Well, finally things are official, they’ll change the Italians in the balance changes, as always when SotL make a civ overview… 
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On a more serious note, SotL actually stated that the GC is overall a better option in castle age, dealing more damage against skirms, onagers and of course cavalry, while being also a bit more tanky.
The downfall of the unit in fact happens in imp, when the arb close the gap with that +1 base damage, while the GC becomes over-specialized as an anti-cav unit.
Onestly, based on this, my instinct would be to reduce the cav bonus damage to +6 instead of +7, in favor of a +1 base damage, and an additional +5 HP (so +10HP total).
But those are just speculations…
Well, that’s literally what I commented on YouTube.
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The biggest 2 differences are still the -1 range and the about 50 % higher attack delay of the GC.
This means you can’t really mix the two units as GC addition heavily reduces the microability of the archers.
You have to make a decision for one of the lines and except for the very few matchups where GC is dominating (mostly against CA civs) the natural choice is usually the more easily available Archer line.
I would like if this would be finally adjusted. I wouldn’t mind if GC would then compensatorily be more expensive and/or take longer to train.
But how it is atm with the decision you have to make (it’s implicitely also made every time her in this thread or in sotls video: nobody even considers “mixing” them, as it makes just no sense) it’s just natural that in the vast majority of games italians prefer to just stay with the standard archer line.
And when you just buff the GC randomly without looking into why they aren’t played as frequent as you’d like to will only make them more oppressive against the civs they already are excellent against. Meanwhile it doesn’t “fix” anything in the current design of Italians.Which would - in my opinion - mean to breach the current gap between land and water maps. Whilst on water maps the cheaper age-ups in combnation with the techs and tools they have can be sometimes almost feel unfair - on land maps it often feels (with the exception of the condos) that they can’t really bring their “best cards” as the state of game just doesn’t allows for it and they have to do something “regular” which just other civs that specialise in this can do better.
I was surprised by how much better he found the Genbow to be against skirms in siege. In my experience, the -1 range is more significant that the +1 damage in those matchups. Enemy skirms and mangonels can just retreat (potentially to underneath the relative safety of a castle) and attack with their superior range. So with micro, the advantage flips. The quirk of dealing bonus damage to ships is also limited by being outranged by the galley line (and fire ships resist the bonus damage, so no benefit there)
In Imperial Age, the slightly lower gold cost starts making up for the higher wood cost. The absolute resource cost may be higher, but 5 gold is worth slightly more than 20 wood. And so which unit is better is pretty much dependent on whether you expect to face cavalry or not: if you do, then Gen bows (with a hussar meat shield) works out great. If not, then arbs (or hand cannons) is a better choice (again with a hussar meat shield).
Basic strategy principle: adding a unit to your roster costs resources. If you add both Genbows and Xbows, then you have to spend more than if you just added one to your roster. Even if some of the costs are shared, you’re still looking at production buildi### for both (and the Elite upgrade and Xbow/arbalest upgrade). You have to see (or expect) a lot of cavalry to really justify switching from Xbows to Genbows.
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Because you also have to consider that the GC also have +10HP, which means that they can tank more shots and get closer more easily.
Overall, the combination of more attack and survivability more than compensate for the lack of range, as micro is anyway a subjective skill.
It’s in imp that’s not worth anymore, as the arb close the gap in the base attack, while also having a greater range, and a much cheaper upgrade cost.
Gen xbow is too situational compared to other archer UUs. But still worth going when in hybrid maps or matchup with cav civs.
In imp, players usually have multiple castle which means massing them aren’t contraints much for production building. It is more difficult to mass genoese from Castle age.
Hence, GC are functioning alright for just skipping elite upgrade. I would say Arb falling more on imp when opponents can spam hussar/Cavalier with +4 armor.
Also, in imp, pop-efficiency becomes more important and Genoese (even without elite) still has more HP than arb, bonus damage against various target.
I would argue Genoese is much better in imp. Just not easy to mass from castle age.
