Just cut hp by 10, reduce piercing armor to 0, give 1 melee armor.
They will be significantly weaker vs Camels and Archers yet still be great vs other melee when stacked, especially low hp units.
1-So paladins being destroyed by trash is ok but for SL it isnât?
2-Not only they arenât meant to murder TCs but they also still have 4 pierce armor from upgrades, people keep forgetting to take upgrades into account.
3-After countless testing, the only unit they lose against cost effectively are Kamayuks, idk how u can say that theyâll get destroyed by everything (and btw SL currently have NO BONUS DAMAGE against ANYTHING, idk why people assume they have)
thatâs exactly what I did, this nerf would make it so there are units in the game that can actually counter them, instead of none at all. They would be âharder to mass paladinsâ that are cheaper and do much more damage than paladins, but can actually be taken down by counters cost effectively (yes they might currently still melt against camels but thatâs in equal numbers, camels are much more expensive than then, eventually the one making camels wonât be able to make camels anymore while the other one will still be able to make SLs for a long time). Also with the âlonger to makeâ nerf it means theyâre good for longer matches but if u wanna try and beat the game quickly then itâll be much better to go for knights instead (that or if the match is being intense with fights happening all the time and taking ur time to mass an army is unviable).
Also the argument of âjust use camelsâ shouldnât solve the issue because there are many civs out there without camels. What would they do against cumans and tatars? Just resign?
The only thing I imply is that people usually overnerf a unit pretty easily, there are many comments here of people saying to nerf their atk down to 7 or so (aka same as hussars), and thatâs what Iâm saying that shouldnât happen. What I want is for them to make a single nerf that would solve the issue instead of spending months on a constant ânerf > buff >nerf > buff >nerf > buffâ scenario (that Iâve seen happening countless times in other games), I rly donât want people to solve an issue by causing another one when it can be avoidable. Also for big games it can take ages for the devs to realise that changes need to be made, so if an overnerf were to happen weâd need to wait years for a buff to come in, and that if it ever come to begin with.
In a way, yes, but this effect is much more limited to melee units. The more melee units there are on both sides the less effective they are, because the ones on the back will take longer to find someone to start attacking, and this effect is further reduced for melee when the fight is happening in a closed up space (thereâs a reason britons are much better in maps like black forest).
But for SL this effect doesnât hit as hard because some units from the back will still be able to hit, thus making them a melee unit that works better than other melee units in large numbers (tho yes, archers and other ranged units still take full advantage of this effect, but a difference that u can see is that they usually have much lower attack than normal melee units, exception being siege and gunpowder units, for gunpowder what balances them is that they have lower accuracy at further distances to make up for their high atk, aka why conquistadors are so scary)
You forget that you need to micro them individually, so unless uâre the AI or viper himself this is highly unviable.
Theyâre that strong even without stacking. Stacking just makes them even stronger.
I mean they are, they actually do better than hussars in small numbers, but theyâll be worse than knights.
Literally all archers and other ranged units have an exponential increase of power. You should try fighting against axe throwers and see how they do in both small and big amounts.
Only play Incas versus Cumans. Kamayuks eat Steppe Lancers for breakfast and you can mass produce them with conscription insanely fast. Incas counter everything.
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Having 2 civs that can only be beaten by a single one is completely unbalanced.
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That much is certain. I also just discovered that Steppe Lancers have a greater line of sight than Kamayuks, which makes it very easy to avoid fights on open fields. Plus, Kamayuks melt against archers so if the Steppe Lancers have any CA support, itâs GGâŠ
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What i did mean with my paladin comparison is that they will die (harder) to trash, and especially even can die to TCâs while a paladin or even a hussar not rlly careâŠ
Also i cant imagine kamayuks are only unit that can win against them cost efficent, since there is also imperial camels and elite genoese which should totally melt them 
(just ppl dont like play italians so better try nerf new civ which get countered by italians than just play italians and make them more viable ).
Well imo if a unit is stronger than Paladins then it should die even easier to trash (the stronger in a point, the weaker in another)
Also idk abt u but my Hussars still melt pretty quickly under TC fire.
That and no civ should ever be made too strong to the point the other player is forced to play with a specific civ to even remotely have a chance to beat said civ.
