I understand about the speed and i do think they are slow, but i think if you increase their speed it would be too much, i mean, it is a tanky unit, with that 50% ranged resist, so for heavy infantry you can use a few gurkas or even sepoys and you are good to go, and against skirms or musks the flail elephant has that ranged resist that it will not really care whos shooting hahah i mean, buildings can´t move, so you may not enter like a speedy cav unit but you don´t take that longer either and buildings are still there, and by the time their skirms or muskets eliminate them, they already siege 4 houses and maybe the TC; but great to hear your opinions too, thanks for the analysis, really helpful! if you haven´t tried it i suggest you give it a try, and i found a video of them being used to see if you still find problem with the speed and all that: The Least Used Unit, But The Most Annoying! [AOE3] - YouTube in the min 6:00 they appear, and again in 15:27
- They have made flail eles better in DE and they are now atleast usable thanks to pop reduction n damage increase. In legacy they were absolutely unusable.
- They are more of a surprise attack unit of last resort, if nothing works you can always spam flails to stall the enemy, because it is the ONLY Indian unit with faster build time (fastest Indian unit to make). Nowhere near europeon build time, but far better than any other Indian unit.
- Its a good food/gold alternative to kill unprotected light infantry, strelets etc or to hold the line for a while. thanks to their decent range resist.
- A lil speed OR price buff would be great. anyone of them is fine.
BUT! they are not tanky unit! they are butter soft against ANY heavy infantry or Cav. Its a HUGE resource loss if even few enemy pikes or halbs are present. the buildings/light infantry needs to be ABSOLUTELY unprotected to use them.
Buff them to 18xp, they should really form trademark native horse archers, maybe normal attack 13 → 18 and 1.5x against villagers to resemble their raiding history. Come on, they are pretty much useless right now and the tribe was famous of their warfare (drove Apaches and the others from southern plains, resisted 150 years of colonisation and even pushed back the US advance by 100 miles in 1860s, smallpox and cholera destroyed their power). Could be a separate cavalry-oriented civ TBH.
Also add 2nd unit for them, comanche lancer which was planned in original AoE. To distinguish from Cheyenne, this buddy could specialize against infantry and be like 16-18xp. Or Comanche Raider - rifle rider like unit to distinguish from Apache.
It is just what I proposed in the rework forum to the natives.
Please give me more specifics of the other Comanche unit to edit and make a better proposal.
I know you decided to exclude these on purpose, I do have some thought on the matter from an analysis I made and by frustrated attempts of trying to make disciples viable through in-game experiments. The difference between disciples and other pets is that when you decide to build the White Pagoda, you are in theory paying for an actual unit now, not just a pet (this is the case with any other wonder, none of them give you ‘‘5 monitor lizards/scouts/war dogs/etc’’ for a reason). The problem is that you don’t actually get that and even after sacrificing a lot of money to fully upgrade them (and sacrifice Summer P. for aging with White Pagoda), they can still be worse than just regular pets.
After some discussion, it seems that it’s best to keep their shock infantry tag but allow them to snare with White Pagoda, give them a multiplier vs cav (kinda like mini Cheyenne Rider) so they can fulfill a special role for the civ that is lacking, give them a slight buff to their stats in Age II + 6 speed total with White P., and maaybe get rid of villager negative multiplier (African civs get something similar with ‘‘Mass Levies’’ after all).
Here’s the whole thing and analysis
I disagree on the disciple, they make great meatshields in combat since they also have cover mode, which if im not wrong gets to like 55% range resist. china can then just go kehisks and ckn and be on their way.
cannons don’t deal any bonus damage to coyotes though so pop for pop they are comparable hussars ( 2 coyotes only have 10 HP less then hussars).
Pikemen do the same, I would trade 4 disciples from White Pagoda for 4 pikemen every time and I think that shows the problem with this Age up option.
I’m not sure what this means. There are no banner armies that produce both of them and keshiks are awful at their job if not heavily carded.
Do all anti-infantry guns have a negative multiplier against shock infantry?
pikeman get dealt bonus damage by skirms and archer types units while they have negative multi against the disciples. so their power goes up against skirm skirm comps
sorry in this case i meant to say spam standard and mongolian armies, which provides a good mix of units that covers all bases at a relatively low cost( specifically with german consulate).
kehisk are not to be underestimated, you only really need mongolian scourge for them to do their magic. they have the same base dps as ckn in age 2( slightly higher actually) and has 48 dps against cav at base ( 64 with mongolian scourge)
the problem with chinese units as always is that you need mass and you need to keep your units alive until you have a death ball. If you are at a position to spam both mongolian and standard army at the same time then you usually win
no I think only the otto bombard has a negative multi, the infantry guns just have a x3 against normal infantry, which shock infantry don’t count as.
