New UUs – incl. leitis of the archers!

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Assuming it’s correct a fresh dlc with three new civs is coming our way (cf. Yet another SteamDB DLC - #20 by Szaladon), at least three extra UUs will be needed. Lords of the West and The last Khans both brought mainly melee units, so ranged units should now be favorite in my opinion.

These are my suggestions :

  1. Leitis of the archers : cavalry archer with low base attack that ignores pierce armour

The Germanic Teutonic knight used to reign against all non-elephant melee units until the leitis came. It’s high time his Germanic cousin the huskarl gets the same treatment. The huskarl’s reign against all archer units should get an exception.

The huskarl’s strength leighs on two main factors: incredibly high pierce armour and massive bonus damage against archers. (Not to mention very cheap goldwise compared to archers).

  • If the leitis-of-the-archers ignores pierce armour, one of the huskarl’s strengths is gone. Remains its other one.

  • The huskarl is (nowadays) a fast unit. With squires, he’s even faster than rattan archers! Thus the leitis-of-the-archers needs to be a cavalry archer, to guarantee to be able to beat the huskarl, at least with hit-and-run (especially relevant in Castle Age, before the flood comes).

I would propose 3 as base attack non-elite, 4 as elite. This means that in Castle Age it’s not always worth it to use this UU, but in imperial age always. (Same idea as other UUs that only start to really shine in imp., like the longbowman, woad raider or berserk).

-Castle Age:

_The longsword has 1+2 pierce armour, the knight 2+2 and the skirmisher 4+2.
_The UU camel archer with 7+2 attack does 6, 5 and 3 damage per shot.
_The leitis-of-the-archers would do w. 3+2 attack 5, 5 and 5 damage per shot.

-Imperial Age:

_The champion has 1+4 pierce armour, the paladin 3+4 and the skirmisher 4+4.
_The UU camel archer with 8+4 attack does 7, 5 and 4 damage per shot.
_The leitis-of-the-archers would now do w. 4+4 attack 8, 8 and 8 damage!

This archer won’t be OP, as – besides countering the huskarl – he only really shines in imp. and even then he has to be cautious that the huskarls and heavy cav. don’t close the distance, as it could prove very nasty for him. Even if he performs exceptionnally well against skirmishers (like the conquistador), it still isn’t a fight he’ll want to take as it’s a gold unit vs. a trash unit which happens to also be the co-cheapest soldier in the game.

Against buildings the leitis-of-the-archers wouldn’t be much worse than usual, as most archers only do one damage anyway.

  1. Obsidian arrows-like foot archer

The Mayan cheap arbalester from simple archery ranges can’t destroy castles anymore. But why couldn’t a castle UU and therefore really hard-to-mass archer don’t do the same ? It’s already hard to replace a deathball of archers, but replace one composed of castle-only units is even harder.

The arambai has been nerfed, at least as far as his damage output against buildings goes. So there really is a niche again for a pierce damage-dealing unit that can actually deal with buildings.

Also: Make mastapieces with a Saracen ally great again! :smiley:

This archer won’t be OP, as one still needs a lot of them massed to deal effectively with buildings like castles. The mangudaï will still arguably be a better UU overall – thus proves this new archer could be balanced within its civilization’s tech tree. Last but not least, if there is a Saracen ally in TGs, the opponents will – or at least should! – know what’s coming! :wink:

(Not to mention community game or even tournament viewers will be able to enjoy the mastapiece if it succeeds !).

  1. Siege UUs are really rare – but not unprecedented either

There already is in some campaign missions and the scenario editor the flamethrower. Why not buff it up like the flaming camel to a UU ? :slight_smile:

2

X for doubt.

If you want to balance this, I would personally suggest drastically lowering the base attack.

5 Likes
3

The Leitis has an incredibly high base attack (same as knights and paladin) so shouldn’t the archer variant be like that too.

4

A ranged unit is much easier to keep alive, pierce armor in general is much higher, while pierce attack is lower than melee attack and archers can focus fire individual targets.

