Just use attack ground. They can’t dodge 2x mangonels using attack ground. Buffing mangonels will also give an archers player an advantage to take out enemy mangonels and skirms. And make castle siege push vs. buildings from crossbow players much stronger.
vs 2 mangonels you always run as an Archer player.
But in the greater scheme of things it hurts xbows more than it hurts everything else. Because mangos are still supposed to be the hard counter for xbows.
The projectile speed is an old suggestion. 2 years old at least.(maybe even in voobly)
It was the logical conclusion the moment people realised how much faster and easier micro is with the newer games
Similar to gunpowder projectile speed
They can, and do. If you can fire 2 mangos in 2 different spots your opponent has the potential skill to split micro those shots.
This doesn’t actually mean that much. Because hitting feudal sooner hurts your eco more(otherwise we could all go 15 pop feudal) It’s actually the other way around, the cav player HAS to hit feudal sooner to leverage their unit, unlike the archer player
We have tons of stats on these things. And we know cav play and cav civs are dominant from above average elo and down
Don’t think this will help. If the player thinks rationally they’ll still small wall, and simply save even more Res than before. The answer is making it easier for scouts to actually do damage, because even if they can’t break through at least they force more idle time/more Res from repairs
Even if they nerf archers, the issue will still exist with scouts and MAA.
Hopefully one day in the future this will be addressed and people can accept it is as much of a game exploit as foundation scouting. Conveniently it also likely hurts their micro against mangos
Regardless of the balance aspect it is nonsensical that you can place 20 xbows on one tile and they can still attack at the same rate.
would a simple +5 wood cost be that crazy? alongside a slight price increase for crossbows/arbalest upgrades.
i think top players would still use them over anithing else honestly, they would be a bit harder to sustain economically and to mass which would open some counterplay maybe
I wouldn’t say so. Teching into both is quite costly and you won’t have the uptime you might want. You still do bc in most games you get a range in feudal at least to make skirms so then you might as well continue that a bit further into castle age.
Yes you dont need fancy micro to have success with xbow. That’s what imo a lot of people don’t understand. The reason why some people aren’t successful with archers actually isn’t lack of micro but lack of macro and decision making. That one is indeed less streamlined compared to knights but it’s also the better play. Double stable knights is just not a good strategy in a game that went equal until castle age. Monks and xbow should always win here unless one civ is clearly better than the other. You use your time window with xbow in early castle, make some dmg then retreat and boom into some defensive units. And bad melee pathing makes it even worse. The knight player has to be really aggressive in mid castle age with siege usually to make that work. Or make the game messy in feudal age.
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What about increase the Spearman-line cost +15F and make Supplies affect them too?
This way, mix spearman will punish a little more by researching supplies, or directly by the +15 food cost for each spearman
Just fix melee pathing and everything is gonna be fine I guess. Some time before DE came out everyone was playing knights skirms in castle age bc you could just run on top of xbows and easily kill them. Maybe that was a bit too easy even but right now most of knights will just run into each other of attacking archers.
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It would be nice make a comparison between AOC 1.0 and DE with the same scenario, f.e. 10 KTs engaging 20 crossbows, to see how worse is the actual pathfinding… I think much people gives original AOC too much credit…
Would a big nerf to the accuracy to all archers, on foot and horse solve anything? Then also with thumb ring not going 100% accuracy, but rather an increase. I am not familiar with accuracy for archer units, does missed shots have a chance of hitting other units in the area, like siege or gunpowder units do?
If that is the case, I thing a big change, where accuracy was much lower would both increase immersion and improve the game, less sniping, but more spread of damage to a large group of units.
It all depends on how accuracy works for arrow though.
I think Scorpions are supposed to be the hard counter. The problem is that Scorpions die to Mangonels, and they aren’t good against buildings, while Mangonels are (so with Mangonels, you buy something that can pressure buildings, pressure Scorpions, and sometimes pressure archers too).
Monks are an underused unit on Arabia maps, no wonder people die to cav civs when they don’t realize you can trololol and boom vs full Knights with 5 monks + full walls.
my goal isn’t to delete the unit, just shake up the meta. If you make 60 Crossbows over the whole Feudal to Castle age, you spend an additional 300w, the price of a TC. It’s not a big nerf because I don’t want to delete the unit but it makes you spam Crossbows more sparingly.
you generally do Archers into 3 Knights with +1 armor and MAYBE Bloodlines. And start spamming cav as soon as you click Imp. There are alternative strats, such as delaying your Imp to do full Knights in Castle, but they are hit or miss really.
