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

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Byzantines are an interesting civ. On paper they could go pure cavalry and have an answer to anything, almost like Goths with infantry. They have Cataphracts for infantry, Paladins for Archers, Heavy Camels for Cavalry, and Hussars for Monks and Siege. No other civ can claim this.

However in practice I find this plan doesn’t work out well. These units are too expensive to upgrade and create (Paladin + Elite Cata lol). Byzantines’ lack of Bloodlines or Blast Furnace means their whole cavalry line is mediocre. I find that it’s typically better to go with their fully upgraded arbalesters, mixed with some discounted trash units and siege.

Kinda disappointing how they are potentially so unique, but then end up playing similar to Ethiopians, Mayans, and other archer civs.

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With byz you want to play defensively and make almost only counter units (except for some minor raiding parties).
Once you forcde the opponent out of his main unit line and into infantry (to counter your trash) you start making catas which you can make a lot cause you saved so much gold before.

That’s how you want to play byz most of the time.

3 Likes
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absolutely not.

Boyar is now a mounted teutonic knight.
Leitis are cheap, ignore armouor and produced quickly.

Coustillier? What that thing needs is a complete rework not a buff. Also, you want to buff burgundians? Absolutely not.

On this list the only thing worthy of a buff are elephant archers and memelukes.

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How are they supposed to be countered if they weren’t vulnerable to archers? Mass monks? :smiley:

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CMon isn’t like 1.4 speed will make wonder vs archers.

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Why change it then? Sounds like a change for the sake of change. Cavalry UU are all kinda good

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Byz I agree with.
Bulgarians I agree with, the 2.4 ROF was so absurd I have no idea why the devs went for such a weird balance decision on this unit, the particular patch they got it in also made Kipchaks have some never seen before 2.2 ROF change. Something lower their attack something, idk, just keep things consistent. And if they attack fast with stirrups whats the problem, the cavalier already attack as fast as samurai and that’s the whole point of the tech anyway.

Ballista eles need a buff, they are too bad against halbs and skirms and scorps do everything they do, just better and cheaper. Ele archers DO NOT NEED BUFFS, especially extra range. They are too strong when massed as they are. Indians have problems with their design, but the state of EA is not it, especially in closed map TGs.

Leitis is debatable. Also I thought they are 80f not 70f. First off, I think that Leitis might be the best melee UU at the moment. 19 attack in castle age is no joke, as is killing halbs and archers in 1 less hit in imperial, alongside with mowing down heavy cavalry and siege. All of this at 50 gold the piece with cheap, compared to cavalier+paladin elite upgrade. I can see the reasoning behind lowering all melee unit train times, but Leitis… They are pretty strong. They are really strong. Don’t even need blast furnace anymore, which gives you a good timing in early imp with FU much before your opponent has FU. And against archers you just add the winged hussars.

Mame buffs I always welcome with open arms, alongside any saracen buffs. Lacking halb makes you too reliant on mames or camels, compared to italians, but at least genoese is easier to mass for them. I don’t think mamelukes in particular are the reason saracens underperform, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them more often. They have the cheapest imp upgrade though, and it’s a good upgrade too, the cost probably is to offset that. Although I’d more be comfortable with a higher imp cost but lower base cost and train time.

Boyars 50f 80g is ok. It’s to better suit the otherwise extremely food dependent eco because of the infantry. On the other side though, you can always spare food with slavs… +10hp… I don’t know, thing with boyars is that in some particular matchups having a number of boyars is basically GG for your opponent- aztecs, bulgarians, teutons (bar TK), persians, khmer, franks etc. I want a Slavs buff, but I don’t think boyars is the way to go. They need something more immediate, not more HP in imp on a unit they rarely use. At that point they have the arguably best infantry in the game, cheap siege, FU hussars, FU monks and remain as one of a handful of civs with an eco bonus at that point, maybe the one with the strongest such, due to the farming cap otherwise.

1 Like
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I think the whole problem was that Konnik at release had better HP and the ROF was 1.9, plus Kreposts were bigger so you could rush the unit out and kill most units even without Stirrups, and in Imperial Age Elite Konnik became too broken with 1,42 Firing Rate, just a bit less broken than steppe lancer as shown here: https://youtu.be/Vtb4QfQqCaY
Also the Bulgarian cavalier has 2 less attack than Elite Konnik.

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The problem I found about cavalry UU compared to Infantry and Archer (Both foot and ca) is that, other than War Elephant not a single cav UU can be called stronger than their rival generic unit line - knights.

Other than Genoese xbow, I think everyone will agree that all Archer UU are better than generic Archer line in almost all situations. Similarly other than 2-3 exceptions, all Infantry UU are stronger than generic Militia line in all situation. Samurai is often considered pretty similar to generic as bonus attack vs UU is rarely useful. Still +10 HP over Champion is better than +1 attack in 95% situation.

