there is too much power creep with the new units and cards. we now have a dragoon unit that performs the same as halberdiers in melee against heavy cavalry while being cheaper among other things.
compare janissaries and javelin riders. both cost 115 resources, have the same 210 hit points and ranged damage per second of 10 every 1.5 seconds. javelin riders also move 63% faster.
javelin riders additionally deal much more bonus damage against heavy cavalry and artillery, with triple the damage output vs heavy cavalry at range and 2.5 times the damage against artillery. javelin cavalry even perform better in melee mode vs cavalry than janissaries since they trade 25% melee hit points for a massive 67% damage boost against cavalry.
javelin cavalry trade evenly with hussars in melee only with the fight going either way, while living with 80/50 hit points against janissaries, 2/3 hits away from death. it gets even more absurd in age 3, with javelin riders with counter cavalry card soloing veteran hussars with cavalry combat in melee only, while veteran janissary with combat card shipped will lose. counter cavalry doesn’t even boost melee bonus and only has a 15% hit point modifier in this instance, yet a 115 resource ranged dragoon unit with a 15% hit point boost is soloing a 200 resource unit with a 15/15% stat increase in melee mode, while janissary with a 20/20% boost cant. they perform equally! with halberdiers in melee against heavy cavalry despite being cheaper, having a ranged attack and moving much faster.
despite costing the same amount they are much better than janissaries against their counters, surviving 3 times more falconet shots and 6 more skirmisher shots. they cost effectively defeat janissaries while choosing when to engage against them. against heavy cavalry they also deal 3/4 times more damage from range than janissaries while also dealing 67% more damage in melee mode, outperforming every dedicated 1 pop heavy infantry unit cost effectively against heavy cavalry while being considerably faster with a ranged attack.
and unlike janissaries they come from a building that can make other units and have much better scaling due to cards and ranged resistance, being extremely effective against cavalry and other units throughout the game. javelin riders are better generalists and better melee specialists, the one major advantage janissaries have is a higher siege damage.
compare how they perform against abus guns and it gets funnier. it takes abus guns 7 shots at 3.5 rof to kill a javelin rider, while only taking 3 shots with CIR against janissary. javelin cavalry are also a more cost effective counter to abus guns than janissary are to heavy cavalry. let that sink in for a moment. and if you run down abus and force them into melee mode, the disparity gets even bigger.
there is not one unit you can make as ottomans to counter javelin cavalry. some of this has come from the terrible meta changes started by esoc to force a more defensive/boom meta, such as nerfing jans and abus to prevent rushing/extended age 2 play and empower ff strategies. but a lot of it also has to do with the power creep that the new expansion bring. both units and cards should be bought down to vanilla levels. there is no reason for +20% stat boosts, even +15% cards have too much power. meanwhile legacy systems such as +10/10% RG upgrades for 800 more resources are left in the dust with all the crazy bonuses in the game.
with the recent ±5% armor changes, decoupling xp bounties from resource costs, +20% cards, increased disparities between resources shipped and shipment value, and ±50 resource crates/non standard ±0.5 rof it looks like the terrible esoc design values are making things worse rather than better.
units need to more closely follow a performance baseline compared to their costs, xp values should match resource costs, shipments should more closely align with their resource values, cards need to be weaker, resistance changes should be a last resort and in steps of 10%, and all the 2.5/3.5 rof should be moved back to a 3.0 rof standard.