Should SO upgrade cost similarly to Paladin upgrade?

SO is rarely ever researched in all 1v1 games and high level team games while Paladin is commonly researched in both. Onager is already an expensive upgrade so I don’t see the problem of slightly lowering the cost of SO so you could be more inclined to research it in 1v1 games.

It wouldn’t affect high level gameplay since they would get pressured too much before they massed enough SO. Almost all pro players I’ve seen just stick with onager and go for numbers. Makes sense because their push would stall out if they spent all those resources to get SO. I don’t think SO should be a Black Forest team game only unit.

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Upgrading stone throwing car is so expensive

I think it’s better off remaining the same. Changing the cost of Siege Onagers could have some crazy ramifications towards balance. There are other team units that are almost never seen in 1v1. For example, War Elephants.

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In 1v1 SO is in fact more common than paladin (which you basically only see as Franks and maybe Lithuanians on open maps.) The simple reason for this is arena where many of the top civs have SO. It’s a super effective unit and making it cheaper will likely distort arena balance while you probably won’t see it on open maps even if it was cheaper.

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definitey i agree, they must lower cost of so. it is really hard to research

Meanwhile on arena pros talk about that SO is too powerful…

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The difference between SO and paladins is that if you get 10 paladins you can’t start flattening everything from a respectable distance. Sounds pretty normal to me that the much more powerful unit is much more expensive to upgrade.

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It’s not fair to compare a castle produced unit to a military building unit. Castle units are much harder to mass and therefore aren’t seen as much in 1v1 compared to team games. The cost would would still set you back a lot and the SO upgrade is one of if not the longest upgrade in the game. But it makes it more tempting to go for the high risk high reward strategy. It would let you create 2 more SO with gold saved and about 4 more halbediers with food saved. It’s not as drastic as you make it sound like.

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No way dude. I watch viper, Hera, Jordan, slam, Daut, and I can’t remember them making SO. It’s very common for them to go Paladin especially when they want a power spike against camels or cavelier. Also the vast majority of games are on arabia.

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Judge by yourself

I never said SO was weak.

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Well you want to make this easier to achieve so it sounded like you didn’t realize the potential this unit has.

Yeah easier to achieve but not by a lot. I’m not wanting SO to be the meta cause it’s so cheap like you’re making it seem. Just enough where you could justify by not making 6 instead of 8 more onagers and a lot of halbs. It would still be expensive but could be slightly more justified.

the price is completely justified, SO is a great unit.

Well no not unless you already have a lot of res, several onagers and a lot halbs otherwise you would lose your push if you used all your res to upgrade a couple of onagers to SO instead of just make more onagers. The return on investment would be too small.

you can literally say the same thing about paladins. there is a reason paladin isn’t researched much in 1v1.

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Paladins don’t need to rely on an additional unit to protect them unlike SO. Paladin upgrade is much more common than SO upgrade because Paladin is a mobile unit that is good against most units. Also gives you a power spike against a civ that doesn’t get Paladin. Also Paladin let’s you take much better fights against camels and certain civs even win which is not possible with cavalier. Also the cavalier upgrade is much cheaper than onager upgrade so you could justify going Paladin much more often since you’ll have extra res saved. Also open maps are played 8 or 9/10 times at the top level. Balance changes are focused around high level gameplay. I’m not saying Paladin is common in 1v1 but it’s way more common than SO.

except against halbs or camels

the only reason i don’t see SO more often is because games are ending before mid to late imp.

paladins take terrible fights against camels no matter what. you might win in equal numbers against certain civs heavy camels, but you still won’t be cost effective. especially when you consider camels train faster, and heavy camel is SO MUCH CHEAPER then paladin.

except you don’t need as many onagers as you do cavaliers/paladins to be effective.

and i highly doubt that. only two civs i see routinely go for paladins. Lithuanians (especially now that Leitis got nerfed), and Franks.

New circle jerk…
what’s next…

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These players rarely play arena. If you only watch streams from these guys it’s obvious you won’t see much SO play. But if you go to streams from arena players/casters as was just linked the picture changes drastically. Just from that 2 arena showmatches this months you have like 5 games featuring SO. You can watch as many (high-level) arabia tourneys and you’ll never see Paladin in 50% of the games. Perception of reality highly depends on from what perspective you look at it.

Nah Paladin is usually to expensive on arabia. It happens from time to time but the thing about going Paladin on arabia is that mostly you can only afford Paladin and no supporting units. With hitting the correct time window it can succeed but if the Paladin spam doesn’t kill off the opponent you’ll run out of gold and might lose to halbs.

SO is a unit you can’t really balance across different maps. They are utterly strong on closed maps but little effective on open ones since you can snipe them using mobility (or just attack opponent’s map if SO/halbs are guarding the middle or important hills). You want to make SO cheaper to see them more on open maps? Then you buff the best arena unit as is and make civs like Teutons even more dominant there. SO is indeed insanely expensive, that is correct. But it is so for a good reason.

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