I didnât test them against Genoese, but itâs rly hard to test a melee unit against a ranged unit without being too bias to one side or another, thereâs way too many factors that can change the result of the fight in a practical match (like if the archers are being microed or not, if they have melee units protecting them, if the fight is happening in a closed or open space, if theyâre being a wall), so yeah I believe they would do great against them in most scenarios, but still we canât make it so SL can only ever be countered by UUs or units that arenât accessible to most civs (like camels)
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Welp, given how hard steppe lancers pwns kipchacks among all things, Iâm not really optimistic for genoese crossbows
It mostly depends on how much you have between the SL and ur archers. Itâs just hard to compare melee against ranged because thereâs no fair way to test it, by themselves archers will always lose unless theyâre microed, and if microed only if theyâre as fast or faster than the melee one. Archers are meant to do damage and not tank it, theyâre meant to melt if under atk by melee, so yeah, the only thing you can do is compare how fast a kind of archer kills the unit compared to other archers, and in that case I think genoese could have more of an edge.
Developers have announced a patch for this month, but imo itâs too late. Itâs very disappointing it might take a full month before team games are somewhat enjoyable. Lancers are by far the most broken unit in aoe2 history, to the extent it makes TGs almost unplayable, because there is always somebody who picks cumans.
It feels like nobody at Forgotten Empires actually plays this game online, literally anybody would have said âok, we are not going to ruin experience for everbody for weeks until the next patch, letâs give lancers quick nerf, so we can actually test balance instead of lancers overshadowing everthing.â
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Couldnât they just move steppe lancers to the castle? The main problem is that you can mass them (plus they have minimal research needed, are essentially free, and have the stats of a knight, but those things other people mentioned).
Those can be countered quite easily and are slow so if you have a counter against them, they canât run away. Throwing axemen are harder to counter but also harder to make, requiring a castle. But ok, I overstated on the exponential power thing.
altho they deserve, I donât think itâd fit logically to move them to castle because they arenât UU, this is why Iâve been asking to make them take 50% longer to make.
And at this point, I think we can all agree that the easiest way to balance SL in a single change is to just remove its range. Like rly, if u remove this single thing theyâll instantly perfectly fit the balance. Working around it can lead to a lot of unintented stuff, and stacking will continue being a problem.
Im surprise how no one here mentions how efficient they are towards raiding and killing villagers. They literally melt them and donât leave any alive. Meanwhile the 10% extra speed is ridicules for them to hit and run all day. This civ has everything, how didnât they realize it was going to be broken.
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They did realise that giving the speed bonus in Dark age and giving them bracer would be too much (and I think they will lose some cav upgrades in the incoming patch). They also have 1 of the worst navies, and the worst imperial monastery and university (when I think of it, they could even lose chemistry and still be viable, after all they already have no gunpowder). So while they did gave them too much good stuff they donât have âeverythingâ
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I mean, if weâre complaining abt them melting paladins and most other matchups, then ofc theyâre actual monsters against vills.
Id like to see Steppe Lancers go up in cost to 70 food and 60 gold (Same gold cost as Camels but the food difference is for their range) and remove the stacking ability⊠In standground mode they should still be able to hit from behind but they shouldnt stack up. Also consider reducing their speed.
I donât think itâs enough to make it an expansive super unit. It really needs to be brought in line so that you can counter it, not just amass them more slowly and have them OP.
Part of the problem that I have been seeing is that that the Lancers kill most of their hard counters before they get in range. This happens with the spearmen line. Each one goes down before they can get a hit in.
That would be like Crossbows being able to kill (efficiently) Skirmishers before Skirmishers could even fire. It wouldnât matter that the Skirmishers had a bonus against crossbows if they never get to fire.
For steppe Lancers, a good start might be to reduce their base attack and replace it with a bonus vs cavalry. This would make them less effective against other units. Maybe a bonus against villagers or some other unit as well, but they need to be less effective against everything. The Steppe Archer canât be the equivalent of Tank Spam in Command and Conquer.
I would also remove their Pierce armor, making them a bit more vulnerable to archers and Cavalry Archers. That might give more players a chance against them.
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Would slowing down their attack animation make them less effective at kiting, and more likely to be hit by melee counters?
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