Simple Abus Rework

[Zelley00]

@newaoeiiiai

you make a claim that it would turn them into jeagers, and when I explain how I don’t believe it will and ask why you think so, you say it’s on me to prove your claim?

That is not what I meant. I didn’t explained it because I feel it is weird for me to reply to someone’s balance idea and having to give more details than the OP himself.

I think double damage and double hp is worth more than double population and double cost. This is because double hp make them tank better against counter and virtually provides double the production speed. Double the hp also means that the damage output does not “drop to half” when the unit get only half speed.
The only drawback is in “medium microed” skirmishes, where the enemy one shot your units one by one, as he would have a lot of overkill against regular skirms.

Jaegers are basically double skirms with +10 hp (250 hp), +10% pierce armor and +1 speed. 200g is similar to 100f/130g due to gather rates. Yeah these boni are very good; speed helps for kitting; pierce armor and hp helps in skirm wars, but I still see the Jaeger as similar to a double skirms, as being a merceary comes with drawback (upgrade, weakness to spy-like units).

For this reason I see a double skirm much more like a Jaeger than a Dutch skirm.

@newaoeiiiai

it also leads to a situation where ottomans have multiple ways to counter light infantry through superior cav, abus and artillery, but no effective way to counter light cavalry

I agree with that.

@Zelley00

So we can argue for giving abus a x1.5 against LC instead of x0.75. I still do not see what you want to throw the whole unit out of the window.

I meant here that I do not see a problem asking for an increase of the multiplicator of abus against light cav. I do not know how well it goes with the “actual civ balance”, but for me it would be a fair buff.

@newaoeiiiai

its fine if they aren’t the best, but they need to function. abus dealing 50% of the damage against light cavalry and less damage against most other units

If you think it is fine if abus are underwhelming as long as they can do their job, then we are on an agreement.

@newaoeiiiai

we all make mistakes, no need to be defensive about. it doesn’t make your other arguments invalid.

Sorry about that, I edited the message right after posting it, as I was being a little emotional while posting. Didn’t think you would reply on the non-edited message.

@newaoeiiiai

you shouldn’t just assume the devs are incompetent.

It is not what I meant. I just think that aoe3 is a very complex game and at this point it is very hard to know how to balance things, as everything has so many implication. So it would be easier for devs to say “abus are a little weak against light cav, let’s buff that a little bit”, than “let’s redo the whole unit and hope we do not oversee any big implication on any matchup”.
I think that devs of aoe3 do a great job at balancing the game and offering content (even though some of their design ideas bring a lot of polemic such as for mexicans and hausas), but I do not think they have the time to make a complete analysis for every single balance change. They use PUP for that.

@newaoeiiiai

Ezad vs Kévin - ESOCommunity (eso-community.net)

Nice ! Thank you for the link, I didnt follow there is a new tournament ! And this time Mitoe is participating.

I was refering to this tournament, where Ottomans got 10 wins out of 12 games:

FPL Winter Tournament 2022 - Conclution

[image] Well, the tournament organized by United Empires is over, we want to thank everyone for their participation and good vibes. Hopefully in the future, we can organize more events, improve the community and make this grow every day. We congratulate Kaiserklein for obtaining the victory, here is a historical reconstruction of the events [image] We thank Crabgot for providing the funds for the organization of this tournament, also Lenlen, Widgie and Harrison for casting, and also all th…

For the current tournament, I notices Ottomans in one mirror match up, one loss against Lakotas, and one loss against Haudenosaunee. I feel at this state there is still nothing to worry about. Especially as Lakotas got bow riders in age 2 that are very good against Ottomans.

didn’t have time to watch the games, but I will surely watch a bunch of them.

@newaoeiiiai

In the end I don’t want abus to have double the hp and damage of skirms, I’m pointing out how much worse they are currently and that they need changes. My preferred change would be to add a swordsmen heavy infantry and bashibazouk light infantry unit to the ottoman roster and move abus and jans to age 3 while buffing them. Encourages a more micro heavy gameplay age 2 that feels fairer to fight and lets the ottoman army comp scale naturally.

These are also different changes from the double skirm idea. I do not like the idea of adding 2 units to the ottoman roster.

If Ottomans need a buff against light cavarly, I would rather think about increasing the abus gun multiplicator, and maybe give them a fortress age shadow tech.

It is still hard for me to see if Ottomans really need buffs, as some civs are known for having glaring weaknesses, like aztecs vs skirms/artillery, china against heavy cavalry, swedes/ottomans against light cav. But I currently do not see a problem with a small buff to abus against light cavalry.

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I just saw this tier list video for supremacy 1v1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laOcZT-WWaU
Ottomans are highly rated, so I do not worry about them. Even though it is surprising to me to see China, Germans, and Ottomans that high. For ottomans, it is possible that they get very good rushes/trades early so that the opponent cannot transition to light cavarly well enough and janissaries are enough to deal with them.