One thing that bothering me is that the ‘Lancer’ concept wasn’t unique at all, a cavalry with lance/spear appeared in many country’s history, it is not something that only Cumans/Tatars know, it is strange for me only they got this unit. (ofc, I know it because of game design/balance)
I heard some people in Reddit discussed that Mongols and Huns should get Steppe Lancer because of the historical reason, haven’t find that post yet, but anyway I agree SL should be nerf and added to more civs.
I have played a few matches specifically as Cumans and against both Cumans and Tatars, to see for myself just how broken Steppe Lancers really are. And indeed, even against Hard AI, they need some reworking for sure.
I have read through the comments and there were a few ideas that I really liked (sorry for not quoting, not sure how to do that):
These are the changes that I think need to be made in order to balance the Steppe Lancer in most situations. Specifically these five changes need to be implemented together. This way, they maintain “some” of their effectiveness in numbers, but are more easily countered by their counters with reduced damage and armor, while not completely taking away from the uniqueness of the unit. Also I believe this is a modest balancing, because it turns the unit into a ranged Hussar, which means that when making the unit, you are paying 40 gold and extra creation time for +1 attack range, which sounds more balanced than paying 30 gold for a unit that, in mass, can take down Paladins, along with everything else.
Otherwise, I don’t think some of the other more drastic change ideas mentioned so far are necessary or as effective as direct stat modification, since these already suggested changes only affect the one unit, and not multiple units (referencing unit stacking here, and also not sure how changing a core collision mechanic/defect/whatever-to-call-it of the game could be applied to just one unit and not multiple units).
I also don’t like moving the unit to the castle (if I understood those comments correctly) because I like the idea of giving the Steppe Lancer to the Mongols and Huns more, and having the Steppe Lancer benefit from stable speed from Huns makes team play with the unit more interesting. If I understood the castle comments incorrectly, then the only other way I could interpret them is to make the Steppe Lancers require a castle to build them, but still be built at the stables, which makes a lot of sense balance wise and could be considered as a replacement for one of the 5 suggestions above.
Having one civ would also make it balanced, no unit variety is what makes the game fun.
Without the range there’s no point to having the unit.
It’s not that hard to balance the unit, just recognize the combination that it has:
That means it can’t also have high damage.
That would make them so much like knights.
Why not lower attack damage and speed?
In line with the idea of a spear being slower than a sword.
Spears have always been the primary weapon of war for melee combat.
Swords are only a primary weapons in civil situations because they’re more convinient to carry around.
In myths swords are used to recognize the hero, not a mere peasant or soldier that uses a spear.
This is how swords remained in public memory and they remained as status symbol for officers when soldiers started using guns.
Movies about the middle ages used to have armies all fighting with swords.
We also see this in Samurai movies, whose primary weapons where bows and (shoulder) shields.
But the movies show Samurai fighting almost exclusively with what’s actually a backup weapon.
The intention behind Age of Empires was to be recognizable, not acccurate.
The only thing “Steppe” about the Steppe Lancer is that it has the word in it’s name. For cavalry it’s absolutely necesary to have the range of a lance (spear type weapon). A knight with only a sword would use his horse to get to the battle field, step off the horse (as they often did in reality) and start the actual fighting. When you know something about actual warfare it’s ridiculous to see knights waving their swords in the air, like that would have any effect. Even if you could hit something, it would be extremely easy for the other side to dodge.
Simply adding a spear to every unit, which is used first when the unit gets into close combat, would make Age of Empires 2 more historically accurate.
bruh
Yes there is? It’s the middle term between Hussars and Paladins, just removing its range will make it perfectly fit that role. Being easier to make while having Cavalier damage can be rly useful in some situations, especially for raiding.
aka make every single civ have access to SL
aka make every unit become halbs
I should have added a comma after the no.
I want more unit variety not less.
Making SL a middle between Hussar and Paladin is boring.
We already have 2 such units.
I want units with different gameplay, not another tier of a unit we already have.
I’m not saying that AoE2 is realistic, or that it should be more realistic.
Just that if you’re going to argue for realism, you have a lot of work ahead of you.
It seems the word “Steppe” creates a lot of expectations and is just strange in general.
