What I will mention here may only apply to treaty games. When all the cards have been sent and the corresponding upgrades have been made.
The Ethiopian javelin raider is extremely overpowered, literally too hard if not impossible to kill with skirmishers (which are supposedly their counter units), the shewa cavalry card makes them invulnerable to ranged attack. Killing it with mele units is quite complicated because they are usually accompanied by Neftenyas, this results in the resources running out in most cases because the Ethiopian army does not die, since it must be added that the Neftenya ridiculously resists the artillery, for the added siege resistance on a card, not to mention that units are constantly healing.
This is resulting in most players spamming a huge amount of javelin riders, turning Ethiopia into Argentina 2.0.
On the other hand, the other African civilization, Hausa has a problem since the Fulani archer was added to the game. The Fulani Archer is the worst light infantry in the game (in treaty) in terms of cost-benefit by far, it literally does the same damage to heavy infantry as a Russian Strelet costing much more, it improves a bit with Fulani migrations, but only a bit. Perhaps the problem is in the multipliers, too low for, as it supposedly says in the description, to be effective against heavy infantry, and let’s not talk about using it against light cavalry because the matter becomes even worse. For the only infantry unit in the Hausa war camp, it sucks.
I don’t think the shewa card is particularly incredible and doesn’t make them invulnerable. The hausa card for jav riders gives just a flat boost to hp so they’re actually tankier vs both melee and ranged attacks than the ethiopian equivalent. The only real difference otherwise is the hausa jav riders are way better vs hand cav with the extra multiplier while ethiopians get a flat boost to attack so better vs everything else.
I’d say it’s more to do with all the little boosts stacked that makes them strong, like the card for extra hp and healing for all units, the age up tech that again boosts all units, monasteries boosting hp etc.
The fulani I do agree with, they do slightly more damage than a longbow but with less range though they do have a far better animation. Longbows now get a higher multiplier vs heavy inf with the yeomen card but falani have no such card to improve the multiplier.
Cavalry Shewa’s problem is the extra ranged resistance it gives (0.1), which added to the small increases in hp (that you mentioned), makes them really resistant to ranged attack, since, you have a unit that costs 1 pop with approx 428 hp with 0.2 range resistance, very similar stats to a 2 pop european dragon (in terms of hp and range resistance). Because doing the damage calculations, the javelin rider, even receiving more damage from the skirmisher’s multiplier, ends up winning in 1vs1, even for skirmishers with a good ranged attack like the Mexican salteador.
They are supposed to be quite tanky units though, that’s why they do more damage in melee. They’re also slower than regular cavalry.
HP is also the only thing they beat skirms on and base skirms have 30% RR. If you count a jav rider with the upgrade card then it should be compared to a dutch skirm with the infantry combat card so they’re on equal footing.
Skirms have higher attack, way more range and a 2x multiplier vs light cavalry. The range is often overlooked too, with a mass of skirms they’ll all be firing whilst a similar mass of jav riders will be fumbling about trying to get into range with just 12 range.
I just made the test, a mass of 30 javelin raiders (fully upgraded, shewa cavalry, Ignatian illumination, Oromo upgrade and using hp aura from monasteries from habesha upgrade plus 10 abunes healing ( 438 hp, 21 range attack, 1.5 of rate of fire, 0.2 range resistance) against one of 30 Dutch skirmishers (all cards and arsenal upgrades, 288 hp, 36 range attack, 3.0 rate of fire), if the skirmishers are in the range of the javelin raiders at the start of the battle, the javelin rider wins without a problem they remain standing as 9, but if the javelin rider has to move closer to attack the skirmisher wins. Then, if u keep the line of javelins near to the skirms and neftenya during the fight (as usual in the treaty games) finally u win without a problem draining the enemy by the losses. Also, i tested the neftenya vs horse artillary, literally horse artillery can’t kill fast the neftenya, omg.
Yeah pretty much expected, ethiopia are better late game than dutch as they’re a fortress age civ primarily. The neftenya are also the best skirm in the game imo, so not surprised even artillery struggle vs them.
I wouldn’t mind reducing their range to 10 since you are supposed to try and get close and melee cav with them.
also a small note but skrims only deal x1.5 to light range cav due to the interaction with the x.7 multi against all cav. like iirc once you get in range muskets deal more damage to goon type units then skirms. the only exception to this is chinese skirms with repelling volley.
Weird thing is that javelin riders as a “tanky and high melee dragoon” feels like a dragoon-musketeer hybrid, and Ethiopia does not even lack musketeers. On the contrary they have a very good one.
omg, in treaty games no, maybe in supremacy yes, literally a Fulani can’t kill properly Carolean, redcoats, or other strong musketeers fully upgraded
I wrote a post dedicated to Africa, and I thought they should improve the training speed of Indigenous musketeers to replace archers and mercenary musketeers in treaty mode