But so are Jans. The most elite, hardiest soldier of the age was turned into the weakest, squishiest gunpowder dude in the game.
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Janissaries actually see consistent use and success in pro games lately. Call to arms tourney, pros are consistently building 10-15 janās to mix in with their archer or xbow mass even in castle age.
While they arenāt the best unique unit, you still see them more consistently than camels, elephants, landsknechts, musofadi, mangudai or horse archers in pro 1v1 games. Also, due to being a castle unit, they end up featuring more often than standard handcannons (but thatās mostly because games donāt reach imp a lot).
Since you can get Vizier Janissaries for free and itās a kind of trash unit, you will see the unit sometimes. Their actual role and contribution is basically a joke.
Authenticity and representation are important. Imagine making a Venice civ that has the worst navy with no ships, only canoes.
You simply canāt make the first ever elite, GENERALIST-trained, HOLD-GROUND modern battlefield soldier (musketeer) in all of human history become a cheap, wimpy, squishy, trashy, specialized, situational āranged spearā unit.
I mean look how they butchered the Landsknecht.
However in the call to arms tourney, people are consistently producing janissaries out of their archer range (not just the 8 you get from Vizier points). Mixing in 10ish of them is enough to shred knights and do well enough into MAA, after which your frontline and archers just overrun the enemy. They also outperform xbows vs MAA (though they are too expensive to mass).
The issue with janissaries isnāt the quality of the unit, but the cost. They are currently being produced in pretty much every professional 1v1 game that reaches castle and ottomans are performing well in the current tournament. For the sake of balance, they take bonus ranged damage, but they are currently the highest dps ranged unit by far in castle age and compete very closely with imperial handcannons even against non-cavā¦
Iāve long advocated that unique units like Great Bombard, Landsknecht, Mangudai must be more wide-use and more mainstream, it adds immensely to the uniqueness of civs (supposedly AoE4ās main point).
The issue is quite simple. Janissary was the elite professional soldier in the world.
Authenticity and representation is the soul. It absolutely must be MORE expensive and stronger, tankier, more hold-ground than some generic Handcannoneer, never LESS. The current Janissary is a complete abomination, goes against history, and the community aināt happy.
Beastyqt said itās impossible for Ottomans to win in very-late game because of Great Bombard and Janissary are not effective, not competitive.
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Lately, that has been proven wrong as Beasty has also mentioned, lots of new strategies for Ottomans have come out. A big issue with late game Ottomans was they would always be super behind in eco since a viable 2TC build had not been found yet.
The problem with going the more expensive stronger unit for the Janissary, is if it is generically stronger and available in castle age, it would have to be prohibitively expensive, and then you run into the great bombard/mangudai issue. Either it is super ridiculously overpowered in teamgames, or it is too expensive to ever make in a 1v1 and becomes a dead unviable unit.
The only option really to make Ottomans have a really strong generically good great bombard and Janissary would be to redesign the civ to be completely garbage in Feudal.
Thereās also the issue of bombards in generally being not great right now, because imperial rams are stupidly strong
Well in his last video, Beastyqt confirmed he considered Ottomans the worst civ in pro level and confirmed itās virtually impossible for Ottomans to win in very-late game, because of Great Bombard and Janissary are not effective, not competitive.
But Iām really not discussing win rates, nobody is in this topic.
This topic is all about historical representation and authenticity, with game design considerations.
Game design doesnāt have to be zero or a million, all or nothing, black or white. Heavy hand kills it.
Same as above.
Thatās very true. Rams own the meta right now. Imperial rams especially. Civs have even less apparent uniqueness. Clearly aināt helping the game.
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Beasty bumped up Ottomans last week with his new tier list. He put Ottomans up with the HRE/French/English and said that new strategies are coming in that make them more than just a one-trick feudal civ and he was considering putting them in A-tier maybe with all the other non-Rus civs. Frankly, itās pretty recent territory with people exploring new Ottoman builds, so itās hard to judge accurately how well they will do late game. Since experimentation on these builds is new, you have some failing, but also people havenāt refined counters either and respond poorly.
I would also argue that making Janissaries more expensive stronger handcanons would make them unplayable in high level 1v1. Handcannons in general are so expensive that they go almost unused unless the game goes really late into imperial. Since Janissaries wouldnāt be AOE units, even if they are stronger they will die to numbers.
We already see what making something generically more expensive but much stronger for an expensive unit. Thatās basically what the great bombard is. Itās just in 1v1ās you canāt justify spending that much resources on a unit (maybe we would see it more if rams get nerfed, fingerās crossed).
Well Mali + Ottos has been around for a whole year now, and AoE players are smart. Honestly this topic is not about anything near tier lists, did you read the original post?
You say making Janissary, well, what Janissary was (a strong elite unit) will make it too expensive, less used, and Ottos weaker.
If that is the case, so be it. Authenticity and historical representation trumps all else, because all else can be adjusted and tweaked. The communityās reaction about Janissary and Ottoman architecture was about authenticity, as is this topic, not because people want OP civs.
You say HCs are a rare sight. I beg to differ. HCs are structurally vital for all civs - thatās why Otto late game is so poor - and are often used in Imp.
