Silk Armor suggestion for the underwhelming Tatars

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Suggestion: Silk Armor gives +1/+1P Armor rather than +1 P armor

Reason: The Tatars have been revealed as one of the weakest civilizations, with not much to boast of. Their main unit the CA itself is unbelievably weak until fully upgraded, and seems like it needs buffing. Even worse with the Steppe Lancers (and no one disagrees in this case).

This combined with the fact that the Hill bonus is simply not useful against an opponent that is paying attention to hills, which is quite common. Hill bonus also is partially negated in melee battles by unit pathing automatically. So better to focus on melee armor for a buff.

All this points to Tatars needing a buff to their supposed strong units the CA, and the SL. What better way to give it than to slightly buff their UT Silk Armor, which affects both these unit lines?

+1 melee armor added to 70-80 HP units is not much by any means
(it’s not like Silk Armor affects Keshiks) , and it seems fitting to the technology. As is the case with Pavise.
Heck, it also fits in with the baby-step balance changes routine the devs have chosen.

Also, remember that the Tatars have an atrocious trash army and bad navy, unlike the Italians and Portuguese, for which, every other thread calls for a land buff.
There simply isn’t much talk about the Tatars’ situation here.

Compared to Hill bonus buff: Safer approach to slightly buff Tatars, as we don’t know what could happen if we buff the Obi-Wan bonus, we could easily overshoot.

Tatars need something to do hard melee battles in trash wars, +1 melee armor on Light Cav will give them atleast some hope, however small.

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I really like this idea. Since it also affects their fully upgraded Hussars they would also really have a good option for trash wars.

Well it still needs the upgrade… :smiley:

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I think a better solution would be to give 25% damage reduction uphill in place of 25% more attack down hill. Helps to push hills better. If that’s not enough then they should get both.

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Yes they should really get both, but even still, that bonus would be very easy to negate by a player who pays attention to hills, which we all have learned to do at some point.
The Obi-Wan bonus is a gimmick and nothing more, easily ignored with an ok micro.

Which is why, a more traditional buff via the underwhelming UT Silk Armor, could be better.

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I agree, they should get both.

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It does help to push hills that are in front of your base where the opponent is camping though. If they got both then it would probably need to be nerfed to a smaller amount.

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Exactly, we don’t know what could happen with that change.

So why not not change that gimmicky bonus, and do a safe approach? i.e. buffing a UT that is known to be underwhelming?
Hence, slightly buffing all the key units a Tatar player use except the Keshik which is already decent?

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Cause the bonus applies to all units and it’s unique. Also it would come into play anytime you aren’t on flat ground if they got both. That would be in effect a lot on most maps except arena. It would make it less gimmicky.

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Good Idea, and good thought put in for the Tatars, as very few do that, but it’s just unlikely the devs will change the Obi-Wan bonus, as it can easily become broken.
The devs have shown a particular fondness for baby-steps in balance changes unfortunately

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Damn finally you got an idea that I support and has sense, yes this needs to be added

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Well, honestly I’d ask for +2/+1 armor but then suddenly people would say it’s radical Kappa
Seriously though, +2/+1 also should be fine, considering they got no infantry for lategame,
and considering there’s Bagains, which gives as much as +5 in terms of melee armor to one of the most spammable unit-lines, and it’s still underwhelming in most situations.

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Well you can’t really compare those two techs because Silk Armor affects 3 different fully upgraded units and Bagains affects Two-Handed Swordsmen only plus costs way more (too much for my taste).

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Even if it cost much less, it would still be very situational, I think this is clear from the effect

Unfortunately, Silk Armor’s case is even worse though, as it affects units which already do very horribly in melee combat unlike the 2HS, for which the extra melee is far more useful than for CA (which never engage in melee), heavily nerfed SL or plain old Hussar (both hardly used outside of some raiding, which is not direct melee combat)

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Well, still less situational than Bagains because - again - it affects 3 different units.

It isn’t all about melee though… I’d say there are more fights that involve ranged units than pure melee fights.

I’d rather call it the good old Hussar. And I see them not only as a raiding unit but also as a meat shield for the Cav Archers. And fully upgraded with +1/+1 extra is a really good bonus to have in my opinion.

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It’s not much at all, considering Tatars do not even have a usable pike-line for the same lategame you are talking about
Hussar don’t really do straight-up melee fights, they do raiding. Even if they did go straight for melee fight, it’s only +1 melee we’re talking about, to a unit which dies in 3 hits from a Halberdier regardless.

In comparison, the Malians get +7 attack to their LC, which is far far more useful for what the unit is designed for (killing villagers) AND is also better for melee fights, than the proposed Tatar Hussar+ more melee armor.
And it’s even more of a tinier change with respect to CA and SL

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It was your idea to make it +1/+1 and now you’re making it sound like it’s a bad suggestion…

It’s true that their Barracks units are useless from Castle Age on but there are lots of examples that Civs can survive pretty well without either Barracks, Archer or Stable units. And against Cavalry they have fully upgraded Camels and Flaming Camels Kappa

I don’t deny that they’re good for raiding but don’t underestimate the meat shield aspect.

It might not help a lot agains Halbs but it sure does in other situations most notably against other Hussars and Eagle Warriors.

They do even get +5 attack and that’s to all Stable units which surely is one of the best UTs in the game. But they need this tech for their Cavalry to be good. Tatar’s Hussars and even more their CA would still be good without Silk Armor.

Honestly, let’s hope that Cav Archers will get a slight buff, that would most likely help Tatars more than 1 or 2 melee armor on a UT.

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I do agree +2/+1 could easily be fine. When is +2 melee armour going to even matter?
vs the spear line: bonus damage kills you
vs champs/knights/whatever: base damage is like 10 or more, +2 MA doesn’t do much (but is still somewhat helpful)
vs archers/castles/TCs: nope, checks PA

Only situation I could see where +2 melee armour would really matter is in a hussar v hussar fight.

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The idea is good and nothing against.
But I like more the idea to give Tatars the identity as a civ with good fight at range like Teutons good civ at Melee fights. That’s why I don’t want to give them any Melee bonus.

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all armour types have greater effect on lower damage per hit dealers.

for example using a tatar hussar, the easiest way to see how big the impact can be is to look at units doing the lowest damage. in this case it will be hussars (12 hits up to 16 with +2MA), its also why PA makes such a big impact in the game (since damage values are always lower)

vs champs and paladins its 7 up to 8 (wheras if its only +1MA, then paladins will have the same kill rate of 7)

so anything that does less damage than a paladin will be affected by +1 MA on a hussar already (and obviously on anything with more MA than a hussar).

if silk arm is +2 MA, then a tatar CA will have the same MA as a teuton paladin (not saying its a bad thing, just funny how high it already is) it will take 20 instead of 14 hits from a hussar, thats quite a jump…

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The major problem for the Tatars is the CA itself. The devs must fix the CA ASAP and it is no joke since this unit is completely useless in the castle age and It has many drawbacks and bad factors, (high cost, long creating time (34s), bad accuracy, stupid frame delay, bad ROF…).
I wrote more than 5 posts about the CA and the Tatars problem and i got banned because of this.

I will agree 100% to any idea that fix/buff the CA and all the CA civs especially the Tatars, and i suggest too to give the Tatars 50% discount on food on blacksmith upgrades or economic upgrades or 25% at least

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