Its the same reason why cannons are not a good counter to eagle runner knights
agreed with the list, zouves suck and need more. Napoleon guns costing the same as falconets is also a joke. flail elephants too slow to be a raider/cavalry and have no other role aside from anti building.
arsonists have nothing redeeming, grenadiers need buffs and have grenade launcher upgrade rolled in.
attack delay is not fun and ruins the experience, sharpshooters, carbines and desert archers also suffer from this.
shotel warriors suffer from shock infantry taking reduced 40% reduced damage from counters and therefore having to be weaker. shotels and coyote runners don’t really have a future until they have the cavalry tags with full damage taken and having their stats increased to counter light infantry/artillery. just compare them to Cossacks.
taking less damage from anti-cav in exchange for being weaker is a dumb and pointless tradeoff.
i think you are misunderstanding something, shock infantry units effectively have a cavalry tag, it operates in the exact same way as how the cavalry tags works.
they are weaker but they are also cheaper then their cav counterparts. they perform very similarly to the other cheap cav units with similar stats , the Steppe rider. they are functionally the same for the most part.
comparatively they even do more damage then hussars pop for pop.
The reason why they underperform against range infantry is due to the fact that all of them have only 10% range resist, meaning that they cant tank as many range hits while charging towards a range formation and take more damage figthing against range units then hussars. The two one pop cav don’t have this problem since they both have 30% range resist.
once chimmus and coyote get their armor upgrades they as well as or better then hussars. If we want shotel to perform more like the lancers they are supposed to be, give them an armor upgrade should do the trick as well.
it does not operate the same way, they take reduced multipliers and do not benefit from hand cavalry upgrades.
their weaker stats reflect this. compare them to Cossacks or raiders who take the full damage from anti cavalry and you will see there is a large stat difference between them for the cost.
Which upgrades are you refering to? all team upgrades that affect cavalry has the same effect on shock infantry. Aztecs and incas don’t get arsenal techs so things like cavalry cuirass are moot. They are also affected by the native cav techs from the comanche as well. Bizarrely since they all the hand shock infantry also retain the hand infantry tag, they also get upgraded by the techs that affect hand infantry, so they can get stacks of upgrades.
I dont think the comparison of cost is as straightforward as you think it is. take raiders compared to coyotes:
cost - 140 vs 110 resources (27% more expensive)
hp - 180 vs 155 (16% more hp)
atk - 22 vs 18 (22% more atk)
its a more expensive units for not the same level of stat increase, so its not a case of hand shock infantry just being weaker and gaining different multipliers. if that was the case the ERK would not be the broken unit that it is.
I see your point on the cossack but that speaks more the uniqueness of the cossacks then the nature of one pop cav, cause the other one pop cav, steppe rider has a more similar stat comparison.
Steppe rider vs coyotes
cost 85 vs 110 ( 23 % less cost)
HP 150 vs 155 ( 4% less hp)
atk 15 vs 18 ( 17 % less atk)
so you should more expect coyotes to perform like steppe rider then you do like cossacks.
the thing that makes shock infantry bad atm is their lacklustre performance against ranged infantry, which stems from their range weakness, not due to their stats
edit: i also just realised for shotels, even if they are not affected by cavalry cuirass, they are still affected by infantry breastplate, so they still gain an additional 10% hp
I’m not arguing that they are weaker than cavalry against ranged, I’m arguing that its intended.
if shock infantry were just as good against ranged units as cavalry while taking reduced anti cavalry bonuses it wouldn’t be balanced.
coyote runners and shotels cannot be as good against ranged units as Cossacks, raiders and steppe raiders because they are countered much harder by anti cav.
the ranged resistance factors heavily in hp, from a 11% increase in effective hp to a 43% increase, which you should add into your stat/cost equation.
but that is the point, their weakness stems not from their stats but their range resist numbers.
otherwise, their stats are comparable to units like hussars, pop and cost adjusted. this is why once chimmu gets the armor increase tech and coyote get their armor support card, they become much more effective. they are effectively hussars
Yeah, vs pikeman or halberdiers they are not tanky, but that´s why i said you should combine them with gurkha, those will kill every heavy inf, so with their huge 50% range resist they are tanky for all other units
but they are effectively the same when against ranged units? ranged resist is just a scaling bonus to hitpoints, a stat. we are just arguing semantics at this point.
if this is true than they don’t need any buff, and in-fact a nerf. hussars that take 40% reduced anti cavalry damage is op.
the point being that their weakness is not due to them being categorised as shock infantry or the shock infantry tag, but due to their own unique stats. if some other civ comes later with a shock infantry with 30% range resist it will perform similarly so cav units that have similar stats numbers.
there are still balancing factors for this, the inca upgrade cost like 550 resources while the armor support is 500 gold + a shipment. also natives drop off in the later game due to weaker eco so you cant sustain these unit mass which is needed to maintain the advantage