I’m going through the forums and not noticing any opposition to this change. I understand people are still testing it out.
That being said, no matter how you look at it - this is a complete game changer.
If someone takes the risk to invest in a critical mass of light infantry, complete with proper micro and macro to get to that point, they shouldn’t be punished for it.
It considerably strengthens heavy infantry/heavy cav builds and weakens further any civ lacking in good anti-cav options until way later (i.e, Russia)
It’s also a bigger permanent nerf to civs whose card base is focused more so on LI than other unit types, so those cards have overall less value as well.
I’ve been proven right many times on these forums before, and I’m saying it now: this is a humongous mistake.
It’s consistent with the balance team constantly making “all or nothing” changes, breaking civs every few months and destroying the meta and fun of skill-based competition.
There are ways to pinpoint slight nerfs to certain aspects without changing the entire meta. For instance, Brits just needed a slight nerf to their eco - a few seconds added to the build time or manor houses would have done the trick. Same for Sweden.
And despite calls for changes to before going live, I almost guarantee they’re going to keep 99% of the changes they suggested anyway as that has been the pattern lately.
What are everyone’s thoughts on this change in particular?
It is not an enough nerf, Unit counter system should be respected even more by light infantry, that’s why all competitive players think it was an overall good change, still need more nerfs for civilisations that can add multiple light infantry cards to their deck like japan yumi, malta crossbows which can still have chance to kill against hand cav, an rts game should have unit counter system. I hope next patch will fix it to even more to add additional negative bonus.
I think it’s fair. Light infantry as a ranged unit just did too well against hand cavalry especially with the poor pathing those units have, you could just kite back forever or stand in trees etc and the cavalry would walk all over the place taking hits and dealing minimal damage, this at least gives them a chance now and provides more incentive to have a decent mass of anti-cav.
9 Likes
The key here is critical mass. This nerf isn’t the only one that came this patch which addresses such critical mass issues. Gatling guns also got a nerf against hand cavalry, and they were really only effective against them in critical mass.
There are smaller indirect nerfs to india, dutch and others who could get skirmishers early game (particularily india skirmisher is very annoying in age2)
I personally think this will shake up the skirmisher dragoon meta. I don’t think we will have enough time in the PUP to even fathom the effects this will have on the meta. This is why I personally haven’t said much about it.
This is probably the single biggest change since the first time we got negative bonus against cav to light inf, back in TWC days.
2 Likes
The game does have a counter system, skirms already dealt roughly half the damage to cav after negative multipliers + cav resistance.
If someone decides to throw 5 or 10 cav at a mass of 90 xbows, of course the cav is going to get beat cost effectively - even more so when with micro.
But the sheer amount of resources invested in the xbows versus the cav in that engagement is several times more. An equal amount of resources worth of cav thrown at LI will always see that the LI, without tricks like walls, will get completely destroyed as expected.
Now it will be even more so.
Crazy to me how after 18 years light infantry versus cav is suddenly considered “OP” and in need of a 20% or more nerf.
We can tell you love to use cav, Foggier.
Not a fan of the change, since skirms are my fav unit, but i can see what they are aiming for, and i think there are more changes coming… Or at least i hope, as now it would shuffle quite a lot of the positioning of many civs (not a bad thing), and it might be rough for civ like dutch, although they seems to be getting more access to anti cav units too…
I think that the majority of people is still trying to get the full extent of such changes, it is no minor stuff after all
To be fair, smart use of terrain should always be rewarded, not punished
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The pathing is particularly poor for cavalry units in this game though, even a couple of trees will have 30 hussars going in circles.
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Good, that is how it should be imo, forests were always the bane of cavalry, exactly because they had pathing problems, it is how infantry dealt with cav…
IMO cav is actually a bit too strong, but it is a very biased POV, since i despise cav in general
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the critical mass number is around 30-40 (assuming standard skirms as baseline) though and just with that alone and some micro its enough to beat 5 to 10 cav, better if you have meatshields
The change pushses the critical mass number to about 60, which is harder but not impposible
That’s literally double the amount of units to reach critical mass.
30 Skirms cost 4950 food/coin.
5 Huss cost 1,000 food/coin.
Are you saying that with micro, the 5 huss should be able to beat back 30 huss but “skirms are OP so they can’t”?
