Personally i think longbow are better than zhuge nu, but that’s probably because i mostly play civs that have armored units in feudal (french hre mongol).
But you really need the ranged armor upgrade against them
If you play otto get the mether ranged armor with sipahi.
If you play /rus/french/hre/english/mongol you have armored unit
mali you have javelin
Delhi and abbasyd are maybe the only civs that could struggle against mass zhugenu.
With abassyd if you go culture wing for feudal and get preservation of knowledge you can age up castle really fast though. And making zhuge nu requires 2 landmark.
I can see how Delhi is the civ complaining about archers. Since they usually need go out on the map in feudal without proper units. Maybe dehli is the issue not archers.
Well, the detail is that the archers already have a low attack (5), another thing is that when accumulated they have a great advantage against several units, but that ends if they fight against Knights, or men-at-arms who serve as a tank to cover mangonels and other archers.
More than the ranged units, the problem is that the Horseman, which in theory should counter them, does not do so as effectively as it should.
A detail of this is that the Horseman has 0/2 anti-projectile defense, and only improves to 3 in castles and 4 in elite. In fact the Horseman was nerfed since the Beta, since he originally had more HP and Attack, but he was so broken that he could practically take down men-at-arms and spearman who were even supposed to be his counter.
I would suggest upgrading Horseman’s projectile defense to 0/3-> 0/4 (Veteran) → 0/5 (Elite), so he lasts longer against archers and will become a stronger counter.
On the other hand, the Sipahi and Ghazi Rider, with more HP and Attack, prove to be a more effective counter against archers, and that is because they are unique units based on melee light cavalry.
I think increasing horsemen armor is a much better solution than nerfing archer and making them useless against anything other than spears.
I would be fine with that. Maybe they would need slightly reduce their hp to balance the armor increase (but in a way that it still takes more archer attack to kill one than before the change.).
This would nerf the archer only against dehli / abbasid / ottoman.
But wouldn’t nerf them against knights civ (or maa civ) which are already very strong against archer.
Well I wasn’t really complaining I know the counters on paper but zhuge nu masses scare me much than other archer type mass even longbow.
I’m not sure the current situation needs a chagne at all to be honest.
But assuming it does need a change. I think one of the key thing is that it takes a horseman 4 hits to kill a vanilla archer in feudal (so no mehter armor or abbassid bootcamp tech). In comparison ghazi raiders and sipahi need only 3 hits, you really feel the difference (well at least for sipahi I don’t play dehli enough).
My issue is that + 1 range armor for basic horsemen (so knight armor vs range) may sound ok but isn’t it a bit too much for the special horsemen like the sipahi who could have up to 5 range armor with the mehter aura ? Wouldn’t it be better to have all horsmen 3 hit kill archers instead by increasing their bonus damage ?
The Ghazi (lower attack speed) and the Sipahi are more expensive (especially the latter). They are unique units, and it’s logical that they perform better than the horseman.
The horseman is fine, the archer is fine. There’s one more problematic because it’s a unique unit and gets mass-produced a lot if the opponent doesn’t make enough cavalry.
The horseman in Castles performs very similarly (there are hardly any differences) to Feudal, and in that age, siege weapons already exist. It’s not a serious problem or anything like that.
If you see that the opponent is starting to mass-produce archers, and it will be challenging for you to mass cavalry in time, age up to Castles and build siege.
The rider is a suitable counter against the archer, but in a fictional game where riders and archers spawn at the same time; But in a real game the player first sees that his rival produces several archers, then moves the economy to produce horsemen, therefore the hypothetical numbers do not hold true.
If men-at-arms are a problem in the feudal era, then let them take away a point of defense against arrows; Therefore, if there are no more excuses, take action on the micromanagement that the developers did not take into account, just as they did not take into account the animation cancellation.
the issue being overlooked is suppose the ONLY counter to mass archer mix IS mangos; already I stated archer mass plus a few spears is already achievable in feudal and suppose the opposing team can JUST age… isn’t always viable.
I’m consistently arguing range need to be nerfed in some way (directly or indirectly) such that horse archer can strongly counter archer/spear mass. Right now archer/spear is superior and extremely extremely ez (A move GG) compared to horseman/archer. Also the idea that ppl keep saying “Just make more cav”; imo dont understand if we’re talking armys of equal value or about equal then you could never have mega more cav than the archer/spear composition.
Examples
20 archers plus 10 spears = the cost of 20 horsemen; and the horsemen would take longer to train than the 2 production buildings producing the 30 units (20 arc + 10 spears). those 20 horseman would get eaten alive by 10 spears thats an auto loss for the horsemen. To then add just 10 more archers on the horsemen side would cost an additoinal 800 resources? AND the enemy archers would snipe your archers as their spears weave in and out.
