Well you can rush any civ. Italians have any unit available so you can defend well.
You will not make Genoes Crosbow agains’t an archer civ I GUESS I GUESS.
But I was talking about cavalry civ like huns persians franks.
Also bizantines and berebers have ship bonuses
Everyone have all units available to defend themselves in feudal, even turks.
Who said that, he doesn’t, he meant that if someone make knights, and you respond with GC, they can simply rspond again with arbs, or xbows, or skirms, or rams, or manganels, even scorps are effective vs GC.
BIzz are good yes, but berber bonus isn’t that useful.
I mean yeah, but with italians you have all the uprades for imp.
If you are not an archer civ, normally you don’t get to arbalest.
Yea that’s true, but genoese crosbow are not mean to counter those units. They still do their job well and I never felt like genoese crosbows are weak to cavalry as you said before. Even if they don’t oneshot cavalry with a small group, they still take a lot of hp. And the player that makes archers, almost every time, if you count all militar units that player has, he might always have bigger numbers than the player that goes for knights.
You can start massing archers since feudal and once you get to caslte age, normally you might want to produce crosbows from 3 archery ranges.
The player that goes for knights can only make knights since he gets to the castle age, so numbers are not equal as you tend to say “if knights and crosbows are equal numbers, knights win easily” thats true but you as the archer player want always to outnumber knights cause when you archers get massed, then they are very powrfull.
Making knights is not as easy as going archers because knights cost food, you can keep 2 stables full working, while the archer player can easily produce with 3 archery ranges full working.
If you add GC to your castle age crosbows army, then your ememy might stop going knights.
They would lose if they didn’t respond. Any way, at imperial age you still can counter easily those with full upgraded huzars, cavaliers or bombard cannons.
I think I will never get convinced that italians are weak on land, they still have a lot of good units. And genoese crosbow is actually usable in my opinion.
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No, they don’t get halbs, paladins, HCA, all the latest siege upgrades.
Yes but you have skirms, even without bracer they hard counter GC (GC and skirms without bracer got the same rage).
I’m sorry but try to pay attention, I never stated that, I stated that GC struggle to counter knights, those 2 units alone. I never said that GC should counter other units other than cavalry, it’s fine that way, I said that if someone want to protect their knights he jast have to add some of those units, but in the scenario GC-vs-knights alone, GC can’t win.
If I go for xbows/arbs yes, but if I transition to GC I have to relie on castles.
That’s not true at all, knights will always outnumber GC, never seen the countrary.
Yes and Italians have to wait for a castle too, so the knight’s player can start sooner, with more buildings and at a better time.
Also please, use check before posting, because some sentences are difficult to read.
To it seem like you prefer knights civs and don’t want to see the GC that is actually usable.
Yes, they obiously will outnumber you since making knights from stable is always easier than making GC at a castle. Thats why you will always want to go with normal crosbows and after some time you may also want to add genoese.
But you don’t need GC to hold knights at that stage its what I am trying to say.
You don’t need GC to hold knights at that stage of the game. Only with your normal crosbows you can still hold decent. Obviously you still need to micro or play better than your enemy but crosbow vs knight is a super classic matchup and is balanced.
My favourite civ is vikings and I play with archery range crosbows a lot.
It’s not convenient, you either go full xbows or full GC, you can go xbows, and then transition to GC, but not both at the same time.
Also all other archer UU take between 16-18s, why GC have to take 22s?
You need if you want to go to the offensive.
Then what’s the point of having GC?
My point is that genoese crosbows can make you hold better in the crosbow-knight battle at castle age.
And then you can click up imperial at a decent time (italian bonus). And at imperial age i guess everybody agrees that italians are good.
When your enemy upgrades to paladin, your arbalest start to become weak. They don’t trade as good as they used to in the xbows-knights or arbalest-cavalry fights before.
While your enemy may be spending its resourses on the paladin upgrade, you can upgrade elite GC.
Arbalest and genoese crosbows mix on imperial age is actually very powerfull against many cav civs. They might need to make scorps if they are khmer, or onager (normaly cav civs don’t have siege onager) or skirms as a hun, bulgarian or bereber.
But then while they are switching into a different unit, you can still full upgrade huzar. Or make cheap bommbard cannons. You need chemestry for bombard cannons but since you are actually going archers, chemestry may be helpfull anyway.
