Any HP buff could be accompanied by negative archer armour…
What’s the point of an hp buff then.
Maybe we should focus on their bullets instead of HP, so
Bullet speed, lack of ballistic, bullets hitbox, frame delay and attackspeed maybe cost.
At this point I just hope the devs are using these longer breaks between patches to actually experiment around and maybe do something about gunpowder.
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Because they won’t be countered by everything else… HC in low numbers are practically useless because everything kills them. Heck even mangonels will be a lot less effective. Since an HC will actually survive a mango shot
ONLY anti archers would do better. Ans you’re telling me every player will have a range and upgraded skirms ready just in case of HCs?
Why give eles so much hp when pikes do bonus damage to them…
I do prefer this to hp. I was just saying hp buffs can be worked without being OP
With larger numbers of Xbows.
The fast-imp guy should have a weaker economy no?
To me it’s ok if the threat of Turk fast-imp is enough to stop you committing to 3TC boom.
If it becomes genuinely unstoppable when the fast-imp Turk player adds siege, I agree that’s bad. But there should be ways to overcome that without making HC trash in almost all other strategies.
There is also something to be said in favour of glass canon Hand cannons, which might not have the same problems.
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I still stand by my opininion that gunpowder units projectiles (except bbcs perhaps) need to be reworked. They should travel faster and they should be affected by ballistics. Why further penalize those units when they already have terrible accuracy?
Give then the porto another effect for their UT, like increased RoF or whatever.
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I’ve given the Turk Fast-Imp strat some more thought, and it’s actually quite troubling. I’d like Turk HC to win patrol battles against generic arbs in equal numbers. But the result of that is that when Turks get Imp (1000+800 res) they’re getting for free a unit worth (125+75 + 350+300 + 100+50 + 200+100 + 300+200 + 300+200 + 300+175=) 1600+1100 res (the cost of Arbalest with full attack upgrades) in addition to all the other advantages of Imp, such as bombard cannons.
This might be a situation where it’d be ok to balance with micro-ability.
That is, generic HC would win patrol battles against Arbs with equal numbers, but lose when the arbs are being microd (to the point that even xbows could beat them).
This would make HC viable in post-imp, and allow gunpowder civs to have truly scary HC without making fast-imp strats too powerful.
This would leave Arbs shrinking into obscurity in very long games. Outgunned by both CA and HC when everyone’s reached 200 pop post-imp. Worth going for only because of their great potential in Feudal, Castle, and early-imp, and part of the trash-war.
I suspect a lot of people would hate this idea, because Goths would have better post-imp ‘archers’ than eg Malay.
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I think every unit that gets 2 bonus against rams is intended for trebs
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bombard galleon cannon is so freaking slow. after fire watches it slowly move towards target. that thing needs a buff
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Cannon Galleons do not need any buffs, they are only supposed to be used against buildings, not units.
Fully agree. It’s so slow that it is ridiculous…
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What harm would there be in having the same projectile speed as BBCs? You can still out-micro them. And cannon galleons are hardly OP now, they are very rarely seen even in pure water maps…
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Agree with this. Anything faster than they currently are… And Spanish cannons can be nerfed to keep their current rate.
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Yeah, they could become at least situational in water fights, right now they are useless against anything which moves…while still being very expensive. Spanish bonus can be replaced with something else.
Imo almost all gunpowder units needs some rework/rebalance (except maybe BBCs and BBTs).
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buff as in making projectile move faster. game is all about getting it to finish sooner, game speed on normal increase, units and civ got buffed overall since AOK days. this projectile needs to go faster to take down building faster no need to buff damage
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So this is the origin of Handcannons OP…
HC thanks your support.
Hope devs see this tread
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My propositions:
Cannon galley: projectile speed 1.95 to 3 (not as high as a BBC so as to placate opposition, but still much faster than it currently is)
HC: projectile speed from 5.5 to 7
Accuracy from65% to 70%
Ram bonus damage from 2 to 4
(Both of these increase the odds of hitting moving targets, HC likely needs more of a buff but better to start somewhere and buff again if needed. Rams currently counter HC even harder than they counter other archers. Due to half ROF and accuracy. Not only is this counterintuitive it makes the weak HC even weaker )
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I think it could be a good starting point. I still think I would like to see gunpowder units being affected by ballistics, but a faster projectile speed should also help in missing less.
Alternatively, no ballistics for gunpowder units, but projectiles are faster than arrows. This would give those units something unique to work with. Plus, microing with gunpowder units like jannis and conqs feels so clunky right now.
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I agree with the premiss that HC are too weak for their role and in comparison to Arbalestester, but your proposed changes are what I have always seen in RTS game balance: the changes are so drastic that change something from very weak to unreasonably strong! This reminds me of aoe3 patches in the early days, every patch made the worst civs overpowered, and the previously overpowered civs useless 11!
If a change is made (which I hope) they should try just one or two of these and see how it goes. I think ballistic affecting them would be most fair and make a lot of sense, but if you couple that with a better rate of fire I think you would already see HC countering all cavalry units for instance.
Thank you for starting this very relevant discussion.
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Yeah i think if anything only one of the bigger buffs should be done at a time. Either buff:
ballistics (i think it won’t work, because porto ballistics already doesn’t work properly due to the low projectile speed)
ROF (would have to be very careful by how much since it has such a high raw dmg it’s dps can spike exponentially. But i also think it goes against the unit theme of a “slower” powerful gun)
Bullet velocity (improves the reliability of the weapon, much less clunky in this age of low ping)
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