Watch now Villese vs Lierrey, see how terribly the Rathas die so hard to fucking Burmese skirms lol.
Mamelukes suffered the same fate when toke that bonus damage but now Rathas die so easily vs Halb+skirm armies cmon.
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I do not think Burmese skirms are that bad, they got bracers for 8 range, and Lierrey had enough skirms to kill one Rathas per volley with micro.
By the way, do the melee Rathas have archer armor (hence take +5 attack from Burmese Hussars) ?
Rathas probably need some kind of buff, maybe:
- a base bonus damage (+2?) against the pike line ?
- removing archer armor from melee Rathas in melee mod (if not already the case) ?
But I think it is normal for Rathas to die against skirms, that’s the natural counter. It is very sad for a civ with near-FU skirms (only missing RT) and FU scorpions to lose to a skirms/halb combo because of mostly investing in a cav archers UU (and light cav)…
I had hoped that Villese made a few Elephants, battle elephants get reduced bonus damage from Halberdiers. Skirms+BE might have been nice to see.
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Yes, they do. Armor class never changes.
In that case switching weapon should have a cool down like trebuchet unpacking-packing. Or there will be a exploit.
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I mean they get only 1 armor and armor on skirms is so important. So they’re a bottom 5 skirmisher. Only ones that are even worse are probably Turks from castle age, and maybe Franks, Celts are as worse in imperial age.
They have archer, cav archer, cavalry everything that gives bonuses to other units. And still 5 base damage.
I think +2 base damage itself or atleast +1. So 6 and 7 base damages for ranged + 11 and 13 for melee OR 7 and 8 base damages for ranged with no changes to melee attack.
Atleast +2 archer class armor.
Happens for every CA unit but all those units have a great dps. So they also kill front line melees like knights or cavalier, snipe canons etc. These just stand without doing anything.
Suppose he invested into Battle elephants, Liereyy might have done more monks, blocked the path to reach the monks with houses and took a lot of conversions. But yes that’s probably the best bet. Also that reduced bonus damage is not that much of a difference, its one extra hit to kill the elephants, actually worse than Vietnamese elephants
Against Burmese and Dravidians. For the rest, they perform same as Vietnamese.
I am not a Bengalis player, but I guess this would be no problem.
I disagree that they are bottom 5 skirmishers. On head to head, I agree (only better than Turcs, Franks, Celts). if they have a meat shield, they are fine as they get 8 range so they outrange Rathas. And Burmese have a dangerous frontline.
And as Rathas killers (10 damage/hit), they should not perform that much worse than mongols ones (die in 7 hits instead of 9).
Okay, thanks. So Burmese Hussars are very good against Rathas.
I don’t know. Bengalis do have elephant conversion resistance (+ faith if enough gold), and FU skirms to kill monks, Burmese monks are no Aztecs monks after all. So houses blocking would not be a problem.
Lierrey halberdiers control was on point to protect the BBC against light cav. Skirms are not that great against BBC, but are good against monks.
As Burmese, I would rather go hussars + halberdiers against Bengalis skirms + BE. I think light cav + Rathas is not the best composition to do against Burmese skirms+halberdiers, may be wrong of course… But if the Burmese player already has some counter ready (upgrades + production building), this is another story.
Rathas are a weird unit, they are like, a very tanky Mangudai, that gives up most offensive power in return. 1v1 probably they dont trade too badly, as they got massive HP for a Cav Archer unit, but their low base attack and bad accuracy don’t make them into the power unit you would like.
I think, more generally, that Bengalis are a bit doomed tech tree-wise, but buffing Rathas isn’t the way to go. Rathas are meant to be THE “heavy mobility” option for Bengalis (light one being Light Cav). People (and Villese too) play them as a spammable UU like Mangudai that you form a blob of, and they don’t work that way. They are meant to be more of a support unit, like Mangonels or Monks, and Bengalis aren’t just another Cav Archer + Light Cav civ.
Villese is a great player and has been on the rise lately, but in that game specifically it was so obvious he should have gone Elephant Archers, which with Bengalis are actually quite scary and were a very reasonable way to beat the Halb Skirm comp (they resist Skirms very well and murder Halbs).
Arguably he could mix a few Siege Elephants/Battle Elephants, but this is more of an opinion, since even Bengalis Battle Elephants don’t trade that well vs Halbs.
Regardless, Bengalis are classified as an Elephant civ, the devs want you to play Elephants in Imp, normally the excuse is that you can’t because there isn’t enough time to boom, but in this game, there was… Perhaps people (including pros) are just biased against Elephants even in the rare cases when they are viable.
And of course, Villese missed a big opportunity in early Imp. That alone (also given how Liereyy played Castle Age) shows how awkwardly both players approached an unfamiliar clown map. I wouldn’t draw many conclusions based on both sides misplaying so significantly.
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The unit is already designed around rewarding micro and changing attack types, so dampening that with a cool down kind of defeats the purpose, and would make the unit more annoying to use. But I don’t think changing the armor class or amounts between forms is a great solution in any case.
Bengalis lack strong Castle Age options, and the Ratha doesn’t provide enough early value to fill that role, so it’s very much in line for either or a stat or accessibility buff. EAs are not so bad, but that shouldn’t be their only decent option in Castle. An easy solution for Rathas would be to have them also benefit from the Bengali ele bonus of taking 25% less bonus damage.
