Issue:
The chinese fire lancers are really too strong, there’s been many games where my friends and I have wasted 30+ minutes setting up a base and economy just to be rushed by a group of 20-30 fire lancers that wipe out our landmarks in literally less than a minute. You’re forced to sit an army back near your landmarks just to protect from this, otherwise you’ve basically lost. Even when you have an army protecting the base they can run so fast and deal so much siege damage that wiping them out before they destroy everything isn’t always an option.
Solutions (suggestions):
Movement speed should be reduced significantly so that you can actually chase them with melee units such as spearmen.
Their siege damage should be reduced slightly as they currently take down buildings at a ridiculous speed, doesn’t need to be a significant change otherwise they’ll end up just being a scout.
Cost and population used should be increased, massing these shouldn’t be so easy, they’re essentially siege weapons to they should be priced accordingly (and use up population accordingly).
Happy to talk it through if anyone has counter arguments, but I personally just want to surrender when matched against a chinese at this point. Wasting 30 mins just to lose in 30 seconds is so frustrating.
I agree it can be frustrating it happened to me and my team mates before, but there are ways to avoid this. One way to play these games is be aggressive from the start and not just let the Chinese player get to that point. Most of the time the game rewards players who are aggressive and take control of the pace of the game.
Also did you guys had walls, even though they go down easily to siege units they can still buy time for your units to deffend the base.
My suggestion in every fire lancer thread will stay the same: Give torch damage a cap. A maximum of 10-15 torch damage instances can be dealt in a time window. So even if you have 60 fire lancers only the damage of 10-15 will be applied. Increased the time they need to take down a building drastically.
Tbh, it is pretty hard to get to fire lancer and I don’t think the fighting aspect of the unit should be nerfed since their stats are horseman with better torches and a splash damage charge and some of their cost moved to gold. Their building damage may need to be nerfed in 3v3 and 4v4, hard to judge what would be appropriate though.
Also the attack resetting mechanic in this game needs to be removed/fixed. It allows units to do way more damage than should be possible.
I agree with you. In a 4v4 match, two Chinese made a total of 60 units in 15 minutes of play and deleted my team in just 15 seconds per player!!! This was absolutely insane.
Tbh, that’s pretty impressive. Getting to fire lancers is almost as expensive as going Imp. It’s really only a concern on larger team games on open maps. (on chokes you should be able to get stone walls down)
Use them. Fire Lancers running into your base won’t be an issue anymore.
Chinese isn’t exactly in a fantastic spot in this meta. They deserve strong late game units to make up for their abyssmal early game. Calling for nerfs on random units because you can’t beat them is a waste of time.
Chinese are only strong late on the game. And only after spend a lot or resources on extra landmarks that, beside the clock tower, are kinda meh.
To be able to create them, the Chinese use a hell ton of resources that others can use for eco or army
I know wall can block fire lancer or they need time to build up, the most important thing is I don’t mind them to be powerful at late game but I don’t want anything unbeatable.
Totally agree with OP. Basically almost every team game revolves around whos gonna mass fire lancers first and melt the enemy landmarks one after the other. It’s just stupid. No one gives a damn about objectives sacred sites or whatever. If you do, you’re going to die to fire lancers wiping your landmarks in seconds. Well, if you end up in that point, you’re going to die anyway, because if they decide to fight, your units melt like butter. 1 million Spearmen does nothing to them. Castles dont even scratch them (well, castles dont kill anything in this game anyway). It’s enough for only 1 player to mass them and it can easily kill all other 4 players. It’s a joke.
Rus and Mongol can’t stone wall, and on open maps it’s not feasable to full stone wall your whole team. I’m not 100% sold on the unit needs nerfs, but I can see the argument at least.
Fair point on mongols. But honestly, you’re not doing yourself any favors going past 3rd age with mongols.
Rus on the other hand. Mainly cav civ. And you can still wall, and it’s cheap. So you should have a really mobile force, and you should have walls too.
If a player is not at his best, playing mediocre, the punishment for this cannot be losing his 3 marks in 15 seconds. It’s not just a question of skill, it’s a question of balance.
Brace cancels the charge damage and stuns the cav for a second or so. Sure the spears get destroyed if you don’t brace but if you either have hill advantage or a few spears to brace vs the charge effect, they are just standard horseman with a gold cost.
Mongols are largely a civ that goes castle after early aggression with good siege engineers/siege. They are a great castle civ with good eco even if Imp isn’t that great.
Also Rus only get fortified pallisades, they don’t get stone walls. And those melt in like 1 second vs fire lancers.