Are we saying if enemy has 20 archers I should just have gone castle and pray I can keep him from attacking until I get a mangonel?
You don’t make horsemen against 20 archer + 10 spear, you make 30 archer. That is the correct counter.
You make horsemen against archer + horsemen.
If they have more archer than spears you can also do a mix of horsemen + archer and you first kill the spear with your archer and then charge to finish the archers.
And in any case your example of Horsemen losing to archer + spear isn’t because archer are op. Its because the spear deal an execessive amount of damage to horses.
The reason why it’s that way is because cavalry can raid and chose their engagement with speed.
While if an army lose all their spearmen, and you have cavalry. The archer will probably all die as they can’t really retreat which is a big disadvantage of archer.
Huh??? You said the counter system works??? I said 20 archers plus 10 spearman vs 20 horsemen (same cost as the 20 archers and 10 spears) plus 10 archers; skill for skill would result in a win or at worse a favorable trade for the archer plus spears. How does this show the system works when the side with the double counter units and clearly spent more resources and took longer to train and had to micro more intently an still likely lost? Shows the system works?
Your whole post demonstrates how woefully broken the counter system is?
You’re trying to explain how to make the broken system work?
I’m familiar with the work around. I’m curious why you want archer blobs to continue being optimal and meta?
Its only meta against that particular composition.
If the opponent goes archer + horse. Its much better to go spear + horsemen. Don’t need archer.
Just won a french mirror today using that comp. He went for archer + knight and i did spear + knight and my army did much much better in fight. We both had 2 tc and fought mostly in feudal.
He started making spear too late and i didn’t need archer until he started making spear. i ended up winning the game.
Same when i play HRE i rarely make archers. So im not really "wanting " a archer blob meta that’s not even what i go for most of time.
I don’t know if we’re watching a different game, but the fact that having only 33% of spearmen in your army already forces you not to make just one unit (horseman), unless you raid very effectively, shows that it’s a tough counter.
In AoE3, 20 LI and 10 HI against 15 cav, for sure, 15 cav “wins” Kappa.
because cavalry has the advantage of mobility, it can also attack buildings unlike archers.
So if you micro well you can’t really lose your entire cav army. But it’s very possible to lose all your archer if they get stuck with enemy cavalry.
Cavalry advantage: mobility + attack buildings
Spear advantage: high counter damage + attack buildings
Archer advantage: ranged so more damage efficient in mass
are merely doubling down on your individual takes and NOT interacting with my retorts? I directly addressed each of you on your respective points?
@Marc4770
Again you’re ADMITTING the rock paper scissors basic originally preached by the devs breaks down when certain military compositions hit the field; you’re suppose as an alternative (to the system failing to work beyond the basic 1 vs 1 unit type matches ups) is to use the secondary benefits of said units.
cav? mobility, raid, siege, etc etc.
The whole premise of this thread is to nerf range units (direclty or indirectly) such that the trio-union battle system will work better in ALL military compositions.
Let’s revisit one of your mentioned points. You said: the answer to 20 archers and 10 spears is 30 archers of your own… this is extremely counterintuitive. Even still this concept doesn’t hold effective in each feudal scenario. What if those are longbowman and spears? 30 standard archers are gonna still be the effective answer? What if those are Delhi TOV archers and spears? Still 30 archers? I’m asking they FIX the system to better obey the original triangle counter system; because doing so will actually promote the 3 military composition to be MOST optimal and soon prevalent without having to have a civ bonus (aka knights, attack speed, hp, etc etc.)
To @Adribird90
In AOE3, funny you bring that up (happy you did actually); those 20 LI would do essentially 0 damage to the hussar! First off the LI base attack is dogshit (good thing!!!) plus they have a built-in cav damage negation AND cavs themselves have additional range armor! So while the 15 hussar would not win that fight; high micro would pick apart those light infantry while the HI attempt to defend. And depending on what kind of HI, say standard musketeers? they’d only be effective against the cav if they got into hand combat otherwise the hussar would GLADLY eat the 25x 0.8 dmg per shot while slapping the LI for 30 dmg a piece.
Last point @Adribird90. AOE3? Has a better trio counter system than this game. I hate the dragoon and when I played it was OP and out of place; but musk, skrim, huss is a much better system than archer spearman horseman. HECK pikeman xbow hussar still better than this games counter system!!
I think spear + archer can be dealt with horse + archer.
But the problem seems to be more the high damage of spears no?
Because as long as there are no spears you can win without any archer for sure. So it seems good.
Your example of composition is basically saying “i make spear, now try to win without archer…”
And yes the secondary advantage means the 3 shouldn’t be exactly equal at countering each other.