So maybe just remove that part and call it Lancer.
And yes, you could easily add it to most civs.
Don’t care about that, just want real choices with units.
It’s a good idea to make Cuman-10%-faster-moving only fit the knight line.
The +1 range pikeman is only trained in the castle, why the +1 range cavalry can be available in the stable? LOL
Look at the unit information of the Steppe Lancer, It already can be an UU, just give it an UU armor class and put it in the castle, done.
After nerf, I guess it’ll still be so useful that knight line become unnecessary.
Actually, I don’t think that Central Asia need a regional common unit.
American have no horse, so they get eagles.
(However only Incas get the slingers.)
Reflecting Southeast Asian history, so they get battle elephants.
(It’s still weird that Indian don’t have useful melee elephants but powerful camels. Imperial Camels are more suitable in Saracens.)
Lancer? Almost every civs in the world used it!
Even if lancers have to be introduced in the game, the most suitable civ for them should be Polish (Western Slavs), like the most suitable civ for +1 range pikeman is Swiss instead of Incas, whats I have regarded for a long time.
(Why did the warriors use such a long pike in the region without cavalries? That was very inconvenient. )
Exactly. Like, literally every country with cavalry. They were far more effective in larger battles than a mounted swordsman like a knight, since close range on horseback doesn’t really work as well in a large battle. It’s even why the AoE1 unit skin carries a spear. I cringe every time I see the ‘steppe’ added to the name. It was kind of an oversight on Ensemble’s part to not include them originally to be honest, given how warfare was actually fought in the Middle Ages. But not this overpowered, obviously
I think this was your problem. Onagers are very bad vs cav… If he mostly had Lancers, you should have had halbs. onangers, castles and tc in ranges wont help vs lancers… Halbs to help soak and deal damage, CA to fire at them while they do, hit and run, more pikes, mamelukes and pikes together would have been great. try it.
Steppe lancers run faster than CA, even kipchacks are completely helpless against them
That’s pretty cheap for a unit like that
This unit should be faster attacking light cav. Downside is no armor and slightly slower. Bright side is range and faster attack. Large number they will indeed beat Knights but can be easy countered with Archer. Just like how Arbalest kills Camels. Camels are basically stronger Knights when it comes to other mounted units. Takes less dam from Halbs even. But gets countered by Archers easily.
Ahh Didnt realize Steppe lancers ran faster than CA. I would still say Pikement/halbs have to be added to try to mitigate them by causing massive anti cav damage when then can get a hit in. Gonna go play as cumans today non stop to try and see if i get countered and will try to remember to post here the results 
Throw longbows in there too 
Even Viper couldn’t beat SL with unlimited 2-handed swordsmen.
Playing the Malay and good fishing, he couldn’t persist in a very long game.
T90 Official did a game against Cumans where he rushed the other side.
Who rushed for eco.
And without defences at the point T90 came in with 10 (not sure on the number) archers, he was able to win.
So there’s a single way in which Cumans can be defeated.
But a Cuman player can easily account for this.
Play it safe with your scout and wall.
Then he can get the second town centre out and will have enough time to react if attacked.
Once he reaches castle age he can start winning with SL.
He didnt make enough pikemen i dont think. ( I did watch his video) I just got crushed with enemy using pikemen, arbelests and berserkers. I was outnumbered 2 to 1 but pikemen and arbs did wonders vs my 25 lancers… there is counters… you must use pikes/halbs for one, 2, use archers…
I don’t think he got the SL right. SL kills low HP units before they reach to hit them. Being slow and having a low attack rate makes things even worse. You need some beefy units to reach them before they die or have ranged units to damage them while they are busy with the melee units.
SL is op atm there is no denying it but that doesn’t mean they are invincible. He needed massed Arb and some halbs in front to protect if SL charge into the Arbs. Sure SL can kill the halbs first but they will take damage from Arbs while doing that which is better than just loosing units. Scorps could also do the ranged damage as SL didn’t have too much mobility on Oasis.
Note: Viper is the best AoE player, i am just 1700HD and SL needs to be nerfed.
His opponent was weak if I remember. Didn’t walled and kept eye for defenses