I’ve discussed and read a lot about grenadiers on this forum. A lot of people are concerned that they are a little too weak, some say Humbaracı might even be a little bit overtuned. I’ve read form a good amount of people that they enjoy the grenadiers that France gets from it’s Churchcard. In short most players really love grenadiers. But they are not uncontroversial.
I’d like to divide my argument into three sections to make it more readable.
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Grenadiers already walk a fine line between being op or up. Probably because their combination of AOE and siege damage sometimes allows them to be very effective against units that should counter them (skirms and heavy cav, maybe cannons). So it is hard to get their DMG numbers right. It’s easy to over- or undertune. What a sad situation for everyone!
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DE introduced a lot of “charged abilities”. I’m usually not a fan of them because they go off automatically and I have two points of contention with that: A) This makes it harder to notice it going off, so it devalues the ability. B) It takes tactical choice from the player, which I think it shouldn’t do in a strategy game. Making strategic or tactical choices is what it is all about in this genre.
But bear with me: What if you had to activate the ability? It would up the skill-ceiling, it would force the player to choose when the best time would be to use the ability (the cooldown should prbly pretty long.)
- Grenadiers in the real world worked more like the Soldado or Giant Grenadier in AOE3 DE. Elite Troopers, not really siege units.
Change grenadiers to elite-muskets with very high stats.
Give them a build limit of 10 or 15.
Give them a charged grenade attack that the player has to trigger. That has at least 60s cooldown. It can have a high AOE and high siege damage.
By giving it a cooldown and making the grenadier a powerful, specialized and rare unit you can maybe solve the grenadier issue.
This is very much an understatement.
The Humbaraci is mostly a late game issue. With over 20% in discounts on a slow-to-damage unit that is somewhat combat adept and faster than most Skirmishers they are very good a busting into bases and killing vills and factories (vills die just from the number of grens usually running one of these attacks due to AOE even though Humbaraci do very little damage to them). The speed, range, siege damage and massive discounts make them over preform against things they shouldn’t.
Grenadiers are very niche. They tank damage extremely well, and would actually probably be a solid unit in their current form if they were trained from the barracks by default. A little AOE and the high RR would be great in extended age 2 musket wars (throw on a build limit if needed).
For Standard Grenadiers, I might lean towards:
• Make them trainable from the Barracks.
• Give them a build limit of 10.
• Let them shadow tech.
• Increase range to 14 with Veteran and make Grenadier Launches an Arsenal tech.
• Increase cost by 10c and 10f (think Order units).
They don’t need to be great or used in all games. These changes would make them good for certain MUs and for Turtle busting. Note, of course, that the cost increase is a nerf for age 2 and that should help compensate for not needing to make an Artillery Foundry.
For Humbaraci, I might lean towards:
• Reduce speed to 4.
• Reduce discount percentages.
• Reduce Range Armor from 30% to 20%. Siege Armor remains at 30% or goes to 35%.
• Make Grenadier Launchers an Arsenal tech.
In theory, I don’t mind your idea (a number of people here have suggested similar things), but adding a supped up musk would create its own issues as it would help some civs a lot more than others. (parroting points others made in previous threads)
2 Likes
If you have to add a build limit to a standard land military unit, it isn’t balanced.
10 Likes
Humbaraci just need to lose the bonus vs artilery, which is what breaks the balance system.
How would you change the grenadier if a djinn gave you mental control over the dev-team?
These changes sound ok to me, too! I always found the high speed kind of strange, but it makes them very powerful.
If it were up to me I’d make the unit actually behave like an artillery unit instead of the weird hodge-podge number of features and tags that makes it too easy to counter and yet too hard to counter all at the same time.
3 Likes
Actually if you think about it, it really is an amazing piece of design, being severally OP and hopelessly UP at the same time. Are you sure you want to ruin it?
2 Likes
Can you be more specific?
Higher Pop, higher siege damage, higher cost?
That is true. It is Schrödinger’s Grenadier.