After 4 months of DE and new civs, i have to say that nearly always the Lithuanian player goes for kt -> paladin instead of a switch from kts to leitis. It’s kinda sad but understandable. Paladins offer +1 pierce armor and +30 HP, the upgrade is obviously more expensive than Leitis elite upgrade, but Paladins are also slightly cheaper goldwise (75 vs 80 gold). Especially the +1 pierce armor is huge in fights vs arbs. The main idea for leitis is that they outperform kt line with their ability to ignore melee armor while attacking. The thing though is that if you gather relics kts/paladins also outperform other civs kt/cheavs/palas, but at the same time also perform way better vs arbs. The biggest drawback for leitis vs paladins is obviously, that they are produced rather slowly from castles (you ned like 4 for ecent production), while kts/palas are easily producable from stables. So why should someone ever transition to leitis?
My suggestion here is quite simple: leithis cost 80 gold and 50 food atm. Simply flip these costs to 50 gold and 80 food. This would make a leithis hussar combo interesting in 1v1s, since its rather goldsaving, while having a nice damage output. It also makes their cost less similar to the cost of knights/boyars (leithis kinda feel like another boyar as well, just slower produced).
Leitis are an endgame unit, so you’re not going to often see them in the early game. Their value comes in mainly after your enemy has researched all the armor upgrades.
I think Leitis has a solid niche in theory, however, the main units it’s intended to counter are rarely made, especially TKs. I don’t think Leitis needs a direct buff, I think the units it counters need a buff so that players will make them, and the Leitis will thereby see more action.
One issue is that not all enemies get tankiness via armor. The toughest units in the game aren’t Teutonic Knights, they’re War Elephants, which actually have very LOW armor.
Maybe give them a bonus against elephants? That way they’re more universally good against tanky enemies, like they’re supposed to be.
I agree, they’re situationaly very powerful, reducing their cost would make those specific match up even worse for the opponent (which would then need to be compensated for)
Whereas improving the number of areas the leitis performa better than kts would see it used in a wider variety of games without excessively punishing its current victims (TK, Boyar etc)
On a side note, really think that Boyar needs a buff
Is it really worth to heavily mine stone (you need like 4+ castles for decent production, which is a lot) to switch to leitis? I mean it’s true that leitis need fewer hits to kill a pala (eg. with 2 relics, a FU lith pala needs 12 hits to kill a FU generic pala, but a leitis only needs 9 hits), but at the same time they have 30 HP less and die faster. You trade of rather similar melee combat for a bigger weakness vs arbs (the 1 pierce armor here makes an even bigger difference), on top of that you need to mine like 3k stone and build castles? That sounds like a bad trade to me.
I mean in general leitis arent horrible themselves, it’s just that compared to lith palas with extra attack over relics, they barely offer anything that justify the expensive transition.
One other thing that annoys me also is that they are so similar to boyar, i mean they have same HP, same armor, same base attack, excatly same cost. Only difference is slower production + they ignore melee armor. Switching the food/gold cost would make them a bit more unique instead of just a copy/paste UU.
One small thing: TKs and Boyars are the 2 UUs from 35 civs. Slavs don’t really make boyar, you usually always stick to infantry/siege, maybe up the castle age kts to chevas. Teuts should never go TKs vs lith, its just a very bad unit choice. I dont think that leitis superior performance vs these 2 units matters much.
So leit are hard counter to TK and boyar, preventing those factions from running them, now if you buff leit in other areas(cost buff etc) not only have you hard countered their UU, you have also made it harder for the faction in general to face off against them, you end up with an even further skewed match up.
As opposed to buffing leit only in areas where they perform poorly (ie vs archers and eles)
At the same time we hardly see boyar and TK anyway due to their sub optimal performance, you now want to buff a unit that already obsoletes those units making them even more obsolete in those match ups?
If the game was balanced properly theoretically a teuton player should be able to counter leit with pikes so their TK can deal with whatever else the leit player has.if you buff the leit too much, this will never happen… Imho a player should never be forced to never use their UU. Other options (ie support) should be viable
It keeps the lith pal situationally better, but gives leit a lot more flexibility.
