Recently White Phosphoru has gained a lot of ELO by rushing with Hussite Wagons as seen in T90’s video. In that video, we see one of his opponents go for Mangonels, no doubt because the tech tree says they are the counter. However, the Hussite Wagon is too fast and never gets hit unless the Bohemian player is not paying attention. This problem has existed since the Bohemians were introduced as seen in this video.
The devs ignored this problem till now because Hussite Wagons were weak to cavalry. But the devs buffed their performance against cav in the last patch. Now, there is no counter except maybe redemption monks which is very expensive and not available to many civs.
Historically, the Hussite Wagons were meant to be used as mobile fortications. So, the 0.8 speed made sense when considering their main usage would be to shield other units. But since then, the devs have turned it into a tank that shreds everything because that is how pros use the unit. Now the speed no longer makes sense.
While organ guns have the same speed, they die in 1 hit so the matchup is fine. Hussite Wagons need 2-3 hits, so they can survive the mangonel shot and counterattack and kill the mangonel. Also, the mangonel is ~50% more expensive than the Hussite Wagon. This is entirely against the in-game description.
Either the devs should change the description or nerf the Hussite Wagon against the Mangonel.
My suggestions for the nerf:
Hussite Wagon speed changed from 0.8 to 0.6
Hussite Wagon attack changed from 11 to 9 (elite unchanged)
Hussite Wagon secondary projectile damage reduced from 4 to 3 (elite unchanged)
Nerf HW speed to 0.7
Nerf HW attack to 9 (castle age only)
Nerf HW secondary projectile damage to 3 (castle age only)
Nerf HW range to 5 (castle age only)
HW is fine as is.
Change HW description to “weak vs. Cav, BBC” instead of “siege”
Forget Mangonels. Villagers were given the +6 bonus specifically against Hussite Wagons (it literally does nothing against the only other unit with the Heavy Siege armor class, since Ballista Elephants have +20 armor in the class), and yet we see villagers failing to counter them if they just run away. And that’s without the unique tech for gunpowder speed.
Make a poll. Edit: the ‘gears’ icon at the right when writing a post.
My own suggestion would be to change speed from 0.8 (it was 0.85 when they were first added) to 0.7, which is still faster than a Scorpion, but increase Line of Sight from 8 to 9, matching Mangonels and Crossbowmen with Bodkin. They aren’t commonly used, so I think as long as they’re slow enough that villagers have a chance at countering them, they might be fine. Their damage against mangonels already went down a lot with the recent change.
Eh? If anything, the devs nerfed their performance against cav, they simply attack faster overall. But they’ll still be hindered by high PA units, such as Knights with armor. And with Mangonels, even before the changes you sort of needed to wait until you had a few Mangonels around before taking the fight, as once you can one shot them the fights dramatically shift in your favour.
Firstly, I shared 2 videos of 2 different players at different skill levels separated by 2 years. What more do you want?
Secondly, I don’t mind the strategy White Phosphoru is using, and I don’t mind if HW kills everything else, I only want mangonels to properly counter HW as in the in-game description. Currently, the description is a lie. That is the main issue.
They attack way faster. Before, the HW would fire the primary projectile and then after a little time, the 3 secondary projectiles would fire, dealing 2 damage each. Then you would have to wait some more for the next attack. Now, all the projectiles fire together, and the 5 secondary projectiles deal 4 damage each. So, the overall attack speed increased a lot. In a rush situation, there may not be time for cav armor or a lot of knights so those secondary projectiles will deal a lot of damage and kill what few cav you have.
Yes, and this is the problem. It has been a problem since release. Mangonels are not cost or pop effective against HW. Good luck getting a lot of them in time for an enemy HW rush. And even with a lot of mangonels, you can still micro to dodge the mangonel shots and counterattack. So, you are far from guaranteed to win, despite being the intended counter. It is like if skirms didn’t counter archers.
If you are at the skill level that you have to read unit descriptions then the description is correct.
The majority of players can’t micro them well enough for them to counter Mangonels.
Mangonel still counter Hussite Wagon. Hussite Wagon gives very small amount of damage to Mangonels and Mangonels kills Hussite Wagon in 2 shots thanks to Hussite Wagon’s armor class. If you don’t play against AI level micro, Mangonels counter Hussite Wagons.
Hussite Wagon needs buff and rework. Currently I don’t understand their niche. They supposed to be meatshield but they are overwhelmingly weak against siege and melee units. Their damage is too low. Currently Siege Ram is better at Hussite’s Wagon’s supposed task.
I’m well aware of the Hussite Wagon changes, and I’m also well aware of the UU rushes. The thing is - on an open map you should more easily be able to either stop it or defend it, as everyone at least has Mangonels and only few civs don’t have Knights (+2).
The changes overall still end up being that if you have higher PA, Hussite Wagons deal less damage. The extra pellets don’t matter at all, they either miss or at most add 1-2 damage. The main attack has much less damage, so overall the incoming damage is lowered compared to a full round from before. The main change is that everything is shot at the same time, and this mostly matters only when you’re actually trying to micro the units.
Knights +2 will still deal with them unless you’re streaming Knights in one by one.
