I guess that makes sense. Very small base attack but high bonus attack vs UU even in ranged mode.
Samurai (Ranged)
Attack - 2 (3 for Elite)
Attack bonus vs UU - 5 (6 for Elite)
No attack bonus vs Eagle or Building.
Rest of the stats are same as melee including ROF (not benefitting from civ bonus of course as it is only for infantry).
That is the point of the Samurai, it is just meant to counter UUs not a standard archer. The champion is better vs most other infantry and trash units anyway.
In that case, Samurai should not have bonus vs UU. For example, Cataphracts only counter infantry. What is the point of saying ‘Cataphracts are good against infantry’ if there are several infantry that can beat it. Currently, Samurai is useless against ranged or cav UUs which is a majority of them.
I was thinking that Samurai ranged mode would retain the UU bonus damage it currently has in melee mode which is +10 (12). This is because samurai still has much lower pierce armor than a skirm and it has to compensate for that and kill UUs atleast cost effectively. Many UUs have very high attack, like Chu ko nu, Mangudai, Urumi, Monaspa so high bonus damage is needed in ranged mode.
+3 armour makes a huge difference.
Paladins just have 3 base pierce armour.
With 1+3 Pierce armour they have the same as an Elite Skirmisher!
Plus they would also be better against all Melee UUs to, taking less damage from them.
Samurai don’t have to hard counter every single UU on their own.
They can soak up a lot more arrows with the +3 armour, you just gotta add a few Skirmishers or Japanese Cavalry Archers which do bonus damage vs. Archers.
I don’t think what you replied is related to the quote you provided for context.
In any case, samurai are slower than paladin and shotels and have less range than skirms. So, they would need more to compensate.
Will be absolutely broken. Even Cavalry UU will melt almost 1.5x faster than Genoese Xbow. Samurai cheaper gold cost will make totally impossible for any UU play.
It’s a niche unit that isn’t used very often.
They are not completely utterly useless though. Any massive buff would easily make them overpowered.
Just Champions are more cost efficient against most none UU units.
Most civilisations would already not use their UUs.
Magudai are better in most situation then Cavalry Archers but if they make significantly less damage against Samurai you simply just use Cavalry Archers.
For other Archer UUs it’s even more extrem. How many people currently even use Longbowman? With Samurai taking 3 less damage there is even more reasons to just train Crossbows.
And that’s true for most archer UUs. Just train Crossbows or Cavalry Archer instead.
It would basically just mean that you simply can’t train your UU against Japanese.
It would be essential like removing that unit from the Techtree.
Most UUs already struggle with being underused this would just simple make it so it is never a good decision to train UUs against Japanese.
Japanese could just train a few Samurai and completely negate any UUs you build.
They have the strongest Halberdiers in the game so they already have the perfect answer to Cavalry.
They have fully upgradable Cavalry Archers with bonus damage vs. Archers so they already have a good answer to enemy ranged units.
The thing is Samurais are useless against a lot of UUs, not just ranged ones.
Thats why I suggest to give them essentially +3/+3 armour vs. UUs, that’s a massive buff.
It would drastically reduce the damage they take from melee UUs too, the impact on ranged ones would just be even bigger.
It would like already reach the point where almost all civs would stop using their UUs vs. Japan entirely because the generic units they have do not have this weakness.
Some UUs like the Slinger would still counter the Samurai though but that’s ok.
True, but non-unique cav could still be used against them so I don’t see shutting down UU play as a bad thing. Japanese aren’t anything special in late game except for this, so I think it is fine.
If the enemy already has skirms out on the field, Samurai would be more useful vs UU cav. Also, strongest halbs is different than best halb. I would still rather have lith halbs because they can keep up with cav better.
I have never seen that bonus be useful in an actual game. Don’t know why they added it, and many pros don’t think it makes any difference to how they play Japanese. Maybe it helps a bit with the transition into CA when the enemy has xbow? That’s all I can think of.
Let new improvements against ranged UUs be locked behind a new Imperial UT. As a result, they will still have trouble fighting ranged UUs until at least the early Imperial Age.
I see it very often. It largely negates the effect of foot archers as a natural counter to CAs. You will need more foot archers to compete with them.
They now have CA. And their tower is actually quite powerful but underrated.
