Skirmisher Buff?. Worst trash unit?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
41

That’s game theory: Because Skirms are kinda bad the unit they counter, the halb becomes the bulk of the army. But because halbs are the most played, skirms also see more play.
You don’t need to understand this, but it’s well documented.
I mean the same also happens in the midgame. Because skirms are actually not the best units, xbow pike is one of the main unit comps in the game. Which then leads to skirms being the best play as they counter both. This wouldn’t happen if skirms would be stronger as then this comp would be played way less.
You can defy it as long as you want, but the truth is that skirms see a lot of play because they are one of the worst units in the game, if not even the worst generic.

Do they really “counter” archers? Archers actually have the same dps/cost against themselves as skirms have vs archers. But only if the archers do have the armor upgrades, if they don’t, archers kill archers actually faster than skirms do.
Skirms only tank a lot of arrowfire, that’s how they “counter” archers. I don’t even think “countering” is the right wording for this.

42

According your theory, eagles are not a counter to archers but more like a counter to cavalry 11

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43

i agree on that. besides, if skirmisher are so strong, then why pretty much everyone that has the chance to go archers at some point?

Vietnamese imperial skirms deal better with spears and archers both (more damage and bonus damageagainst both) and has also more PA, so it is even better against archers. still, the unit is not even close to OP, and vietnamese have not an impressive winrate against archer civs either

and again, there is no logical reason for skirms to be the only unit without imperial upgrade…

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44

Because archers unlike cavalry:

A. Are ranged units so you can keep them out of harm more easily.
B. Are way more avaible tech wise

45

Are archers that available though?
I always felt the high production time for their cost of archers was and always will hold them back. I mean they literally take as long to produce as knights…

46

Yeah for sure. You NEED bloodlines for knights as well as the blacksmith upgrades (and four civs miss knights altogheter), which means that a lot of civs cant go knights, but crossbows arent as reliant on thumb ring and while they need four techs (blacksmith techs as well as crossbow and imo e skirm), theres only four civs missing one of those

Also something I dint mention is that cav usually works better with an strong mid game eco while crossbows dont need it as much so they can work better for all in strats or for civs that have an early game eco bonus but weak mid game eco. And crossbow bonuses are genera better and more common than knight ones too.

Although thats only in theory. At the end of the day you can totally go Burmese crossbows if you want and we have Hoanging as a totally viable strategy.

47

Really? you need bloodlines?
I just tested in the aoe-combatsim.com simulator: (perfect hit and run)
24 fu persian knights are evenly matched with 20 pikes and 30 crossbows (saracens).
without bloodlines it is 27 persian knights. Just 1 knight more than the “breakeven” for the cost of bloodlines.
Don’t get me wrong. Bloodlines is a very important tech, but it’s not that knights without it would be unplayable.
I agree that TR isn’t as important for xbows as bloodlines is for knights, but mostly because it is so expensive. The effect is comparable.

Ofc you can play archers more than anything with low eco setup. But it’s also a very high risk involved with that. It is more a pro play also, i basically never see saracen market abuse in my games. The reason why this is always so hyped is because it is so rare and basically only pros can do it.
Britons and Vikings are so strong archer civs besides their eco bonus doesn’t help with archer play. They aren’t set up for “low eco”, instead they actually like to add eco and boom or get the tech advantage.

48

To elaborate what Casus is stating, there is something called rational actor theory. Rational actor theory states that all entities are rational actors, and will do what is necessary to achieve their goals. Their goals need not be rational in the sane sense. Actors work with different levels of information, forcing them to draw in assumptions within their gameplay. This is true, even on full reveal maps, and with players who know each other well, and are even telling each other what they are doing.
In game theory, it is not unusual for players to end up with an inferior ending for all, because they cannot risk an alternative leaf in the tree when trying to achieve their goals. Add in variables like time (Rubenstein) and you will be surprised by the results.

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49

I think that with knights tankiness means a lot more than anything else so I think you are underselling the effect of the tech.

I dont think so, look at Japanese for example. They are pretty okay in land maps for all elos and have pretty much mediocre mid game eco

50

Time to repeat myself: there are only FOUR civs in the entire game that have very bad skirmishers in imp. Since thumbring is quite irrelevant for skirms it means that 35 civs out of 39 either have them FU or only lack one tech. And elite skirms beat imp archers while pikemen don’t beat some imp cav. If the pikeman upgrade had the effect of the halberdier upgrade and if the immense majority of civs only lacked one tech or none for them you wouldn’t hear often about pike weakness because it would just be super rare. Ditto for hussars.