Mangonels right now are a far better counter to Hussite Wagons than before, because Hussite Wagons dealt far more damage to them than now. Again, the problem is simply you can’t just make one Mangonel and think you’re completely safe, unless you’re safe behind walls. In that case, the Wagons aren’t going to be a problem anyway, it’s Bohemians’ followup that’ll actually matter.
Also, just as much as the enemy can micro Hussite Wagons against your Mangonels… you can micro Mangonels against Hussite Wagons. And if you have more than just one Mangonel, like I’ve been telling you - you’re going to land shots. You can repair Mangonels behind them as well, because they don’t one shot it. If the enemy player manages to micro every individual Hussite Wagon against your few Mangonels and you’re unable to do the same, the problem is not the civ matchup or the unit any more, but either there’s some insane mismatch happening or the enemy player isn’t looking at their home whatsoever. In the latter case, you can just send some Knights to raid, or manage your eco far better.
In a rush situation, in what world are you booming anyway? Because if the map is Arena or Black Forest, you’ll still have enough time to get a Siege Workshop up and do Mangonels. In an open map… if you die to Hussite Wagons, I’m sorry to say, but you’ve majorly messed things up somewhere. How come you don’t have army to stop it?
All skill levels check the tech tree from time to time. Hera is famous for pausing tournament games to check the description in the tech tree. There are 40+ civs and even more UUs and more coming. The only way to keep track of it all is the tech tree descriptions.
It only takes 2 shots if you get 2 direct hits with the mangonel. If the HW gets hit with the AOE, it takes 3 shots. You don’t need AI level micro. You just need to pay a little attention, which is easy when using rush-type builds since you stop making eco. The last patch was meant specifically to encourage HW micro at the cost of its role as a meatshield.
You can dodge 1-2 mangonels and kill them with HW all while spending less resources. By the time you get more mangonels, there will be more HW added all under your TC shutting your eco down. If your enemy has enough HW, he can 1 shot mangonels. HW have 21s training time compared to 46s for the mangonel and HW are much cheaper than mangonels, so there will be more HW than mangonels (as seen in T90’s video). Even 2 siege workshops don’t match the production of 1 castle.
No, mangonels are too slow to dodge HW projectiles while mangonel projectiles are much slower and can be dodged by HW. T90 even mentioned in the video that HW are more accurate in the current patch. The wiki shows that HW projectiles are 2x faster than mangonel projectiles. A movement speed nerf on the HW would fix this issue.
Mangonels also have min range of 3, compared to HW’s min range of 0. So, HWs can just move closer to the mangonels while maybe tanking a hit. Once HW are within min range, they dominate.
HW can be repaired as well, because mangonels don’t 1 shot HW either.
Didn’t know that.
I basically never have to do that and I’m not really good at the game.
The only thing I can’t remember is what techs every civ has available, there are just too many.
You spend fewer resources on HW and you percentually also do less damage than you receive from Mangonels. You don’t need to match the numbers of HWs, you simply need to get out 3-4 Mangonels, which is definitely easily done.
What are you talking about? You can target fire. That’s what I meant about microing. Hussite Wagon can’t target fire. You can absolutely micro Mangonels against Hussite Wagons.
And that’s why you have multiple Mangonels…
And Mangonels will damage both Villager and HW, HW probably doesn’t really damage the villager (not sure if it’s affected by the tower bug or not). HW doesn’t even block arrows, so if you have a HW running under your TC you can absolutely kill that HW with your Mangonel and repair it with your villagers, while your TC snipes the enemy villager.
(And if you have no villagers, you can just bumrush it down with Villagers thanks to the +6 bonus damage Villagers get.)
I mean, isn’t Hera pausing for tech tree sort of a myth?
You only do less damage with HW if you don’t micro HW properly. If you have 3-4 mangonels, the enemy has 6-8 HW, more than enough to 1 shot mangonels 1 by 1.
HW can check where the projectiles are going to land after the mangonels have launched them and then change direction. HW are fast enough to do dodge even if the mangonel player predicts where they are going. HW don’t need to predict where mangonels are going because their projectiles are fast enough to hit them.
Not if your mangonels are together.
You can pull the vill back for a sec to avoid damage and go back to repairing. It is very hard to get both the vill and the HW and if you are not going for the HW, then it can shoot.
Read the description. This is their main ability as a UU.
And if you have 3-4 mangonels, you have enough to one shot several HWs at once.
Yes, everyone can micro a ball of Archers against one single Mangonel, but make multiple and it’ll be much harder. It seems you still don’t understand what micro is, considering you also say this next:
It halves damage from projectiles passing through. Your units behind it aren’t invincible.
And what you said was that Hera often does that, which is a myth as he’s only done it a few times. It’s the same as saying Nicov never does eco upgrades before min 40 or something. A myth, even though you can link an old game from years ago.
Not if you split and shoot. The mangonels have to focus their fire to 1 shot. Did you actually watch the videos I shared?
It is more like we are talking about different levels of micro.
I said ‘famous’, you said ‘myth’. Neither of those mean ‘often’. I don’t have a playlist of these moments in the off chance it comes up in a conversation with a random stranger on the internet. No one cares if people check the tech tree.