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I agree. However it seems to me that GC is less important than what it seems. Against knight civs is good, but, if you are against other civ, I would put the castle up more for Pavise/conscription.
Overall I think that GC is quite weak, also because it is situational, in the sense that GC is useless against half of the civs. Italians have features that are either very useful (dock techs on water and imperial UT in team games) or totally useless (UU useless against non cav civ, UT useless 1v1, dock tech on all non islands map).
Viper put GC in the second lowest tier, just 1 above the elephant archer in his recent video about UU. I would say viper was a bit severe in this score, but for sure GC is not that powerful. Fortunately, as you have said several times, italians have a versatile tech tree.
So, 2/3 of the games you may not even go GC at all. I think that, even if GC is buffed, Italians remain weak in the majority of the circumstances. That is why I am more for a more general help for Italians.
Even the first proposal I did, free armor techs for archers, is more useful for them, for instance to help their game with crossbowman, which is very behind several other civs. I totally agree that crossbowman are the way to go, especially in castle age.
Buffing GC would help only in the games where you go GC, which are not that many.
Anyway, I feel GC weak, as viper said. So if GC is buffed is fine, but I do not see that as something really balancing the Italians, whose weakness remains the very modest economy.
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I would still preffer GC less training time than this, and I will tell you why i think free armor uprgades for archers is broken: archers/sikirmishir fights tend to happen like almost 60% of the arabia games, or even more. I mean a lot of times.
If you get free armor, you already will win the early archer battles. You will force your enemy to upgrade the archer armor, and then you will be able to click up easily earlier than your opponent. You already up with a decent time with your 15% discount.
I don’t think italians are so bad on land that they need a buff, but if there is a lot of people that want to buff GC training time I won’t keep refusing to it, but I will just add that there are more situational or unavailable unique units than GC. But anyway, i wouldn’t mind like a 2 seconds less training time for GC, but I still don’t see that as something the civ actually needs.
Yes and no, condos are good only on water for a surprise landing or for a super fast imp rush, if you waste time in feudal/castle you have probably lost the surprise effect, and then condos aren’t that viable anymore.
GC take a lot of time even in imp, 16s (as much as a chuko in castle) with conscription (in imp chukos take 8s each) franks and huns stables take less for training knights.
The gunpowder discount is useful for BBCs, no complaints on that, but the HC usually come in late since you had to mass them, and they are useful only if the enemy go full infantry, so in the case he go full cavalry, you got no halbs and UU that struggle to counter them because they can’t reach the numbers they need.
Yes it’s never convient to train both xbow and GC, when I transition to GC it’s better to go full on them, and maybe use the archery range to train skirms instead of xbows.
Yes but the transition to BBC take long time, chemistry alone takes 100s.
If I spend all my resources in 2 similar units (GC and arms) I’ll slow the time upgrade/train other units, like the hussars or the BBC.
Italians aren’t that weak, ok, but they have some problems that keep them behind, that’s block them using their full potential.
Even IF they are able to survive castle (and it’s a bif if since castle age is when it’s more probable that italians loose) they are still dependent on GC against cavalry civs (no halbs or camels so…).
Decreasing the TT of GC wouldn’t make them better in general, vs infantry or archers, it wouldn’t improve them vs cavalry either, it would just allow to counter cavalry, something that they struggle to do now, and for a unit that it’s have only that purpose it’s not a great thing. [quote=“Sylux1000, post:112, topic:82001”]
However it seems to me that GC is less important than what it seems.
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It’s their only decent long term anti cavalry solution, of course you wouldn’t use them vs aztec (to say one) but it doesn’t mean it’s not an important unit, it’s fundamental.
That’s why they should at least be buff vs those civs.
Not necessarily, they counter good enough infantry and siege civs, struggle a bit vs archers but that’s ok, yes buffing the age up discount can help a bit, it would be 2 vills worth of resources in feudal instead on 1 and a half, but to me it’s more important to buff their UU than their bonus, there are civs without eco bonus than are strong because you can field powerful unit in the late games, and that more the Italians play stile.
It would mean every game against a cavalry civs, now there aren’t many because the GC isn’t a good option.
With 2s less they would take as much time as a cataphract, still more than all other UU archers, to it could be even 3/4s less.
