Hussar will still be a better choice though. If you have gold, why not go UU or pala.
That’s on purpose because they have several other advantages.
They stack better then other melee cavalry, and they have one range.
Steppe lancers aren’t designed to win 1v1. They are designed to win with numbers
ez just replace paladin unit with a unique cuman lancer problem solved
Well if you balance equal gold vs. Knights they do win (check out spirit of the laws recent vid) so there is an aspect where if gold is an issue you can mass more of them/replenish. Not saying they are or should be a knight replacement, but with this gold reduction (and maybe another later) they could have more of a situational use such as when gold is scarce but not totally gone.
Edit: my point is not that they’re where they need to be yet, I need to test them out in real situations to determine that, just that I think the fix is lowering the cost as they’ve done, not increasing the stats since the snowball risk is high. It’s also worth noting as others have, that civs with steppe Lancers, also get bonuses to them which means the generic numbers aren’t really what we should be looking at, much like eagle warriors for messo civs.
There is only one role witch can be taken by Steppe Lancer, what cannot be filled by otehr cav:
Trashkiller/Anti-infantry Cavalry.
SL never will be as strong frontliner and against Archers as Knight-line, due to latter superior stats.
Never will be as good raider as Hussar, because of cost and speed.
Never will be good against Cav as Camel without strong bonus (except Cumans).
If Steppe Lancer will get some bonus against Spear-line (and maybe Eagles) it would become “Mounted Champion” - of course cannot be as good as Champion, and it would be good for SL to actualy lose to Champion, and with lack of Pierce Armor it will be countered by Archers. But will be good to add punch, if enemy would go for Halbs against our Cav.
You can argue it is the same role as Cav Archer, but this is not exactly true, because SL have the same upgrade as other Cav, but Cav Archers need other upgrades and other building. It would be cheaper and faster to tech into Steppe Lancer - Cavalier/Paladin/Keshik
BTW, Cumans have very good Barracks, they lack only Supplies. If we can make SL Champion Equivalent, ve can even take out Cuman and Mongol Champion.
This isn’t a bad idea, so they’d have a bonus damage against infantry, or specifically against pike line?
I think only against Spear-line and Eagle-line. Against all infantry can be a little to much, because it would also counter many UU.
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However unlike Cavalry Archers, Lancers aren’t available for other civs. Only 3 civs in the game get them and 2 of them are already quite strong.
No one is going to make expensive lancers and fight them vs knights or teutonic knights or other melee units in a battle…at 3 base p.armor and 1.45 base speed + 1 range, the unit is going to be used for raiding the base, sniping monks, mangonels, pick a small group of stray archers or skirms. If you’re up against a lancer civ and u have camels in ur civ, u might defend. Otherwise it would be a nightmare. And if you’re an archer civ, u can never go out of your base to attack without having camels or a large number of pikemen against a civ with lancers.
Long answer short - The game is never going to get 3 base p.armor Lancers ever. That’s just revisiting the Age of Steppe Lancers times (Nov-Dec 2019)
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I have watched all spirit’s video lol. I think in castle age the food cost is more important though, 70f per unit is a big hit for our own economic. In imp steppe lancers do be cost effect in melee fight in some situation, but they are way too bad against arrows. In most cases the heavy cavalry or hussar will be the better choice.
I know changing stats can cause even more balance issue, but the role of steppe lancers are unclear now. If we only lower their cost, they will just take over the jobs of heavy cavalry or hussar and become too cost effective.
This is really good point! The three civ should have more bonus or unique tech to adjust steppe lancer to a better unit, as well as giving them different but clear role. In this case the 0/3 base armor may be overkill.
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I think all three civs (Mongols, Cumans, Tatars) already have top CA to counter infantry, and CA even share the same weakness as steppe lancers, which is the range units. Steppe lancers may still lack their own role and be overshadowed by other gold units in my opinion.
Since the units exist, they should be useful in some situation.
Just like going knights, if we train 10 knights in castle age and not able to do enough damage to opponents, we will be in losing position because we have invested lots of resources.
Lancers with 3 base PA definitely need more adjust from current state. Maybe lower the attack to further weaken the melee ability, or the speed, or the creation time. In my design the role of lancers are raiding and countering range unit, so they can be much weaker in other field, just to keep their identity.
We can even higher the cost if lancers are too deadly. I prefer 3 base PA lancers with higher cost rather than 1 base PA lancers with very low cost, because it will give them a clearer role.
Totally agree. Food is the most valueable ressource in the mid game.
Additionally steppe lancers are kinda bad in low numbers. So you want to build a mass of them, which is hard with a castle age eco.
