Come to think of it, I have never seen a serious use of Halberdiers. They are slow, and being melee heavy infantry, get beaten by skirms, muskets, falconets, and micro’ed goons. The unit have good siege, but so does most artillery. The Dutch have Royal Guard Halberdiers, but 9 times out of 10, they will go for Ruyters instead. Likewise, I have not ever seen Poruchik since the Russian rework, despite them having pretty good stats with the Polk card. While I get that historically, melee infantry became outdated by the 17th-19th century (depending on where in the world you are), having a unit that sees little to no gameplay feels problematic.
So is Halberdier currently useless (underpowered)? And if so, what can be done to buff them?
They are high HP units, good at siege and against cavalry, I would say they are an excellent way to keep artillery safe or defend your base.
Although if you are so interested in using them against other units you can always use Italy together with the Argentine revolution, the gauchos slow down the units which allows the halberdier to easily destroy all the enemy cavalry.
It is a situational unit when you want to get rid quickly of cavalry units or certain units that have good rr but not mr, like the eagle knights or the caroleans after Svea Lifeguard. The Poruchik at least in treaty is an incredible unit in that it has good stats, is cheap and is created almost instantly.
I use them, but often on heavily forested maps, small maps or in marine raiding parties. But mostly as dutch, Portuguese and Italian. Russian Poruchik does have use too but usually I go the cav route.
But sometimes when I need that extra omph where musketeers fail since they do so much damage and siege.
Lets see:
It’s probably because Portuguese and Italian are so weak you never see halberdiers (no point in french halberdiers barely get any card bonus’).
You sometimes see spanish ones that come from the church card.
Italian halbs are purely by accident a decent unit and the french ones are actually better since armor, HP and promotions are actually a bigger deal for less cards ontop of a civ that actually has the economical might to sustain the pricey halbs. Though the french don’t need decent Halbs at all since they have just better alternatives to them period.
Frankly though, the Halb should be the archaic unit and the pikemen the one to replace it but that is just an leftover from initial AOE 3 design.
I don’t think it’s an accident that Halberdiers seem to be one of italian’s best options though they benefit most from their cards and they synergise well with papal guard which is the best papal shipment in terms of long term efficiency.
Papal guard is efficent? I allways found the Zouaves and lancers far more effective. NVM that papal unit shipments are not efficent at all due to time and que constraints.
Main use of Halb is actually not in battle, put like 15 of them on top of cannon to scare melee cavalry. Their other uses is to walk the long route on the edge of map border, and snipe enemy building by avoiding detection with a group of 20, while your main army engage the enemy army
Well yes, but relatively speaking Papal is the most efficient of all, Lancers are a little slow for cavalry and you need to mix with with hussars so they effectively slow down the hussars you only get 4 Zouaves and they are industrial age onward and they don’t exactly mix well with your regular troops. Of course all papal shipments are a little inefficient but it’s better to always have them shipping when you’re out of normal shipments.
I miss callen streams of him using dutch or ports halbs only to win games. Or aiz doing such. Social media has truly affected our attention span if we think halbs are not used or useless. sure, its not going to work in large masses but early age2/3 and during long games to split opponent attention these units are strong. Not every single unit needs to make up 50% of a composition to be worth it.
Theoretically, they are good for defending cannons. However, musk+falc or goon+falc(+huss) is a lot more popular. The problem is that they do not output any damage unless they connect in melee, and as a meatshield, hussars are better most of the time due to range resist.
The problem with treating Halberdiers as a stop-gap unit (train/ship a few for emergency purposes) is that by Age 4, their uses drop hard. It is generally not worth the investment to upgrade them to Guards/Imperial if they are only going to get situational uses.
That being said, if there are any strategies that actually uses Halberdiers extensively, that would be good to know.
dutch logi (niche)
port 10/10 uses halb organ quite a bit
Italy gets solid value out of even basic halbs due to guard being cheap and free vill and synergizing a bit with comps (halb berse plus shipments)
Any civ vs inca since hvy cannon plus halb hardcounters the civ
in teams the russian one can be nice when carded fully rarely in 1v1s tho
If vs sipahi or cuir, 8 halbs is great shipment. also mixes seige into the comp
None of these are “always optimal” but quite common on mid to high elo. Remember, a unit that helps get you to mid age4 is important in tempo centric aoe3. If you can rip a fort down, counter 8 cuir or 5 sipahi, or show that annoying chimu lover the sticks of wrath its a game winner. Surely, these are not spammable heavy infantry like musk are in late game but hand infantry isnt supposed to be.
Italian Halberdiers sound interesting, I will take a look into it.
Portuguese Halberdiers seems unintuitive. The Portuguese already have fairly good Musketeers and Dragoons, and can tech into Royal Guard Pikeman if they really need to flood the field with cavalry-interceptors. Any reason Halberdiers would be better for guarding Organ Guns compared to other units?
The Dutch Logisticians Halberdiers are more iffy, since even with the default Veteran upgrade in Age 2, they are rarely used. From most games I have played/watched, Age 2 Dutch usually rely on pikes for anti-cav/sieging, probably because Pikes are (0.75 speed) faster and (50%) cheaper than Halberdiers.
Using Halberdiers against Inca makes sense, but I think that is a more of a Inca civ-design problem.
I guess the biggest issue I have is that Halberdiers are currently a situational “panic button” for beating back cavalry, rather than a unit with its own valid and irreplaceable role in an army composition. For Spahi and Cuirassier, the optimal strategy is to use a combination of Dragoon (for damage) + Musketeer/Pikeman (for shielding). Halberdier is an emergency unit when your Dragoon or Musketeer mass is too small, and is otherwise ignored.
Interesting idea, but that might work. In general, I think Dragoons could be slightly nerfed against Heavy Infantry (Dragoon + Caracole outranges most Musketeers, and a group of Dragoons can hit-and-run Halberdiers relatively effectively). Of course, there are some edge problems, like the Rodeleros…
1 - That seems a bit unhistorical, even in terms of gameplay.
2 - Maybe, but we have to be careful not to make them too fast (i.e. Caroleans with charge) …
Have you played vs ports recently? Or as them? We aint goon bot into cass goon every game now since rework.
The halbs are there to carry your organs and seige occasionally. Civs with cav espcially slippery shock infantry ruin the fun that is 3 organs at sub 8 minutes. 8 halb plus w/e more you can make ensure even cuir or sipahi stay away from the fun cannons. And should your opponent drop a fort botting a revolt, its dead asap. Its going to depend on civ matchups but halb organ off a 10/10 is very common. It can ruin civs like brits spain otto malta or inca we normally struggle to disrupt their timings. You usualy pivot into skirm goon musk huss long term but constable gives you a bit more time before you need to. And as a good ports player you should always have good scouting so once the culvs or mass goon skirm are out (if enemy has such) yeah change up. Until then enjoy one of the deadiliest timings vs age2 civs or people trying to FI/revolt.
Dutch logi is niche but good players know how to micro and veteran halbs running amock is amazing sometimes. Yes pikes are standard but there are m/us or enemy builds where 8 pikes and a batch or 2 doesn’t cut it. The slower age up and focus on coin shipments over wood slows tempo down. But even the age up halb can make a difference.
A running theme of this is halbs arent going to be useful as easily as musk or goon, but that doesnt mean bad. A good player knows when to apply specific unit comps vs specific builds. Failure to do so doesnt make halb bad.
Even with maximal cards and age5 upgrades, the two best generic halbs from dutch and Italy remain mediocre unless you use them as siege units
They have good stats per se, but they are a slow moving heavy melee infantry which means anything ranged shits on them.
