I think a way for buffing burmese would be ti give them the non elite elephant archer
This would hel a lot against archer civs in castle age
This unit soaks arrows pretty well.
If it was affected by Howdah, would soak even more
With this unit, parthian tactica would make sense in the tech tree
Elephant archer has already 100% accuracy, so the lack of thumb ring is not a big hurdle. And in imperial age they can always tech into manipur cavalry to counter archers.
Giving the non elite version to them would still make the elite version as a “regional unit” somehow (also, the elite version looks more indian)
The other raja civ that would like a lot the elephant archer would be vietnamese, thanks to extra HP, but I think they dont need it as much as burmese.
With khmer or malay, maybe it would be too OP even if they are not affected by civ bonuses: malay have FU archer techtree and khmer has very good food eco
literally nobody in pure Crossbow play ever does +2 armor before Imperial age, there aren’t enough resources for it and it’s not a priority upgrade.
the Huns/Berbers player can beat the Mayans also, it comes down to what happened in Feudal age as well as individual player skill.
Knights are a Crossbow hard counter, after +2 armor, Crossbows can’t even remotely trade resource/efficiently vs Knights.
so your argument is that the Crossbow player mixes in Monks/Pikeman (which btw Pikeman is a bad offensive unit, they can never push a TC with it so idk why a Crossbow player would ever tech Pikeman vs a booming Knights civ, the “standard play” is fast Imp into Arbalest into Castle drop in Crossbow vs Knights civ), but the Knights player plays full Knights, then it’s unfair that the Knights player loses? No shot, almost like unit compositions > pure unit spam in 90% of cases in this game. +1 Knights + Skirms also beats Crossbow spam btw.
you only need 1 Scorpion on each woodline, also you should be keeping track of whether opponent does one of three things:
spamming crossbows (in which case you spam scorpions)
doing only minor amount of crossbows (the “default play”) and going fast Imp in which case 1 Scorpion on each woodline is normally enough to prevent eco harassment because here the goal of the archer player is to delay your eco
doing defensive crossbows, in which case you do forward siege and do Scorpion + mangonel mix and try to destroy buildings, OR you boom at home.
If you find yourself in a situation as a Knights civ where there are 15 Crossbows breaking your wall and entering the economy with no Scorpion to intercept those, it just means you got outplayed.
Watch how TheViper won as a Knights civ vs an archer civ in the recent “DWL vs BacT game 2” video on his channel. Admittedly Tatars aren’t a perfect Knights civ but he played them as one and notice how late he did the +2 armor on Skirms, with Burmese you play same way except since you lack +2 armor, you either do more Skirms or you do more Scorpions and less Skirms.
Camels effectively are one actually, only civs that were historically centered in areas that had large populations of Bactiran and or Dromedary camels have access to them in their tech tree, it is something that AOE2 has being really consistent with throughout its development for some bizarre reason.
who’s going to make them? In general they’re a terribly expensive unit for 1v1 and Burmese have good Battle elephants for TGs. It would be another meme option like Flaming camel.
Tbf IF they are truely giving ele archers in archery ranges then they are probably changing the unit’s stats so that it’s more usable in castle age and less of a juggernaut in the late game, so depending on how they do it ele archer for Burmese might be useful. Tho there is the problem that they will be the worst one at sponging arrows no matter what, so depending on how they balance it for the other civs it will be too weak for the Burmese to bother giving it to them.
It’s ok to have multiple regional units. Everything new is weird and different until it becomes common place
Very short shelf life
Ok if a Mayan player can beat a frank/Hun/berber player who uses knights, please tell me how the same player using Burmese with a much weaker eco can hope to beat the same Mayan using knights?
Knights are a soft counter, and only work Vs pure xbows, neither are they comeback or defensive choice
I agree they’re great counters but they’re very slow, iaw limiting the player’s choice and allowing the archer player to pick fights and out flank.
You do realise cavalry archers exist? And this is more of the issue with burmese. EA aren’t as good of a counter as FU skirms, but having them is better than not having them. They’re still a very good counter to archers. And considering we don’t know which Indian civs will have PT, and the fact Burmese have both PT AND a UT, their EA will actually be MORE arrow resistant than any civ that lacks PT or the last archer armour
Neither does it break Burmese balance in already favoured matches.
Even if is true, Burmese ele archers would be utter trash, because they will lack Thumb Ring and 2 armor upgrades, in short, just a waste of resources.