Add to that that the way to counter archers is usually by employing high pierce armor units, or units with high AoE damage (siege).
The way you counter cavalry is by employing high damage counter units, or a mass of range units.
Having a high damage melee unit therefore doesnt make half the counters obsolete. Having an armor ingoring ranged unit does do so.
Let’s say we give it a base attack of only 3 in castle age (2 less than xbow), with upgrades it will still get to 5(7 for crossbow), therefore deal the same amount of damage to a villager. And then think about progression through the ages.
Each age melee units get +1 pierce armor (+2 in imperial) whereas archers get +1 damage (+2 in imperial). A Leitis archer will instead get twice the damage each age.
Consider a Leitis archer against a Hussar (medium level pierce armor). The Hussar has 6 Pierce armor. The Leitis archer with 3 base attack will deal 7 damage to the hussar, whereas a Arbalester will deal only 4 damage to the hussar. So it is almost doubling the attack against medium level pierce armor.

Consider a camel (low pierce armor): Leitis archer 7 damage, Arbalester 6 damage. Still more.

Against Skirmishers: Leitis archer 7 damage, Arbalester 2 damage.
Against Paladins: Leitis archer 7 damage, Arbalester 3 damage
Against Trebuchets and rams: Leitis archer 7 damage, Arbalester 1 damage.

Definitely op. Couldnt imagine anything more OP than this.

5

I’m honoured TriRem has answered! (Even if he disagrees about at least one UU suggestion though). :smiley:

I don’t think the leitis archer would be “very broken”, because the damage output isn’t THAT big. If one factors in the mangudaï’s impressive firerate (the leitis archer’s one would be generic) - not to mention the mangudaï’s exceptional speed helping him in hit-and-run scenarios -, the difference in dps won’t be that high. And the mangudaï has other strengths the leitis-of-the-archers hasn’t.

A downside of the leitis archer I didn’t even mention is his garrisonning potential. Like the chukonu and kipchak (other precedent to the leitis archer as far as beating siege goes), he will be really disappointing within castles due to its low base attack (very low in imp.).

Furthermore, I believe at least as strange things have been seen than this! :smiley: (leitis, konnik, actually even huskarl himself… An infantry unit that specializes in defeating his counter, how incredible is that?!).

If one really is worried about the leitis archer’s OPness, its stats can be tweaked or he can have a long training time. The “cobra car” mangudaï (as Hera calls him) for instance has a training time that only the ultra-beefy Persian elephant surpasses as a land UU.

The leitis archer will offer some great fun, fresh and never-before-seen gameplay, which is I think what the dlc should offer.

6

It is really difficult to balance something like that, so the devs would never implement it even if the future of the game depended on it.

7

Why aren’t we talking about Cavalry, Foot Archer and Cavalry Archer variations of Samurais (attack bonus against UU)?

The Samurai has 8(+10) and 12(+12) attacks : numbers in brackets are attack bonus against UUs

The Cavalry version can very easily have 12 and 14 attacks as decided by the convention. It can also have (+12) and (+14) against Unique units since by the standards of Cavalry it will also cost much gold.

Since the Archer versions are massed up, they might be broken if given too much attack. So a simple +2 or +1 and +2 (for Elite) suffices.

8

There isnt an archer unit with a higher base attack than 7, (well 8 for the elite Mangudai as the only exception) leading to a 75% damage increase against Skirmishers, 30% against Paladins and less than that against anything else.

Sure you could reduce the base damage to 2, but even then you would still have way higher damage against just medium pierce armor.
Also consider the way to counter archers is usually by employing high pierce armor units, or units with high AoE damage (siege).
The way you counter cavalry is by employing high damage counter units, or a mass of range units.
Having a high damage melee unit therefore doesnt make half the counters obsolete. Having an armor ignoring ranged unit does do so.

1 Like
9

Castle Age camel archers have 7 and Elite Camel Archers have 8. War Wagons (both) have 9 always.

10

TriRem, now you’re here I wanted to tell you I am (like so many others) a HUGE (!) fan of https://aoe2techtree.net where you contribute as well as far as I can see.

