The last patch (16MAR21) Russian Oprichniks were nerfed from 75 Siege damage to 64. That’s all well and good. I love the Russians and have zero problem with this nerf.
However, the units, cards, and ceremonies that the Lakota have access are on a new level of broken.
In a 40 minute treaty game assuming you have 99 settlers you are able to make:
18x Legendary Tashunke Prowler: 87 base siege damage. 814HP
32x Legendary Tokala Soldiers (Using the Plaza and Big Button from TC): 69 base siege damage. 1375HP
Base damage alone is higher than the nerfed Russians, but it gets better.
Ship the Age 1 War Chief card which boosts siege damage for all units near your War Chief.
Tashunke Prowler: 105 siege damage
Tokala Soldiers: 83 siege damage
Not done yet.
Charging Ceremony at the Community Plaza on top of your War Chief Aura:
Tashunke Prowler: 261 siege damage
Tokala Soldiers: 206 siege damage
Your hero: War Chief Running Elk:
Base: 132
Charging Ceremony: 326
If you attack with those 51 units (50 horses plus your War Chief), you are attacking with the equivalent of 181 Oprichniks (Not population, that’s the number of horses. That military population would be 362 just in Oprichniks)
The Lakota horses can run faster than all the other horses in the game with the War Chiefs Aura so once you are past your enemy you can destroy an entire economy before your opponent has time to move their units and/or delete and make new ones to defend.
Factories, banks, shines, and settlers are gone and the Lakota have map control and will constantly be attacking fortifications until the game is over.
Please if you’re going to nerf the Oprichniks, please nerf the Lakota as well.
They already lost 50% siege damage from last patch, and in that late game have no ranged siege capability, making them ridiculously subpar when facing 5 layered wall with cannon and dragoon.
I understand what you’re saying. However, with that over whelming number of units, you WILL NOT be able to stop the initial attack before you lose your factories. Not without devoting a huge number of your population if not all into anti cav units which in turn will impact map control and once the Lakota are able to establish map control gaining it back is very difficult especially with the constant threat of a minimal 15 horse economy killer.
Also, the percentages were taken down from 200% to 150%. That is a 1/4 or 25% reduction.
That being said, it did not do enough.
You also have to take into account how hard it is to mass Tokala soldiers. Even with 25 vills on plaza, it will be 15 minutes before you have full pop. You won’t survive in supremacy, and in treaty that’s just wasting resources.
This thread is aimed toward 40 minute treaty. Yes I used Tokala Soldiers as examples because it is do-able to have 25 sets on the plaza and get the 22 horses you need.
If you didn’t want to do that because you want to gather resources, sure, you could you use 32 axe riders and still get 137 siege damage a piece plus the 10 Tokala from the big button upgrade and do the same thing.
I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve played treaty Russia since 2012, have done cav boxes for as long as I remember. I know these methods by heart, and I have fought very, very good Lakota players who have done the same, notorious running tactics against me, AND those who have fought me face-to-face on maps like Orinoco.
I personally think the nerf is fine. Lakota are actually very powerful and effective fighting face-to-face, but their lack of seige artillery is painful. Imo, getting this nerf actually hurts a lot.
Story time: I played a NR55 Orinoco game and out of all the civs (France, Portugal-me, Japan, Spain, Germany, Lakota), this Lakota guy was really good and got the most kills (~3.5k)… all WITHOUT the use of cannons. Pure units buffed by teepees in a confined space. Awful experience. The guy didn’t even use Tokala soldiers in this fight. But wave after wave of successfully shredding armies, he couldn’t push across the river, as his units had to leave the comfort of their teepees, and we punished him back, HARD. Behind walls, we had swarms of cannons, goons, and skirms, and he had no culverins, horse cannons, mortars, ro ways of flanking heavy cav. He obviously couldn’t build teepees on the river, so that’s where his reign ended.
Having no ranged seige ability was the reason why the Lakota guy couldn’t win, otherwise we’d be in trouble having to constantly fight 1000-2000 HP units. And sending cav to their deaths against my Portugese goons in the game wasn’t a great idea either. Defensively playing, I was able rack up 3.3k kills and 1.5k deaths due to the safety of my walls. It was Lakota (awful late game economy), I knew I could drain him out. So I did, abusing the fact that the Lakota can’t maintain a super-powerful army and have great seige capability at the same time. They literally can’t economically afford it, and it didn’t help him either that I kept using long-range Portugese mortars behind walls to constantly shred his teepees without him being able to do anything about it.
To me, it’s fine if their cav have high seige to make up for their lack of artillery. Lakota’s lack of artillery is their bane, and nerfing their seige is painful. With my long experience of Russian opri-boxes, running cav isn’t even that scary against good players. They react fast and well with 20-30 goons/cav archers to minimize impact. And if you already anticipate this tactic and prepare beforehand, you’re fine. (5+ walls around your base, minimum, no holes. 2-3 internal barracks and stables near your settlers and factories. Lots of houses and non-military buildings completely surrounding your factories in a 360 degrees [Capitol, Arsenal, Church, Saloon, etc.])
