Shrivamsha Rider is weirdly designed and (likely) underpowered

With focus firing of Archers/Crossbows, Shrivamsha Rider isnt any better than normal Light Cavalry…
and Light Cavs with +1 Pierce Armor (like old Indians, Tatars or Turks) are surely much much better than Shrivamsha Riders which are sold as specially being anti-archer in their description…

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On the other hand they interact very weirdly with siege units, in that they ignore siege weapon projectiles like they’re nothing

Overall it feels like a weird game design on this unit. Its amazing vs Siege, but only as good as Light Cavalry/Hussar against Archer units (assuming the opponent is paying attention and focus firing, which does usually happen)

Shrivamsha performes well only if the archer player is not microing :joy:
isn’t that itself horrible design?

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Yeah… I also am a bit irritated by the design.
I guess some micro nerds could use the unit effectively as a hit+run unit, but seems extremely hard to execute for me.

Better if they just had 50% chance to “dodge” pierce damage.

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Since mameluke’ shot can be dodged, I wonder if shrivamsha Rider can dodge Steppe Lancer and Kamayuk attack as well. Besides, it is kinda ridiculous if mameluke, genoese xbow, Kamayuk are worse than Chu ko nu to fight this unit. They are produced in stable and should be unlike Cataphract.

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My main issue is the graphical design of the unit. Why is the unit topless and has a ridiculous looking helmet. It needs a turban

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It was heavily armoured if you check the image in the Wikipedia page for that unit.

But that’s just a design choice of devs. So I won’t complain.

We need the Ratha archer/infantry unit as a foot unit. The Indian longbow it wields is excellent!

This unit is also garbage. OMG.

I don’t think so, it moreso seems to count projectile attacks, I think.

What a cool unit. It’s a fantastic blend of making an anti-something with multiple mechanics subtly mixing together, rather than a singular hard bonus. Compared to Knights vs. Archers the Shrivamsha will mass faster, surround faster, lose less damage potential over time, and have regenerating “health.” I love it.

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Another Steppe Lancer has been added to the game, great.
And you need an absurd farming eco to sustain 70f (20g) cavalry unit. Just like Steppe Lancers, No point to boom into this unit. Since it’s good mostly in the early game. Nonesense conceptually. Gold efficienciness is a worthless attribute when your unit doesnt scale to late-game anyways, what’s the obsession with gold? Another case of a gimmicky unit that’s good only in low numbers.
What’s the point Devs?

The least you could do is giving them an unique food cost that will allow people to actually create it over Knight or Light Cav due to how low the reliability in big farming eco is. A price like 20f 60g.
Yet you chose to work systematically, and once you work according to an equation you end up with a generic unit, another gimmick that has no real purpose.

Steppe Lancers 2.0
#WeLoveGimmicks
#AOEII2022

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I just thought about how this unit could be “saved”.
The best Idea I had so far was to add a “global dodge” charge for them:
Every Shrivamsha increases the amount of the global dodge by 1. The Recharge speed (percentual) is a bit lower than the individual one (like 50% speed or so). And the individual dodge charge will be depleted first before the global one comes into play.

So if eg you have 20 of them they have all an indivdual dodge charge of 5, but together also a global 20. They only start to take damage when the global 20 is also depleted.

That still means you need to be careful with them, cause once that global charge is gone they will start to take serious damage from archery.

And ofc it should only apply to arrows, not any kind of ranged attacks…

Tbh I dont want a so heavilyRNG based unit

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It’s actually not rng…
But it’s really snowbally. Which I also don’t like that much. A lot of the things devs implemented in de was actually very snowbally stuff.

Like SL, 2 ND TC, Revolution, Coustillier, First Crusade, Szlachta Privileges, Folwark…

If crossbows focus fire, Shrivamsha rider is literally useless because it dies at the same time as the Light Cavalry of any civ.
Knights are just so so much better in everything, even considering the cost…

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Completely agree, the current shrivamsha design makes little to no sense.

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Factually incorrect.
If crossbows focus fire, Shrivamsha rider is literally useless because it dies at the same time as the Light Cavalry of any civ.
See this image

It’s hilarious you even consider comparing them to Knights when they die at the same time as Light Cavalry to 6 crossbows focus firing.
In fact they have less HP remaining in the health bar than the ordinary Light Cavalry.

That is with just one unit, and they needed several volleys. From the same video, you learnt that the shield absorbs five projectiles before depleting, so they might be useful to make before Knights, or for raiding purposes. They’re useless vs a stack of Archers, yes, but the unit shouldn’t be stronger than Knights either.

They’re better to ambush Archers with, so idk - reinforcements and the like.

Whilst this might be true… What do you do about the main archer ball then? ^^
Besides that, it’s not so easy to pull that off in a real game.

If anything I can imagin using the unit for hit + runs as you would suffer from way less castle and TC fire when moving in with them. But this also sounds way easier to do than it is to actually pull of in a game.

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The point is that they aren’t any better than regular Light Cavalry vs crossbowmen/archer armies

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You’re starting to compare hypothetical unrealistic scenarios. Spirit of the Law simply tested their longevity if they didn’t attack.

More realistically they’re going to outperform Knights vs Archers who don’t focus fire units down one by one.