Cavalry Archers from Rus in their current form are far too powerful in the mid game as well as in the late game. The concept of “Countering” currently does not really apply to them. The only decent counter to cav archers at the moment is the normal archer unit, and when i say decent what i mean is “can trade evenly”. As they stand right now Cav archers do not really have a solid counter which is weird because since they are a “Light Archer” type unit they should be countered by units that have high pierce armor and a lot of damage against lightly armored units.
But exactly here is the problem:
Their Attack Damage is simply way too high at the moment. Fully upgraded Cavalry Archers have a whopping 20 Attack. With such high attack damage not only do they counter the High armor of men at arms (only 40% of their damage is blocked by fully upgraded MAA! [50% for english MAA]) but they can also easily decimate Knights and lancers. In large numbers they can also oneshot most siege units while being able to dance around and dodge Mangonel shots with ease.
In late game you can just spam horse archers and there isn’t really any unit that your opponent can make to relieably trade well with Horse archers. [I can’t really include delhi here since they are currently suffering from a lot of bugs that hurt their potential but even delhi elephants can be killed very fast by mass horse archers].
There are 2 ways that the devs can really balance cavalry archers.
They can either adjust the cost of the unit. An added gold price to the unit seems like the right thing to do here. Maybe remove the food cost and add lets say 60-75 gold to make a horse archer. This would definetly reduce the insane tenacity with which rus can spam Horse Archers in the late game even after you’ve successfully taken them off from gold or maybe secured the markets.
The other option would be to heavily decrease the stats of the horse archer. A reduction of around 40% to their Attack damage and maybe an increase of 10 seconds to their creation time should do the trick to put the horse archer in a spot where it can still do a lot of damage but get countered by the units that it should get countered by. To offset the 40% damage decrease they could get a 50% damage increase against lightly armored units/infantry [Specifically infantry since horsemen should still be a counter to archer type units].
Anybody else thinking that Rus Cav archers are currently simply too strong of a unit in the game?
Please interact with the Topic so the devs can see it!
Its due to flame arrow upgrade from university which is applicated twice for them (12 base dmg x1,2 = 14,4x1,2 = 17,28 = 17dmg without any upgrade only from tech. from uni.) than +3 from regular upgrade from blacksmith and another +3 when u upgrade them to their elite version.
Yes solve that bug problem with the uni upgrade and make correct attack speed (which is way faster than on paper) - thats first step
Second step:
IS THIS as u mentioned
OR
Increase training time so u cannot spamm them so fast for their cheap price + Reduce their attack range by 0,5 tiles at least. Look at the other mounted ranged units and theirs range.
Not only they are strong but they are ruining entire TGs experience even on top top ladder.
With combination of strongest RUS sieges (13,5tr springald - no setup mango) its simple - u dont kill RUS player in first 15 minits - you died
(not to even mention some other broken features related to RUS as spamming hunting cabins - you spamm 20 of those to get 40 g/p from each which is 800 g/per min in total - its not hard for you to capture another 2 relics and u have 1000 g/p income without ANY NEED OF WASTING POPCAP on gold (traders/miners) so u can field-up 20 more HA or 7 springalds which counter any siege from game.
SOLUTION?
Increase wood cost for every additional HC by +50 wood per each (if u go above 3 HC in total)
Only to fix a bug around them is still not enough - you still have 20dmg cavalry unit with a range of almost longbows which u cannot even chase with regular bows because he dictates the tempo of game and place of fight - not you - which is kinda bad for you on super-overtuned maps of 3v3/4v4
Yes this might not be as huge problem in 1v1s but than again.
Are RUS supposed to be a faction which only stupidly spamm one unit? if so u basicily removed one faction from the game
They lose hard to archers, They are doing good because of many things combined Pro scout is strong, They are bugged and scouts in general tank too much. Otherwise you get advantage over them. They die fast to archers/mangonels/towers and any defensive building that shoots, they can’t destroy buildings as fast so a rus player going mainly HA will have a hard time dealing against buildings/walls.
To this we add if horsemen wasn’t as bad as they are right now. Horsemen destroy HA and the benefit over them is that Horsemen can destroy buildings fast
Ehm? nope? they have better dmg, better range, more hps, much more mobility … how is this lose hard to archers? HA are not spears okay bruh?
This is disscusin about HA vs. regular archers why u even mention sieges? not to even bother with fact that archers are WAAAY more fragile to sieges so pls. stop. - HA can even kill sieges on its own because of their high base dmg - can dodge them because of mobility and can run away form them and strike elswhere.
Okay am done. end of disscusin here. Ever heard about kiting? I think u dont.
To end my disscusion here I just post some of the stats of mine here:
As u can see I play moslty underwhelming civs. and not broken RUS or Chinese in tgs at all. But I know how strong and broken they are so I even stoped to play them.
They further weaken ABBASID and DELLI so people will go to play strong civilizations, the battle game between 6 middle and upper civilizations will be fair
In Castle Age you have a chance to trade equaly with archer vs HA.
But full upgraded Imp HA shred archer quite well…
They both have 3 armor, 144 vs 95 HP and 23 vs 13 dmg. So 1 HA win slightly vs 2 Archer and cost less (120 vs 160 resources)! Not even considered that they can outrange them.
For me the main problem is that HA have no real counter. They are just strong vs all units. AOE4 miss a anti-range unit like skirmisher in AOE2.
For me the best way to balance HA were to give archer a attack bonus vs. light ranged units. For sure the Mangudai and CA would need a litle buff like armor then.
The Archer cost 30 Food 50 Wood = 80 resources with a starting dmg of 5 and comparable veteran 7 dmg !
The Horsearcher cost 80 Food 40 Wood = 120 resources with a starting dmg of 12 !!!
The think the 40 costs more in total would be ok only by giving them the mobility advantage but there are nearly double the damage than normal archers.
They have even equal damage than crossbows (vs light) and this is wayyyyyy to much.
The problem is that they bypass the armor system of the game because of the high base dmg.
Archers are balanced because they low dmg number is highly modified with the armor value . If ur cutting 5 dmg (MaA armor) from a 7 or 8 dmg archer. It gets to a realy low amount and thats the advantage of high armor units.
The Horsearchers dmg isnt even halfed by the armor of a MaA AND they can kite them.
In my opinion they should have the same Damage than normal veteran archers.
It would be logical.
It would be balanced.
It would be nice and fair.
Another problem related to this is fact that MANGONELS which should be a counter to HA can be one-shooted easily by HA because of their high dmg and low anti-ranged armor which mangonels has.
So u cannot be even scared by some early aggresion put from Abbasid player with archers and mangonels because u can easily fuck-up with both.
This unit is completely badly designed and its a neverending cancer of tgs as we can even see in current 3v3 tourney - Who of the two players uses better his HA horde - his team wins
Yeah, they kill them equaly fast than crossbows but they can easiely use the spread formation to reduce loses and win against 1-2 mangos.
I havnt found a downside to the spread formation yet and I thing its a balance (problem) thing too.
Is it so much of a damage loss if ur using range units nearly all time in this formation?
I think the reduced dmg from mangonals/nets of bees is more valueable than the little dps loss if im micro them step by step (shot by shot) all inside range.
