i would like to discuss the change of the saracen archer bonus against buildings to a cav archer bonus and increase it maybe a bit to compensate for the lower numbers you have of ca compared to archers (no feudal mass etc.) I know they had this bonus in the past and afaik it wasn’t oppressing.
This could make CA civs more interesting in Teamgames and would also emphazise the Saracens as a mobile civ instead of another “generic” arb civ like i see them used nowadays.
Also i think it’s time to remove attack bonus against ships from Camels and Genoese Crossbows. That’s a relict from when there was no special camel armor class i guess but makes no sense anymore. Genoese Crossbows kill Galleys much too easy now. For halbs i may understand the attack bonus somehow, as it may be seen as a boarding fight against ships, but should be either for all infantery or non.
I think that CA are going to become too strong if they melt buildings. They are already fast and dangerous once a mass is built if microed well. I also think it’s fine for the units to be good against ships, land units already lose badly to ships, if you lose water on a water map, you lose. There is no comeback like on some other maps sometimes. Although, as far as civs go, Italians probably don’t need their UU to be good against ships, considering they are a top 3 water civ.
But that mass is much easier to achieve with normal archers you can mass in feudal already. And knights should still kill buildings faster with the same mobility (which is fair because they take damage from tcs for example something ca could avoid). I just think it’s a way to reward people for the less easy way of massing ca instead of archers.
Land units can’t really do anything against ships if it’s not swamp terrain where both land and naval units can move as they don’t range them on normal water maps (if not placed stupidly on the shoreline). To me this seems to be a relict that the developers forgot/didn’t care about but could fix now to keep the game clean. It’s not really game changing (like memeluke archer class) but should eliminate some strange situations.
Yeah I agree about both suggestions. For the Saracens, although I agree their CA should have an identity afer they nerfed them, I don’t think the attack bonus vs buildings is really that helpful, so they should get something better.
For Camels and GXbows, I fully agree, they need to lose the damage bonus vs ships.
It’s a team bonus. It’s specifically not meant to be great.
That being said it drastically changes how you can defend against Saracen archers due to their destructive nature compared to any other civ. Especially since obsidian was removed, it specifically makes Saracens unique
No. Xbows are slow and fragile. For example Mangudai aren’t. This should never be a team bonus.
If anything give them a small civ bonus only. But Devs specifically removed it. So doubt it’s returning.
If I remember correctly, the reason Obsidian Arrows was removed was because the dev team and elite players came to a consensus that giving archer units the siege ability was toxic to the game.
To be honest, I think it would be good for the Saracens to change the team bonus too.
Maybe make the civ bonus about Transport Ships to a team reward, then give them a new civ bonus for Archers or Cavalry Archers if needed.
but for example with the old indians bonus (camel damage to buildings) camel archers had bonus attack against buildings and that wasn’t dominating the team game meta.
Not even elephant archers. Elephant archers will be more broken if they have damage bonus vs buildings because they are so tanky. I highly agree with @Martinurello that there should not be archer units have damage vs buildings.
i guess usually if you have enough elephant archer for that bonus to matter your opponent should be already doomed. so the effect shouldn’t be too bad. old indians had it if i remember correctly and it was fine. but yeah elephant archers weren’t really on my mind when i created this topic
Not even Elephant archers… The only exception I “accept” is the korean War Wagon, but honestly, they should be classified as siege unit instead of archer unit… I mean… is a kind of scorpion into a wooden box…
Again , do you guys even think about implications of these ideas?
If it wasn’t archer skirms would be useless
If it was siege AND archer, it would be too easily countered
Camel archers are a singular bottlenecked unit. You don’t have half a dozen camel archer civs, but we do have a wide range of civs that would happily field CA, nevermind buffed CA
More broken, implies you think they’re already broken!??
Of all the units that should get an anti building bonus it is specifically EA because they are currently so niche and so incredibly expensive due to the food cost, with such a low dps per cost.
They serve little to no purpose in most matches, that e skirms wouldn’t be better at.
The old indian elephant archer had anti building bonus and they were tankier (but harder to mass) and they werent broken because of that. Architecture nullified that bonus
Agreed but there are some differents. Elephant archers will get buffs next patch means making them will be easier. Indians were a UU not a generic ao making them was harder.
Agreed. Cav archer bonus damage was Saracen’s bonus since AoK and can’t see any game that was oppressive. but the bonus disappeared for no reason.
Just make Cav archer bonus damage vs Building as civ bonus and it is perfectly fine. They don’t have other bonus for cav archer play or good eco to support that. I don’t see reason why this bonus have to be removed while other really good CA civ like Huns, Magyars, Tatars etc exist (It doesn’t help actual combat ability, we lost another civ have unique bonus on CA)
I don’t think archer bonus damage have to be go either. Maybe it can be moved to civ bonus and transport capacity can be team bonus.
It is true for some other good CA like Huns, Magyars or Mangudai. But not Saracens CA with no bonus and not good eco. Literally no one complain about Saracens CA bonus for 20 years and bonus disappeared.
Also small bonus damage vs building doesn’t mean CA can melt building. It just help CA player to force fight against opponent hiding behind the walls and building.
The reason is that developers want to remove all kind of Siege archer play, especially fast moving one. Starting from Saracens CA, Burmese Arambai, Mayans UT, Camel Archer with Indian Team bonus, indian UU. The upcoming one maybe Conquistador, Korean WW, Hussite Wagon if they see play as Siege archer in high level tournament game.
Their intention and road map are quite clear and I am hopeless for them to bring back Saracens CA building damage bonus to this game.