I think the Sicilian page could be improved upon on something small: The shown stats of the Castle Age serjeant are actually his stats from Feudal Age. Perhaps it could be changed? :slight_smile:

image

1 Like
11

dont worry this isnt a defining factor, CA were buffed after all

wrt your obsidian archer aka straight out of aoe3 aztecs…

he can have a low base damage with +4 vs buildings or whatever, with high pierce armour so resistant to ranged fire and low speed for non siege (like 0.8), they will be weaker vs units, but more mobile than most siege, but need to be massed (just like aoe3)

so i think it could work since it’s bottle necked out the castle

abuse could be loading them in rams(so maybe even limit them to only rams, not even capped ram) and then driving up to a castle so might have to think about that, definitely shouldnt outrange castles or even towers…

you could probably even play around with the bonuses and give more vs standard and less vs stone buildings (ie a negative bonus to cancel out the positive one)

could possibly give this to an african civ, with very bad cav : no knights (shock and horror :open_mouth: ), heavy camel, no hussar or blood lines. but militia is faster and gets a cheap castle age UT with extra +1/1 (stealing this from that other post)

so even though their UU can rip open bases, they dont have the light cav that other civs have to abuse the raiding potential

how would this work vs mangonels, rams and trebs? sounds like this thing kills too much stuff, might be too hard to balance aka make it usable but not abusable… might end up like the step lancer… or what the coustilier seems to have become : OP in some situations but generally not that great

12

Pretty cool idea for a uu.

13

Agree if xou get the critical mass this could one-shot everything. Really bad Idea.

Leitis is ok, because it takes damage itself, this armor ignpring archer would be impossible to stop by anything but mangonels, which many players aren’t able to handle properly.

14

A downside of the leitis archer I didn’t even mention is his garrisonning potential. Like the chukonu and kipchak (other precedent to the leitis archer as far as beating siege goes), he will be really disappointing within castles due to its low base attack (very low in imp.).

Since when is strength-while-garrisoned a weakness? No one garrisons units to make their castles stronger in real games. You would always prefer to have your units outside and fighting. I am confused by this logic.

15

I think if a leitis like cavalry archer was to be added into the game, then the Jurchens are the most suitable new civ to receive it. Historically, the Jurchens (and their successor the Manchus) preferred to use heavy armor piercing arrows that didn’t shoot very far but had a considerable penetration. Their unique unit could be called Tiefutu, which is a cavalry archer that ignores enemy’s pierce armor. It has a high attack, but is shorter ranged than normal cavalry archers.

Tiefutu

Cost: 50 Wood 65 Gold

HP: 60 / 65 (elite)

Attack: 10 / 12 (elite) pierce

No attack bonuses, but its attack ignores enemy’s pierce armor

Rate of fire: 2.0

Frame delay: 25

Attack delay: 0.7

Range: 3

Accuracy: 95%

Projectile speed: 7

Melee armor: 2 / 4 (elite)

Pierce armor: 2

Armor classes: Archer, Cavalry Archer, Cavalry, Unique Unit

Speed: 1.3

LOS: 6

1 Like
16

Camel civ that has archers that slow down enemy units a bit would be nice.

AoE healer that needs to be protected in combat

AoE glaive infantry.

Infantry with high pierce armor and health but low melee armor, attack and speed. Decent bonus against buildings. (instead of petards)

17

That seems very op. Insane accuracy, high damage, only downside is the low range. If its going to ignore armor your best bet to valance it is to give it lower damage

18

If You have an archer that ignores armor they can have all upgrades ir should have a lower rof.

Even 4 base dmg would Spike to 8 with upgrades, it would be the Best archer against both hca and paladins

19

True, actually thinking of it Hand cannons, Conqs and Arambai are pretty much a Leitis archer.
Conquistadords still dealin 11 damage against Paladins. So I retract my earlier statement. A Leitis archer CAN be balanced. Only problem with it reamains siege, which would need the introduction of a new armor class.

20

The thing with Conqs and HC is their incredibly slow attack rate. They attack even slower than foot trash units. Once every 3.45 sec. For Conqs, apply the Spanish faster attack rate bonus, which makes them close to 2.92

So they are balanced naturally.

The Arambai on the other hand is always a hot topic. It attacks every 2 sec, which is why they melted buildings even before Manipuri Cavalry. They are also great against Mangonels anf scorpions. The necessary check and balance for Arambai are:

  1. It is classified as a Conquistador not a Cavalry Archer. So it is unaffected by Fletching line (imagine 8 range Arambai), Thumb Ring (imagine 100% accurate Arambai) and Parthian Tactics.

  2. Burmese also lack 2nd and 3rd Archer Armor techs making this unit weak to Arbalesters.

  3. The base speed of the unit is same ad Boyar, whereas Mangudai without Husbandry move as fast as Camels without Husbandry and Boyars with Husbandry. Or even simpler, Arambai have the same speed as Elite Eagle Warriors.

The Arambai is a cool unit, and probably it is finally balanced now.

1 Like