Shatagni niche?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

I have tried indians HC for first time after the accuracy buff.

We already knew that the extra range may be bad for HCs, because the more the distance, the more the probability to miss a shot. So with the extra range, indian HC mostly throw the first shot, unless against massed comps.

However, yesterday I saw one successful use of this tech even without intending it.

There was a “treb wars” in a quite tight chokepoint (similar to black forest). Both I and my enemy moved our BBCs to counter the opponent’s trebs while our armies were fighting in the choke point.

Suddenly, the enemy committed a little but crucial fail: their BBCs, which was moving forward to deal with my trebs (which was behind my meatshield), got enough near to my 8-range-HCs (which was between the trebs and the meatshield). So my little army of HCs destroyed their BBCs pretty fast.

My opponent was byzantines so they couldn’t have siege engineers.

I think the slowness of BBCs (and siege in general) makes them a good target even for a unit with 75% accuracy. This was very surprising to me. In usual conditions, I would have sent hussars or camels to kill their siege, but in this chokepoint shatagni was the ideal option at the end.

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2

I don’t really get the negative opinions about Shatagni. This tech gives you basically better Janissaries and Indian HC can almost compete with Arbalesters.

For comparison:
Janissary

44 HP
17 Attack
1/0 Armor
50% Accuracy
Range 8

Hand Cannonner
35 HP
17 Attack
1/0 Armor
75% Accuracy
Range 7+1

I think it’s actually a good upgrade

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3

But Janissary can be upgraded to Elite. HC don’t.

Because BBC have more box radius than most of the other units, even bigger than some cavalry units.

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4

Interesting. Is it similar to mangonel?

Jannisary also has slight less frame delay (not very impactful though)

5

Not sure. Maybe a bit smaller.
This is why you never test accuracy against anything other than infantry. Foot archers have smaller box radius than infantry allowing them to stack and other units have bigger box radius.