I decided to test the new British Rangers as soon as the patch dropped to see if they are a worthy replacement for the longbowmen. Here are their raw stats at their absolute peak(Post-Imperial, with all possible card upgrades for Britain), as well as the Roger Rangers(generic skirmishers) and the Jaeger Mercenary who also have similar roles.
ROF: Rate of Fire
LRC: Light Ranged Cavalry
HI: Heavy Infantry
HSC: Hand Shock Infantry(I ■■■■■■ up and wrote HSC instead of HSI on the chart)
CAV: Cavalry
Rangers are better than Roger Rangers by every possible metric, except price maybe. Longbowmen are cheaper and can do more damage at a larger range than Rangers in every situation, except when facing Heavy Infantry. The extra damage over time for Longbowmen on siege is actually quite weak and doesn’t add a lot really, at least in my quick tests.
10 Likes
Great analysis. I don’t see the rangers being used too much outside of treaty where you will see them more due to not costing wood. That being said in certain match ups they have their uses due to being far more effective vs heavy infantry.
Vs civs like ottoman or sweden they might be worth using, you can train some longbow and ship some then send the church card and get 5 rangers + change a decent mass of longbow into rangers and they’ll fair far better vs jans and caroleans.
The longbow siege card isn’t great damage wise but combined with yeomen it’s an easy way to siege towers out of firing range and is very annoying to deal with.
5 Likes
I honestly like new changes to longbowmen. I know it’s an archaic unit but I just like it too much to let go, now they are more viable later on and siege ability opens up some new strategies. There’s still some room to tweak firing animations, timing and scripting around their attacks so they feel more dynamic and responsive, but as for now it’s a good improvement.
2 Likes
I really like that they buffed yeomen to give them an extra multiplier vs heavy inf rather than having it with the imperial upgrade.
3 Likes
Rangers are better than Dutch and German Skirms, it hurts my soul.
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How are they better? Just wondering because dutch skirms have 3 combat cards, rangers are only effected by yeoman.
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german probably, but i doubt they’re better than 3 carded dutch skirms?
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Just load up a skirmish and see for yourself. Rangers have more damage, a higher multiplier and more speed than Dutch skirms.
the higher multiplier is a bug, they should only have 3
I do think the trade-off is that they have much less HP, they have only 95 HP as base and scales from age 3, so only getting 2 upgrades
Skirms have 120 hp as base and has 3 upgrades
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Honestly they should be called green jackets not rangers.
are you like, starting them in the editor, age 2 stats? bruh
rangers are at automatically veteran stats they dont upgrade in age 3 and have no real upgrade cards. they’re shorter ranged too. Dutch skirms will upgrade to about 144 hp and 18 dmg in age 3, plus they have 3 infantry cards.
The only feasible circumstance where the brit skirms are theoretically better is if you get the small little batch in age 2 as brits against the dutch ones also in age 2, but even then you’re getting outranged.
Post-imperial, all techs the rangers still aren’t anything terribly special. Pretty similar stats to cassadores but cost 120 res, more than the other skirms/cassadores/prowlers/gurkha all of which are pretty similar in power levels
I think that the animation of the archers is usually like this so as not to perform ‘hit and run’ as effectively. It is compensated with the cadence and a greater melee attack/tolerance.
Longbowmen are better against Counter-Cavalry, possibly the best counter in the game.
longbows are incredible against goons, absolutely. 1.5x vs goons but only 1.25x vs HI rip