This is true, but it is not a huge advantage. In general it is good mainly in feudal, where archer battles are more common, but at that point the majority of the civ are ahead in economy so they can afford that 100 food.
Also, Italians are not necessarily an archer civ up to late castle age, so it would be an unused bonus in some game. Age up improvement would be just more versatile, despite weaker when going archers. And it is a hystorically accurate bonus. Moreover age up discount is something more unique to Italians (byz have a similar bonus for imp but completely different playstyle). Resistant archers is more Vietnamese identity, which are imo one of the most enjoyable civ now (maybe the one I prefer more righ now), despite not top tier for pro game.
Regarding the TT of GC, I am favorable as well, despite for me it will remain a limited UU. But I agree that an archer UU cannot take more than a cataphract to be trained.
Yes but there could also other small changes that could help Italians, like giving them back their +2LoS on their fishing ships for more efficient work on ibrid maps, or let pavise affect condos, so that in late g ame could have a bit more of a role (other than counter HC).
This minor but underrated changes can improve the Italians as much as other buff.
I think I’m repeating myself but Italians are a 100% legit hybrid map civ as well.
They would still be a crappier champ that is spammed faster and cost more gold. If you want to use infantry as the core of your army why don’t you use champs instead of the counter unit? It’s like asking for slingers to be buffed because for some reason you would like to spam anti-infantry units as the bulk of your ranged forces instead of using your all purpose archer.
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I agree. If we want really see the condo as a useful unit, we should first remove champions from Italians.
Then condos cannot be buffed directly since it messes up team game balancing. The idea of making condos special for Italians only using UT is very good. Still a pavise condo is way too expensive in comparison with champs: 35g. Maybe also the imperial UT should somehow reduce the gold cost of condos, like -10/15, to leave them as they are in early imp and make them useful as champions replacement in late game for Italians only.
All possibilities, we can even open a topic if you are interested in making condos good for Italians. But I still think that, Italians would prefer a game like archers + hussars…
Yes well, they aren’t bad, but not that good either, I meant this bonus would mean that on 4 lake (as an example) I don’t have to check my FS every minute to avoid that they go to shore fish, and I can concentrate most of my attention on the land, it for shut wouldn’t break them, but it would make a bit more colse to the level of japs or Malay (still a lot behind).
I already said that it could be because of my negative bias vs champs, but still it could add some more diversified playstile, you have a infantry unit that is tankier and faster but with less attack, right now condos are just are occasionally units not very used.
I’m not saying that they need a buff, only that they could be used more in that way, in my opinion at least.
That exactly what I proposed in the first time, remove champs, have condos with more armor.
It’s not necessary, they have to cost more than champs, because even if they have less attack, thanks to their speed they can force more engagements.
Also they would become a pretty good raiding unit.
Yes of course, never said that this is a fundamental change that needs to be made, just that it could give them more unique games, and it could be nice.
I don’t like this. Champions for italians are useful when you fight eagles.
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Yes, but italians also have cheap HC, and while condos deals a lot less damage to them, they can keep up better with their speed, EEW would still be faster, but the gap between EEW and condos would be a lot less than the gap between EEW and champs. Condos also out-armor eagles in melee (not for pierce thought).
Also for counter eagles, 2HS are eneugh.
Well, slingers are useful, genitours are useful, and yet Incas have arbs and Berbers have elite skirmishers. So the best solution is to accept that the condotierro is good at what it’s supposed to be good at: skipping infantry upgrades/fighting gunpowder.
Then why for Italian specifically? I bet people who play Japanese/Mongols/Persian ect think the exact same.
You’re overdoing it. When you see Italian being picked on Pants in HC3 vs Mongols (ie.super tryhard tournament where everyone plays the meta) and winning, you know it’s a good hybrid civ.
If champs don’t fit your playstyle then play a civ that has “tankier, faster but less attack infantry” Huskarls can do that. El Dorado eagles can do that.
They are already the only civ that can field infantry without having to pay for line upgrades/elite upgrade, and on top of that they are the only anti-gunpowder unit. Isn’t that unique enough?
Getting 1 more hit in once in a while isn’t worth much when it barely tickles the opponent. Not to mention that the very second your HC are gone (whether because they were killed by something else or where outrun) the eagles will just have to turn around and murder the condos. If you want something fast that catches up to eagles, use cavaliers. Those are good units, even when generic.
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