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Handcannons are common in team games or on ladder (especially closed maps). I was just mentioning them being uncommon in high level - especially in tournaments, because games typically end before going imperial. Games that do get imperial usually end like 1-2 minutes later, so even getting to handcannons is pretty uncommon. This is a 2nd reason great bombards are so rare. Getting to the point you can spend like 1500 resources on a siege unit means the game has stretched into a crazy stalemate. Even if Great Bombards 2-shot keeps or something insane, they would probably be pretty rare.
Authenticity doesnāt trump everything since this is a game, not a historical simulator, so balance takes precedence. If a unit is strong, it has to be expensive or have key weaknesses. Jannisaries are really strong, but they are expensive and somewhat weak to archers/mangos when massed. Granted as an elite unit, an argument could be made that we have a good representation as itās a strong unit that is used in small numbers inside an army.
I say experimentation is new on Ottomans because it has been a long time since we had a high level 1v1 tourney, so people who played Ottos on ranked ladder just spammed the same all-in Feudal gameplay. If someone had said a month ago a pro player would go 2 TC FC and then build 15-20 janissaries to crush Malians (one of the best castle civs), people would probably assume you were trolling or someone was memeing, but that happened, and boom Ottoman play has had a lot of new innovation lately.
I thought it was this guy in the other thread.
How many accounts are you on by now? What makes you keep making new accounts? Honestly I do wonder how you donāt get tired of this.
And how do people keep engaging?
Perhaps at one point the Jannisaries were as you said, a generic all around elite unit with great authenticity and historical representation, then because they broke the gameplay (afterall this is a game not a simulation), they as you said balanced stats with tweaks until we got here.
Thats almost exclusively cuz the janissary company viz point giving you units to fluff up a hard push. It still stands that any comp that makes handcannons folds ottomans - ands directly the fault of the janssisary.
Unless you are actively microing handcannons to individual target the Janissaries, or the entire frontline has died, itās pretty moot. Janissaries drastically outDPS handcannons vs cav and are similar vs other units (while it does like 60% of the damage, it also shoots like 60% faster while being significantly cheaper and faster to create)
Tbh the main issue you donāt mass handcannons is they have to have a frontline, moreso than other ranged units. That and itās just super overkill.
The other main issue with handcannons is they take extra damage from archers, so they need something to be in front. On the other hand, they take less damage from jav throwers and horseman and amusingly enough mangonels (you should definitely still dodge the mangonel shots)
Yes authenticity and historical representation absolutely 100% DO TRUMP balance, because the latter obviously can be endlessly adjusted and tweaked, as is always done last stage. First you get design right and genuine. Then balance stats.
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When I watch every new civ videos, I see that ottomans are f ing badly, careless, lazy designed than I thought. This is getting worse and worse. Byzantines shines. If Byzantines shines like that in history, why ottomans can conquer it? According to the game, Ottomans are nomads. But they have no horse archers. This game intentionally shows the history un real. Sultan Ascends will give us crusades but why arent Turks in it? Dear devs you can make the game like that but you cant change history. Turks conquered all arab peninsula, anatolia, balkans, half of Europe. You cant change this and even you make the Ottomans f ing hilaraous, Ottomans shined the most civ in the Age of 4 time line. . This game cant change this historical fact.
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Janissary - it dies to 2 shots against handcannons. It does better vs cav while losing to men at arms and even spearmen. It is outranged and outrun by almost all its direct counters. It loses to mangudai. Mehter? Yeah, other civs got perks too. Its post imp dps is greater only vs cav and nowhere close anywhere else.
You do mass handcannons. And its good. You then support them with siege (springs/culvs/trebs) since mangoes are the only real threat at a certain mass (40-60 ish). Vs french you get some spears/maa since they have cheap/beef knights. But they generally do well in large numbers of both.
We have 2 channels worth of vids on this on youtube. Hand cannons already beat cav at a critical mass in alot of cases - attack speed for delhi, cost for rus/frech, beefyness + camels for, etc, etc.
And this is all depended on the idea that ppl will run cav staight into its theoretical counter, ignoring that a simple xbow/maa comp is all you need to counter jans hard - and thus is the point to work around.
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How would they lose to mangudai? They 3 shot Mangudai since they are cav. Maybe if they are overkilling too much and somehow the mongols killed all your spears and sipahi first. Sure they take bonus damage, but not THAT much bonus damage (even ignoring the fact that they mass faster). How are your Janissaries getting shot by enemy Handcannons? Do you have 0 melee units, or is your opponent microing 2 handcannons at a time in a giant imperial fight? Amusingly, Janissaries are less vulnerable to mangos since they dont take bonus damage.
Sure Janissaries arenāt the greatest post-imp unit when you are massing 30+ handcannons, but they are very powerful still before that. They are trained more often in high level than many unique units like Mangudai, elephants, camels, all of the chinese uniques (except Zhuge Nu possibly). Thereās also the fact that Ottomans are really strong for the first half of the game so they shouldnāt have insane post-imp gameplay too.
Janissaries have significantly higher attack speed than handcannons, so as long as they arenāt fighting straight up against other ranged units with no frontlines, they actually do similar or more dps to most units while being faster to mass and much cheaper.
The difference between Janissaries and xbows/handcannons, is that 5-10 of them will absolutely destroy knights/horseman, while the others donāt do that great until in significant mass.
The worldās first modern soldier, an iconic trooper that dominated late AoE4 timeā¦ gets 2-shoted by utterly archaic, almost experimental HCs.
Devs have such respect for the Ottomans, I feel touched even. (not)
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