Hi! I like the nerf to Area Damage of Etairos from 2.5 to 1.5 but now the base unit is bad and useless. It isn’t the dps but I think now Etairos have a defense problems . Jarl, Tiger Cavalry, Daimyo, War Elephant have a good Hack Armor (25% ) (15% Daimyo but is a hero) , Etairos have 5% base hack armor less than Kataskopos !!(10%). Come on! Hetairos is a Elite cavalry! Ok there is life leech but is very ridiculous that a Elite Cavalry have 5% base hack armor! I suggest to buff it to 15%/20% and rise the cost of the unit . Ok there is Bronze Divine Power but it is a divine power! What do you think? Sorry for my bad english! I hope that you understand me 
The issue is how good the aoe + lifesteal becomes, it negates most of its supposed counters. Rising the armor would make it snowball very Hard again. Specially since they basically appear with full Iron due to heph
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When the Area of effect is 1.5, life steal is much less effective because the hit outside the 1.0 is half calculated so less health gained.
Hetairos have 240 hp full upgraded
18.5 full upgrade damage
56 hack armor on enfantry opponent
18.5-56% = 8.14
8.14-30% = 2,44
20 second = 2.44 x20 = 48.8
Total hp = 288 , with 2 enemies 240+ 48.8+ 24(half hp outiside 1.0 ) = 312
Odin jarl have 333 hp and 45 hack armor…
I’d just get rid of the AOE damage completely and make it do bonus damage vs infantry, as a differentiator from the hippie.
Its still oppresive with the momentum they give. You are picturing it in a solo battle. Have backline and suddenly your calv outlive their Hard counters while you melt theirs.
Yea i also would rather they have another effect. Dunno if bonus vs inf or Just their old bonus vs Buildings. Aoe on attack is always problemátic, specially on a fast unit. At least on units like cyclops its kinda ok imo.
A simple solution is to make the lifesteal work on primary target only. This way this upgrade wont make or break them.
The difference between hetairoi with and without these upgrades are too big.
Regarding armor, it depands. Corrently the direction was to make them less of a generalist and more of a standard cav. So high pierce, low heck. Thats why they lost damage in favor for bonus vs archers, which they wrecked anyway due to how well aoe damage works vs archers.
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I tI’ve been testing the Hetairos extensively and with the September 30th patch, they’re no longer as broken as before. Other civilizations’ heavy cavalry performs much better, especially because they have much higher armor and more base HP without needing life leech. I factored in the new damage area (1.5) in my tests, which is the size of a tower in term of map tiles(1.5)and hetairos can hit three units and it isn’t huge. For three units placed in front of each other, the unit closest to the Hetairos takes 100% of the damage, the second 50%, and the third a tenth, and the health drain is based on how much damage the Hetairos deals. Life leech is a only great health bonus.The Hetairos only has a lot of health (like 320 HP when life leech work) when it hits multiple enemies and manages to recover it, otherwise a Hippeus performs better. I think it needs a slight armor buff to at least make it equal to the Hippeus. If I look at the tiger cavalry, jarl, daymio they have the same HP as the hetairos with life drain (like 300 hp) but they are much more armored. The Kataskopos has more armor than a hetairos and it’s absurd.
A simple solution is to make the lifesteal work on primary target only. This way this upgrade wont make or break them.
The Hetairois with 1.5 AoE damage already do this. The AoE damage hits 3 targets, and since it has a small AoE, the first enemy takes all 100% damage, and so does the life drain. The first enemy near the Hetairois takes 100% of damage, the second 50%, and the third 1 so life leech work well with enemy near etairos and work bad with other enemies. For a 1.5 AoE is calculated like this. The larger the AoE, the more damage is conserved. With the nerf, it now has a smaller AoE, so it takes less life drain and deals less damage.
By design they are glass canons, and not heavy cav.
They have high damage thanks to the aoe (though it is debatable ho effective it is now with only 1.5 area) but they cant stand for long unless they have lifesteal which greatly improve their survivability, more so when they had 2.5 area damage.
Thats why i think it was always this upgrade that was problematic and not the unit itself. They can go back to 2-2.5 area if its only lifesteal from the primary target.
I think 1.5 (a tower) it’s perfect . 2.5 is very very large and i like dev nerf that. For me Now 18.5 dps with 1.5 area damage it’s good. I like to see a slight buff to hack armor
That makes sense.
I can see them actually lose the bonus vs archers again, in order to become more generalists (heck armor and overall damage), defferentiating then from hippious.
