That was already done with the last change to the Genoese. It’s already 18/14 before conscription, elite is created in ~9.4 seconds.
I mean, assume that the elite version is trained in 5 seconds after conscription. In that case I would justify such a price for the upgrade.
Still thinking that reducing the cost is the way to go, and filling the hole of SE for the civ is pretty important. But this reduction of TT may definitely work
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the change was 22/19 → 18/14, which has slightly increased the vallue of the EGC, but that wasn’t the point of the change.
I was suggesting more something along the line of Royal Heirs (the Shotel UT), ie 22/11 or 18/9, as a way of justifying the upgrade cost
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I still think that a reduced cost and a TT buff are better, but another option may be to add a hidden armor vs anti archer attacks. Basically helping vs skyrms.
In practice is not always.
You can argue that the plumes are always used, but that doesn’t mean that they fill the same role of the arbs, that’s what I was talking about.
The meta is that, it solidify around the most common strategy, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only strategy. Even if 90% of the time the situation requires plumes, there is at least a 10% that requires the arbs, thus the 2 units are different (and I’m not referring to situations where there is no stone).
To it would be, it would make the Italian gameplay more plain and boring, and it would simply simplify the game, removing a critical decision making.
I would also say that they would be OP, but to support that theory I need testing that I don’t have right now.
If you decrease it about 1 or 2 seconds it would be enough, but at that point why not decreasing the TT further in castle age, and buff them again on their biggest weakness?
The overall point was to justify the price of the elite upgrade. If it guarantees, say, 5s as TT, is is clearly a huge boost which makes sense to invest in…
What if italian’s 2nd UT (silk road) would allow GCs production from archery ranges? That+ an elite upgrade discount and it will be fine
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But in imp it would have that big of an impact, since at that point either you should have enough castle to have a good production even with the current TT.
It just seems a buff for the sake of it, a bit random, and not aimed at one real critical issue of the unit.
If the problem is the overpriced elite cost, then the logical solution is to reduce the cost. If the problem is the long TT, then reduce the TT when it’s more critical (in the castle age). Do one, or the other. Or do both rather the implement an half measure just for the sake of pleasing everyone, but that in the end it’s something that doesn’t help the civ.
Well, I’m not a fan of it, but anyway, the problem as I already said it’s not in imp, but in castle age. In fact, if you observe other civs with similar UTs, they are all castle age UTs.
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Anyway, this isn’t really on topic (it has nothing to do with balance) but I figured that it might still interest some of you.
I found it this morning, and it’s a video that talks about the genoese crossbowmen history, so since we are talking about them, maybe someone want to know more about it from an historical point of view.
Also, I watched the video about hera archers TG tier list, and even if I thought that italians would have been higher on the tier, it shows how they are anyway fine, and solid, in part thanks to their UU too.
It would be very good for the civ actually. Personally I have always believed that the tech should have a secondary effect more reasonable for 1v1.
A very nice idea I have recently read (not for this tech specific) is to give the access to a tech otherwise not accessible. That would be awesome to play imo, also for saracens, but it fits nicely Italians.
This makes GC a better substitute of missing halbs, which they should have supposed to be.
Both an almost instant TT and the possibility of training GCs at ARs. I think it is not a bad idea at all.
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We can argue that a civ might need a tech that they lack now, like the Italians SE.
But if a tech is missing from the tech tree there is a reason. I mean, would you like to see franks with BL? Or LB with TR?
Also, the devs usually tends to implement buff and nerf that don’t change the nature of the civ, so sometimes this radical is highly unlikely.
The idea actually works for some civs only, which do not have a hole in the tech tree for balance issues.
Overall, despite being more favorable to an early game buff for Italians, I would prefer a simple cost reduction of egc and the addition of SE, instead of a different buff for GCs.
Gotta say, not a big fan of Royal Archer Heirs, and that idea.
Would rather just accept the feelsbadman cost reduction.
