This is true, yes, though there are situations where the lower normal damage also comes into play. But yes, you are right.
Indeed they are extremely strong in the end. They don’t really need changes whatsoever imo.
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Bonuses to compensate aren’t complete halbs? And there aren’t bonus to really compensate.
Halbs lacking the last upgrade is a big deal because they can’t effectively deal against cav units fully upgraded. For example, goths halbs are melted by huns tarkans and they should just be good against buildings.
I never saw any scout rush running away completely for 1 spear man.
It doesn’t cost as much as time to actually make stables + knights or enough crossbow ( that needs to be upgraded) to counter.
Who are these civs? This is a fallacy called straw hat argument. That is why i try to specify all the civs. The Ram push with halbs is easily countered by arbalest/crossbow + other halbs or mangonel, which doesn’t really require to be upgraded fully, in this case.
That is why byzantine have strong defense. To defend yourselves with cheap units that cost less to make the cataphracts.
And what exactly are teutonic knights gonna do? Chase them forever?
I haven’t tried with boyars but they probably win 1 vs 1 but with splash damage, and enough number of cataphract, they lose
Don’t put up another straw hat argument. Who thinks that halbs are op? And for the aztecs argument that i made, recently the viper and hera and mbl lost 3 vs 2 because the viper team had 2 infantry civs against 2 cavalry civs and viper was the Aztecs and lost.
Viking HP bonus and chieftains
Halbs lacking the last upgrade is a big deal because they can’t effectively deal against cav units fully upgraded. For example, goths halbs are melted by huns tarkans and they should just be good against buildings
Missing melee armor is rarely what holds them back. In case of tarkans or paladins, whether it’s platemail or not, it takes them same amount of hits to kill the halb. Although FU Cataphract is something that comes to my mind, allowing them to 2 shot a halb without the last armor. The missing pierce armor is what makes them bad really.
I never saw any scout rush running away completely for 1 spear man.
They don’t run away completely but it’s not good to engage as the spearman player can micro to get two hits on say three scouts before dying. The HP lost makes them vulnerable to villagers
Who are these civs? This is a fallacy called straw hat argument. That is why i try to specify all the civs. The Ram push with halbs is easily countered by arbalest/crossbow + other halbs or mangonel, which doesn’t really require to be upgraded fully, in this case.
Yeah let’s disregard one of the best comps used by over half civs because I think I’m better than anyone else
And what exactly are teutonic knights gonna do? Chase them forever
TKs lose badly to catas. I believe he meant because Teutons get paladins as well as heavy scorpions. Also hand cannoneers are pretty effective against Catas.
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Just watched the game. They lost because they got overconfident. Viper went imp with literally 47 villagers, only 13 on wood, that too as a flank with no castles or anything to defend. MbL went yolo on Vivi and it paid off but it took him a while to catchup, with no mass military or shared defense they were on backfoot, with no chance to trade because of the bad economy and base defense. Of course such play is vulnerable to mobility
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Well bonuses to “compensate” are: Goth/Byzantine cost reduction, Celt bonus speed, Lithuanian speed + UT, and you can also count Viking pikes HP boost + UT.
Lacking the last armour upgrade doesn’t make them weaker to Tarkans, the difference is too small to matter. And halbs that lack the last attack upgrade are fine too since this missing 2 attack is negligible when compared to the 32 bonus they get vs cav.
Of course they won’t “run away completely”, you don’t pay for military units just to hide them forever in your base when there is a threat.
There is no fallacy. These civs are in general those who will heavily invest in archers or cav first, and that doesn’t have siege infantry or siege on their usual game plan (ie.the halb ram push will force them off their plan and they will have to drop everything and start upgrade their swordsmen/mangonels. Oh, and mangonels are much more expensive than rams) So you can include in the list: Berbers, Magyars, Huns, Tatars for instance, and even civs that might have a reason to have some of this stuff ready like Briton or Korean can have trouble against the strat.
In what world do you counter a strat that uses a unit that can take 270 arrows with archers? Using halbs yourself isn’t optimal because your either need to focus the ram (and risk losing all of them in the process) or duel their halbs (and let your buildings go down). Mangonels are more expensive than rams, slower to build on top of the weaknesses I mentioned earlier.
