On the Puma Spearman

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

So with the changes to the JPK (which was needed, the unit was not viable) especially the speed changes, I think that the role of the puma spearman, as a speedy melee complement to the coyote has been taken over by the JPK.

It has more rounded stats, can counter the counters of coyote and is easier to macro for even if it cost overall more res.

So I want to prose a few things to maybe make a more solid niche for the puma, as another choice in the coyote complement or even as part of a triple complement of coyote, puma and JPK.

The concept will be a melee tank with high speed that can keep up with coyote even at potentially full speed that can force coyote counters such as goons into melee where they die or absorb melee damage from muskets, halbs or cav.

There will be 4 changes, some more important then others but I think there will be some core change and some optional change.

1st (needed) - reverting HP to 135 from 125

Originally the puma had 135 HP and this change is designed to increase survivability and complement the second change

2nd (needed) - Xochipilli Support to age 2 and also increases melee armour by 0.15

While I am still in favour of maybe integrating a lot of the support cards into the big button techs, this is a more short term change or the now.

This card in age 3 is very hard to justify because of the other arguably more crucial support cards

Moving it to age 2 means that the puma coyote complement can act as an age 2 version of the coyote-jpk comp, frees up an age 3 slot (which was never used for this card anyway)

Increasing the melee armour is done for 2 reason, it follows the trend of giving 2 buffs to war hut units (coyote increases HP and armour, slingers get HP and range) and it now gives the puma enough HP to tank alot of melee hits.

combined with the HP revert, the puma will have about 207 melee HP in age 2, slightly less than the Incan plumed spearman, which I think them more comparable.

3rd (needed ??) - cost from 45f/45c to 50f/40c

This is to make the unit more favourable to macro coin-wise

This is pretty important as well especially if you send aztec mining and is still making coyote or slingers which will make macroing for the comp harder on gold.

4th (optional) - base speed to 5.5

This one is to arguably make it able to have the same-ish speed as coyote after the support tech, allowing it to become a fast speed comp with the unit

with the support tech, it will have 6.6 speed, which is only 0.2 less then coyote with coyote combat, which will make for a potent shock force.

arguably it will be able to do this with 6 speed but lets see.

So yeah thoughts??

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2

I’d be inclined to say reduce the siege and it’ll be fine. The concern I’d have is a fast moving siege unit with high speed that counters dragoons and gets a bonus vs vills with “Ruthlessness”. Late game the pike raids could get nasty.

To me it sounds like you want to make them more Rodelero-like, which I’d be fine with.

Perhaps reduce their siege to 20.
Then increasing the speed, hp and decreasing the cost slightly all would seem fine.

3

I think thats a bit too much, that would make them have 12 less siege then even base pikes

I think somewhere around 35 is more reasonable. Thats the siege of the incan plumed spearman.

I think tunning down their cav bonus is also an option, they deal 60 damage to cav at base right now and maybe 35 siege and x4 vs cav is a reasonable move

4

yes, more aztec nerfs please

2 Likes
5

hey hey, im trying to buff the first, we can nerf them after that

6

nah fam, lets make coyotes heavy infantry too

5 Likes
7

thats not enough, we can make them siege units as well

9

I also just realised that puma are siege units so they are also countered by culvs now so lets say they are already nerfed

10

They were siege unit. In DE they lost it.

2 Likes
11

Tlaloc trainable from War Hut when?

12

Throughout the patches, Puma cost got reduced by 5f and 5c. But they lost 10 hp, some siege damage, siege unit tag.

If a change is needed to make Puma more usable, I think would be by changing their tag to be hand skirmisher like Urumi without aoe and removing the heavy infantry tag. They got 2x dmg against light infantry but a reduced siege attack. But this change would also mean Aztec got problem in sieging in age 2.

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… or countering cavalry

3 Likes
14

Another option is to give them extra range like most pikes got in earlier patchs

5 Likes