Discuss need talk about cost upgrade unique unit too. Compare cost of Việt, Britton, china, mayan Việt the most expensive when Mayan upgrade free gold why??_
This is true. I think it’s really weird and maybe unbalanced that plumed archers upgrade doesn’t cost gold. Rattan upgrade cost maybe should be diminish (considering than rattan are more expensive that both longbow man and plumed archers). Maybe something like 850F 650G
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Long bow expensive too but yes Việt more expensive, Mayan need nerf like other archer civil. I from AOE1 go to here and see it from start but no one see it 
. 850 and 650g if can it big change but 850f-700g better . Anyway if not nerf plum 
it is big benefit for they. See longbow and chukonu, rattan hard for use very much, while plum can easy play and they not weak, they run fast + high tank with melee attack
played random civ yesterday and got viet. We reached lateGame and i was horrified by the lack of lateGame techno they get… Here’s the list of the most important tech/unit they lack of:
- black furnace
- mansonery
- hussard
- hand cannoneer
- shipright
- gold shaft mining
Other nice to have tech would be:
- siege ram
- siege onager
- parthian tactic
- architecture
- hussard
- fast fire ship
- heresy (i get why: elephant
)
I think they should get one of these tech. Mansonery is a must have if you get bombard tower! gold shaft mining is required for a civ with so low eco boost. Parthian tactic would be fun but it doesn’t fit the civ (with parthian tactic, they would get FU cav archer with extra hp bonus : really good). But for me, black furnace would be a huge upgrade for their lateGame. It won’t solve early problem but at least they get a chance if you reach lateGame.
Concern about rattan: they are really good in castle but in imp, they’re not good at all. The upgrad cost is too high and the creation time is too high too
Some say that having fully upgraded Halbediers and light cavs would be too broken, considering they have the imperoal skirmishers, but I think that viets are designed to be a late-game civ, and thus, they should get the upper hand in trash wars. If you compare to persians, they have FU trash (all three units) plus trashbows. And that’s without taking in accout the huge eco bonus persians have. Also, I think viets are designed to be a team-game civ, and therefore, their excellent trash wouldn’t be THAT important, since in team game you don’t run out of gold (not completely). So yes, they should get furnance.
After hearing it from some people, i’ve decided to make a comparison agains other Unique archers, and it’s true. The upgrade it’s too expensive, and the rattan itself it’s expensive as well. More than both longbow and plumed archers (both in upgrades and cost of each unit). Even further, mayans and Britton have good eco bonuses. I think rattans should get some tipe of bost regarding their cost, since thw unit itself is good
Also, they have a pretty weak siege workshop, so I think they should get bombard cannon as well
Slight mistake, their skirms lack Bracer (but yeah, trashbows make up for that)
Vietnamese have both this and siege engineer, which helps a lot.
I quote this from AOK heaven:
What does make Rattan Archers stand out, to count as a “Unique” Unit", rather than an almost the same as the baseline unit (Arbalest), and hard to compare to the Imperial Skirmisher @ Pierce Armor.
http://aok.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=3,44377,0,30
I would argue against that they are good UU. While the idea of being tanky archer itself sounds good, in real life hardly anyone would wanna mass them.
These are flaws in their design:
- Weak offensive abilities (very normal attack dmg)
- Low HP (they are just normal archers when vs melee and siege)
- High cost (compare to other archers like plumed, longbow, arbarlester)
- Hard to mass (castle unit)
- Less effective than Arbarlester vs infantry (this is the primary job of archers)
Despite high piece armour, they have low HP therefore they can’t live without escorts.
Their front line escort, Battle Elephants, while tanky, are very slow and cost dearly on eco (hey look for a sec, rattan = gold + wood heavy, elephant = food heavy) hence even civ with best eco in the game would be struggling to produce this combo.
Upgrade costs for both units are very expensive.
If a unit is expensive, they should excel in a role, either having strong offensive capabilities (Longbowman) or being very tanky (Plumed Archer). Otherwise they should be cheap (Karambits) or quick to produce (Shotel Warriors). It’s very difficult to find a UU that ticks every NO boxes like Rattan.
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I was almost sure they do. It’s just the other guy’s post that made me confused 
Actually, they have a pretty solid attack for an archer (7) but, yeah, they still could use a buff
After all Rattan Archers are archers (yep). As archers we care about offensive abilities. Let’s compare them to Chu Ko Nu, Longbowman, Plumed Archer to see why on full upgrade they have the worst out of all:
They have:
- The most expensive cost out of 4 unique foot archers (95 resource vs 80 of plumed, while cost the most gold)
- Second worse train time out of 4
- Second worst dmg output (only better than Plumed)
- Second worst range.