Im never a fan of big changes in one go, as it can break unforeseen balance in areas one never considered (like such a massive gold change could be potentially disastrous for frank players)
I agree that leitis are pretty much never needed, but I also think buffing against elephants is not the solution. Please keep in mind I’m just an amateur player, I just don’t believe people gonna invest into leitis because of eles, as:
halbs are still more efficient and easier to mass, even without the last armor upgrade
elephants are not that common either
elephants are not made by TK or Boyar civs, so you won’t face both at the same time to rise the value of leitis specifically
I’m honestly thinking about it and every idea I come with seems to have big flaws or just not change the situation. When I look at them I picture a charging cav and its hard to represent that ingame
Lithuanians are already a very strong civ. +150 food at the start is very strong and the relic bonus is a serious edge to their heavy cavalry. They don’t need a buff for Leitis. Maybe change the Leitis entirely and make it a new kind of unit?
Thing is Leitis are already perfectly viable against boyar/TK, they don’t need any more help there. They need broader applicability. Being even just decent against elephants would make taking fights against them acceptable, where currently doing so is a very bad idea from a cost perspective.
Halbs would still be the ideal unit for purely taking down elephants, but don’t forget that Leitis can also go fast and kill other things.
The problem is that already normal paladins are decent vs other paladins, because of the extra attack from relics. You wont switch units to perform worse vs arbs, just to trade a bit better vs paladins. YOu already trade well vs paladins, there is no need to do that even better. The cost is really the best way to do something, without recreating sompletly different sats for the unit. 80 food and 50 gold would be extremly viable for 1v1s and decent in low gold TGs, like arena.
It wouldn’t just be viable, it would be overpowered, at least in the endgame where it’s already strong. By contrast, it wouldn’t have much impact in the early game when they’re already weak. In castle, gold isn’t terribly valuable, after all.
They’re already viable in the imperial age, they need help in the castle age so you have some to bother upgrading in the first place.
According to Sotl’s vid in Castle they are better at bruteforcing your way against cav counters (and actually trade well with camels). Also, the fact the Elite upgrade is much cheaper and faster than Cavalier+Paladin could be useful, no?
Being cheaper and faster to upgrade is massively held back by the fact that you need to invest into a ton of castles to get a decent production going.
Sure you are saving about 1500 resources and time on upgrade, but your production building is 650 resources a piece and takes forever to build. You’re never going to have a high number of castles up in early imp so the early powerspike of the upgrade is a moot point.
As for doing well vs cavalry counter, well yes they do marginally better than Lithuanians paladins, which are already better than any other paladin. And this is at the cost of being a lot worse vs ranged units.
Having a much lower survivability in exchange for slightly better results in melee is definitely not worth it.
This is just straight up wrong. If you have a real lategame TG situation (also stop calling it endgame, this is aoe not avengers endgame 11) what matters is the res, not the gold or food count, since you have trade and therefore an endless income of gold available. The res count stays unchanged, if you switch gold and food. In 1v1 switching the food and gold cost has the intended effect, that you can produce them way longer than paladins, which makes them a bit more attractive (since they’re so unattractive atm compared to kt/paladin line). Keep in mind that 50 gold 80 food is still everything else than cheap. You still will run out of gold sooner or later, an endless production is not going to happen. They also still get hard countred by halbs and aren’t the best arbs, even with 50 gold 80 food. Including their slow production rate into this equation, then this unit is by any means not OP at all. I dont know whats the point for randomly calling out units for being OP.
You also describe that they need to be more viable in early game/castle age. First of all castle age isn’t early game, rather midgame. Feudal/Dark age is early game. Second how is a slow created castle age UU ever going to be viable early castle? you need a castle to produce them and even then they’re expensive and still not a ranged UU, means they will barely get any vill kills done in castle age. It simply can never be worth it to go for them, but thats fine, since there are many UUs that are like this. If you go for leitis then it’s only late castle age and you will transition slowly into them as main army for mid imp.
Gold is absurdly more valuable than food, dude. In castle age they’re basically equal because both are equally available, but in imp, after natural gold sources have been exhausted, making them cost a full 33% less gold than paladins will make them completely and absolutely crush paladins in an open battle, to the point of being overpowered.
If you really want them to be better for a transition into imp, then reduce their food cost by maybe 5, that’ll be more than enough given the stats SOTL demonstrated on his video on them.