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Yeah, I’m also surprised he didn’t try any practical scenario on microing against mangonel.
I’m wondering if castle Age GC with LC will be a good combo. Regualr Xbow+LC can’t hold against Knight+skirms.
No, knight+ skirm can outnumber GC
Italians are very good on paper. Their tech tree is quite open. Their only problem is a lack of powerspike in transition from mid-feudal to mid-castle in land maps. Its pretty easy to fix them. The cheaper gun power bonus can be removed and pavise can be added as a civ bonus
Foot archers except skirms have +1/+1 armour
The bonus will give Italian player the capability to push out archers who are more tranky and push against infantry archers openings or do a strong archer opening themselves. They will be good against scout rush civs as well like mongols and franks enforcing italians identity as a ranged anit-cavalry civ. Opponent civ skirms can easily counter them due to bonus damage. So the counter-balance system remains in-tact. The gun-power bonus can be switched with “Silk road”. The new imperial age technology will be “Renaissance technologies”.
"Renaissance technologies" - Gunpowder units +1 range
Cost 500 food, 250 gold
Renaissance was a major event which happened in late imperial age and hasn’t been captured well in AOE2 gameplay. It helped the city states catapult ahead of larger empires by becoming qualitatively superior to them. There were lot of innovations on firearms in particular which helped them wither any takeover by larger powers. Italians don’t need discount on gunpowder. They have pretty good archers for that role. What they need is technology similar to ‘siege engineers’ in late game. This will also help them overcome range disadvantage against late game civs like portugese albeit with a costlier composition.
“Renaissance technologies” will not make them a late game powerhouse. But will allow their imp timing advantage to start with a push which does not peter out due to lack of siege engineers. Let me know your opinions.
This combined with cheaper age ups and cheaper Chemistry (so earlier access to gunpowder) would be wayy too strong, we already have Turks with Artillery (extra range on Bombard Cannon, Cannon Galleon) and Hindustani with Shatagni (+2 range to Hand Cannons).
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They have decent late game. Don’t need to get extra range for HC and BBC. I would rather remove Seige engineer of Portuguese.
Other gunpowder civs, such as Spanish and Burgundians (even Turks albeit artillery) also lacking Seige engineer. I think it is good design to make most good gunpowder civs lack seige engineer to close the gap between gunpowder civs and other civs in late game. Bombard Cannon is already too good.
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I would rather elite janissary +1 range instead of Italians BBC or HC. I like italians BBC being cheaper than trebuchets.
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At only 2 damage per shot, and with how much damage a single mangonel shot deals, you really don’t want to be taking the risk unless you have to. Even if the Genbows survive a shot, a single mangonel shot will still deal a ton of damage (making it much easier for skirms or other units to clean them up). And 2 mangonel shots can still kill a large mass, so mangonels are still a very effective counter. It’s easy to deal with mangonels that you outrange. It’s risky to deal with a mangonel that shares your units range, and much riskier to deal with a mangonel that outranges your ranged units.
Also, getting closer to the mangonel also means getting closer to anything guarding the mangonel - be that a castle, skirms, other siege, or melee units (which will still clean Genbows up quickly if they get close, despite the extra hp and +1 melee armor)
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A combination of Turks and Hindustanis. They lack Siege Engineers. So basically this is old Indians with Shatagni. And old Indians had Siege Engineers as well. Your proposal will make them weaker in Imperial Age. I don’t know if I will like it tbh.
As I said, Italians don’t have SE. So it will be even weaker than generic.
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It makes their closed maps more problematic as they can counter siege better and opponents BBC can no longer outrange it. While flattening the powerspike in early imp to produce miltiple BBC
Yeah. Castle is a big burden.
I don’t think it makes them more problematic in closed maps. You don’t have any more discount on BBC. So having equal range won’t give any advantage.
Hussar+ GC+ BBC in closed maps will be harder to counter
New SOTL’s overview.
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