Plus I’ve noticed that it’s more effective to counter running cav methods by split-popping. If they devote 100 military pop to running cav (50 cav), and you just devote 60 pop (30 goons) to take care of the situation and use the other 40 to push, which can be more powerful depending on how you do it.
If there’s any nerf the Lakota needs, it’s those DAMN teepees. Nobody’s trying to stand up 1000 HP units. They nerfed teepees on the ESOC treaty patch in 2016 before DE came out. 15 teepees right outside your walls is a horrible sight. (But seeing how Lakota’s eco is still trash, I guess nerfs aren’t needed if you survive their initial onslaught)
I agree the Lakota are strong with the Teepees! I have played a few people that weren’t taking advantage of the horses siege damage and played a normal game. It was difficult to push into their city. Due to their economy not being good enough I was able to push in slowly taking out teepees and eventually their town centers and settlers. Long term they can’t keep up resource wise.
They do suffer when it comes to long range siege attacks and I understand that argument.
I agree that it is possible to reduce the damage dealt by the initial push with good base building if someone knows that strategy is coming.
I would rather see a buff to their resource gathering rates and a nerf to their siege ability to make them more viable in the long term.
Really isnt hard to scout before treaty end and see if they are doing the Lakota cav cheese strat and counter it. Literally 4 or 5 layers of walls with anti cav stops it. But it is important to build proper pillarless walls and not the noob ones. Lakota lack seige, nerfing them even further would dumpster the civ for treaty, it isnt even very good at treaty in the first place.
Yeah man, just look at the forest and not at the tree. Lakota in Treaty need a lot more buffs than nerfs. Lakota will simply just not win in treaty games, unless someone just simply can’t defend for ~30 minutes.
The real tragedy is oprichnicks getting nerfed. They LITERALLY only do one thing, but people are crying rivers about their "OP"ness. If people are losing to oprichnicks masses, it literally just shows that defending players aren’t smart enough to build at least 4 layers walls at 40 min, or isn’t using goons properly to defend themselves. Or, that they have crappy infrastructure and can’t respond quickly to mass cav (3 stables at least with cav training card, church tech, and immigrants). It was never the oprichnicks that people complained about in treaty, it was the insta-forts and insta-infantry. And it’s not hard to gun down a mass of oprichnicks. I say this, playing as the Ports and having done Russian treaty mirrors.
Literally, nerfing oprichnik seige just makes oprichniks a bad 2-pop cavalry in Imperial. There’s nothing special to them, considering an Imperial Hussar takes up 2 pop with 720+ HP and 60+ attack and Oprichniks have like ~550 HP and ~42 attack with the same amount of pop. Yeah, they cost less (oprichnicks) but you aren’t getting bang for your buck in terms of population, if their seige isn’t special
Ive seen in team games, even after this patch Lakota rushing to age 5 and having tashunke and dog soldiers with exponential speed and seige damage just kept passing through walls like nothing ! you cant stop that surpise attack without almost twice the unit and more!
The nerf was not a accurate nerf to the whole civ! the nerf missed the target! a 50% nerf is considerable but still enough to stop them from passing through walls and there are other things that needed attention, like the speed boost from war chief and calming the horses down in a respectable manner!
for now ! patch or no patch! its still easy to destroy every thing in one go in a team match once you have the age and horses in place ! there is example of mass hatamoto that are used by many ppl! but ! they are stoppable ! while these horses cant be stopped my artillary of walls! the onl thing that stops them is:
they intentionaly walks into mass of heavy inf
The pathing of dragoons get better and so does ability to EFFECTIVLY! catch n kill the horses in the base, which is generrally not possible due to packed building in the base, as well as speed+siege+hp of those horses.
As an average Treaty player, I never had any issue with that before.
Does it hurts? Sure, when you are not prepared, but even then, any good player can come back from it.
As a matter of fact, I did a Lakota Tokola box against a French player last week: destroyed his factories and most of his inside city. He rebuilt and did not have any economic issue as far as I could tell.
Remember that Lakota can do that ONCE. There is no way to replenish Tokola fast enough after the Treaty ends. And even if the defending player did not counter it well, they are far from done.
I can understand this can be frustrating, but someone will have to show why this is an issue. Lakota is still one of the worst civ in Treaty.
Siege rams with full inf garrison are faster than most cavalry. They also take 1 damage from all building fire (except TC). Makes the M1 Abrams tank proud.
If you know there is a lakota and you know they will do the cavalry break in (what else can they do anyway?), then simply prepare for it. You shouldn’t relay on walls to keep you safe forever. In fact, walls should 100% get nerfed, or overall siege unit damage against them increased.
I had prepared 3 stables and faat cavalry card to spam ruyters. It was a 3v3 teamgame so the Russian had the time to ma’ss 30 oppri.
When they arrived I immidielty spammed from my stables, still the broke trough my 2 walls easily and the 20 ruyters I had by then were not able to prevent my factories losses.
To amount of preparation needed to prevent the sudden game ending siege cav, is a bit overboard.
I would rather have played another 5-10 minutes losing convengually but having fun, then this sudden ending.
Like most players my team resigned on the spot afterwards
So in the time he built 30 oppriks and broke through 2 of your walls, you only managed to get 20 ruyters? Certainly the problem isn’t the game balance.