Steppe Lancers have a fun idea in their 1 range, but it’s just not quite long enough to make it effective. For example, they can attack villagers on the other side of walls, but ONLY while the villager is actually building the wall. Move back at all and they instantly move out of range. The same sort of effect happens with battles; in theory, steppe lancers would be great in the back line of a fight, but in practice, the 1 range just isn’t quite enough. And they’d theoretically be quite good at micro, but in practice, they can’t actually micro against other cavalry, as the amount of time needed to get off an attack, always allows the enemy cavalry to get in a hit, as well, rendering their range advantage moot.
But there’s a simple fix. Give them slightly more range. I tested this in the scenario editor by adding 2 range and then dividing their range in half, to give them a new total of 1.5. This allowed them to attack slightly further on the other side of walls, making that a highly viable use for them, and it allowed for successful micro against enemy knights.
This change alone would turn them from a useless gimmick to a unit with a useful, if specific, niche. You won’t want huge armies of them, because they’re best in small numbers, but a group of 6-12 steppe lancers would be a powerful way to attack an enemy economy, or to support more traditional units.
And best of all, it’s easy!
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would propably still end up as a gimmick unit that is overshadowd by either knight line or scout line, which has been the fundamental issue for the unit from the start. stepp lancer either overshadow scout or knights and become broken or they dont and become redundant or a gimmich witch extreme niche usages over the other 2 lines.
the suggestion is nice bz strengthening step lancer where they are unique so i fully support your idea.
i still think we should just remove knight line from mongols and tartars (not cumans) and also add step lancer to indians + let their civ bonus armor affect stepp lancer.
then we automatically have created a niche for step lancer since they wont compete with knights anymore and we would see more varried army composition on the field
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I think 1/2 more range could make them OP already. But I like the Idea to give them more range, maybe even 2 range bud decrease their dps. That way they would be much easier to balance among all elos.
i disagreee, if you increae their range to 2 it might make them op in hands of op with supreme micro skill and by decreasing their dps you make the very bad for people without that micro skill.
I think 2 range is easier to micro than 1 range, as for 1 range you need to learn melee fighting skills, which I think less than 1% of the playerbase even know about it exists.
If they still aren’t good enough with 1.5 range, you could consider upping it further than that, but based on my testing in the scenario editor, 1.5 should be enough. After that, I’d be more inclined to increase their speed instead, to enhance their ability to micro that way.
But honestly, I think 1.5 range alone might be enough.