The point of unit upgrades is improving them, right? But I see that Cavalry Archer’s frame delay is 35, while Heavy Cavalry Archer’s frame delay is 46. What’s up with that? Why does the upgrade make them react SLOWER?
Also, I see that for both of them, the frame delay was only 10 before Definitve Edition. Doesn’t that make hit-and-run tactics impossible? I don’t mean shooting down villagers and escaping, I mean tearing down approaching Pikemen. With such a high delay between moving and firing, that tactic is out of the question.
Keep in mind that the frame delay stat is higher because in DE all unit animations have more frames compared to older versions, so the increase is a way to keep the true “Time Delay” the same. Actually, in DE the Time Delay of Cavalry Archers is lower than in other versions. This is because the frame delay stat only indicates how many frames are counted before the attack happens, but this stat alone cannot tell you how this translates into actual game time. For that, you also need to know the Graphic Time Duration (a hidden stat independent from the unit itself, but associated with a particular graphic set for an unit). If you know both values, you can know the actual Time Delay, which by all means and purposes is what actually matters in the discussion, calculated as the Graphic Time Duration divided by the Number of Frames of that graphic in a particular direction times the Frame Delay.
TD = (GTD/NF)*FD
All of this to say that:
Cavalry Archers are actually easier to micro in DE compared to previous versions because Frame Delay ≠ Time Delay and their current Graphics account for a shorter real Time Delay.
Heavy Cavalry Archers seem to release their arrow about as quickly as regular Cavalry Archer apparently because even though their Frame Delay is higher, their Graphic Time Duration is shorter, so they end up balancing out.
we’d actually need the numbers for CA and HCA from AOC to know. can someone look up the number of frames and how many seconds does the animation last. with those numbers we can tell.
in DE CA and HCA attack animation are both 1.15 I believe unless its changed.
assuming both are 10f delay, both last same amount of seconds for it’s attack animation, we’d need:
attack animation to be less than 13 frames and
with above condition, animation duration more than 1.15
edit: alright found the old AOC data file, it is exactly 13 frames with 10f delay, however attack animation duration is set to 1.3 seconds vs the DE 1.15 seconds.
@Tamerlane7926 is correct. the fire delay in seconds would be at ~0.88s in DE vs at exactly 1s in AOC. add on the fact that DE normal speed is 1.7x while pre DE was 1.5x I believe, makes it even shorter for DE.
Frame delay is really not a good stat for comparing. Use attack delay for more accurate info(attack delay is derived from frame delay and animation length.
From the Frame Delay page in fandom, it tells you the attack delay of each unit in the game
Being the Heavy Cavalry Archer with 0.9 seconds
And the Cavalry Archer with 0.91 seconds
