So I haven’t seen it talked about alot but the recent patch gave italians some pretty crazy gunpowder. They were already pretty good with the cost reduction, but with this new tech apparently improving accuracy and granting passthrough damage, isn’t actually pretty scary?
1 Like
Before talking how scary it is, how does it work exactly?
1 Like
So its an imperial tech, displacing Silk Road, that gives %15 pass through damage and ‘makes them more accurate’.
The description doesnt say how much more accurate or how far the projectile travels.
- New unique tech: Pirotechnia
- Available in Imperial Age for 650 food 500 gold.
- Effect: Hand Cannoneers deal +15% pass through damage and are more accurate.
Then the topic should continue after the patch has been released.
Agree to disagree.
The pass through damage alone is big enough to think about Italian fast imp potential.
How many bodies the bullet can pass through? How many tiles it travels after it penetrate a body? How is it compared to missed shot damage? How is the damage calculated?
Against arbalest, their pavise arbalest can beat generic arbalest.
Against cavalry, they have genoese crossbowmen.
This mostly affects against infantry. And the effect is not known.
Enough to make Italian hand cannons the best in the game with the existing cost reduction.
There is apparently not enough data to judge that Italian HC will be better than Spanish/Hindustani/Portuguese
Perhaps the gunpowder discount should be removed and given to the Magyars or Slavs in the future (after they get gunpowder units, of course).
They’re already better with the cost difference - save perhaps Hindustanis.
Yeah, strong AND cheap is a hard pill - even if Italians might take a while to get there. Honestly, I’d give the gunpowder cost to teutons, tbh. I can see slavs, but whats the deal with magyars?
The Black Army was famous for using gunpowder weaponry.
First let’s look at math : 15% of 17 is 2.55, 15% of 27 (counting the infantry bonus) is 4.05. Will it round down (2 and 4) or up (3 and 5), will it be affected by armour (if yes it will mean 1 damage against most units), what’s the distance through which the passthrough damage will happen, will it even be scorpion-like pass-through damage or just ignoring a certain amount of pierce armour… too many unknown parameters. I’m sure Spirit will test it soon enough once he gets his hands on that.
1 Like
Internally the health of units are stored as float values (or at least some decimal places are recorded), not integer values. Spirit of the Law explained that in one of his elevation videos.
So 15% will mostly likely really be 15%.
Italian Hand Cannoneers were cost-effectively countering even the Janissaries. It’s not hard to see what will happen soon.
Three big bonuses to the same unit is too much; it’s the definition of power creep.
1 Like
Poor Turks, they’ll have to rely on their skirmishers to counter hand cannoneers 
Sad to see those Janissaries not microing with their zero attack delay…
1 Like
Which are closer to a soft counter vs gunpowder, and for which the civ has no elite upgrade to. I know you’re doing a meme, but these ARE valid problems.
Are you just taking ANY stat difference to build an argument over? There a 1 range difference. Show me a clip of you kiting knights with steppe lancers before you talk about kiting normal hc’s with janissaries.
This bonus is unacceptable.
Portuguese, Spanish, and Turks get only one combat bonus for their Hand Cannoneers, while Hindustanis have three, and Italians will have three as well!
It also negates all the efforts to make infantry viable.
Well, it seems that we have very different understanding of the games.
Steppe lancers 1 range attacking melee units is nowhere comparable to ranged units outrange another ranged units. The collision size of steppe lancers is big while the collision of janissaries is actually small. There will be way more janissaries fire at once than steppe lancers attack.
On small mass, micro does matter specially with 1 more range and ZERO ATTACK DELAY. On large scale, micro does not matter much but units that have more range will have enormous advantage to reduce the opponent units mass with 1 shorter range at the beginning.
If we have that different understanding, it is no point to argue. If range does not matter much for a ranged unit, I don’t know what matter then.
Well, there was a thread complaining about composite bowmen being too OP BEFORE its release. It turned out that Armenians was borderline trash and composite bowmen didn’t really help very much. It is not hard to wait for the patch release and then evaluate.
Portuguese actually get -20% gold for HC. And wood will be adequate in imperial age. But Portuguese HC has been fine for years. For damage, what makes you think Italians HC outclass Spanish +18% firing or Burgundians +25% dmg?