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Yes! It’ a good option for Poseidon. Also because hetairos are only trainable in the age of myths and only in fortresses so it would make some sense for them to be a valid elite unit like Myrmydon.
Yea, theres different ways to go about it im personally Just not a fan of aoe on attacks overall but it for sure could be tunned around it to make it work.
Well yea they were nerfed, that was the whole point.
Well yea thats all extra Life is, extra Life. Im pretty certain most civs would take hetairoi as their calv if they had the chance. With the exception of juts a few. Grabted this is only if they get acces to all the insanely good calv upgrades. You are talking in scenarios about 1 hetairoi vs multiple units. But you final to account that the target recieving 50% damage is recieving 100% from a unit in front of it and another 50% from a unit next to it. Its getting 200% instead of if it was dealing with hpp doing 100% on each unit. Even the units getting 10% are also recieving 50% from another 2 and 100% from another.
Dude you gotta account for cost. Tiger calv is a lot more expensive than hetairoi. Granted they are insanely strong but you Just dont take a spearmen and hoplite see one has a lot more stats and call it a day. Theres more to that.
Jarl are more of a tank calv unit, similar to elephants. They arent the big damage dealer of the army, they soak a lot of damage thou.
Again this is a 4 pop unit thats Costs a lot lot more is a hero and has different statsd.
Does jarl dealor damyo even deal close to equal damage to hetairoi when you account for the 220% (100 original 2 50% to each side and 2 10% to the third ones) damage it deals when fighting army comps? This is taking what you said, im trusting your numbers.
That doesnt matter at all. You dont mass those they dont right. Their role is to scout and survive to give info with a big Los.
Theres human units with better armor than myth units. Destroyers get to higher pierce armor than units made out of rocks. That follow up logic doesnt matter. Stats are meant to be important around the role a unit does and the situation it is in.
I think that a slight buff to hack armor like hippeus (15%) is a good for Etairos base unit. Remove archer multiplier and rise the cost. Daymio cost 3 Population now.
My bad, same pop unit. Yet one Costs 50 good 110 gold and 2 favor and the other one is 50 food and 90 gold (without the pos discount). Doesnt feel weird at all that one of them to has better stats. They even got a damage buff to compensate the aoe reduction.
You say going to 15% from 5% is a slight buff when its a 200% hack armor increase. How is that “slight”. Thats an insanely strong buff. Just the recent patch we had a units loose around 5% pierce armor and you can really tell the difference, you want double that and thinking is a small change.
Could you test the current effective range with 3 units? 1 in front and two on the flanks. I’m playing on console, I don’t have the editor… I don’t know how much damage it actually does to the flanking units. If you could please test with photos… i calculated the effective life leech but i don’ t know the damage for the units on the flank on ethairos.
Sure, i can test some time later. I was simply using the numbers you gave me thou and taking them for granted.
Yeah. Hetairos Champions full upgrade = hermes, dyonysus, ephestus 18.5 dps 31 hack armor , armory full
Enemies Hoplite with 56% armor (armory full)
Raising slashing armor from 5% to 15% means that when fully upgraded, it goes from 31% to 38%. The difference would be a 7% damage reduction. A hoplite with 14 damage + 25% cavalry would reduce:
With 31% = 17.5-31% = 12.07
With 38% = 17.5-38% = 10.85
The difference isn’t that dramatic. Let’s see how much HP he actually recovers with 3 enemies in lines…
Thats not how % math works thou. You are taking the 38-31 = 7 as the damage reduction value when thats the absolute difference. The damage reduction in % is still the same 10% difference. It doesnt matter how much armor you add to both scenarios, the 10% armor increase stays the same throught.
You are still increasing the initial armor by 200%
People look at 1-5-10% increases/nerfs and think they are small but that adds up.
Yes, in theory, you definitely get a 200% increase from 5 to 15 on the base unit. However, the way Age of Mythology works, you unlock technologies to enhance units, and unfortunately, armor suffers quite a bit from this mechanism. From 31 to 38, there’s definitely a difference, but it’s not that huge if you consider the maximum value that unit can have. Jarls have a base 25, going up to 45, the tiger as well, elephants as well, and Hyppeus have a base 15 and go up to 38. Myrmidons had 20, now 15 from afar. Clearly, the unit becomes a little more resistant, but you can still push it back with its counters. Now I’m trying to test the area of damage with the AI disabled against some villagers in deathmatch