If Viets had say, Khmer eles or paladins trust me it would be an asset. It’s just that since Viets use archer armies most of the time halb is hardly a priority vs them. The point is, bonuses are fine on the civ they are but you can’t just start giving them out to everyone. I can’t say that stirrups hussars are not OP and use it as an argument to make all hussars attack faster, I can’t say that Slavs not being OP is an argument for siege weapons to be cheaper, etc.

Time to open a thread about imperial monks ig.

OK I’m very sorry but are you seriously meaning this? You can prove anything with that. What’s next, longswords are going to be the most played unit because skirms are very bad hence played a lot and longswords beat skirms so people go longswords?

Now you’re just fixating on DPS cuz it’s the only way to make skirms look like they don’t counter archers. Despite the fact skirms are one of the most pop efficient counters in the game and that most of their targets can’t really escape.

37 civs have xbows and thumb ring’s cost and effect don’t make it as essential early on as bloodlines is. So no TR xbow is much more viable than no BL kts.

Fun fact: to get high numbers of kts, you need -1 to have low number of kts first -2 not to lose them all. BL helps with that in such a way TR just doesn’t for xbows.

Because SotL spamming that the Saracen TB is a meme has more influence than you claiming raiding is OP.

What? There is not a single thing these civs’ eco bonuses don’t help.

So someone who thinks skirms merely trade with halbs would favour mono halbs over halbs+skirms. Because those skirms would basically drag you down by making the army more vulnerable to hussars and forcing you to research more upgrades. Someone who thinks skirms are the worst castle age unit would rather use mass heavy scorpion or more xbow to kill pikes + xbows.

Also I’m sorry but I’m kinda laughing at the word “rational” when half the player base gets giga tilted by just seeing a fleur de lys or chicken suit dude in their game.

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51

i mean, we could make an imperial upgrade for the monk either, it would be cool

yeah many civs have FU or close to skirms, but that does not mean they are a great unit nor a great counter. Arbalest is considered one the if not the strongest unit in early imp, and that would not be the case if castle age skirms would be that strong of a counter. infact, i would argue hussar fills a similar role with their higher HP, decent PA and similar damage, with the added possibility of raiding potential and mobility, to deal with other units, while skirms suck at everything besides their intended counter, for s slight higher cost of course

if skirms would actually be that strong, you would not see archer as dominant as they are now in imperial age. that’s why an imperial upgrade for skirms could be very beneficial to create the same situation that cav vs halbs have, since atm even in feudal of castle you could just trade better with archers against skirms if you have fletching and other attack upgrades before your opponent

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52

Things are a bit more complicated than that. Ofc it’s not only that they are one of the worst units, but also HOW. And I tried to explain it already several times. You pick just one single point out and attack that one instead of even trying to see the bigger picture. For example:

I don’t fixate on this. I just pointed this out as it is one of the reasons why skirm is a quite bad unit. Because they actually don’t have such a big DPS against the units they counter. They are also not faster so they can’t force the engagement. On the other side skirms are killed very fast by the units they are countered by: cavalry, militia line, siege.
It’s also generally a bad concept, “passive countering” as it is so extremely depending on the tech advantage. But I already explained this before also, you just ignored it.

Skirms and pop efficiency… really? nice joke.

Ofc they can escape, skirms aren’t faster than the units they counter. ON the other hand light cav and knights are much faster than skirms and actually CAN force the engagement…

This was about the creation time of archers… And what is about ballistics? Don’t get me wrong. I never said that Bloodlines is a bad upgrade, but to state you basically can’t play knights without it is just wrong. I not rarely play knights with koreans (yeah). It’s quite a useful tool if the opponent goes into skirms, even if the knights don’t scale good, they totally decimate the opponent skirm numbers.

Very important point. It’s the same with castle age xbows vs feudal skirms btw. The tech advantage actually reverses the counter mechanic there.

That’s one of the things why skirms often suck. On the other hand in feudal and castle if the units are FU skirms actually really hardcounter archers if there is an engagement. So if we would change the skirms to deal more dps against archers the sheer counter ratio must be reduced a bit (by reducing skirm armor) from values of 80 % (loss to kill ratio with equal ressources) to about 60 %, which is about the same as pikes counter knights.
Higher DPS is always more valueable than tanking. A good example for this is the militia line, that actualy looks like it would totally suck in comparison to knights and archers. But if you can overwhealm your opponent with numbers they just shred everything to pieces with their insane dps/cost. Plus because of the change from tanking to higher dps the tech advantage reverse wouldn’t occur anymore.
It’s a tweak, not a straight-up buff.

