There is absolutely no reason that a Castle Age infantry unit only costing 55 food and 20 gold should have 80 HP, 2 base melee and pierce armor (which will be higher after some upgrades) and a 12-second creation time. What on Earth were the devs thinking? They wreck basically everything. They have basically no counterplay in the Castle Age, and by the time you’re in the Imperial Age and have Hand Cannoneers, the Obuch have large enough numbers to just steamroll everything. Forget Winged Hussars and cheap Cavaliers; massed Obuch are basically unstoppable.
The devs must nerf one of the following:
Training time (this has already been addressed, but nerfing it more wouldn’t hurt)
Cost
HP
Armor
The Obuch’s stats are way too good for a Castle Age unit, especially considering its cost and creation time.
Poles still need a nerf, sure. Obuch? I’m leaning against nerfing it, beyond perhaps a minor cost or TT increase. It shows the devs actually have the ability to create a decent Castle Age infantry UU that doesn’t have superlative speed and/or PA. Just because most other infantry UUs are bad doesn’t mean that has to be the baseline. If anything, I’d like to see more infantry UUs be able to perform like the Obuch in that sense. My preferred Poles nerf would be a decrease in flexibility - maybe lose TR or even Arb, or SE, and/or increase the cost or decrease the effect size of their UTs.
Obuch is a clear example of how infantry UUs can’t be designed, is just straight up better than champion without much drawbacks, they just overperform for the cost.
Like I said many times, just reduce the PA from 2 to 1, infantry UU with 95 HP, attack that reduces armor, 55f 20g cost shouldn’t get also good PA up to 6.
Sure, so raise the cost. +5 or maybe even 10 gold so they have the same gold cost as many infantry UUs. With unremarkable speed, they’ll just get wrecked by ranged units if they lose PA. I don’t think Poles are too strong because they have the Obuch, I think Poles are too strong because they have the Obuch and the Folwark and the stone bonus and Szlachta and TR Arb and SE BBC. Sure, tweak the Obuch, but look at what else is strong on the civ before you create another useless infantry UU.
Thing is, you just can’t have an infantry UU with such power in melee that also is just good as Hussars at taking arrow damage, want to remember you the leitis when had 2 base PA and how that needed to be lowered to 1, that made Leitis useless? No.
Losing 1 PA won’t be even close to kill the unit ( if is super strong in melee needs a better weakness to ranged) because still will cost 55f 20g, get 95 HP and good melee armor with the attack that remove armor and a cheaper elite upgrade while others like berserks need 2 UTs to be strong.
Ghulam also lost 10 HP because was overperforming in melee and winning vs light cav in 1v1, is the Ghulam killed now? Or chakram with the latest nerf?
I think seriously people should just simply wanting infantry UUs to be buffed that much because Chakram thrower, Obuch and Ghulam are clear examples on how overpowered can be, and we also saw this years ago with Karambit Warrior ( nerfed like 2 times), Gbeto, Condotiero amd why not, flemish militia lol.
That won’t nerf the unit really, just makes Obuch harder to create in castle age while in Imperial still remain an incredibly overpowered unit, you have to jump the cost to something like teutonic knight and then you get an overpriced UU.
Ideally, Obuch should act as a pure assistant/supporter, giving full play to its armor-destroying ability to help other units crush opponents, rather than crushing everything by itself.
For this, it should have a low base attack, but decent HP and armor to survive enough time on the battlefield to fully utilize its special ability.
Having decent PA is so important to the viability of a gold infantry unit, that even a unit like the Urumi that has absurd DPS and multiple gimmicks is quite niche due to how hard it dies to ranged units. Going from 2 PA to 1 is a big drop. You could try it, but I suspect it would make the unit very niche in Castle Age, and if Poles were nerfed elsewhere, as I think they should be, it might make the civ too weak vs archer civs generally. I could be wrong, but modifying the cost or TT of the UU gives you the option of using smaller increments that are more likely to be able to create an appropriately fine-tuned unit. Heck, take off 5 HP and add 3s to TT. Even losing 1 attack would probably be a better way to moderate the unit than -1 PA. Regardless of how you’d prefer to nerf them though, I continue to think that trying to address Poles only along the single dimension of this unit is far from ideal.
Any unit type can be (and has been) overpowered (Mangudai, Plumed Archer, Steppe Lancer, etc). People ask for infantry buffs because they’re the unit class that’s most commonly underpowered/niche. That’s no reason not to be careful to avoid overnerfing the strong ones, or to leave the overly niche ones weak.
