shot to an early grave.
HCs being good against Infantry is more of a āgameplay over realismā incident.
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Thats actually wrong. Cavalry Charges were ever a high threat especcially to gun infantry. This changed in World War 1 because of mashine guns. Even Napoleon abused the absence of pikes and halberds in compositions and showed the power of cavalry charges to whole europe at his time. Cavalry was just normally too expensive, thats why it was not that present anymore, and they were countered by pikes and halberdsā¦ this was even before gunpowder became relevant.
Gunpowder was so strong because it was so extrem efficient against slow charges of enemy infantry. They didnāt even hat a chance to reach the Gunpowder units.
But once a Charge against gunpowder was successfull, they didnāt had a chance.
But maybe you just saw too many hollywood pictures. You canāt shoot somebody from a horse with the pure force of a gun. It just looks nice in movies.
It wouldnāt make too much sense, since itās not something gunpowder related.
Plus, one of the few strengths of the HC is that they require onlt chemistry (and the 3 armors if you want), adding another tech to research would actually nerf them.
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No. Gunpowder weapons brought about the end of Heavy Cavalry just like I said. Napoleonās Cavalry would be considered Light Cavalry by Medieval standards, even the Cuirassiers.
You even see that Horse Barding fell out of fashion quickly after the invention of the Arquebus, because Cavalry had a huge shift towards Speed dependant tactics, and started abandoning armour with time, because a slower horse and rider was an easier target.
That happened only with advent of the Musket, and AoE2 only goes up until the Arquebus.
"By the end of the fifteenth century, those late-medieval troop types that had proven most successful in the Hundred Yearsā War and Burgundian Wars dominated European warfare, especially the heavily armoured gendarme (a professional version of the medieval knight), the Swiss and Landsknecht mercenary pikeman, and the emerging artillery corps of heavy cannons, which were rapidly improving in technological sophistication. The French army of the Valois kings was particularly formidable due to its combination of all of these elements. The French dominance of warfare at this time presented a daunting challenge to those states which were opposed to Valois ambitions, particularly in Italy.
Emperor Maximilian I (1493-1519) opposed the French armies with the establishment of the Landsknechte units. Many of their tactics were adapted from the Swiss mercenaries, but the use of firearms was added. The firearms, in conjunction with the pike formations, gave the Imperials a tactical edge over the French. Those pike and shot regiments were recruited in Germany, Austria, and Tyrol.
A simulaneous development took place in the Spanish forces. In 1495 at the Battle of Seminara, the hitherto-successful Spanish army was trounced while opposing the French invasion of Naples by an army composed of armoured gendarme cavalry and Swiss mercenary infantry.
The chastened Spanish undertook a thorough reorganization of their army and tactics under the great captain Gonzalo FernĆ”ndez de CĆ³rdoba. Realizing that he could not match the sheer offensive power of the French gendarmes and Swiss pikes, FernĆ”ndez de CĆ³rdoba decided to integrate the shooting power of firearms, an emerging technology at the time, with the defensive strength of the pike, and to employ them in a mutually-supporting formation, preferably in a strong defensive position.
At first, this mixed infantry formation was referred to as a colunella (ācolonelcyā), and was commanded by a colonel. It interspersed formations of men in close order armed with the pike and looser formations armed with the firearm, initially the arquebus. The arquebusiers could shoot down their foes, and could then run to the nearby pikemen for shelter if enemy cavalry or pikes drew near. This was especially necessary because the firearms of the early sixteenth century were inaccurate, took a very long time to load and only had a short range, meaning the shooters were often only able to get off a few shots before the enemy was upon them.
This new tactic resulted in triumph for the Spanish and FernĆ”ndez de CĆ³rdobaās colunellas at the Battle of Cerignola, one of the great victories of the Italian Wars, in which the heavily outnumbered Spanish pike-and-shot forces, in a strong defensive position, crushed the attacking gendarmes and Swiss mercenaries of the French army."
As you can see, Pike & Shotte was designed as an anti-Cavalry formation, to beat Late Medieval fully plated Knights, not Infantry.
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You are constructing something together.
First, this even wasnt medieval anymore.
Second pikes were efeective against cavalry on their own. of cource this could even be empowered by gunpowder. But this is Also how it is in AOE2 as it is now.
Third most of cavalry in the game is not heavy armored, not even close to plate. Teutonic knights come closest to this atm, and they would be countered by HC. There is actually no plate-lance cavalry unit in the game, as it was even in medieval times really rare. As well as for several hundred years there was almost no counter to it. Till in LATE MIDDLE AGES pikes countered them.
So actually the game mix this up a bit, otherwise the castle age knights would just be much too strong.
Even musquets were not effective against cavalry until they were chunked together because all gunpowder weapons had really bad accuraccy. They were actually designed and compared in hitting approaching enemy infantry armies from quite close distance. The Prussians were so proud in 18th century their guns were able to hit a 30x2m target from 40 m in about 90 % of their shots.
Try to hit some approaching cav with a weapon like this. Good luck.
This is the true story about Hand Cannons. They were designed for infantry battles. And they were very effective in this purpose. Donāt make something else of them.