Skirm performs badly against cav, the negative multiplier is already hefty because they have the ranged advantage to a melee unit.
Trust me, it’s fine as it is, Even just a 5% nerf is unwarranted.
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If I have a pop intensive cav that costs higher than 2 pop , the 40% nerf makes alot of sense !
Especially against the Light infantry with target locking and faster animation, such as long bows which are more efficient on high pop cavs vs 1 or 2 pop cavs.
against a 1 or 2 pop, I doubt the nerf.
you know that is a terrible argument, melee fights are inherently different from range fights, especially when its melee against range units. Range units can deal damage before the melee units has a chance to respond and if you are losing dps before you even make contact then the fight gets exponentially harder.
Things change in respond to scale, just because a huss can fight 2-3 skirms easily does not mean that 10 huss can fight 30 skirms easily. And yes the skirm mass cost more but you also lose less.
Someone has done the math for this in aoe 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpjxWBwLkIE
just doing some dumb math based on the video information and give the assumption that you once at critical mass you target down 3 huss before they make contact and then stop microing (12v30 scenario) vs just cav having instant contact (15v30) scenario, it turns a lost into a win and the more micro you do the better this becomes
Its not about the scenario of someone charging 5 cav into 90 units, the scales are much smaller
just the 10 vs 30 scenario is kinda devastating for huss, skirms lossing less then half compared ( so losing 2k of huss vs losign 1.4k resources of skirms) to the 12 vs 30 scenario, and that is just from having 2 less huss
with the changes, cav basically keep winning, though by less assuming same pop ( though with any combat card or stat buffs it shifts again)
all this means is that you cant go mono skirms
6 Likes
For me it’s a good change and back to the old vanilla game where the counters worked better (taking out the instant op armorer and stuff), see how it is from this point of view that mainly most of the units only work well against the their counters because they have low damage but very high % counter obvious here on aoe3 it’s the opposite damage compared to high aom and “low” percentages.
Finally we will no longer see a full yumi beat his counter too conveniently, sorry for the strelets who are even weaker against heavy cavalry and similar units
This could be solved with yumi nerfs, which are always been known to be the best archer, for many reasons… Sadly they went with a carpet nerf, which as you also pinted out affected already crap units vs cav like strelets…
2 Likes
Its not, Heavy cavalry were always meant to counter light infantry from day one.
Then they are an idiot as you should never invest in just one kind of unit, especially if your opponent makes it counters. Thats why its a risk isnt it? It sounds like you want that player to be rewarded in terms of being able to counter heavy cavalry? What?
Yeah no shit, if you only make one kind of unit its only logical that you will lose to a unit combo. You expect heavy cavalry spam to win against a artillery halb combo?
Its a nerf towards their attack against Heavy Cavalry, which they arent supposed to be good at in the first place. If you wanted to spam light infantry against heavy cavalry it sounds like its a you problem.
This is a fallacy, just because you were right sometimes doesnt mean you always are lol. You saying this just makes me feel like you are wrong if you need to use this fallacy.
It sounds like you are just mad you cant spam light infantry without consequences anymore.
4 Likes
That was quite the mouthful.
Nobody, not a single person, is saying that skirms shouldn’t be able to beat their counter. They literally already do get countered by cav. Spamming light infantry is a risk when the opponent invests a far lesser amount of resources in cav.
Nobody is saying to blindly go light infantry only, but if a person gets to the point of critical mass - it’s the fault of the opponent that they let it happen by getting outplayed and not predicting the opponent’s moves properly.
Me being proven right on the forum many times over simply speaks to my reputation and what I’ve been seeing in games playing at my level, assessing the situation, then commenting - accurately so - on balance.
It’s ok though, we’ll see when this goes live the complaints that start reigning in and how much of a bad decision it was. When we cross that bridge we’ll turn our wheels all over again as is the usual process with balance since release, they’ll apply heavy buffs or heavy nerfs and break the game over and over.
A new reign of uhlan terror will begin lol.
4 Likes
On this topic, dragoons should get 0.75 modifier against heavy infantry. This should seal the deal for dragoon skirmisher.
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They did the same in AOE2. Crossbows were intended to be countered by cavalry but they kill cavalry when massed. So they nerfed them.
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The problem in aoe2 was that cavalry was moving too slow to effectively close the gap.
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