Infantry UUs are being buffed, so some cavalry UUs should also receive same treatment

After the infantry units being buffed in castle age and the elite upgrades being adjusted, some cavalry UUs still need some adjustments.

Byzantines:
Cataphract (Standard and Elite) speed increased from 1.35 to 1.4
Elite Cataphract training time reduced from 20 seconds to 16 seconds.

These changes aim to make the unit a bit easier to field and use, especially in the Imperial Age.

Burgundians:
Coustilier (Standard and Elite) speed increased from 1,35 to 1,4.
Elite upgrade decreased from 1000f and 800G to 850F and 750G.

These changes aim to make Coustilier a more reliable and a bit cheaper unit to upgrade, and making the micro-manage to the charge attack more relevant.

However we have a problem, Burgundians can more easily tech into super early paladin, whose upgrade is really cheap and paladin is overall more versatile in almost every task, plus a lot easier to mass since castle age. so go ahead and discourage their usage by reducing Stable techs discount from 50% to 33%.

Bulgarians
Konnik (Standard and Elite) speed increased from 1.35 to 1.4
Elite Konnik ROF decreased from 2.4 to 2.2 (After Stirrups is 1,6, just 0,1 less than Elite Cataphract)

Konniks are already a really good cavalry UU, but the lack of PA makes the unit a bit akward vs archers, and they aren’t that weak vs them, these changes can make them more useful in TG, especially vs paladins as Bulgarian Cavaliers become obsolete once paladins are on the field.

Ballista Elephant and Elephant Archer:
Already explained here:Solutions for Ballista Elephant and Elephant Archer

Lithuanians
Leitis (Standard and Elite) training time decreased from 20 secs and 18 secs to 18 secs and 16 seconds.
Leitis is already pretty good, but since lack of blast furnace hurts a lot going for Knights for a long time, and starting switching into Leitis becomes really hard since massing them on the way to Imperial is challenging as the unit costs 70F so it drains your food eco really hard, keep that, but at least reward better with the unit being deployed faster, needed vs cavalry civs because Lithuanian halbs are medicre vs cavalry (needing one extra hit to kill in comparison to other halbs).

Saracens
Mameluke (Standard and Elite) training time reduced to 17 seconds and 15 seconds.
Mameluke cost changed from 55f and 85g to 75f and 60g

I always said mames don’t need an overbuff, but the 85G makes the unit insanely so hard to use properly in comparison to Saracen Heavy camels, also the current TT is really long with 23 seconds.

Slavs
Boyar cost changed from 50F and 80G to 65f and 70G.
Elite Boyar +10 HP.

Boyars are a really good cavalry UU but the 80G isn’t that logical considerating the unit is strictly less tanky vs arbalests. Also with the +10HP they in theory should tank one extra hit from halbs and camels

Thoughts?

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I dont think leitis or boyar need buffs. The cost change on the boyar could be okay, especially considering the civ has a food bonus, which kind of conflicts with the uu being food cheap.

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Yeah, but in comaprison to other cavalry UU tt like Boyar, Keshik, and Cosutilier, the Leitis train way slower.

Cav is just better than infantry in general though. Most of the infantry civs tend to play either archers or cav for a lot of the game, so I think buffing their UUs is partly targeted at making them see a wider field of play. A lot of the cav unique units are already used, but I guess some of them could be buffed.

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Why would you fix all Cavalry units movement speed to 1.4… Diversity is too much?

And again making Mamelukes and Boyars more gold efficient. Why?

Why would you Keshikize every UU?

Stop working methodically, be unique literally, be creative, some units should be faster than others, some should be more gold heavy than others, that’s the beauty of a strategy game, Diversity, the key component for every RTS game.

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That’s because infantry is support units in this game.

That said I still see more infantry uu use then I do cav uu use

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To give them an advantage over knights would be my guess.

Because both are insanely gold expensive for almost no reason and gives little reason to make them

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What diversity are you talking about, some listed here have lower PA while also moving at the basically same speed as Knight, and being worse vs archers.

I could went for the boring way and give all 1 PA and making them even more Knight clones but no.

Devs are trying to give to Infantry a more protagonist role than be just a support unit
IMO is good for the game that Infantry plays equal against knights and archers without be OP or break the game

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Cav UUs are already quite strong.
The only thing you can discuss of giving the cav UUs more distinct roles, some specialisation when you want to make them over the standard knight line.

Which might be hard to achieve as the knight line has already almost not weaknesses.

The reason why people often don’t use the UUs is that the knight line is already so insanely strong. Even if the UUs are better it’s often not worth to invest heavily in castles for it and also taking the risk of possibly losing your essential production buildings.
As the knight line is already so strong the little bit of extra punch you usually get from the UUs is often just not worth the risk to give the opponent an additional winning condition.