Sure, you’ve got better defenses… but no bonuses to make your civ faster, so going full defensive and try and get all ressources for FU cata while ir enemy is just taking all the map control he wants isn’t a good idea.
I mentioned Teutonic knights because you said some people “use Byzantine effectively”, which ignores the fact this can be said about any civ, any UU, even the nichest such as Teutonic Knights. So it’s not a good argument.
Since Boyars kill Paladins I doubt they are beaten by Catas.
Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/6hagn3/the_ever_ongoing_debate_are_halberdiers_too_op/
While I don’t agree tha they are OP, I think it shows they aren’t too weak either, because if Halbs truely were underpowered, people believing they are OP would instantly be met with a reminder of how much they actually are UP, and yet it’s not the case.
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This is why we have camels and monks to counter cavalry. Or make cavalry of your own. Spears are supposed to be a cheap means of fending off scout and knight rushes early on and you generally need to be walled regardless if your opponent is going with cavalry. Camels are more expensive and better if you opponent goes with a lot of cavalry. Monks are good for castle pushes–knight rushes. Making spears faster would make early cavalry pushes less of an option and push us further to “mass archers gg” meta.
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Not everybody has camels/good knights and the problem is mostly the scout line. It is too easy to push and destroy your economy with hussars/scouts while it isn’t that easy to defend against them using halbs/spearman.
That’s the main purpose of scout line, raiding. Walling your eco and protecting key areas with castles is the basic defense you’re expected to do. You’re literally asking mobility for infantry, something cavalry is supposed to be good at
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Indeed, as JoJo already mentioned, scout line is supposed to be raiders and the raiding can already be quite tough with the current spear line, you want raiding to become a completely pointless and extinct tactic?
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If your civ can’t defend against cav with:
-walls
-camels
-monks
-spears
-your own cav
then you need to pick better civ matchups and scout your opponent to see they’re going cav and prepare accordingly.
If you’re not walled and res aren’t well defended then your own mounted units should be used in defense to match their mobility
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No I am not and i wrote this multiple times. I don’t want the halbs to be catching scouts as you are typing.
And spearman is supposed to be stoppers of raiders
walling is viable depending on map, you will be wasting too much time/resource if your map position sucks
camels aren’t viable late game after gold, and not every civ has them. They can effectively counter knights or scouts, i know that.
monks costs 100 gold and they die easy to scouts, good against elephants more than other cavs.
spears can’t defend effectively
is not always a viable option if the cav line sucks later on to invest on knights/camels(ex missing last tech, missing bloodline)
if you have walls ofc
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No? It is their only utility, stopping cavs. That is why they have such a huge bonus.
You use halbs to deter the cavalry from burning down your walls
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Again, there are many options to counter cav. Buffing the cheapest option to make to make raiding more difficult doesn’t make sense to me. I see why someone would want to increase the speed of spearmen after having been knight raided with few defenses, but if that happens there were other more serious issues than spearman not being fast enough. I listed plenty of options that can be used to counter cav. If none of those options, incuding making your own cav (knights, scouts, camels) is an option then, again, you did something else wrong other than having slow spearman.
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Hey, what about Lithuanian? If the lack of speed makes Halbs 100% useless, then Lith Halbs must be the absolute best and everyone would absolutely love them as the lack of armor would be a negligible downside right?
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I am against a movement speed of spearmen to better counter a scout rush cuz you patrouille your spears near your berries or wood lines and wait of the scouts to come anyway. Maybe a slight LOS increase of spears would help spears to actually follow scouts.
Did somebody brought up that Hallbardiers is clearly the strongest unit of the trash trio
A Hallbs
B Hussars
C Skirms
Skirms dont counter hallbs, skirms die horrendously against hallbs in general and especially against halb + siege which you will frequently encounter in the late game. Skirms should get more bonus damage against hallbs.
Skirms die to Siege, but win easily against Halbs. They have a +3 damage bonus vs Spearmen line units, and will volley fire them down quickly.
without decent range distnace, halbs win vs skirms
Almosty any map has enough distance for the Skirms to win by a large margin.