Japanese Samurai have problems dealing with ranged UU but their CA helps fight ranged UU with +2 vs archers. They can have royal heir like effect to reduce dmg from UU
To be clear, I meant the bonus does not make a big difference to the match up. CAs are just stronger than foot archers if you can afford them.
How do foot archers counter CAs? HCA has same reload time and tranining time as arb while having more HP, attack, armor, speed at the cost of higher resource cost and less range. Even UUs don’t overturn all these advantages. There is a window in Castle age where all the upgrades are not in yet and there are more foot archers on the field due to massing in feudal, but this is a temporary advantage.
CA don’t do anything they didn’t already do. Tower is still worse than castle because castle can hold territory for longer before going down. Keeps are still a fairly rare sight even for Japanese, though more common relative to other civs.
do u mean with how they did with shotel warrior, taking in negative 3 damage from any UU attacks?
Foot Archers used to be a cost effective counter to CA. Now it is very close if I recall it correctly.
For same resource investment, Japanese is way better in both.
As I said, it is underrated. Maybe with new cost reduction on Tower, there will be more tower play from Japanese.
Having the ability to train Samurai that are very good against the majority of UUs or at last a lot better then Champions would mean that many civilisation will already think twice before training their UUs.
This gives Japan a passive advantage, kinda removing one strategic option form the enemy.
If the Samurai can tank a lot of arrows from your UU (Cavalry) Archer then why not just train generic (Cavalry) Archers instead?
There are not many civilisations that don’t have the generic version of their UU with decent stats.
Only a few civilisation are missing critical upgrades for the unit type their UU is.
The only ones I can currently think of are Burmese missing 2 archer armour upgrades.
Almost every civilisation with a good cavalry UU also has good knights.
If the Samurai gets buffed against UUs then most civilisations will just use normal knights against Japanese anyway.
So it doesn’t really matter if we give Samurai a much bigger buff that makes them like 1 shot UUs or something.
At some point every civilisation will just stop using their UUs against Japanese.
It should change the cost effectiveness in the favour of (Heavy) Cavalry Archers.
Especially with Parthian Tactics they resist ranged damage pretty well.
Japanese have a good Imperial Age UT that should stay this way.
But it could be partially locked behind the Elite upgrade.
Exactly.
Even though the number 3 is up for debate.
It probably should be different between normal and Elite Samurai too.
The effect of Kataparuto itself is good. But the Japanese should not have it.
This technology, and the history description thereof, is completely against real history.
It is almost an obligation to change this technology.
On the other hand, even though its effect is good, do the Japanese really need it?
They can have the Bombard Cannons rather than it and will still have a better siege capability, then the UT can be replaced with something that finally fits their history and culture.
It could be interesting to change the effect of Counterweights to the effect of Kataparuto and to replace Kataparuto with a new tech that can improve samurais largely and also CAs a few, like samurais receiving -3 damage from ranged UUs’ attack and samurais and CAs having +10% speed and the effect of Heresy (meanwhile tweaks the tech tree to gain BBC and lose Husbandry maybe).
I generally like the idea of Japanese getting access to Cannons tbh.
Not sure how much that would impact overall balance.
But yeah if they had cannons they didn’t need fast Trebuchets and someone else could get it instead.
Then the -3 damage from UUs could be the new UT.
Maybe we could go as far as remove Arbalester from their techtree and increase the Cavalry Archer bonus to maybe +2/+4 in Castle/Imperial Age.
Then they would be more pushed towards using Cavalry Archer instead of Crossbows.
But Japanese where also famous for using foot archers so not sure if that’s a good idea.
That’s way I even a little bit nerf their CAs rather than buffing.
Now if the players can afford the CAs, they always go to CAs. Though the Japanese were a boring civ, they were not a unbalanced weak civ at the beginning, and then they got such a buff against archers. The CAs are as good as before when they fight melee units and now even better than before when they fight archers, their natural counter.
I’d like to remove their Husbandry rather than Arbalests to give a small and mere nerf to CAs, so people can choose Crossbows/Arbalests or CAs depending on what they face. Facing cavalry, choose Crossbows/Arbalests; facing archers, choosing CAs. Maybe the imperial UT could make up the 10% speed to CAs for the late game.
Actually, why not both.
No Husbandry but therefor they get more bonus damage vs. Archers.
So their Cavalry Archers are slow but strong. I think that would be fitting for Japanese.