Nerf Halbs and Buff Men at arm line

I should not lose all my 60 paladins after all the resources i put in them for a few halbs that is a JOKE

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It is indeed an absolute joke that you should lose a fight when fighting the unit that counters you…

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Yes it is, you need to either use other units to counter the Halbs, or just avoid engaging them entirely with your Cavalry.

Neither option is very hard to do.

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As the others have said, halbs are intentionally a hard counter to all cavalry.

Many RTS games, including this one, aren’t about strong vs. weak units and therefore not about buffing vs. nerfing. They’re about rock-paper-scissors. Units aren’t strong in themselves, just in what they’re matched up against.

Example: Spears counter cavalry. Archers counter spears. Cavalry counters archers. Closed loop. Of course, it gets more complex since there are more than three units. Militia line also counters spears but archers also counter militia. Skirms also counter archers but cavalry counters skirms. And so on.

If you go through all the strengths and weaknesses, you’ll realize that cavalry has only one counter available to every civ: spears. (They’re also countered by camels and elephants, the latter only in terms of gold.) If you took away the ability for halbs to kill paladins, you would make paladins unstoppable.

But this game has more strategic depth than that. Cavalry have a speed advantage over infantry. You don’t have to fight where they want you to fight. As long as you’re paying attention, you can run around someone’s base all day and kill vills while halbs trail along after you. They build walls? Build trebs and add some skirms to kill the halbs if they get too close. Then run through the hole. A civ without camels to chase your cavalry doesn’t have many options. They have to protect choke points with halbs while trying to hit your base elsewhere. If you fight them head-on and lose your paladins, it’s on you.

So what does this mean for army composition? Don’t just pick a “strong unit”. Pick a unit, plus a counter to its counter. Say you’re Lith and you make a Leitis army. You know the enemy will counter it with halbs, so you add skirms. Or you know the enemy will make camels, so you add halbs. A one-unit army is extremely unreliable unless you’re up against someone who doesn’t know how to counter or can’t afford the counter (e.g. a gold-starved late game vs. Saracens, who don’t have halbs).

As you get better you’ll add another layer of depth: resource trading. Much of the time, winning fights is less important than trading well. I remember playing with someone early on who had some knights and the enemy had some spears. He wanted to take the fight and I thought it was a bad idea. “But I have enough to win!” Yup, you’ll win this one fight, but you’ll pay a lot to replace the knights you lose, whereas he’ll have no trouble replacing the spears he loses. The goal a lot of the time is make them lose gold units to your non-gold (“trash”) units.

But there’s always more depth and a lot more to learn. Sometimes you have to win a specific fight or lose the game, so you take a bad trade. If you can force someone into that position, you’ve won the fight even if you lose the fight. Sometimes gold isn’t scarce but wood is (e.g. a late-game 4v4 with heavy trade once the forests are nearly gone), so you prioritize different units.

Losing a lot of paladins to a lot of halbs isn’t a reason to change the game. Halbs already lose against almost everything but the one job they have. But it is a good lesson to start learning counters. :slight_smile:

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That is because the RTS games that were about “strong vs weak”, just saw steamrolling of strong units, with the weak ones barely being played at all.

I think anyone that thinks about it seriously, will find the rock-paper-scissors model of balance, greatly superior.

Just look at Starcraft 2 Terran, with counter-all Marines, and more recently, Mass Thors (basically better Marines).
The whole community, even Terran, is starting to complain about Mass Thors having no counter, because the counters take a lot more work to pull off, than it takes to just A-Move Thors for assured damage with every attack.

That is a classic example of 2strong vs weak" balance. No matter how much tecjh the strong units are behind, people will just rush to it and mass them, because they are just the best units bar none, and achieve the best results with the lowest required effort.

The best Skirms in the game, might I add. +2 PA and 10% faster Movement.
You should always go for Skirms and Halbs as Lithuanians, there is just no excuse not to.

well said! except, poor turks :’( QQ QQ QQ

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Turks have Heavy Camel, which can go toe-to-toe with the best Paladins in the game, and win.

and siphali cav archers, which beat even Mangudai 1v1, its amazing how their cav archers are so underrated by most people.

when i hear “who has great cav archers” i hear Huns, Mongols, Indians, and Magyars all the time.

but Turks? rarely

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