That’s why I said Knights are a transition unit to steppe lancers.
And I personally think, elite SL are actually not that bad already. They have low gold cost, they deal very well with infantry, hussars, skirms and siege, even in lower numbers. They are insane raiding units. And they are deadly to basically everything when massed.
Especially Tatars ones, as the extra pierce armor makes them a viable choice against archers.
The thing is, all these civs have extremely strong cav archer options, which serve the same purpose. Absolutely impossible to deal with when massed. As long as these cav archers are that strong, there is no sense in going for steppe lancers for these civs, if the steppe lancer isn’t pushed back to basically it’s pre-nerf state.
That’s why I say, it’s better to give the steppe lancer a utility role. It’s way easier to balance and also doesn’t changes the civs identity. But instead it would give them a bit more depth, working more with unit comps instead of just massing (UU) cav archers.
I also though again about a possible halb-counter role. I don’t think it is a good Idea, for several reasons.
First, the lancers work best in masses against halbs because you don’t want to allow the halbs to make even a single hit against them. But if the role of the SL is support, you won’t get the masses to be effective in that role unless you give them an absurd amount of bonus damage vs spears.
Second, it is also dangerous, cause halbs are basically the only available counter unit against keshik and palading for most civs. If cumans and tatars get a mobile halb-counter, it’s basically free win, pretty much as the goth flood is vs mayans.
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I couldn’t agree with you more. That’s why I try to make Steppe lancers more arrow resistance, which may be the only downside of cavalry archers. Otherwise all three civs will always have better options over steppe lancers.
The roles of gold units are looking like this:
Knight line - good at both melee and absorbing arrow, expensive.
Elephants - very strong, slow, expensive.
Archer line - range support and bad at melee.
Cavalry archer - with micro can kill all melee units, weak against range unit (for cost perspective).
Swordsman line - cheap and kill trash unit.
Eagle - low food cost, good absorbing arrow while weak in melee fight.
Consider the tech tree of three civs, I think the unit with resistance against range unit should find his role and cooperation with other support units. Therefore, I will give steppe lancer an eagle-like 0/3 pierce armor:
Steppe lancer - high food cost, very good absorbing arrow while bad in melee fight.
I have made a sheet, because I wanted to figure out, how good the elite steppe lancer is already as a less gold intensive version of the knight line.
I was quite surprised how good it is already, even if I ignored the range advantage. Here are the graphs for the HP and DPS values of ESL compared to cavs and paladins at differend G/F ratios. The graphs completely ignore the 1 range of the ESL.
I actually think the ESL is now a viable choice in 1v1, as Paladin is only situationally viable. At least in melee vs melee matchups.
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According to Lanchester’s square law, the two armies with different strength all fighting at once can be described by the following equation:
(A,B) are the army size, and (a,b) are the unit strength, and the equation holds when two armys are balance. I’ll use 1 divide by the time that needed to kill others as unit strength, like Spirit of the law has once done (Lanchester's Laws in AoE2 - YouTube).
For steppe lancers vs cavaliers case:
I suppose cavaliers need extra 3 sec to find another target to kill. It ends up we needs about 41 steppe lancers to balance 30 cavaliers.
And for steppe lancers vs paladin case:
We will need about 45 steppe lancers to balance 30 paladins.
So, steppe lancers do be cost effective on gold. All we need is keeping the army size 33% bigger than cavaliers, and 50% bigger than paladins. I just think we won’t be able to put our steppe lancers army all in one place in all time. The opponents can attack at different angles and force us to divide the force, or even attack earlier before we trying to build up such a massive army.
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I totally agree with everything but this. As steppe lancers are insanely mobile, it is very risky to try to split forces against them, as they could stay together and make extremely effective trades against split forces.
I think the opposite is the case, the main strat against mass steppe lancers would be halb+siege. As the halbs force the steppe lancers to group up and stack to get acceptable trades and the siege can get massive damage against stacked units.
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I meant if there are cavalier army raiding everywhere in our town, we still need to group up our steppe lancers trying to clean them. We will win the fight in the end, but our economic will suffer a bit longer.
Actually I just realize that the strength of steppe lancers may be shine in castle fight, because we can group our army and force the fight, also 1 range is insane when protecting the treb.
Best counter is always the range units. Just need some meat shield in front and arbalests can finish their job.
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Anti-Infantry Cavalry? You mean Knights?
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pikes, kamayuks, flemish militia, and viking infantry would all like words with you.
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Money for Money sure.
But Knight-line does beat all of those in the straight up fight. The win and the tempo go to Knights.
That’s an eco trade, not a combat trade.