In order to win against Goths late-game you have to have a very specific civ (Japanese, Aztecs, Teutons) with an absurd win condition of having multiple Castles within a reach.
What Siege are you talking about? I’m not refering to BF. Most maps are relatively open.
Nothing can compete the res/gold efficiency of Goths, and the big killer is the production rate that makes their Champion win against most generic FU Champions.
You can’t even use scorps against goths btw, they just get swarmed and killed. One of if not the best counters against inf usually.
I didn’t say they’re off, in fact in my whole comment I was just telling how we should avoid touching Huskarl since he’s a solid unit.
With that being said, if we do want to theoretically deal with it, yes, the only feature that can be an issue is its high damage that makes him a Champion.
That’s exactly why it shouldn’t be this way, Huskarl is NOT an average infantry unit and therefore should get a different treatment conceptually. While most other infantry UU are similar to a major degree this one is so special, it cant just be lined up with the rest.
(Anyways, as I said, I dont want this unit to be changed)
First I meant UU, obviously cant compete with Eagles (which are Huskarls in a way), though it’s quite easy to proove its supirior viability, Anarchy plus the fact this unit shuffles up the meta, being stronger than the strongest unit in the game (Xbow) make this unit the one with the most relevancy in the game. (Hi to Berserks and Obuch that can barely kill a Knight 1v1, and rely on multiple Castles)
It’s a simple work of numbers, Slavs give 10% farming rate boost, which is practically little less considering how chaotic late-game farms are, considering you have 80 farmers this means 8 extra pop, which is almost like Goths, Khmer same thing, perhaps a little better realistically. And as I said, arguably top3.
the reverse is also true, you can’t micro every single Halberdier to go vs Cavalier and Champions to dodge Cavaliers, some Champions will be fighting Cavalier, and some of your Huskarls will be fighting enemy Champions.
I don’t deny Goths is strong late game, I stated so multiple times.
You know what is also strong late game? Berber Hussar flood, Magyars CA + Hussar comp, etc… I don’t see Goths are being the only civ that makes you go “omg” with your hands into your hair.
Huskarl is the 1 unit that Goths can’t spam forever, it’s 26g and besides HC normally kite to a Castle or something. Obviously you can also screen them with Hussar/Halberdiers/Champion etc.
yeah good example, Aztecs is far stronger AND comes earlier, or Mayans “mistakes don’t matter” Archer floods in Feudal/Castle age.
I think with any Supplies civ, since Goths must respect tech switch hence mix in Huskarls/Halberdiers always, if you do full Champion with a sprinkle of Cavalier/Handcannon etc., you trade only very slightly unfavorably.
the problem is that it’s more expensive than a Champion. Elite Teutonic Knights have 16 + 4 attack, too bad they cost like 150 total resources. It’s all about attack-per-resource spent and Huskarls here are very average. Champions, even without supplies, are considered a fairly hard counter to pure Huskarls.
Once Goths mix their own Champion the show is over, production rate is too high to be dealt by just a soft counter.
Yeah, I’d be willing to bet that in practice, the Goth pop bonus almost never actually means “10 more eco units” TBH it probably maxes out at 5-6, which is far worse than something like Mahayana, and usually worse than the Slavs farming bonus (from which they benefit all game). This is exacerbated by the fact that due to your cheaper/weaker units, there isn’t really a reward for going eco-heavy relative to other civs that have more expensive but more pop efficient units (i.e. this is better used with a bias towards military than eco units).
…All I’m going to say is that I always enjoy playing almost any strong infantry civ vs. a Goth player who thinks this is true.
Something like Khmer/Celt/Slav scorps with any kind of meat shield shreds Goth flood. Yes, it requires you to have some areas of your base locked down with walls or Castles, but this raiding defense 101. If you’ll die to a few huskarls getting into your base, you’ll die to a few knights/eagles/CA/Crossbows, etc.
Stuff like this is what makes me say people are still living in the early 2000’s as far as their assessment of Goths. Ignoring superior compositions/counters/micro/strategy, this was true in AoC. I used to play almost exclusively as Goths for years. This is no longer true thanks to the Supplies tech and the ballooned number of civs with super-infantry. I no longer play Goths except maybe as a counterpick to literally 2 civs, because if I want to have cost-effective, strong infantry, I’ll more likely play with Aztecs, Bulgarians, Burmese, Dravidians, Japanese, Malay, Poles, Slavs, Teutons, maybe even Vikings. Nearly all of which have better ecos (not Bulgarians). Nearly all of which (Not Poles) counter Goths cost and pop effectively with just their swordsmen line when FU. Nearly all of which have more flexibility (you can argue Dravidians/Burmese don’t) and/or strong bonuses for units other than infantry. Even a generic civ with no infantry bonus but FU champs/supplies, their sword line performs well enough that the Goth resource efficiency advantage is pretty small, and it give the non-Goth plenty of opportunity to do damage with other units while it distracts with swordsmen line. Anyway, I’ve made this argument a dozen times in as many threads, but some people seem to have the AoC Goth flood seared into their brain such that no subsequent nerfs/power creep/meta change can shake their image of “the unstoppable Goth flood.”
I wonder if this assessment is based on having only seen it done poorly before. Yes, scorps are a deathball unit that requires a certain mass to be effective. Once you get a certain number, maybe 10+, Huskarls might as well have 0 pierce armor. In a chokepoint you can throw thousands of res worth of Huskarls at massed scorps and literally have nothing to show for it, and even on maps that are any less open than a swiss cheese, scorps perform very well in a defensive setting vs infantry. Massed scorps are uncommonly seen only because massed infantry are also uncommon.
That’s the key part. The Goth flood is about flooding from all different angles. That’s why scorpiosn (and also HC btw) don’t work. If you can restrict Goths so they can only attack from one angle they are trash.
This multi-angle swarming is what makes this flood so extremely hard to deal with.
The only aspect about Huskarl that annoying me is their bonus against buildings. It overlap with champions. I think Huskarls shouldn’t have this bonus. It would healthier for the civ
Goths need an effective unit to raid and destroy buildings, they are fine.
If you want to nerf one infantry UU, the Obuch is the one.
They already have it… The militia line cover that role…
But has weaker PA, isn’t comparable
Note that the Goths have bad siege precisely because they are supposed to use huskarls. In AoC they were the only civ to lack both siege rams and siege engineers and this trait is still very rare nowadays, but the Goths still have the shortest end of the stick as they have neither siege onagers like Malians or discounted BBC like Italians. So the huskarl’s bonus damage against buildings is more than fine (and it’s lower than the one of the Goth champion anyway)
I’m legit curious (due to my own lack of knowledge) what are considered to be the main deathball comps in this game atm ? I’m assuming mangadai + seige ram + hussar is one, I always thought khmer balista eles but then they are quite weak to onager?
Imo any civ that can do ca +hussar + strong siege with mongols being the perfect example (huns magyars tyrks as well). Also any civ that can pull off SO infantry like tuetons koreans bohemians (technically houfnice not SO but houfnice better anyways) finally civs with tanky archers like elephant archer or wagons.