any high level casted games with landsknecht and elephants playing a big role?
I remember in beta thinking landsknecht needed a massive hp boost to be viable, but I also believed that Abbasid dark age ram push and Chinese tower rushes might be a thing, and they clearly aren’t.
id love to see a replay with a hre player flexing on the french with landsknecht in the recent tournament, and the same with delhi elephants.
Yeah, I think Landsknecht should get a 30/40% bonus HP too, they can be easily destroyed by 2-shoots mangonels, archers, surrounding man-at-arms and KTS so giving them enough life to provide 2 aoe hits before dying can be good. Actually they got a higher cost than MAA when MAA are by far better.
Pretty sure I saw an HRE mirror where the guy taking Landsknecht lost hard. They are dreadful, I don’t think there’s going to be a game showing the opposite.
Elephants are unfortunately in a similar boat. I’d say they occasionally pop up - but usually only because the Delhi player has got massively ahead so chucked a tower elephant in there alongside the MAA/Springalds for a laugh. The elephant then tends to just absorb a lot of enemy Springald shots.
As of now Landksnecht does not have a role in the HRE composition. They need a massive rework. Maybe turn them into a shock troop or something. Just move them away from a high damage low hp unit. That will never work with melee infantry.
Elephants are occasionally mixed in, they are basically an expensive ram that shoots back, and Delhi often has more gold than they can reasonably spend anyway.
Landskenetch could use a bit of a buff yep.
Elephants on the other hand, one of the reasons they don’t do very well right now is because of the springald meta. Its very easy to just focus them down.
I think its very likely we are going to see these units being much more relevant after the next patch.
I didn’t think it’s a good idea to remove it. It can be a shock unit with improved hp and/or even improved movespeed. That’ll literally add some compositions and diversity in the game.
Have you ever played age of empires 2 or seen any their matches? we know it works and we know it has uses.
It just needs to be balanced properly.
Yeah any of this, I would prefer a bit more damage as well
For a high dps unit I would bet the Delhi MAA with the landmark bonus (15% rof) has a very close dps (possibly scholar boost as well +50%) when they actually work
It does not, i play 1v1 compentively in Aoe2 and Aoe4.
Only viable unit in Aoe2 that is high damage but low hp is the shotel warrior. Its only viable in niche circumstances. Plus its only viable in those circumstances because it moves fast for infantry, 1.2 v 1.0 with most infantry UU while 0.9 for militia line. Landschneckt moves at the same speed as spearmen.
Thus my point, it will never be a viable low hp, high damage melee unit. Thing to make it viable is to make it a shock unit. Something like Eagle warrior in Aoe2. Infantry with high movement and average hp and damage. That is what’s missing in the HRE comp.
Something around 1.38 movement, same as Palace guards (1.52 after upgrade) would be viable and maybe around 140 hp with its damage adjusted to compensate.
Landsknecht are faster than everyone else’s spears.
Almost the speed of a knight?
Eagle is highly arrow resistant, with damage bonuses Vs almost everything of value. But the key point is the arrow resistance since that is the hard counter to infantry
Of course I would like a landsknecht like that as well, but whats the counter? The difference in aoe2 is that champs do huge damage to eagles, and eagles base dps is not actually that high.
That is almost the inverse of the current landsknecht
And finally the landsknecht isnt as fragile as the shotel, on top of the shotel being a lot less niche than you’re making it out to be. Karambits also have their uses.
Zerglings are also a famously low hp, high dps unit.
The point being the idea of a high dps low hp unit doesn’t make it unviable. It’s simply a tweaking issue.
I’m not sure on adopting this never approach to low hp/high damage - but its a function of extremes.
Right now the Landsknecht has 80->95 hp and 0 armour. For 160 resources. This isn’t just low for a melee unit - its ludicrous.
An equivalent age MAA has 155->180 hp for 120 resources. Thats effectively about 2.5 times as much in terms of resources - and the MAA gets a bunch of armour. Two Elite Spearmen (notionally the same resources) have the equivalent of 260 hp.
The Landsknecht is fragile to the point where it just doesn’t work. Ranged units just breeze through them. Knights meanwhile charge in and take about half their health…and then kill them with two swings of a sword. If you attack move blobs of Landsknecht into blobs of MAA/Spears they come out ahead - but not to the point where this is a sensible thing to do.
Resource comparisons are not the only consideration - because sometimes games are decided by 100 pop armies running into each other and then one side can’t get back up - but still.
Zerglings are atleast cheap, and expendable and tier 1 and do not cost gas.
Landschnekts, are expensive, age 3 units. By the time they can come out, they are obsolete for what the opponent can have fielded. Sprinkling them in an mma group seems to be the most effective, but that gold would be better invested in anything, and will yield better value than a landsknecht.
Elephants seem to be like a much more powerful ram, not a good idea to mass them, any high alpha range group can decimate mass elephants. They are slow and hit buildings hard, and can damage stone walls, unlike a ram they can defend themselves in melee.
They need a huge buff for HRE we don’t have but two special units everyone else has more then just two.
I thought about one potential use and that’s using a ram as a clown car. Go send them to the enemy base in a flank, attack a building near a villager group, villagers bunch up together to torch the ram, pop them out and one shot cleave his entire villager line.
Probably will never work more than once, but would be funny. The unit is still terrible regardless.
I will train Landksnecht and Elephants which look telling my opponent, I am going to win the game.