Logistica cost: 600g+800f
Elite Cataphract Upgrade Cost: 800g+1200f
Elite Cataphract Cost: 75g+70f
Needs to be created from a castle
Lechitic Legacy cost: 550g+750f
Winged Hussar Upgrade Cost: 550g+750f
Hussar Cost: 80f
Is created from stable
Conclusion: Cataphract cost should be waaayy less in terms of gold like 40 gold may be
You are reasoning as if a cathaphract and a winged hussar are the same…
Hussars are better overall.
Cataphract. Way more health, huge bonus damage vs infantry, flat 5 trample damage, and anti damage resistance to boot.
I do agree cataphract could be a little bit cheaper but 40 gold? You’re joking right?
I agree that Logistica/Elite Cataphract could cost a bit less, but other than that, Cataphract is a fine unit. I would say, Elite upgrade could cost 100-200f less and maybe 100g less also
We have seen a consistent power creep for UU meele cav units.
Bojars getting more srmor
Tartar getting more armor
Keshik become ultra cheap for their stats
Leitis being also very cheap with better meele performance than paladins
Bulgarian uu
Even war Elefant became cheaper
Feels like the cata as the original UU cav unit has been left in the dust.
I honestly feel like many of the units listed above are too good now, when you get into a position you can consistently spam them, but it seems like most people don’t agree with me on that.
I would say catas aren’t broken, everyone else is
And despite all that i’ve seen the cataphract more then i’ve seen the boyar, war elephant, or the leitis.
yeah because we see cavalry unique units so often in this game. nope.
ranged units are the best unique units in the game largely. heck i see woads and berserks more then i see most cavalry unique units.
I knew you would say that. Play more 4v4 games and you will start to see more cav UU. Also don’t only focus on pro player level.
you know why i focus on the pro level? because at non pro levels balance doesn’t impact you as much.
seriously. i’ve seen games with long swords, cav archers without thumb ring, and even a skirmisher push winning games at lower levels.
at those levels people are playing so sub optimally anything can win. oh i was booming and didn’t make army and my opponent walked into my base with a dozen longswords and two rams. all i got are 3 tcs and villagers. not even military buildings. oh i guess long swords are op.
so of course some stuff is going to look stronger. but you don’t balance around games like that because it’s not optimal play - just like those guys who were crying about siege onagers when they start the game in post imp with death match resources. the game isn’t balanced around that.
you want the game balanced around sub optimal play - find a way to buff archers without breaking them at the pro level. because if you look at the data - cavalry civs dominate at lower levels, largely because they aren’t as micro dependent as archers. so clearly based on your ideas we should buff archers.
I’ll say it again and again - balance isn’t going to impact why 90% (or more) of the community loses a game.
not scouting properly, bad macro, bad decision making, etc are all more likely to result in them losing.
so yeah - maybe at lower levels you’ll see more cavalry unique units, but that isn’t going to fly at higher levels. the new boyar probably can slip into the meta, but not much else imho.
Cataphracts also aren’t really a good team game unit, which makes your comparison a bit moot to begin with. they lack pierce armor, they lack the ability to fight heavy cavalry in general. their specialty is destroying infantry, which makes them a good 1v1 unit though. which is hilarious because i still see them in team games more then the Leitis.
Catas also have 1.7 attack speed (Hussars/Winged Hussars have 1.9), which is faster than even a Cavalier.
fastest attacking unit in the game baseline.
It’s just complete bs to compare cataphracts with winged hussars.
They have basically nothing to do with each other, completely different usage.
And I think trample damage on hussars is actually a total waste.
To be fair, Cataphracts are objectively not good. It’s rarely ever seen in pro games, even rarely seen in ‘normal’ games. It’s too expensive and just isn’t very good. Infantry just generally isn’t strong and isn’t used as much as knight-line or archer-line, so Cataphract is really very situational because you rarely need a unit that’s exceptionally good against nothing but Infantry.
oh i agree completely with you there.
you could say this about pretty much most cavalry unique units though.
i’m totally for making cataphracts cheaper - i just don’t think you can make them 40 gold cheaper.
I can see merit in some of the other ones. At least in team games. E.g. Coustilliers will do very well against Archer-line, because the charge damage quickly decimates them compared to any other Cavalry attack.
Konniks are pretty good because you can spam them from cheaper Kreposts and the respawn as infantry mechanism means they are quite awkward for many civs to counter. (Not OP, or anything, but certainly awkwrd)
Boyars are now pretty scary, because it forces the enemy to go halbs, since most melee units don’t stand a chance against them. But you also happen to have a good Siege Workshop, so Boyars with Scorpion support is pretty deadly.
Leitis are very strong, as they’re one of the unusual and unexpected counters to things with heavy armor (Teuton Paladin, Boyar, TK, Serjeant etc.) But I admit, this unit is perhaps more situational than the others, because not many things in game have such high melee armor that you really need this.
With that being said, I understand why the Cataphract was designed the way it was, and I think at the time of conception, ES did not expect infantry to be so rarely utilized as it is now.
Cataphracts are situational. But they aren’t bad.
It’s a nice tool byz have in their roster, but ofc they need to be careful with it. They can’t just spam catas, the cata is usually the killer blow element in their roster.
Anyway I think Byz could use any kind of utility for teamgames. Their arsenal of counter-units just doesn’t fit TG meta.
Any ideas how to give byz utility in tg?
Make their town watch + patrol bonus the team bonus?
They can still be a good TG civ, but you have to play them completely different from the classical meta civs. The cheap imp opens up some interesting strategies, but you have to abandon playing ‘normal’.
that would make the monk healing their civ bonus, which Teutons already have a version of.
I just don’t have an Idea how to fix them else. I think the only way is to give them a very strong team bonus to compensate for the lack of a strong power unit line.