But my point is this doesn’t make sense. 1 range does not significantly change the ability to engage against infantry or cavalry or cavalry archers relative to xbow. Why would it? And we know xbow can be used effectively against all of these targets. So what exactly prevents xbow + genoese xbow from being a superior version of pure xbow vs these targets? I know it works better for me you just move 1 range closer for everything and adjust for the extra attack delay. But this doesn’t say much about what it would look like if it was meta.
This has been true for almost every strategy at some point in time. The inca trush should have been OP prior to DE, people barely touched it. The Hoang rush should have been used significantly prior to Hoang, it wasn’t. The Saracen market should be automatic/second nature for basically everyone above 2k because its been around for 20 years but it isn’t. I’m just saying this means almost nothing for a unit like the castle age Genoese Xbow which for all intents and purposes was awful until DE, and kinda meh to use prior to the recent discount and university discount. The relevant question is: Can the GC in it’s current state ever become a meta staple for Italians? I think the answer is yes.
7 base attack on an archer is extremely strong in castle age. 10 GC could 2 shot a mangonel or scorpion, not to mention the fact they already survive a mangonel hit. They would kill eagles in half the time as xbow, you turn xbow into a rather soft counter once the GC have pavise, most infantry die significantly faster compared to xbow, and of course you still have the same dps vs cavalry. I have faith that pros with excellent micro could turn this into something extremely overpowered.
I think a feudal age buff would be good but I also think it ignores the larger problem of how a civ’s history can influence how people play it today. People aren’t robots but many people here treats them as such for the purposes for analyzing civ design. The statistics for civs has to pass through players first so if there’s any important gaps that’s going to affect the statistics for the civ. This makes looking for possible gaps in how players use the civ just as important as analyzing the civ itself.
Anyway that’s all I have to say about this.