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Halb is a counter unit. Lots of TG I don’t make them as flank and then bam I need them right then in certain situations. Since Genoese is the way Italians are meant to counter cav and made from hard to create quickly castles it makes more sense for them to be made quicker to fit this role. The idea that Italians shouldn’t have a TT tech or faster TT for GC doesn’t make sense either as the UU is meant to counter cav why just make the civ bad at something that clearly goes against the way it is designed to be played. It’s not like the civ is meant to be crap Vs cavalry otherwise their UU wouldn’t be effective Vs cav and you wouldnt be forced into it. It’s very contradictory for the civ to have a UU which is meant to fill the role of halb and in most cases be not viable due to creation time. Anytime I play Italians and I lose my first little army of GC on arena the game is over cos I can’t keep up with the TT of arbalest and I can’t even defend my small number of GC with halb until I reach critical mass. I would rather castle age tech for better creation time or just base reduction of TT whatever makes most sense balance wise. Anytime I’ve used the civ it’s useless on arena unless your in a really particular matchup where you can fast imp Vs a civ which depends on it’s UU like Burmese back in the day and castle drop treb their base and kill castles. I think an overhaul of the unit where it doesn’t need a tech to create it faster but it performs better Vs cav and worse Vs arch might be better. I don’t have much experience with this unit though due to losing with this terrible creation time so cant say for sure the best approach. I’m not a fan of UT to make a unit viable though tbh. Maybe if it’s cheap it’s fine though. Also wouldn’t mind giving it +1 range than it currently does if it gets an overhaul where it can be better Vs cav and gets countered harder by archers. The unit having low range also makes it kinda suck Vs cavalry anyway due to how fast cav can close the distance without taking so much damage while also arch tends to overkill its target that is closest to it. So you might waste lots of total damage on knights as you kill twos times over the shots that went into them.
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Yeah but if the hole is there there is a reason. A tech should be either permanently present or permanently removed, not both.
Even if you restrict the techs to just like blacksmith techs, or eco techs, it becomes an unbalanced bonus.
A TT reduction may be fine, even if not that necessary anymore, but point was that it didn’t make any sense to get it through the elite upgrade, and even less through an UT (since twe were talking about the overpriced elite, not SR).
Your main problem of massing GC is in castle age, early imp at best, so a TT reduction after the elite wouldn’t solve the problem.
But if it’s not the TT the problem, but the overpriced elite upgrade (as the title of the topic say) then there is no reason to decrease the TT at a point of the game when it’s necessary anymore. Just decrease the cost.
The main issue I have with this thread is that I’m not confident the unit is balanced in castle age and can be used as a baseline to answer this question. That is it’s possible that the unit should be nerfed in castle age, with a slight cost discount, to make the unit more appropriate in both ages. The reload and tt were the big problem for the majority of the units life and I think the belief about the unit is still heavily influenced by that.
After having run a bunch of tests and experimenting with some reasonable, but by no means great, build orders in actual games it doesn’t seem like there’s any reason to not go 1 castle GC against cavalry civs ASAP. The theme seems to be you cede initiative in early castle age but by late castle age they have no good response. It’s not a shut out but it’s just so much better than going full xbow.
The key is mixing GC with something, anything really, to pad their health pool. The unit fundamentally performs extremely well in this hybrid formation. Just make sure to brush up on microing mixed formations.
I was gonna post a whole list of tips and tricks and building ratios one can use to maintain the proper production ratios but that isn’t useful if everyone decides to dismiss what I’ve said here out of hand, which I think is likely.
I’d be thrilled to see this strat failing at 2k+ elo. But I can’t find any Italians games where the Italians player builds GC before very late castle age. There are however a bunch of games where the Italians players’ xbows are overrun by CA, knights, elephant archers, konniks, etc.
In fact, in my opinion the GC is mostly fine.
The main things that bugs people is that the elite upgrade is overpriced for what it gives back, if compared with ither elite upgrades. Which is true, but it’s not something that I personally can’t live with.
From that point, some other people used it as an excuse to suggest all kinds of buffs to the GC (more range, attack, training ar ranges…) getting a bit out of topic. On top of that, the GC is mostly fine with their stats, and more importantly is different from the arb.
The problem is that you don’t have anything to help you in that strategy. Yeah you can age up a bit faster, but it’s not enough to build that catle/s and mass GC in time. You either need to be full walled, get some kind of advantege in the earlier ages, or face another slow civ. You lack an eco bonus that allow you to put more vills into stone, or a discout to help you in that direction.