The #1 skill Crossbows need is the ability to time your attacks well. That means a strong macro that allows for reasonable uptimes (even in “messy games”), but also the ability to see which parts of the opponent’s eco are vulnerable and where you can sneak Crossbows to kill vills.
Castle age Pikeman is already a garbage unit and doesn’t need an additional nerf. I think you meant it in the way that vs Knight civ as Crossbow player you do Pikeman so you want to buff Knight, in truth as Crossbow player vs Knight civ you hit faster Castle age and try to get onto his gold, or if that went bad, you do Monks and depending on how many Knights he makes, you either full boom + defend with Crossbow + Monk or do light pressure with Crossbow + Mangonel + Monk, either way, Crossbow player generally always comes out ahead, because in early Castle you have a higher mass to beat the first ~4 Knights and when he has ~10 Knights you have Monks and vs Monks + Crossbow he starts needing 20+ Knights.
melee pathing is as good as it can get I think, minus the bugs introduced with this patch, you can’t instruct melee units to surround and each go for a different archer, you have to micro such stuff yourself.
would make the game less fun and nobody wants to be locked by Thumb Ring to be able to do damage, I think Archers are in a good spot accuracy-wise, you need a good number (8) to 1 shot Villagers AND Ballistics most of the time, it’s their cost that is too cheap imo. If you nerf accuracy, you start needing ~15 Crossbows AND Ballistics to 1 shot vills, that’s ridiculous and an overnerf.
Main issue with Crossbows is how easy it is to slow down enemy eco/kill a few vills while also adding Mangonels/booming behind it. Basically you do minimal investment AND create far greater pressure than like 15 Knights can do. So the solution seems obvious, make Crossbows require more eco to create so that you must make choices more, either you boom or you flood Crossbows, currently you can do both, while doing both early while spamming Knights is far harder.
But making it harder to kill vills, would achieve just what you are asking for, making it harder to slow down enemy eco by killing vills.
there is a fun factor to the game, you could also give Knights a 10% hitrate, but 100 attack, but the game wouldn’t be very engaging. The game is more fun and skillful when you are rewarded for microing groups of 4-5 Crossbows and sneaking them in as opposed to making a giant 60-Crossbow army and doing a full frontal attack as they like in 800 elo.
This is why I propose to punish spearman specially in feudal when scouts can catch archers and reduce archers numbers face to Castle Age, to make snowball a little less oppresive. As you said, in castle age you have another tools to deal with knights, and even then 75F and 75G in supplies is not much un castle age, but is huge in feudal.
your idea is dumb, with all due respect. Spearmen are already in a bad spot and you propose to make them worse. At the same time, if the archer player has the suspicion you catch him mid-way, he will just camp at home, and the 7+ Scouts you made are useless. Even if you catch his 10-archer army moving out as he is about to hit Castle age, his Castle age time will be so superior to yours, because you made more Scouts which is a food unit, at that point he can just free boom and outboom you to Imp while you run around with the 7 Scouts you made and hit Castle age at ~ min 24.
They could increase the Train Time of Crossbows.
Archers have a TT of 35, Crossbow/Arbalester are 27.
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This and/or xbow research time should be good.
what I would like to highlight, however, is that the nerf needs to be SMALL, because we don’t want Crossbow to shift out of the meta, otherwise it will be 3 TC boom into full Skirms every game. So the nerf needs to be small so that CA crossbows are still a strong strat.
I say same thing in every topic about how op archers are: Just increase the size of archers and it will be fine. 403593058304583058930 xbows can fit in 1 tile, you cant engage with knights, you cant catch them with mangonels (also mangonels need too much res).
You’re not mistaken, the meta is pretty much 90% Xbows, you’re naive if you expect something else, strategically this game is narrower than ever, meta is close to dead when it comes to diversity.
However, You dont need to murder AOE to balance that. Units were fine for 20 years, I recommend you to watch games from early 2019 and below, you’d see plenty of Knights, Pikes+Siege, and even Unique Units, yes, on Arabia.
We have short memory, but it used to be much better, and it’s mostly a result of the changes they’ve made in the Arabia. Check my post regarding this exact subject:
yeah but they are basically oppressive atm since everyone that has xbows available use them as a CA strat, almost regardless of map, situations, and the like. they are just too amazing to skip them, so i think they can most certaintly tank a nerf
another options we could consider is making the Imperial Skirmisher a regular upgrade for skirms, since they are the only trash unit without an imperial upgrade and the sole in the game besides monks i believe. then vietnamese get a new TB. that would indirectly nerf archer making them better countered in the long run, since atm if your elitè skirms lack final armor upgrade they are basically no good against arbalest for what an hard-counter should be