- Second worst HP (5 hp more than Longbow, but they have 50% more range than Rattan and that is super important)
They are designed to be “tanky archer” who can’t properly tank because of low HP and melee armour.
The only thing Rattans are superior to those archers is the cost 
Therefore they beat Chu Ko Nu, Longbowman, Plumed Archer in terms of uselessness.
I strongly advocate either of these changes:
- Increase their tankiness by applying Vietnamese HP bonus to them, or give them HP regen
- Lower their train time.
- Lower their cost a little (50w 35g is fair enough for a weak offensive archer).
This should be coped with some early eco bonuses to help transition to the costly Archer + Battle Elephant combo
Dude.
No foot archer is designed to tank melee, and you didn’t even take either of the the Rattan’s major strengths into consideration. 1. They are fast, the 2nd fastest archer on the list only slightly behind the plumed archer. This allows them to escape from most infantry and skirmishers, and even makes them decent at raiding.
2. They are number 1 in pierce armor among all archers. They have as much pierce armor as an Elite Huskarl. The Elite Longbowman and Plumed Archer, Arbalest, etc, deal 1 damage to Rattans, while taking much more damage. They are the only foot archer that can beat Elite Skirms with a large chunk of HP left.
Of course they look weak when you fail to include their defining strong characteristics in your analysis, and when you choose to only interpret neutral data in a way that makes them look bad (for example, you say “Second worst train time”, which is technically true, but they are tied with Plumed Archers, so you could just as accurately have said “Second best train time.”)
So yeah, they’re not a bad unit at all, and absolutely massacre most other archer units. However, since the Vietnamese do need to be buffed, I could live with the Rattans receiving a small boost, perhaps 5 more hp, or -5 wood or gold cost, or removing their frame/fire delay. Any one of those, I think, would be sufficient, but the Vietnamese should also get an eco bonus.
Edit:
They have higher attack… Unless you can show that they fire significantly slower than Arbalesters, this is untrue.
Welcome to the world of foot archers in Aoe2.
To be precise Arbarlesters fight infantries just as good as Rattan Archers… I say maybe 8% different at most. However if you take Rattan’s cost into account, they are not cost effective vs infantries and that’s disappointing for the most expensive foot archer UU.
Not true, Chu Ko Nus massacre everything in front of them with 5 arrows each shot and can even beat Rattan cost effectively, Longbow can massacre everything 12 tiles away from them before their opponent can damage them, even countering onagers, Plumed has a tanky 65hp and shoot faster, run faster. Unless you are comparing a unique unit to normal Arbarlesters?
This is pretty lame designing an expensive UU specialising in beating trash unit skirm…
No, it’s true. You are truly welcome into the aforementioned world. Truly.
You seem to have a very idealized view of all these other units, and a much poorer view of the Rattan than is borne out by its stats. Chu ko nus, longbows, and plumed archers are all pretty good against slow infantry, as you point out, and against villagers. They are all pretty bad against:
-Eagle Warriors
-Huskarls
-Knight Line/Heavy Cavalry.
-Skirmishers
-Rattan Archers.
*Chu Ko nu’s extra arrows help somewhat against units with high pierce armor, but it’s still a very bad idea to fight eagles, huskarls, and most heavy cavalry without, as you say, “an escort.”
**Britons extra range allows them to get off one, maybe 2 more shots than any other archer before enemy units close in. This is a miniscule advantage, especially against any fast unit. Again, it’s something of a different story if you have Longbows + support units in a chokepoint, but you’re comparing Rattans “without an escort” to these other units, so I have to assume that the same rules apply for a fair comparison.
