I remember I destroyed a Goth player last summer in a TG, where Gbetos had worse Frame Delay. The Goth player had Infantry+Hand Cannoneer. The Hand Cannoneers obviously did nothing, but die.
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The micro is stupid simple. You use stand ground box formation and hit and run with the HC + champs while the infantry close in. As soon as the infantry close in and begin to engage the champions you break formation to allow the champion in the back to attack. You can choose to keep the HC close or begin to retreat them, the choice depends on if you are being outflanked.
If you are dramatically outnumbered just stay in box formation.
You can verify this with a friend in game or in the editor if you donât believe me.
Goths have literally no answer to units like Champions, Trash-handed Swordsmen, Throwing Axemen or Gbetos.
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Micro is impossible with Hand Cannoneers. They do not hit anything and they fire very slowly. Also their Frame Delay is beyond terrible.
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Unless you outspam them. It is possible to have 60 Champs when the enemy has 10 Throwing Axeman, but in the later stages, Goths lose hard to many civs.
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Their attack delay is the exactly same as arbalests
Hereâs a fun fact you know.
40 Champs, fully upgraded but otherwise generic, lose to 40 Hand Cannons with no micro.
Hereâs a fun fact you aught to know.
40 Champs, fully upgraded but otherwise generic, beat 40 Arbalest with no micro.
The layout ends up being like +20 for HC, and like -10 for Arbalest, but yeah. Hand Cannons are superior to generic arbalest in fights against Champions.
I used Jap HC and Arbs for the test, and I patrolled the champs in.
âBut microâ
Yes, but micro. Arbalests are way better with micro than HC (mainly because of obscene overkill). Guess what. HC isnât a micro unit, itâs a quick transition unit that does itâs job.
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So you invest MORE into a âcounterâ unit to somehow make it work??? Whatâs that nonsense?
Every unit should be seen with micro in mind. And ofc that Arbs are so micro-revarding should be regarded here. You canât just say âmicro has no influence hereâ. Ofc it has.
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40 Champs takes the full upgrade line and 40 Champs which is around 5850 resources (ignoring blacksmith armor since that mostly cancels out archer armor).
Even at the margin including only 2hs and champion and blast furnace itâs 4600 resource.
40 hand cannons takes chemistry and 40 hand cannons which costs 4300 resources.
I mean. Iâd need to make like 150 hand cannons to equal the Arbalestâs total investment since you need to count in the fact youâve spent 1500 gold on that unit to get it going vs the HCâs 600 gold investment, but sure, yeah, a civ that spends more gold on a counter unit against infantry gets a more pop efficient unit against infantry. My gawsh.
Edit: Back of hand math failed me. Itâs 180 HCâs, not 150. Almost 200 HCâs before the arbalest player is even on the gold.
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OK, just show me a single pro game were standard HC were used to success.
You try to state they would be fine right now. So there must be a single pro game showing that.
Iâm waiting.
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Too easy
Game #3, Liereyy vs Tatoh, Tatoh wins the game with HC play, and Tatoh won the set.
Easily the best match of the QF.
Are you done yet, or what? Hell, the thumbnail has HCâs on it
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In addition to WoeIsToWhoâs example something else has to be said about invoking real world game data.
In game empirical evidence is mostly useful for when you cant test things in isolation. Things like timing, things like raiding, things like gold denial and exhaustion, intertemporal decisions, etc. However you can test the hand cannon with a friend and see that thereâs a lot of little things which are not obvious but add up.
Aoe2 is not a solved game. Pros used to skip heavy plow all the time. Most currently dont use the Saracen market even close to optimally most games. Pros get elite cataphract before logistica vs non halb infantry. Pros buy elite genoese to kill things like heavy camels. Pros donât stone wall to prevent hussar raids as often as they themselves say they should. Most pros donât realize that goth Champs get 3 shot by a hand cannon rather than the standard 4 shots, which reduces expected shots by 1.33 now. The list goes on.
Pros in aoe2 are the best because they are better than everyone else, not because because are perfect. The meta will continue to evolve as people explore the strategy space.
The only reason I popped in here was because people werenât making accurate comparisons, not because I think HC are super good. To get anywhere in balance discussions you have at least describe the world as it is to get to where you want it to be.
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You know that was HC 3 with the worst melee pathing we ever had in the game?
Tatoh was already leading and the engagements were more in desperation than anything, too. In the engagements he had often more value there in the HC than liereyy in his army.
Itâs a bad example bec if someone is leading that far basically everything can work.
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I do that
So I give you an example, exactly what you ask for, you arenât even halfway done with the game so you donât know what went right or wrong for it, and youâre already throwing it under the bus because it doesnât support your position. Just vomiting every reason you can out from your keyboard onto the screen because you canât simply acknowledge that in this game, HC was used with success.
Yeah. This discussion is worth having. sarcasm
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you know even the commentators said he was actually into switching into trashbows but made the HC basically as transition unit. Yes they worked, but not because they are so good, because the game was already won. He could have done basically anything at that time. He had like 40 paladins already that had much higher value than the whole military fielded by liereyy.
We are talking about sits were the HC switch helped to decide an even game.
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The commentators also specifically said Xbow Paladin would have lost to that whereas the Hand Cannon was a huge difference.
At least seven times in the broadcast they mentioned how he shouldnât be taking the fight against the Hand Cannons because they are âso goodâ and they were talking about El Dorado Eagles, an upgrade we continuously beg the devs to nerf in this forum.
The HC helped to decide this game. The HC made this an uneven game. As T90 mentioned, 50 el dorado eagles getting in anywhere⊠can end the game. The fact that the Mayans had to raid was a result of the HC and the fact that you are ignoring this means having absolutely any discussion on the matter with you is a complete waste of â â â â â â â time.
You ask for an example, I give you an example, and now, instead of acknowledging, like a reasonable person that there are circumstances where the HC is not only worth itâs cost, but a necessary option, and just arguing it could use some help which is an opinion that doesnât contradict the evidence Iâve provided, you do absolutely everything in your power to discredit a clear example of a HC transition winning a game. Weâre done here.
Also, Iâd like to mention, Stark had three archery ranges in that meme freakout. Yeah, three range production is enough to deal with spam of any type. 11
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Arbs losing to inf isnât necessarily as bad as youâve said after all arbs better than HC at killing almost everything other than inf. After watching twitch games regularly for years and hearing every pro out there whine about them, I can say that HC fall into more of the meme unit category than anything they are trash and I hope Devs can make them viable if they arenât already after latest buff (havenât found a need for them yet in my games ) only in very rare instances where Iâve used them in my games they not let me down and not felt like a complete waste
I wonder if a part of the solution couldnât be to remove (or reduce) archer-line bonus Vs spears.
Archers would still counter them, and skirms bonus too. But HC would remain the only dedicated hard counter.
There might be dubious consequences such as non FU archers Vs Malian pikes though.
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All Archery Range units have Bonus Damage vs Spearmen. It is a trait of the building, like it is a trait of Barracks units to all have Bonus Damage vs Buildings.