For cavalry UU, you just can’t say that. Every single one of them are weaker than Paladin in at least one situation. Boyar, Letis and Coustiler are weaker against archer, Keshik, Tarkan is weaker against melee, Cata is weaker against anything other than infantry and camels. Some even weaker than Cavalier in some situations. War Elephant is definitely stronger than Paladin if they can engage in battle to begin with and still perform terribly worse than knight line against 2 of the greatest cavalry counter - Halb + Monk.

Another ironic thing is almost all Infantry and Archer UU cost more than generic rival units and still can be seen while total cost of most of the Cavalry UU is slightly cheaper than knight line and still can’t be seen that frequent.

At this point, I think all Cavalry UU should be specialized units. They should be specialized in a specific situation and perform significantly better than knight line in way that using knight line as their replacement won’t be a good choice at all. IMO all the 4 classical cavalry UU - Cata, WE, Mameluke and Tarkan can be considered specialized units and therefore need no to very little change.
Mameluke cost change 55f/85g → 60f/75g.
Cata cost change 70f/75g → 65f/70g, TT reduced 20s → 16s, 14s (Elite)
WE and Tarkan are fine. Need no change.

Now for newer expansion cavalry UUs. They all are more or less derived from Boyar. All the 3 TLK cavalry UU were designed just as Boyar with regular MA but an unique gimmick new to the game. Since Boyar was not a good cavalry UU to begin with, all 3 of them suffered, gone through couple of changes (including Boyar itself) and still here we are - those 4 still does not feel unique enough.

For the last one - Coustiler,

You realized that is still more expensive than Cavalier + Paladin combined for Burgandians, right? So any reason to pick them over knight line especially when you don’t have to upgrade Cavalier first? I think they need to be cheaper as well as cheaper than Burgandians Knight line to upgrade.

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Coustilliers are better thsn knights if you manageto get an advantage,and are stillway cheaper overall

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Konniks could have their attack rate buffed again. I agree that they were over nerfed.

Coustillier are fine imo. Buffing their movement speed is the wrong choice anyway. They need counter play so they can’t hit and speed away without suffering damage in return. Burgundians don’t need any buffs anyway until they remove that abomination that is Flemish Revolution from the game.

Cataphracts are fine. With that said, I think you could argue for a slight cost reduction on Logistica or their elite upgrade. Still, they are strong in the right situation. We don’t see them too often because Byzantines don’t usually have a need for them until late imperial but they are powerful there.

Leitis are fine imo. They have a niche and they hit like trucks.

Boyars could maybe use a slight tweak. Shifting some of the gold to food to synergize with their farming bonus sounds fair.

I don’t think Mamelukes need any significant buffs. A mass of Mamelukes is incredibly hard to stop. If we reduce their cost I think their elite upgrade would need to be more expensive. A small production time buff may be acceptable.

1 Like
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I honestly don’t see non-elite Coustilier better than Cavalier. Elite maybe slightly better than Paladin only if you can do hit and run. But again, is this really worthy the more expensive upgrade for harder to mass unit?

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It absolutely does in the situations Coustilliers excel in

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I was thinking about a new idea for a while. Hopefully it will be interesting. Just like some CA UU don’t get archer attack upgrades from blacksmith, some Cav UU won’t need cavalry attack upgrades from blacksmith. Leitis and Coustilier are the perfect units for this. One has a pretty huge attack without blacksmith attack upgrades that even ignores armor and other has a big attack after a period. Blacksmith cavalry attack upgrade has a very insignificant contribution to their DPS.

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Yeah I’m heavily against nerfing the leitis any further. The unit is already a non entity in team games and against archers.
Coustilier is pretty bad outside of its charge attack and doesn’t need nerfs either

3 Likes
36

They buffed infantry units because cavalry is too strong. and i don´t think cav UU are in a bad state, they are normaly just situational units.

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37

Completely ironic seeing as I see huskarls, Throwing Axeman, Obuch, serjeants, woads and berserks more often then I see cavalry uu

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Franks, Poles and Vikings are top tier civs so they are more popular in ranked and they dont have cav UU and as goths you need to produce huscarls yes or yes because is their only counter to archers.

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Lithuanians are a top tier civ and I see leitis less then I see every unit I mentioned. What’s your argument about that? This despite the fact that some people still want to nerf it more.

Point was infantry uu were and are in a better spot then cav uu are.

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Lituanians aren´t top tier civ, they are just good in tg and Leitis are pretty good right now considering the last attack upgrade nerf so it makes no sense buffing them.