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why? Most civs lack versatility late game and are similarly limited, anyway. Bengalis late game can play:
EA
BE (this one I’m not against removing from the list since I admit it’s hard to get there, even for Bengalis on a map like Arena)
Light Cav
Skirms
Arbalest (no TR doesn’t make them viable long-term but you can for example counter full HC play which civs with only Xbow struggle more against)
Halb.
They only really miss BBC and Knight Line, even their LC is better than for example Britons one which is regularly played. I maintain, people are biased against Elephants, on Arena of all maps you maybe can’t make BE since those are 120f and the Elite upgrade is so expensive, but u can surely make the much cheaper EA.
I do agree however that in Castle Age their options are limited, the Xbow Mangonel Knight meta in particular is hard for them since they can’t make Knights to snipe Mangonels and potentially counterpush. This is the only spot where I agree Bengalis can feel underwhelming, but it’s the civ’s identity, I don’t see them as being in a worse spot than say Turks who have to face Xbow opening always due to lacking Elite Skirms, or Franks lacking good Skirms in Imperial and facing full Halb every Imp age.
I don’t see devs taking away armor class from this unit. What I suggest would be to slightly give armor class defense for Ratha. Like Cavalry (4), Cavalry Archer (2) or Archer (2). Its fine to have weaknesses when you can switch modes to attack… but remember how much that Ram Elephants against pikes/halbs were criticized until the value of armor protection was revealed?
Ratha could benefit from this armor protection and don’t be broken.
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Sure, and even if Rathas are buffed, they will still have (better but) limited Castle Age options. Even a UU that somewhat fills the gap left by lacking knights is less accessible and represents a civ-defining limitation. The apparent design of Bengalis, apart from being an ele civ, is to have a UU that is a partial stand-in for knightline. If it can’t do that properly, the unit probably needs some work. Their Imp is fine of course, but having a weak Castle Age without some kind of Mongol-tier Dark/Feudal feels bad. (See also, Spanish, Goths, Dravidians).
I like the idea of Rathas just taking less bonus damage since it’s an extension of an existing civ bonus, and solves the problem many people perceive them having of being countered too hard, especially by skirms.
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In my opinion, Rathas seriously need to lose one armour class while keeping the upgrades - not sure if those need to be connected or not - as they are too easily countered by purely Skirmishers, while not offering anything of value whenever.
They would be a really interesting unit if they were able to be pseudo-Knight and Cav Archer, but without weakness to one of its counters. Removing Cavalry armor would mean that they can fight Halberdiers while remaining extremely vulnerable to Skirmishers, so it’d be a unit that you can actually use in melee fights. It’s an armor class I’d rather see removed myself, as removing both Cav Archer and Archer (or just Archer in general, would still mean they’ll be vulnerable to Skirms tho) might make them obnoxious to fight with just Halberdiers.
Right now, they only find very niche uses of being good against Eagles (can put them into melee while keeping some in ranged mode), Siege while pressuring with ranged attacks on top, and breaking Palisade Walls (melee hits wall, range prevents rewalls).
They cost too much to be upgraded fully while not having any meaningful payoff for that. I’m not sure if giving them bonus armor changes much, at the end of the day suffering bonus damage is simply too meaningful even if halved. Skirms are easily spammable, so it doesn’t matter if you’ll need 10 more Skirms to take one down with one volley.
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People will switch to melee when skirmishers fire to reduce the damage taken. Just like they used to do when there was a bug (or feature) when Ratha did 10 or 12 damage even from range.
Kind of Conquistador firing faster than regular gunpowder units. Anyway, Ratha (and EA) also needs some bonus damage vs pikeman like other archer units.
They aren’t same as Mameluke. Mameluke has much shorter range, and they have their own armor class to receive more damage vs Halb.
Any Pure Cav archer army die easily to Halb+skirm or just mass skirm. That is why they always accompany with Light cav in the long term. Bengalis has decent FU light cav and there is no issue if they make composition.
Rather are more tanky version of Mangudai/HCA. Might be similar to War Wagon. I don’t think they need to be “Kill-all” OP unit for Bengalis.
I meant that it should be no problem for Bengalis player to have a packing style of waiting time to switch beteween melee and range, as you suggested.
Just having some resistance against bonus damage won’t make them “Kill-all” OP unit.
Ah okay. But it will be very awkward to use then. CD time needs to be very small like 2-3 seconds to make the micro worthy.
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As said, I am not a Bengalis player, so I don’t really know. I was expecting this stance switch to be done before the fight and not changed halfway unless the Bengalis army composition was really wrong.
I just thought it was akward for a heavy cavalry unit to die to skirms.
I also thought the same and expected they would have a CD time like trebuchet before DOI release.
Well, they are CA. The melee stance may give some people this impression. But it is not actually true. They are CA all the time. Even melee stance shares its armor with blacksmith archer armor, not cavalry armor.
About commenting that game, you also have to consider that Liereyy is simply better late game player with another level of micro/macro. Villese need to push him early and it is his fault of not switching to other units and waste so many Rathas to huge mass of skirms.
Also Burmese skirms have all attack upgrades and should be okay to play against most of archer units/Cav archer when you set up eco with endless flood of them.
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First off the way he took the fight was bad. Either you fully commit or you don’t engage in this scenario. Also sending a couple of rathas in melee mode in front villese should have done way earlier. Secondly, he didn’t really have siege behind. So yeah heavily misplayed by villese. He had both a clear advantage and the better civ so one definitely shouldn’t draw conclusions from this game.
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