Sappers has a little-known effect of letting villagers cut down trees in one chop instead of two. That alone makes little difference, but what if villagers with sappers could then walk through those chopped trees?
That would mean a team of covert sappers could chop their way into an enemy base and wreak havoc, which could make the tech actually worth getting sometimes!
So vil will jump over trees ? Other way youw vils cant collect wood.
They’d still be able to harvest like normal, they could just walk through the trees, too.
So they could build easy sneaky buildings on Black Forest ?
Too OP I think. Why bother getting expensive Onager upgrade and spending ages cutting through when you can just get Sappers?
Well, you could ONLY get villagers through! So it would be a much sneakier and specialized tactic than onager cutting.
Honestly this is just a spitball idea, so I’m open to discussion, just thought it might be a neat use for the rarely-seen tech!
True, that’s a fair point. But I think it would play out like a sneak villager on black forest before the first wall is up.
It could be a fun way to disrupt a stalemate, perhaps. Sneak in a few villagers and distract your enemy? I do like early villager sneaks, this could let that happen in more ways. Heck, you could just send them through and have the villagers themselves tear down their production buildings, lol.
Some situational techs in the game is fine. If really needed, reduce its cost. imo, it’s only real value is as a meme tech for Spanish, and for using vils against rams.
It’s not even that I fully disagree with you. But nobody has time to micro a single vil to cut one tree after another for like 60 trees to get to enemy camp. Instead, just make an onager.
I’ve seen cases where people have used trebs to chop through, so it does happen occasionally! I feel like Sappers is just way TOO niche atm. It needs some big ticket feature to make people want to get it, and then they can take advantage of the other bonuses too.
Plus I really love the idea of SAS villagers, lol.
The Huns and the Turks don’t have that as an option. They do have Sappers.
Turks don’t need it. That’s deliberate. Their BBCs and bombard towers have a LOT of range, and are difficult to deal with. If they really need to cut, they can use trebs.
As for Huns, just give them onagers. You shouldn’t use a complicated solution when a simple one will suffice.
Trebs are different, because 1. They have a lot of range, and 2. Military can pass through their cuts.
If sappers was a castle age tech, what you’ve proposed might’ve been useful. You can sneak vils in, especially on maps like black forest. But it is an imperial age tech, so this particular functionality is a lot less valuable.
Just lower its cost to like 100 food, 100 wood. People will have no issue picking it up afterwards.
I dunno, I feel like even if it were just free and passive it still would be rarely seen, just because the idea of sending villagers to attack enemy buildings is so oddball in a typical game, when your instincts are to protect your villagers at all costs.
Would make an interesting civi bonus for scenarios.
Not really players build outposts to detect onager cuts
The main use of sappers right now isn’t against buildings, it’s rams. Against units like armoured eles, they will let vils take them down 3x faster.
That is, of course, situational. But if your opponent makes 10 siege rams or armoured elephants, sappers is always worth it it.
Rams isn’t quite what that video is showing; it’s showing armored elephants, and even with sappers, I doubt that would be a particularly good matchup, since the splash damage would cause significant damage and likely death to the villagers, and I cannot see any good reason why villagers would be attacking enemy trebs. Against rams, the existing bonus damage largely mutes the effect of sappers.
That’s a moderately handy bonus, but I don’t think it’s worth researching just for that, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think it’s usually worth researching even for both of the bonuses combined.
That’s why I think it’d be neat to have a big ticket item like this! It wouldn’t be useful in all cases, but every once in a while it could play a major role and change the flow of a game!
This is imperial age, death of a villager isn’t as important as taking down a treb/ram, and maintaining your castles and therefore, maintaining map control.
I would explain more, but I don’t think you are the kind of person who really wants to listen. Go watch arabia pro-matches where pros send vils to attack trebs and ##### ### might not think it’s common, but it does often happen in games that get to mid-late imperial.
Do you have a video? I’ve watched a good few hundred Pro videos, and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen sappers coming in, I’d be very interested in seeing how they use it!
Not sappers, but of the situations I mentioned, sure.
Pros sending vils to attack rams and, sometimes, even trebs. I’ll need a while if you need me to find them, but I can.