Didnt we already have a long discussion about this? what has changed since then?
I agree, that it is very difficult to balance because the mongol lancer just has vastly different stats. However i would go with just ignoring the mongol lancer. I think it is beyond redemption for actual fights and mongols as a civ have been working out really well for a long time. They never needed the lancer to begin with. Tartars on the other hand are pretty mediocre. An archer killing steppe lancer would help them out quite a bit, while it also adds to the options of cumans. I think if it m…
Making the Steppe lancer anti archer cav (not a big fan anymore of that idea, since melee pathfinding has vastly improved since then and made knights pretty balanced against archers):
Yes, they will die quicker from crossbows, however right now tartar steppe lancers aren’t even doing terrible against chocked up cross bows when compared to cavaliers. They were quite comparable actually, though my tests were not perfect and I might be wrong about that.
So what you want to do is to give them even more pierce armor, reducing the upgrade cost, give it bonus damage against villagers AND decrease the overall cost? I think with those stats it would become way too strong again. Maybe…
Making the Steppe lancer a rewarding micro intensive unit:
In line with this I came up with some new ideas.
So what I’ve heard people say so far is to give the SL a role either as:
Anti Archer
Full Raiding
Anti infantery, as i.e. Tartars don’t get good champions
Anti Camel, to get a Rock paper scissor cavalry triangle with Camel counter knights, knights counter SL, SL counters Camels.
I already made suggestions for the first 2 (+1 pierce armor on elite upgrade, and lower cost, bonus damage against palisades, houses).
So I try to integrate the lat…