That’s kind of what the unit is already, although I suppose it’s HP is beyond decent. Perhaps you’d recommend a HP or Attack nerf?
And we have Viper who puts Samurai in the B tier (which is good) and thinks Urumi swordsman is a good unit, just more or less underrated. However the urumi concept is poor tbh, basically overly boosted shotel warrior that need a huge weakness vs ranged units to not be OP.
It is but is clearly warranted, again, most infantry UUs are already very rare to use in castle age and here crossbows are too common, and Obuch in castle age isn’t that problematic as the Elite Obuch is in imperial age, losing 1 PA won’t change the things that much.
What? A civ with 2 eco bonuses, broken 30g knight spam, winged hussars with trample damage and extra attack vs archers, onager and siege ram with SE is far from being burmese level vs archers, very far in fact.
Again, those are more like bandaids (like the El Dorado 20 secs nerf of research time, still OP) that need to be high enough to be even called nerfs, and then you get what you truly fear, UUs that are unused.
Reducing attack or HP goes against what Obuch is supposed to do in combat (HP is high because needs to stay in melee combat enough to reduce armor) so is reducing the attack.
And here’s the thing, Obuch alone doesn’t make Poles OP, nerfing Obuch is one of the other nerfs that Poles need to be a balanced civ.
Yeh…that would by why I suggested other nerfs to the civ since my first post…
Odd to assume that a PA nerf is perfectly calibrated to hit the sweet spot of balance, while all other types of nerfs seem to exist in this magical limbo where they will either do nothing, or push the unit entirely into obscurity (despite them being of a nature that is capable of finer calibration). To be fair, you could probably make a PA nerf work, I just find it sort of clumsy relative to the other options. Maybe the devs will go for it, but who knows, you have your thoughts, I have mine, and they’ll do what they’ll do without consulting either of us.
Attack nerf. Make it have pretty low attack (even maybe 2 or 1 only under the extreme example) to force it to rely on others. As long as Obuch has high enough HP and armor to survive enough time, it still can help other friendly units to crush enemy.
While poles are played frequently in the tournament. I can’t remember last time obuchs were trained much. Obuch is super good for sure but not the best unit poles have. Have to nerf Szlachta privlledge first. Poles just spam cavalier brainlessly and overrun any cavarly counter which is not fun to play against or watch. Even poles have other good options like Obuch, arb with thumb ring but they are rarely used.
Obuch still have weakness against archer same as other infantry and 12-second creation time is same as many other infantry uu like Jaguar, Samurai or Teutonic Knight.
Poles definitely need a nerf but Obuch is the least OP thing about them. You need 650 stone for a castle and your creation speed will still be quite slow until you have enough stone for more castles. They can be countered with crossbow/arbalest. If you are losing to Obuch, you are attacking too late thus allowing your opponent to get castles and production going. And also not scouting / not teching into ranged units fast enough.
I would say Poles farming simulator needs nerfing the most.
I still don’t know why they have arbs with almost all upgrades. They only miss the last archer armour, which isn’t a big deal because you have cheap cavalry to tank the opponent’s skirms/arbs.
They should lose bracer, and/or the arbalest upgrade imo. Also remove the bombard cannon, make them struggle a bit for destroying castles.
basically every unit has a hard counter in one of the 3 main buildings: Stable, Barracks, Archery Range. Cavaliers for example die to Halberdiers, Arbalest dies to Cavalier and so on.
There is 0 reason why Obuch should:
beat Longswords 1v1
nearly even trade vs Knights
in mass they make microing Crossbowmen vs them too burdensome for the payoff (3 damage per shot after you upgrade armor - they have same armor as Knights the apex predator of Castle Age
needless to say they do extremely well vs buildings, and all trash units too (Skirms, Mangonels etc.)
Sure they are bottlenecked by # of Castles, but that’s a bit like saying Mangudai is bottlenecked by # of Castles.
they allow Poles to play a low-eco composition of Obuch-Skirm/Obuch-Pike-Arbalest which works from 110 pop unlike the more classic 130 and make Poles a very unpredictable civ on top of one with very big power spikes (cheap Knights, fast Imp etc.)
Obuch are an insane unit and need a nerf. If we go by the idea that every unit needs a hard counter, the most reasonable nerf would be bring Pierce Armor 2 → 1. Obuch by design are meant to help Poles vs units like Teutonic Knight, mass Paladin etc. by lowering the armor so that their cheap Cavalier can do the damage.
Duh. This unit single handedly changed all the non-eagle, non-spearman infantry in the game. And all the changes of Militia line and infantry UU were in positive direction.