That being said, i wouldn’t mind increasing ranged armor by 1 on horsemen. Archer are fine against knights and maa and should definitely not be nerfed to half damage against them (from 2 to 1 damage with your suggestion at equal tech). Archer also don’t need nerf against crossbow and jani.
While the spearman high damage contributes greatly to this dichotomy; the archers themselves in large numbers can snipe or significantly negate encroaching horsemen. It’s a common tactic used by longbow mass abbasid archers and DELHI TOV archers and malian javelin throwers. And the few moments the horsemen CAN touch an archer they need 4 strikes to kill an archer. So the horsemen if not sniped during the charge they will lose a significant amount of HP. THEN because of mass fight melee micro issues, it’s excessively difficult to make your horsemen attack JUST archers AND not circle around NOT ATTACKING, trying to hit the singular target, meanwhile spearman A move an at worse kill that horsemen in 3 strikes?
I’m not saying that. I merely intimate cost for cost the archer plus spears is already at a cost effective advantage bc the horsemen HAVE to have archers to deal with the opposing spears. And not just enough archers to deal with spears but basically be an archer mass themselves with horsemen as the support units going in an out attempting to bait the spears forward to get sniped before the horseman fully commit.
I want all range nerfed not just archers. I favor the tooltip that stays range units are weak and need protection. I want this to be emphatically true even when range are in mass. I do want archers to be favored cost effectively vs jans and standard horse archers and crossbows.
Alsoi don’t want horsemen to have more range armor bc of tower/TC damage and late game raiding. I want non countering range units to themselves do much less damage to melee cav and for cav to counter range units as effectively as spearman counters cavalry.
Here is another nerf idea that would significantly impact functionality. Give all infantry range units a combat walk speed vs standard walk speed.
in combat speed will be 0.88 tiles/sec; this effect would almost if not completely do away with kiting and would basically work like the dreaded “snare” mechanic. This change would also help mangonel be more effective as dodges would be harder to perform. Overall retreating behaviors would be more costly.
i dont know i feel this would require too much change and i don’t think its a big issue. The whole design is based on very specific math (archer have exactly 2 damage against armored unit of equal tech, which make have tech advantage a very interesting benefit to consider). I don’t think this math on archer damage is easy to change without affecting all the design behind it.
I like the concept of counter with mangonel to deal with mass archer i think it adds a sense of tech being needed to progress against specific tactics, as it was in medieval warfare. And this is not only true for archer btw. It’s also true to counter HRE/English MAA. Nothing is really effective against them in feudal if they get a big mass.
Since the mangonel is the perfect ranged unit counter. I don’t see why crossbow need a nerf. I think we can agree that if there is an issue, its only in feudal?
In castle the counter system is spear → horse → mangonel → archer → spear.
Which is nice to have the counter system evolve through ages and not remain stale…
But, i can see pretty much all civ have a good feudal counter to archer. Except maybe Abasyd and Dehli. Either an armored unit, a javelin, or mether armor, and for china its zhuge-nu. If you agree the issue is really just in feudal, do you think we should just have some kind a buff to dehli and abbasyd to help deal with it?
I’m going to say technical explanations about what you’re saying regarding AoE3 and the ‘quite’ tougher counters.
The unit most similar to the Horseman is the Sowar, which has a bonus against light ranged units. The Sowar costs 80f 80g and 2 population, has 225hp, 30% ranged armor, and deals 40 damage (20 base x 2) against light ranged units (3 hits). So, there would need to be a cost restructuring, and it’s also important to note that it costs the same amount of gold as food, which gives it an advantage.
In other words, the Sowar, costing 120 resources like the Horseman, would have 160 hp, 30% ranged armor, and 28 damage against light ranged units (4 hits, similar to the Horseman). They would die faster against pikemen (4 hits instead of 5 in AoE4), and a crossbowman, for example, would deal 6.72 damage against cavalry (fast firing animation) at a rate of 3 seconds per hit, so it would need 24 hits to one-shot a Sowar firing every 3 seconds. In the case of the Horseman, a regular archer would need 42 hits to one-shot them every 1.5 seconds, which means a crossbowman would need 48 hits with a fire rate of 1.5 seconds in a hypothetical scenario.
The differences are minimal (AoE3 has slightly tougher counters but excessive depth). AoE4 has counters that are tougher than AoE2 and a bit less tough than AoE3.
Mass ranged units can be countered with a large cavalry force (assuming there’s time to produce them) or siege if they are behind walls or in strategically favorable positions.
The Hussar is more like a Knight, and in the composition I mentioned, the Hussar would be defeated without much trouble, and micromanagement shouldn’t pose too many issues, even though ranged units may switch to melee.
