I created this topic to start a balance discussion only about the Tatar’s (first) unique unit, the keshik.
Current stats:
-Cost: 50 food 40 gold
-HP: 110/140
-Attack: 9/11
-Armor: 1/1
-Pierce armor: 2/3
-Training time: 16/14
-Reload / fire rate: 1,9
-Movement speed: 1,4
-Gold generation per mintue while attacking: 22
My thoughts:
In my opinion the unit is at a pretty good place now, there is only one problem: getting a such tanky unit as a keshik with 140 HP and 3 pierce armor for 40 gold is too cheap. It is nearly as tanky as the paladin, only has 20 less HP. This single unit can straight murder archers in smaller equal cost fights even if the player controlling the archers is microing, which is not really a problem. But this unit is just simply too good in fights where the armies are a combination of unit types. Tanking archer fire nearly like a paladin just for 40 gold cost is insane!!! The tatar player having really strong ranged units behind the keshik (either own cavalry archers or teammates’ arbalests) wins fights really hard, and really cost effective. And if the enemy has a better army, they can always retreat without taking significant losses since that unit is just way too tanky and cheap.
My proposals:
-Increase gold cost from 40 gold to 50 gold
-Multiply gold generation speed by 2 (from 22 gold per minute to 44 gold per minute)
This way, the keshik will perform nearly the same in melee fights (or when it fights archers), while for the use of only tanking archer fire in front of some other units, it will be 20% more expensive in gold cost. Overall the unit will still be pretty cheap (50 food 50 gold). For anyone wondering this is a small nerf, but if the player only uses them up in smaller melee fights it is a buff.
the changes sound good, although im not sure how good that gold harvesting will be in trash wars it might become too effective at 100% increase…
but at the same time tatars have incredibly few racial bonuses, relying on the fact they have tech that not all CA races have, their hill bonus is 100% useless on some of these flat maps like golden marsh, the additional food from sheep is just a minor wood buff (since they can delay farming) but it is very small in comparison to other races, and not so great team bonus
and then they get 2 free techs…
if we compare to races like mongols they fail in comparison if we nerf their UU too much
yeah definitely, although then that’s buffing the subjectively good mongol steppe (cant remember but someone did tests on it, probably cactus or cauthun)
Imo it wouldn’t take that much a big of an effect on mongols, since you will want to go with mangudais anyways, while you might want to tech into the much stronger tatar sreppe lancer in case it gets buffed
Speaking of buffs, I think a cost reduction of the elite upgrade is definitely needed, while we might want to give a faster reload speed aswell
I think that by nerfing the keshik for a civ that is the antepenultimate worst of 1650 elo win rate now, just only move tatars to the penultimate or last place.
The keshik is tankier and cheap, but has an average damage, compared to paladins (14) or champions (13). The reason of beeing tankier is because tatars basically doesn’t have any reason to train infantry, as they only have scale mail armor, what make them useless, so they doesn’t have a decent militia line trash killer, so what is your front line if the other player has a good PA unit mixed with halberdiers? what is the meat shield of tatars if you expect to backup the HCA?
1650 elo winrates are not even worth a look, there can easily be ±5% inaccuracies. Imo tatars are a really good and underrated now, I love playing them because they are very flexible and have lots of options with top tier cav archers.
50 gold keshik will still be super strong but now as much as now.
+50% was my first thought aswell. After I’ve made a test, even with +50% gold generation keshiks will be overall weaker in melee fights (looking at cost efficiency). Since I think that only their tanking ability should be nerfed, I don’t see a reason why +100% couldn’t be done (10v10 versus knights they lose nearly equal resources in both cases, the difference is 4 gold, so there would be basicly no difference like I intended).
So stats aren’t worth looking at, but a video is important that treats gold = food/wood, doesn’t factor micro at all or factor training time at all or factor the keshiks gold generation. Okaaayyy
Also this video is pre pathing buff…
Either way its nice that the pathing buff has helped tatars a bit. Still don’t see them dominating games. But not saying they’re useless either.
I’m not saying the video perfectly showcases the keshiks’ strength, unlike how people say stats are showing a civilization’s strength. What I’m trying to say is that if you look at these results which may not be perfectly fair, you can see big advantages for the keshiks. And not factoring in training time etc would not lead to that big differences.
This is a question of wheater civ balance is more important or the same as unit balance. Would we have more interesting and diverse games even though tatars get nerfed and will be played less? I think yes, because in tatar games, even though the amount will be less, there won’t be that much keshiks, and the game will be more interesting. I might be wrong, but I’m sure that unit balance should be taken just as seriously as civ balance.
