Let's talk about Abus Guns

Why isn’t anyone talking about their permanent nerf from TAD to DE to reduce the attack animation speed to every 3.5 seconds, thus throwing off synergy with Janissaries and requiring unnecessary micro? Instead of nerfing their attack speed by 17%, why not just nerf their actual attack power?

Or at least give the attack speed back to them on the Guard Upgrade or something? Currently they deal .50 damage to arillery, so they don’t even pack a punch there and by the time they get too close they get shredded, dealing 20 damage total at base. The multiplier should increase to .75 so that they deal 30 damage each fire at base.

For their cost and per pop, Abus have the lowest HP than any other light infantry unit in the game, and the largest melee box (with a very weak melee attack). This hurts them a lot especially in the late-game. When you realize that you have to run from cav for 3.5 seconds and your melee box is unreal, abus end up being terrible investments and everyone knows it. Unlike Arrow Knights which no longer die as easily to cannon fire and safely fire at artillery and buildings, abus die all too easily.

Ottomans don’t need a major rework or a major buff, just little ones here and there as some maps, build orders, and team synergies can definitely be powerful - just little things here and there are sufficient. Maybe permanently decrease the settler spawn rate at start by 1 second.

A competent British player will destroy a competent Ottoman player of similar skill any day for example.

Thoughts?

4 Likes

obus so e bom em times

At first this topic was already talked about a lot, not only that but also the multiplier against artillery had been nerfed,

But you have to consider that “obuses” if they hit too much, not specifically to heavy infantry but also lightly, I think the only thing they should correct is that it has a clearer damage against light cavalry, because it has a multiplier negative and then a positive one, which yields a low value against the light cav for what it costs: 2 for population and 150 for resources.

In addition, the combo of jenizaro and howitzer is very old, it is not used much, in general, different strategies are used linked to the rush of jenizaros such as the beginning with the silk route doing a double-barracks rush in age 2, the typical FF of jenizaros and 2 falconetes (If you lose the dough you can return with the 4 rompers or 5 spahi that are saviors) Go with Nizam or Fi etc.

The reason why they called otolamer was because winning with the combo of obuses and jenizaros was very easy and it is not funny that it is like that again, the Ottomans need other mini improvements to make it more fluid not to return to the legacy

the rof nerf also cripples them against ranged cavalry even further, a unit they are supposed to counter. you always face tank 2 shots before returning fire, and most ranged cav does enough damage to pick off a bunch of abus in that 3.5s window. they’re essentially worthless vs goon civs, just like all other otto units

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The nerf was meant to balance Legacy but the game changed to mich after one year of Definitive Edition.
I do believe that they should “de-nerf” Abus Gun tweak by tweak until they are balanced. Starting with the rate of fire.

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It’s an opportunity to adjust cav archers, make them better against goons, streltsy and abus guns are pop inefficient. Ad Cav archers are with both russian and ottoman.

Keep in mind that the scope is better than that of the legacy game. He already has a range comparable to that of skirmishers when he reaches the fourth age. What I would improve is projectile tolerance. Its slow cadence is justified by the enormous damage it does with a single shot.

He’s a fair nerf.
Ottomans have a good musketeer like the Janizaro, a strong cavalry unit like the Spahi, and great bombards.
The Howitzer and Horse Archer are decent units, but I don’t think they need buffs.

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Also, the artillery of the Ottomans is one of the best in the game. They also feature the nizam who is a super versatile unit and very threatening in the early game.

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there’s a good reason 100% pure war wagons is a well known counter to the entire otto roster

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Abus Guns are too luxurious to use at the moment. Too expensive, 2 pop and also requires more time to get due to training time and the requirement of the art. foundry.

My suggestion:

-Revert the reload time to what it was. 3S
-Give 2 extra ranges by age advancement. Veteran Abus Guns gives +2 range and then Guard Abus Guns will give +2 more. 22 range in total at the late game will give them more resistance against cavalry and help to micro. 22 range what it was anyways at Vanilla.
-OPTIONAL: a late-game age HC card which might drop the pop to 1 with some other benefits maybe?