53

i like the vietnamese imperial skirmisher tough stat wise. it has 1 more PA, 1 more damage, and some hidden added bonuses. it’s a good upgrade that should be accessible as a generic upgrade, with compensation for vietnamese, and would help a lot in the trash fights, since they have a bigger bonus vs spears, and i believe for that exact reason: trash fights (since feudal to castle skirms do not get additional bonus vs spears)

atm, a group of skirms beats a group of halbs only when they are at very high numbers, but in a more realistic smaller-scaled fight, skirm do not counter halbs at all

54

Skirmisher lacking last armor upgrade doesn’t counter archers such as Franks and Sicilians Skirmishers. Thus, Skirmisher become useless when Devs want to nerf one civs’ Skirmishers. If Skirmisher had 2/3 (Elite) Pierce Armor and +6/+8 attack against archers, Skirmisher would counter Archers without last armor upgrade.

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55

Because you get a +3 attack powerspike and (ideally) you’re imp first so there is no imp upgrade for the enemy’s skirmishers. And, oh surprise, units with more upgrades win! Who would have thought.

I said that dive bombing with ur archers just to pick off villagers is bad since well, you’re sacking mass and that’s not how you play archers but you didn’t say anything about that. Because in all other aspects (cost, training time…) skirms just win.

I mean, you said that “skirm DPS against archer isn’t higher than archer DPS against archer”. Why is it even a bad thing? Archers kill each other quite fast.

Lith skirms are god tier just by virtue of being 10% faster so thx goodness it’s not like that for every civ. Plus if your skirms can’t catch up to the archers it means they are running away in a straight line, which should be a pretty good sign.

I didn’t ignore it? I said that it’s common. Only counter units that doesn’t need any upgrades in castle age are mangos and scorpions and maaaaaybe monks vs kts.

Boooo bad CactusSteak who “ignores” some stuff I write! Let’s proceed to do the same by being unable to notice that if there is written “pop efficient counter” it means “pop efficient counter” and not “pop efficient”. Ie. skirmishers can beat archers while outnumbered.

What about the obvious benefit of having forced the archer player into an expensive type of units that is going to become obsolete for them real quick, especially if yourself are a cav civ? +even kts need armour against elite skirms so it’s not like they don’t need to invest in upgrades.

Time to buff scorpions and mangonels since those are even more pitiful against arbs.

Except against ranged units…
Which is perfectly illustrated by the champion example: the only champion that can stand a chance against archers is the one that sacrifices DPS for armour. It’s also the reason huskarls have insane pierce armour and not just bonus damage against archers. Or why early imp hauberk+plate barding is a thing but no one wants to touch whatever manipur cav is nowadays even with a 10 feet pole (and I bet no one would even if they took less bonus damage. Which is kinda like tanking). Wanna hear about FU elite eagles warriors who beat archers despite literally having the attack of a longsword? Did you also forget about what you said about the Pole cavalry which is a poster child of more DPS per cost?

What if you get outmicro’d? Currently trying to outmicro skirms is extremely hard because it takes so much time it’s not worth. But if they die faster it might be worth. Plus with the imp power spike skirms will die even faster since they can’t outrange no matter what.

Did it occur to you that stuff happens before trash fights? Any civ that can remotely use its cavalry in imperial age will be buffed by having an easier time killing halbs.

not performing as well =/= useless. If they have bracer but no RAA skirms can counter archers. Heck the only civ that lack this tech that is actually weak to archers is Burmese and that’s because their skirms aren’t FU in castle age.

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56

@CactusSteak2171
You still ignore the main part of the thing that we actually discuss a tweak of the skirm. And a tweak that would under your own measure maks archers “less countered” by skirms. But you still pretend it would be a buff. You are counted out as one that only pleads rationalisations. Cause if you mean it serious that the skirm is already “too strong” by this measure you should support the “nerf” by your own measure.

I personally would prefer if it would mostly be skirm rof that would be buffed in th exchange. This would make the unit in general more viable, also in the lategame trash wars. High bonus damage can lead to a lot of overkill in mass battles.
In that process it would also be possible that TR would affect skirm rof aswell, not only accuracy.

57

It is big problem in skirmisher&other unit vs archer&other unit fight. For instance, Mangonel, Scorpion, Knight kills Skirmisher before Skirmishers kills archers. Hera once said that Archer&Scout combo is better than Skirmisher&Scout combo for this reason. Spear-line doesn’t have this problem due to high damage output.

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58

Every unit you mentioned kill archers just as fast as they kill skirms…

59

but archers can kill Cavalry and even kill other archers faster. Therefore, Skirmisher lose its counter ability when both side add other units to support archer or skirmisher. Solely relying on high armor to counter units cause these problems. If Spear-line had high melee armor to counter cavalry and less bonus attack similar to Skirmisher, Spear-line would suffer same problem. Knight-side would easily counter Spear-line by adding archers.

60

You want skirmisher to shut down archer play? Most Archer civs are quite underwhelming. Archer is gold intensive while skirmisher is way cheaper. Archer should have a chance to play even opponent have skirmisher. Just like knight are viable even opponent have halbs

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