“At most” would be 100% better, if we’re really being precise. In the world of AoE, small increases in attack can add up to significant percentage increases. An Elite Elephant archer has 9 Pierce armor, so an arbalest does 1 damage, an Elite Rattan, 2 (i.e. 100% more damage). This is a rare case, but it’s still substantial enough against lower pierce armor targets to somewhat justify the increased cost. For example, the Elite Rattan 50% more damage to the Elite Tarkan, Elite War Wagon, Elite Eagle, Malian Champ, does 33% more damage to Elite Battle Elephants, Paladins, Hussars, Malian Pikes…you get the idea)
Edit:
I’d be inclined to concede you something of a point here, but again, you’re fixating on arguably the least important implication of their strength, and ignoring all the others. Elite Rattans wreck most other archers so hard, it’s not even funny, and it’s not uncommon for Castle/Imp archer armies to clash. The ability to deal better damage than arbs, and handily destroy enemy archer armies is quite strong in those situations where it becomes relevant. Even regarding their less-important performance against skirmishers, since skirmishers are the premiere archer counter, being able to stand up to them is no mean feat. In a way, it’s similar to the cataphract’s anti-infantry bonus - if you were determined to view that in a negative light, you could say it’s “pretty lame designing an expensive UU specializing in beating trash unit halb,” but the reality is, it can be quite powerful to have a unit that is not nearly as scared of one of its main counters as most other units in its class.
- You missed my point. In this game archers are designed to beat infantries by default, and in rare cases, cavalries and sieges.
- In the case Archer vs Infantry, my point still stands as Arbarlesters are defnitely just as good as Rattan when fighting infantry which is their main prey.
- This is weird as Rattan can’t beat Skirms reliably (to be expected) so I don’t know where you get the idea from. Watch 600 skirms vs 600 Rattans:
-
You would argue that Rattan can effectively counter archers with their high pierce armor. This is questionable. Why would you use a castle unit that cost 45gold, 95 res in total, while a cheap trash skirm that costs no gold and is easy to mass, can do much better job?
-
I can see that this archer is also designed to beat other archers as well, this is an option, but this job has always been done excellently and cost effectively with trash skirms, therefore giving the Viet another expensive option that isn’t even optimal. What’s the point of this design? I don’t understand.
My main point here is that Rattan is actually very much less useful than they appear on paper. Despite being expensive and trained from castle, their role is pretty much overshadowed by normal Arbarlesters and Skirms.
When you design a unit that is trained from castle and very costly, that you want people to actually use them, you have to give them compelling reasons to do so.
I agree with you,
Sorry but 
50w45g kill 30f25w and still lose. When trash skirmishers you still lost so much. And they attack delay 15% than archer line and plum, longbow 11 what thing you want do with this archer expensive and not thing to do with. Trash skirmishers better choice instead for rattan . or arbalest better damage when they shoot faster trash arbalest more easy and you can use wood for economy, and remember never use archer for kill rattan 
when I see rattan only easy trash skirmishers + some knights or mangonel . And all gold for sign weapon 
rattan is weak archer never use or when you true you win you can create some rattan for fun.
Yoy’re missing the point: rattans can full the rol of both skirmishers and archers. They counter both archers and infantry, and also could be used for raiding, thing that skirm. Can’t do.
Besides that, yes, they need a buff. Maybe one more attack, or more speed, or less frame delay. Idk. An small buff would do. But they’re a prwtty solid archer.
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Delay attack 
, cost upgrade, and cost create 
40w45g
Welp, there is a pretty big list that rattan can do that no other Vietnamese archer can:
they are actually useful against non archers, unlike skirm
they kill mangonel faster than arbs
they are much faster
they can sit under TC fire and raid all they want
they can run (I see luch more people going rattan than HCA so it’s enoguh I guess)
and also I don’t see the problem with their elite upgrade, it’s 100 less gold than britons, and you don’t have to pay for a unique tech as well to FU them.
I dont agree, Britton high upgrade price too, and compare to other civil archer. Special Mayan. 1k f750g is too high. And they can stand under fire tc but still be kill easy and why you want stand under fight building, if want talk about it why not stand under castle fire?. Plum archer can not stand under TC? :)). And look what rt can do with knights, Plum can use for knights better. Thing we need make balance for UU tech cost upgrade. Let they get 850f700g is rasonable. While they get highest cost create
They are indeed the exception, not the norm
To kill villagers/prevent them from repairing for instance.
They can do it better than most archers, but are not as good as Rattan for that. But you know, unlike viets they don’t have cavalry, elephants, BBC, siege engineers, or even HCA… only eagles and plumes, so those have to be quite good to make up for all the stuff Mayan lack.
What is rt?
???
Do you know eagle was good choice for all time in game? Horse of Vietnamese is bad horse, because res and elephant you cant use it before boom imperial age in long time. Mayan Special 
11 I wish Vietnamese can change for they 11 Special make unbalanced game it good like AOE1 1997 edition
Rattan shoot delay than more plum so much and tank unless to melee attack, like me say no one use archer for kill rattan, skirmishers is free trash. 1 more cost create and upgrade make you cant use it.