We could make specialised cav UUs like one with considerably higher speed or another with special bonus damages or whatever. One with low armor but high HP, one with conversion resistance or whatever. But then the unit shouldn’t be much better than the knight line and a lot of the current cav UUs are considerably stronger than the knight line already.

I think the knight line actually doesn’t really allows for UUs to shine as it is already so insanely strong. IMO the still clearly strongest line in the game.
With this in mind I would be extremely careful with overbuffing some of these UUs cause it can easily become totally OP. Some of the cav UUs like the coustilier and leitis are already quite close to that in certain matchups.

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Infantry has neither range nor speed. Cavalry can always choose not to fight infantry.

You say that the boyar is less tanky than the knight line against ranged fire. Not by much, having less hp (150 vs 180 for paladins) has a smaller impact than having less pierce armour would. Buffing its hp would also buff it in melee and it already has an insane melee armour. Being a little bit more vulnerable to ranged units is another counter (relatively…) than halberds which is a fight boyars can always refuse.

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I just looked again into age arenas counter videos:

Common
Unique

Funny that some people try to argue to buff a Unit that has only 3 (with monks) common and 8 unique counters. And don’t forget that the slavs faster farming bonus isn’t even included there.

Boyars are even equally matched with battle elephants! And you want to buff them? Really?

As I said above, the reason why people don’t go for cav UUs is that the knight line is so strong already. And there is the very high risk if the units are so strong that they overcome the inconvenience and risk of going for them they will most likely be totally OP immediately. Better make them more situational.

In general I could imagine a world where all UUs are trained like 20-30 % faster to make it less inconveniant to try going for them, but please don’t buff units like leitis, coustilier, boyar, tarkan keshik, konnik or cataphracts. They are already insanely strong, it’s just inconvenient to go for cav UUs. (and in case of the cata, it’s their killer punsh unit, that doesn’t need any buffs, it’s insanely strong in what it is designed for)

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No, they remain support, they still won’t compete with knights and archers both, so this just isn’t true.

Except that is not happening. Sure some fight well against one or the other but not both. And it comes with clear downsides. You want one that fights both? You know what has go happen.

I’ve always felt Coustiliers should have 1.4 ms as they’re quite similar to the likes of Leitis and Keshik’s. But then we have Tarkans at 1.35 MS so this “medium cavalry” thing is not a thing.
I’m not comfortable with any of these buffs except for Cataphracts. The rest are rare but still useful in a pinch.

All of those units you mentioned are in a pretty decent spot and I would be VERY careful with buffs. Why would you even touch Cataphracts or Coustillier?

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Because both aren’t as used as you might think, why Leitis, being a lot cheaper than those, move faster than coustilier (moving faster is a must to make charge attack more relevant), cataphract (weaker attack, more gold intensive, slower) and Konnik (slower)?

How much time you see Boyars being used? those tests only account into basically nothing but fictional situations, you can’t go Boyars vs Teutons, Lithuanians and Poles because all get also UUs that destroy Boyar, vs other cavalry civs Slavs go more often to halbs with trample damage, vs archers siege is overall more reliable, all for 1v1 games. Basically left Boyar as an option for TGs sadly as 80G in 1v1 isn’t that easy to keep affording.

I suspect Coustillier is balanced that way because they are 1) cheaper than Leitis and 2) would be hard to counter if they would be even better at hit and run tactics.

Also Cataphracts don’t have weaker attack, they have a pretty high attack rate and are countered only by archers. Why would you make them better?

I wonder why you don’t have War Elephants on your list. Probably because they are so expensive and never seen that you forgot about them :smiley: I could see changes to that unit instead

Isn’t something you want to do with the unit, otherwise what’s the whole point of the coustilier??

And still will be countered by massed arbalests, Leitis has same PA and massed arbalest are also the way to counter and the unit is fatser, why cataphract can’t? Also you can’t really compare the attack lol, up to 22 attack that bypasses armor vs 14 attack that’s reduced by armor and only excels vs infantry…

War elephants are in a better place than ele archer and ballista ele, war ele has a purpose and excel at it.

And that’s all that byzantines need. The cataphract is a strong unit, but it is esepecially strong in the army comp that byzantines have. Cause with their super cheap counter units they try to force their opponent into infantry. And if this happens the cataphract is just the perfect tool to close the game.

Maybe with any other civ the cataphract would be quite bad, but it’s the perfect fit for the byzantines.

We should at least wait to see if the infantry buffs are overall good or bad for byzantines.

Why you would ever make catas if the opponent still has a lot of arbs. You make the catas when you successfully forced the opponent out of knight or archers. It’ your killer blow unit, you don’t want to make it before the right situation. And ofc it’s a bad idea to make it if the opponent still has the counter units.

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