Some other units like Spahi, Nizam Fusiliers, or Great Bombard are good but also too luxurious to obtain. Even more luxurious than Abus. I don’t even mention Nizams since you need a HC card, then research a Unique Mosque tech, and so on. You can get these units from HC only and We left here alone with Janissaries only. Hence, Devs need to give more possibilities to Abus so that they can be used more often. Too much investment for a ‘‘GLASS CANNONEER’’ unit…

Abus guns are very oppressive in the early game, this is why they were nerfed. A good abus jan rush is still very very good despite those nerfs.

What they need is some late game improvements.Possibly the cards that improve jan combat and costs should also affect abus gun. This should also relieve some pressure in age3 and age2 decks for ottomans, possibly making room for extra eco cards to help in late game.

Industrial and imperial age upgrades should also grant an additional 0.75 bonus to light cav and heavy infantry (so in imperial age they’d have 1.5 extra bonus).

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i really dont think they need extra bonus vs heavy infantry, they already have counter infantry rifling. vs light cav id rather just see them at deafult get to do at least base damage instead of the current 0.75x they are currently suffering with.

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Here’s what I think:

Bring abus base damage down to 35.

In exchange, do the following:

-Increase the attack speed/decrease the reload time back to 3s. This will bring much-needed synergy back.
-Make multiplier against light cavalry 1.75x instead of 1.5x. This will make abus slightly better against goons, which they are supposed to counter, while not breaking the game in any way.
-Increase the multiplier towards artillery from .50 to .75.This will make abus moderately better against artillery. They desperately need this because it fills in their niche of dealing siege damage, while being still being very vulnerable to them, yet not being enough of a threat to feel like mini-culverins due to their low range and low HP.

So, 35 base damage and 1.5x against heavy infantry is 52.5.

This means, at base stats:

  • It will take now 3 hits to kill a Russian musketeer for a total of 9 seconds, instead of 7 seconds (original base damage was 40 x 1.5 = 60, killing them in two 3.5s shots).
  • It will still take 3 shots to kill regular musketeers for a total of 9 seconds (instead of 10.5s), however any HP upgrades on regular musketeers will now require another fire to die, rewarding the upgrade more.
    -Enemy Janissaries will still take exactly 4 hits to die. 52.5 x 4 = 210, for a total of 12s instead of 14s.
    -Ashigaru will now die in 4 hits instead of 3, which equals 12 seconds instead of 10.5s.
    -Sepoy will now die in 4 hits instead of 3, which again equals 12 seconds total instead of 10.5s.

After all of this, abus will still be:

  • Horrible at actual sieging of buildings
  • Horrible at sniping villagers
  • Very vulnerable to hand cav
  • Very vulnerable to artillery
  • Having a large melee hitbox, being more vulnerable to literally anything in melee than any other unit
  • A low HP per pop unit
  • A high pop unit
  • An expensive unit especially for the Ottoman eco

So this honestly makes a lot of sense.

Thoughts?

I think they clearly need buff without any nerf for the mid and late game.

2 Likes

They are the only skirmishes that don’t do bonus damage to light cav, and i see no point why they shouldn’t in the late game.

doing base damage would already put them nearly on par with regular skirms anyway. normal skirms do 15*1.5 vs goons, which is then negated by (most) ranged cav’s 20rr for a result of 18 damage per shot per pop. If abus had base damage they would do 40 per shot, which would result in 20 damage per population. This assumes of course that they were reverted to a TAD state. If the damage was cut then I could definitely be on board with a larger bonus

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That’s incorrect, I checked the stats yesterday - they do 1.5x damage to light cavalry right now, but it’s definitely underperforming with the current ROF and pop cost.

no, they do 0.75x to light cavalry unfortunately

1.5x vs light cav
&
0.5x to all cav

0.5*1.5 = 0.75

if you want to confirm, test a bow rider vs an abus gun in the scenario editor, the abus will do 30 damage every shot, which is of course 0.75 of 40

Fair enough. Then reverting then to TAD state with industrial age upgrade would be a good place to start.