And even when you get to that point, the GC isn’t a UU that is so strong that it was worth all that trouble, it’s not a mangudai or conqs, it’s still mainly a defensive counter unit (unless you do a castle drop, wich is even more risky), that yes might put your opponent into a difficult spot, but it doesn’t win you the game.
I’m not saying that the GC is useless, but only that going for them in castle age is super risky, especially against an agressive civ like franks or huns, that can simply overwhelm your GCs with superior numbers.
Yes but if your opponent is able to punish you hard for that you are done. Your are basically ceding map control, and the GC isn’t a unit really suited to gain map control (slow, less range than xbows).
This is the most recent pro game with italians. In the end, he explains exactly why he didn’t go for GC against a cavalry civ. The meta seems to be that you switch into GC only when you have a lot of castles, or you have a huge mass of arbs, and with a small trickle of GC you start replacing them.
This one confirms why is better to go for GC only in the late game.
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I am not saying it is a guaranteed win nor that one should throw away momentum to get it, all I am saying is that one should probably set aside a few villagers to stone to get it sometime soon. Or go for the full Spanish early castle type thing if they want to try it. If nothing else a defensive castle is still a defensive castle and it has value on its own. It is not an OP strategy, just that it’s better than the alternative of restricting yourself to xbow against cavalry.
Take the viper’s game. He built a defensive castle right before imperial age. So the castle is a sunk cost at that point. Given he is up against a civ like magyars and given that the castle is a sunk cost and given how good the castle age GC is relative to building arbs vs cavalry there is literally no reason to not make as many GC as possible and supplement with other production. The regular GC is far more cost effective against cavalry and is cheaper on gold than arbs. It doesn’t matter that he can’t go full GC, because any xbows or even arbs replaced at the margin with a GC would have been better. Yet he didn’t do it.
It’s these kind of (fairly objectively) provable mistakes which makes me question the observed meta. It’s like watching a slavs player drop a defensive castle, go knights and not touch boyars. The castle is a sunk cost and boyar is already basically a cavalier, what is there to lose? It’s not like the slavs player loses out on paladin numbers in the future. Or like watching pros build like standard feudal farms as Saracens. These are objectively sub-optimal things to do in 95% of the cases they occur.
The rest of your analysis only holds true if you hold the assumption that you cannot mix skirms or pikes with GC in a mixed formation. You fundamentally cannot send 1 castle GC out in their own formation like you would with other units. At least not in castle age. Their surface area is too high and speed too low. If you try it the enemy will get around or shoot over the meatshield and kill the GC. But if you mix the units together in the same formation it’s a nightmare to deal with.
- No upgrade Pikes + GC will kill (but just barely) twice the resource cost in knights beyond about 10 pikes and 7 GC. With even resources it’s a total slaughter. Just have to know what kind of micro to use.
- Skirms beat Xbow so hard that you can spare GC to protect against knights. Notice how in the viper’s game his mass of about 20 skirms was slaughtered by only 4-5 knights.
- CA get slaughtered by skirms and GC, and again GC also protect against melee cav.
Think about why civs like Spanish, with one of the worst pre-castle ecos, can get away with early castles. Because raiding with conqs slows down the enemy eco which allows you to set up for better trades later and pays back the initially poor military. But you know what also sets you up for better trades later? Trading extremely cost effectively against civ-buffed cavalry and/or discouraging their use.
Fundamentally you’re relying too much on the “Mono-unit composition” heuristic. Obviously if you try to send out GC alone they will die. For equal DPS vs cavalry (compared to xbow) you have 40% the health. Stack more and you are overkilling cavalry and opening yourself up to a counter-play. So you have to mix something else with them. Only in Imp where the cavalry is stronger and you can afford more castles does the mono-unit comp + separate trash micro work.
Think about why the Italians don’t have a crazy strong early eco bonus on land. If they could easily get up a quick castle for little downside how would you stop GC? A half GC, half skirm ball has the same health as an xbow ball vs cavalry and about 1.5x the dps vs cavalry. Against xbow it has way more health and similar DPS compared to an xbow v xbow fight. So you would need siege. But the italians also have redemption monks, good cavalry, and split micro is a thing. The civ would probably be broken.