It suddenly occurred to me that the Steppe Lancers (hereinafter referred to as the Lancers) were useless because those civs did not lack any important original elements. In other words, they didn’t need the Lancers to do what they could already do.
For example, the Eagle is the American equivalent of the Scout Cavalry and Knight, the Battle Elephant is the Southeast Asian equivalent of the Paladin, and the Winged Hussar directly replaces the Hussar.
So I think maybe after nerfing the Lancer and Elite Lancer, they could replace the Light Cavalry and Hussar as the unique upgrade for the Scout Cavalry of Mongols, Cumans and Tatars, similar to the Winged Hussar replacing the Hussar for the Poles and Lithuanians. Their bonuses to Hussars are often shared with Lancers, so I think this is a pretty reasonable change.
I think that light cav would work much better in the wider context of the game, especially with the openings, if they had lower attack but 1 range.
But I heavily disagree on replacing it with steppe lancers. Steppe lancers are way too strong in comparison. Especially the effective damage output is too high.
Set a reasonable cost for the upgrade and adjust it to make them fit the 80 food cost.
Perhaps you can directly imagine that the Light cavalry and Hussar will have +1 range, but other stats will be adjusted for the balance accordingly, and the upgrade cost may also become more expensive.
I wonder why every unit should have exactly distinct role in general. Some units roles are overlap but players can make strategical decision between them.
If all unit have exactly distinct role to perform, the game would be more 1-dimensional. We need diversity and every unit can have distinct role OR have similar role.
As also @casusincorrabil stated,I think light cav is little bit too versatile and strong for trash unit. I think just nerfing light cav/ Hussar a little and buffing Steppe lancer (especially Elite version) a little would be acceptable range of suggestion. Steppe lancer can be given to other civ like Turks in this way.
I don’t think Light cav/Hussar should be nerfed hard or direct way, but I think late game champion should win Hussar decisively as trash counter. My suggestion is just giving 2HS/Champion bonus damage against light cav line (for giving separate armor class for them).
In this way, steppe lancer can have a role in late game as semi-trash cavalry with no weakness against Militia line and less weakness against pike-line with 1 range (also E. steppe lancer cost can be reduced slightly).
I used to think so too, but the Lancer’s situation speaks for itself.
Need better combat power, the Knight is the best choice.
Need a more economical price, the Hussar is the best choice.
Most of the time the game doesn’t need ambiguous units, not to mention that the Lancer and they are all cavalry units, which makes the decision to reject the Lancers without hesitation.
When there are villagers can build, we don’t need a unit which is called Architect, having better HP but can only build and not gather resources.
NO. The STEPPE Lancer should belong to the civs living on the Eurasian Steppe.
Even the Huns are more suitable than the Turks.
The ones being nerfed are Lancers and Elite Lancers. Light Cavalry and Hussar haven’t changed at all. Please read the article carefully.
We do not need semi-trash. When it costs gold, it is not trash. We use trash since we do not want to pay the gold or we cannot pay the gold, otherwise we can use stronger units like Knights, Camels and Arbalesters to fight.
In this context I would think about reducing steppe lancer HP by 10 or so but buffing their attack a bit.
That way it would be such a “glass cannon” it wouldn’t be viable as a standalone unit.
Instead an ideal addition to cavalry formations (to get some extra “punch”) and/or for sniping enemy siege. (The elite upgrade cost could be reduced then a bit.)
I think the past showed how terrifying this unit can be if you can use it as a standalone “mass to win” unit.
With the way of the gameplay of AoE2, in the end the Lancers either remain unused or become the main force and make the knights unused… Simply adjusting values and costs is most likely an unrealistic idea because the Lancers still have no advantage comparing to the Knights and the Light Cavalry, otherwise even the current Lancers would be somewhat trained and used in the way you stated more or less. The reality, however, is that Lancers are even rarer than Siege Towers and Indian Elephant Archers.