Pike and Shotte is Medieval.
They needed Arquebuses to be effective against Renaissance Heavy Cavalry.
That is Platemail right there!
TK units are with Full Chainmail and Tabbard, not Platemail.
Muskets were anti-Infantry weapons, you would use fusillade against Cavalry, but THOSE are not Medieval.
My friend, you just made a mess of whatever point you were trying to make, when you brought Napoleon into the conversation.
Pki & Shotte was invented to stop Late Medieval full plated and barded Heavy Cavalry, that not even Pikes could reliably stop anymore.
Nope.
"The earliest artistic depiction of what might be a hand cannon ā a rock sculpture found among the Dazu Rock Carvings ā is dated to 1128, much earlier than any recorded or precisely dated archaeological samples, so it is possible that the concept of a cannon-like firearm has existed since the 12th century.[3] This has been challenged by others such as Liu Xu, Cheng Dong, and Benjamin Avichai Katz Sinvany. According to Liu, the weight of the cannon would have been too much for one person to hold, especially with just one arm, and points out that fire lances were being used a decade later at Deāan. Cheng Dong believes that the figure depicted is actually a wind spirit letting air out of a bag rather than a cannon emitting a blast. Stephen Haw also considered the possibility that the item in question was a bag of air but concludes that it is a cannon because it was grouped with other weapon wielding sculptures. Sinvany believes in the wind bag interpretation and that the cannonball indentation was added later on.[4]
The first cannons were likely an evolution of the fire lance. In 1259 a type of āfire-emitting lanceā ( tuhuoqiang ēŖē«ę§) made an appearance. According to the History of Song : āIt is made from a large bamboo tube, and inside is stuffed a pellet wad (åēŖ ). Once the fire goes off it completely spews the rear pellet wad forth, and the sound is like a bomb that can be heard for five hundred or more paces.ā[5][6][7][8][9] The pellet wad mentioned is possibly the first true bullet in recorded history depending on how bullet is defined, as it did occlude the barrel, unlike previous co-viatives (non-occluding shrapnel) used in the fire lance.[5] Fire lances transformed from the ābamboo- (or wood- or paper-) barreled firearm to the metal-barreled firearmā[5] to better withstand the explosive pressure of gunpowder. From there it branched off into several different gunpowder weapons known as āeruptorsā in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, with different functions such as the āfilling-the-sky erupting tubeā which spewed out poisonous gas and porcelain shards, the āorifice-penetrating flying sand magic mist tubeā (é½ē©“é£ē ē„é§ē) which spewed forth sand and poisonous chemicals into orifices, and the more conventional āphalanx-charging fire gourdā which shot out lead pellets.[5]"
āThe earliest reliable evidence of hand cannons in Europe appeared in 1326 and evidence of their production can be dated as early as 1327.[15] The first recorded use of gunpowder weapons in Europe was in 1331 when two mounted German knights attacked Cividale del Friuli with gunpowder weapons of some sort.[16][17] By 1338 hand cannons were in widespread use in France.[18] During the 14th century the Arabs seem to have used the hand cannon to some degree.[19] Cannons are attested to in India starting from 1366.[20] The Joseon kingdom in Korea acquired knowledge of gunpowder from China by 1374 and started producing cannons by 1377.[19] In Southeast Asia Äįŗ”i Viį»t soldiers were using hand cannons at the very latest by 1390 when they employed them in killing the king of Champa, Che Bong Nga.[21] Java was confirmed to use hand cannon in 1413 during Zheng He voyage.[22][23]:245 In 1511 siege of Malacca, the Malays were using cannons, matchlock guns, and āfiring tubesā.[24] Japan was already aware of gunpowder warfare due to the Mongol invasions during the 13th century, but did not acquire a cannon until a monk took one back to Japan from China in 1510,[25] and firearms were not produced until 1543, when the Portuguese introduced matchlocks which were known as tanegashima to the Japanese.[26]ā
They were actually initially Cavalry weapons to dislodge combatants from Walls.
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Are you Employed by the NRA? I think they are looking for people like you.
When 2 Mounted knights try to use hc to shoot people on a wall its a cav weapon for siege??? Thats just ridiculous. Iām out of discussing this with you, just not worth the time.
I am not even a US citizen, or in the US at all.
People do that when they lose. They also strawman a lot.
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If somebody argues like you in a discussion the discussion is doomed and everybody loses, including yourself.
Iām surprised you havenāt learned this lesson yet.
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Not how it works, but OK.
I am more of an āobjective reality over opinionsā type of guy.
It is also understandable. I brought the proverbial receipts, and you brought no evidence.
Then you strawmanned me hard, because you realized you lost the argument.
Discussions are not won when you convince the other party, but when one backs up their claim substantially, and with correct data.
This is how HC are used properly in a tourney game. Against high pierce melee units like eagles.
HC and Arbs have different roles in the game. Arbs are high DPS units, HC are for hard countering high pierce melee units. Micro or meat shield is always needed. If the argument is to make HC a more versatile unit, thatās a discussion worth having.
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Impressive, but a bit weird how Sancho never made Skirms.