Samurai, The Best Infantry Unit In The Game

Karambits are the coolest

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Shotel looks like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle… all said

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Karambits are the worst they don’t even wear armor the samurai can crush them. Besides the Samurai is about more than looks so read the actual factors section.

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Not having armor is cooler than needing one.

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Despite not wearing actual armour karambits still have 1 pierce armour. That’s some muscles right there.

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It would be actually cool if armor upgrades changed would change the unit appearance. Perhaps something for AoE 4…

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They just cut the arrows apart in the air. The power of Silat.

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I’m not going to argue against the cool factor since everyone has his onw definition of cool.

As for the rest, the Champion feels more versatile than the Samurai.

I find the attack animation of the Samurai way better than the champion. Champions’ animation in my opinion is weird.

Nah man, condos are the coolest looking infantry unit.

The problem of samurai is that their bonus is quite useless.

Out of 42 UU (excluding the samurai itself, and water UU or FC/missionaries) they actually counter effectively few of them. Make it 39,because we don’t know how they’ll perform vs the 3 new UU.

  • 20 of them are ranged units (plus mamelukes and gbetos that can still out-micro them), so samurai isn’t effective at all vs them being an infantry unit (maybe vs EA only sometimes…).

  • 9 are melee cavalry, and among those there are at least 3 that counter samurais harder than samurais counter them (cataprhacts, WE and boyars). The remaining 6 die to samurais, but being cav can simply run away when they want and out-manouver them.

  • Out of the remaining 10 infantry UU, 2 have stats that puts them about on the same level of the samurai (TK and JW). Of the remaining 8, samurai do kill them, but again there at least 2 that can decisively out-run them (WR and condos) and so out-manovre them, 4 of the remaining 6 are still faster than samurai.

So it’s really difficult to actually counter UU with samurai, but at least before DE they can act as a counter to that few UU and anti trash that cost less than champs.

Now champs cost less food and gold, and don’t require a castle, so in reality, all the unit that samurai counter are countered better and more cost efficient by japs champs.

On top of that, they also have FU arbs, skirms and HC and CA to counter infantry and archers, and vs cav halbs are better in any situation.

Unfortunately there is no place in AoE2DE for samurais…

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They should be able to handle serjeants, but they will get destroyed by the charge of the coustillier 11 Even if it wasn’t the case, as with most cav UUs, you’d be better of using halberdiers.

the best infantry unit is Attila the hun (unless they changed him, in that case it’s AoC Attila)

no other words needed

but honestly, y argue that a unit looks cooler? it’s the internet, no one is gonna change their mind

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Berserks are cool because of many reasons:

  1. They are armed with 2 weapons: an axe (which they hold) and a sword (attached to their belt)

  2. They have capes…samurai do not.

  3. Red beards!!!

  4. They have big round shields that are the biggest shield of any unit in the game (with the possible exception of the Light Cavalry/Hussar shields)

  5. They are the only unit that self-generates Health (except for Berber Camel units, but that only if they research their Imp Unique Tech, and Heroes)

It still works in DE, same for Bleda.

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Can we move past the which unit looks cooler discussion and onto the real reasons why they are the best?

P.S. I know I am bringing up an old topic but I feel like this discussion isn’t over yet.

Reasons why Berserks suck:

  1. They’re fat and short.
  2. Axes are used for chopping trees not slicing bodies.
  3. Their shields aren’t much use since they have very low melee and pierce armour.
  4. Samurai take them out in three hits while the Berserks only get in one hit.

axes are used for plenty of uses, and have been used effectively in combat

they literally have the same pierce armor as samurai and elite berserks have more armor.

how do you figure samurai take them out in 3 hits? in castle age 8+2+10 - 2 = a total of 18 damage, vs a health of 61. which means 4 hits is needed to win.
in imperial with elite samurai you would have 12+4+12-5 = 23 damage, vs a health of 75 which again means 4 hits.

furthermore how do you figure berserks only get 1 hit in? even if your 3 hits was accurate (and its not) those 3 hits, from the start of combat would take 2.9 seconds to complete. berserks therefore, with their attack rate of 2.0 would get in 2 hits. 1 at the initial clash, and then 1 2 seconds later. but since your 3 hits isn’t accurate, and it in fact takes 4 hits, that means it takes 4.35 seconds for the samurai to kill them, and berserks actually get in 3 total hits.

but a viking player would be a downright fool to make berserks against a japanese player to begin with, and would be better off just going pure arb.

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Feels like the thread is a bit 50-50 at best.
Lets give samurai title of perhaps the best castle age infantry.

They need no tech, the castle vs barrack thing is less bothersome, archers counters aint as long range or accurate yet…

Yeah I think they could be and most arguments for why not seem to be in imperial age.

Since the “rather many champions from many barracks than samurai from few castles” been mentioned a few times… what do people think about balance if Japanese did get a “can build samurai in barrack” tech?

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That part is from a memory of a scenario editor test I did months ago.

Not as effectively as swords.

The Japanese have fully upgraded elite skirmishers, capped rams and decent cavalry so full on Arbalest isn’t a very good counter.

From a historical perspective nope but from a gameplay perspective I could see it happening.