I just think the base concepts of the Steppe Lancer are inherently flawed and the unit should be given a fundamental redesign as:
The +1 Range is an incredibly snowbally mechanic against melee units and unlike Kamayuks is coupled with movement speed only beaten by Light Cav, this means that Steppe Lancers are able to pick and choose their fights against anything slower than Camels coupled with potentially overwhelming melee damage when you have a large mass. This makes it so that by design Steppe Lancers need to have incredibly crummy stats so that they’re not unbeatable once you reach a certain number of them
The role of the unit is completely at odds with its own theming and that of the Civs it is trainable by (Mongols, Cumans and Tatars), being a Cavalry unit that is mainly good being in a tight phalanx-esq formations and fighting in tight compact areas, rather than being a shock lancer type cavalry unit that relies on steppe hit and run tactics.
The Coustillier is everything the Steppe Lancer should of being, a hit and run shock cavalry unit that possesses a distinct role from the Light Cav and Knight
What about running almost straight for a certain distance before attacking builds damage, and stopping or deviating too much from the initial course negates it. That reflects the true crushing charge of shock cavalry, although it really could apply to almost any shock cavalry, or just lance cavalry in general unit.
No. That would be awful. Scouts do not cost gold, and would make these civs awful in trash wars.
Scouts are needed as a trash unit. Plus having the ability to have Steppe Lancers in the feudal age would be insane. Imagine instead of the scout rush, you face the Steppe Lancer rush?
Depending on how it’s done, you are either going to make the Steppe civs the best in the game, or significantly drop their chances of winning. Either way, it will break the balance, and it is an unnecessary and pointless change.
Remove 1 range, give +12, +15 charge attack and cost is 65f 35g.
Also Speed gap among cavalries should be increased. Slowest cav which is Boyar has 1.3 speed while fastest Light Cav is 1.5. My proposal is:
Give one of the elite steppe lancer +16 cavalry armor to receive less dmg from pikes. Elite Steppe lancer become a good trash buster and at least have some niche.
With +16 armor class, Steppe Lancer Lancer will destroy trash unit better than heavy infantries. Steppe Lancer also beat heavy infantries except TK and Kamayuk (it will also beat Kamayuk like Cataphract). With this change, Steppe Lancer would be too strong unit in late game considering its counters which are archers and camels are gold heavy units.
Steppe Lancer’s problem is different. When Steppe Lancer is massed, it destroy even Paladin easily with some micro. Only problem of SL is archers and SL also destroy them when gain little snowball. Kamayuk for instance still die to archer, scorpion, HC due to slowness, Steppe Lancer doesn’t die these units thanks to speed. Ranged mobile unit is bug of the game. Mangudai was defined as broken unit for same reason. Mangudai has at least ranged counter unit which is Skirmisher but Steppe didn’t have even this. Best way to balance Steppe Lancer, removing 1 range give and different ability like +12, +15 charge attack.
I really like the range mechanic of the SL. The problem of SL is that they are to expensive to compete with the Scout line and to week to compete with the Knight line, even with the extra range.
But the main problem of the SL are the current meta. Similar to players that only want to play Arabia and only Franks or Mayans, it is the way the game it’s play.
You can find BO for Scouts opening and FC into Knight but none with SL.
You can try to buff SL but don’t remove the range mechanic
You could possibly try to make the standard steppe lancer sronger but nerf the elite variant, so the lategame potential of the unit wouldn’t be as big.
But imo the lancer would work as an army addition quite well when mixed with other cav. Whilst the other cav would soak the damage the steppe lancers could provide some extra punch.
The thing isn’t the steppe lancer itself but the civs it is given to: Cav archer civs. It can’t offer much to them cause it makes similar things like cav archers but worse. 2 mass to win units are redundant and ofc people will always prefer that unit that provides more in these situations. And that’s the cav archer.
Therefore my idea to change steppe lancers in a way it provides utility in smaller numbers instead of sheer power when massed.