Steppe Lancer civilizations should lose Knights

slower damage I’ll give you.
Health? Not for mongols. They get more health.

In castle age? Yes. In imp? Tatars come out the same. (Silk armor means no armor loss).

Let me put this in perspective.
Mongol knight vs mongol changed steppe lancer.
1 less attack. 1/1 less armor castle, 0/1 less armor imp.
Slower attack.
More health for steppe lancer.
More Los and faster. +1 range.
Train faster and cost less.

This is pure buff as is.

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Civ bonuses might have to be tweaked again. That wouldn’t be a big deal IMO - they tweaked them a few times already trying to help SL. They’re still not really used, even Mongol ones.

Silk armor would mean 2/2, since they don’t get Imperial Steppe Lancer in Parthnan’s numbers. Less than Paladin.

I’m thinking speed should be 1.4 instead of 1.45, because Cuman SL would be faster than Camels. That would be…uhm; interesting.

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but tatars don’t get paladins. Thry lose cavalier.

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So yes. If this were to stand as he puts it now, I would say the cost would absolutely need to be adjusted

True on Tatars. They don’t have great late-game Cavalry anyway; they’re definitely a CA civ.

My hypothetical stats.

Stats:
Cost: 70F 55G
TT: 24 seconds (Cuman Steppe Husbandry would have to be rethought)
Fire rate: 2.3s (unchanged, 20% slower than Knight)

Steppe Lancer (Cheaper faster Knight with 1 range)
HP: 80 (up from 60, 100 with bloodlines, Mongol bonus rethought for SL)
Atk: 9
A/PA: 1/1 (up from 0/1) (1/2 for Tatars)
Speed: 1.40 vs (Knight’s 1.35)

Elite Steppe Lancer (Cheaper faster Cavalier with 1 range)
HP: 95 (up from 80, 115 with bloodlines)
Atk: 11
A/PA: 2/1 (up from 0/1) (2/2 for Tatars)
Speed:1.40

Imperial Steppe Lancer (Cumans ONLY)
HP: 120 (140 with bloodlines)
Atk: 13
A/PA: 2/2
Speed:1.40 (tied with Camels with 15% bonus)

Easier to mass? Hard to tell. 70 food is a lot. Only 10 less resources for an arguably inferior unit, unless you can get the numbers going. Easier to counter with Fuedal pressure, if you take a small eco lead Knights will beat them out.

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It is, by a lot. Units that stack are very hard to hit by Melee units, and can focus down enemies very fast.

At release, SLs were the best unit in the game, bar none.

I’m glad you point this out because a cuman could drop forward stables and with conscription pump out 140 health 2/2 fully 13 attack fully upgraded heavy cavalry in 9 seconds.

That would be a nightmare to face.

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But the stackability was neutered (edit: Mat’s right, poor word choice. Highly reduced), along with many other stats such as fire rate. You’d think 9 attack SL, with less HP than Knights, would do well against Leitis that do +5 damage (faster, as well) against them with Castle Age armor techs?

Leitis would shred them, even with that range. I’d actually like to edit their stats and do a scenario editor test. Gotta learn how to do that.

Agreed. That would be terrifying. It’d be worse than Goth post-imp spam.

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reduced? Yes. Neutered? No. They still stack.

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I largely agree with your proposed changes, as it clears up many of the concerns.

Reducing the speed, increasing the cost, and changss to the mongols and cumans bonus makes me have a lot less issues with it.

Imagine a team game with hun allies. Shudder.

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I personally can’t say based on stats exactly how good does unit perform in different battle situations. It would be good if @Parthnan and @Walkop would do data mods with their suggested changes to (elite) steppe lancer and test these in scenario editor in different situations (vs cavalry, infantry, archers, etc). Data mods can also be published, so that other people can try them and give feedback :slight_smile:

Also while making steppe lancer more useful sounds fun, I still can’t understand, why does it mean, that knight-line needs to be removed for it. In any case steppe lancer will be quite different from knight-line, so both type of units could remain. Similarly to how some civs have both knight-line and battle elephants.

For example maybe it would be smart for player to first train knights and then add steppe lancers, so he could avoid steppe lancers individual weakness, while later taking advantage from their strength when massed?

The offensive stats are the same as current SL which struggle to kill high HP units or 2 melee armor units

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I agree, I was always ready to bump it , but went for the conservative side, because then some people can just cry ‘OPOPOP’ , ‘No changes, Wrong changes’ etc etc.

if you can find a way to make it balanced while giving it the same attack as knight/cavalier/paladin, and keeping the initial cost you wanted, feel free to go ahead.

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let’s look at the comparison. for this i’ll be using strictly the knight and steppe lancer as he set them up.

Knight has higher attack (10 vs 9)
Knight therefore has better DPS (5.55 (10/1.8) vs 3.91 (9/2.3)) (6.67 with upgrades vs 4.78 with upgrades) (so the SL is doing 70% of the dps of a knight, or 71.6% with upgrades)
Knight has faster attack speed (1.8 vs 2.3)
Knight has better HP (100 vs 80)
Knight has better overall armor (2/2 vs 1/1)
Knight has better food cost (60 vs 70)
Steppe Lancer has better mobility (1.45 vs 1.35)
Steppe Lancer has better range (2 vs 1)
Steppe Lancer has better Line of Sight (5 vs 4)
Steppe Lancer has better creation time (24 vs 30)
Steppe Lancer has better Gold Cost (45 vs 75)
Steppe Lancers stack better as well

Here’s the thing though. as you go up to Elite and Imperial Lancer, those things the knight are better at?
get better and better for the Steppe Lancer, except the health
the 1/1 armor difference becomes a paltry 0/1.
the 1 attack difference remains the same, but 1 from 9 to 10 is a 11% difference. 1 from 13 to 14 is less then a 8% difference. not only that, but the attack speed of the paladin gets worse (goes up to 1.9) while the lancer stays the same. DPS? Paladin w/o upgrades (7.36 vs 5.65 or SL doing 77% of the paladins DPS) with upgrades? (9.5 dps vs 7.4 dps, or the SL doing 78% of the paladins DPS)
and that food cost? a little prohibitive in the Castle age. but 70 food in the imperial age? non issue.

but what really kicks it into higher gear is the comparisons based on what he wants further.
Parthnan wants this to replace the Knight Line, a Heavy Cavalry unit. yet despite replacing the Heavy Cavalry, and gaining Heavy cavalry benefits (Higher attack, health, armor) he’s still retaining the benefits of the Light Cavalry (training speed, cost, Speed).

on top of this. well let me just put it in perspective in the Imp Age.
Compare a Mongol Cavalier to his buffed Mongol Elite Steppe Lancer
Cavalier has 12 attack, 1.8 attack speed, 2/2 base armor, 1.35 movement and 140 HP
his steppe lancer has 11 attack, 2.3 attack speed, 2/1 base armor, 1.45 movement speed, and between 144 health and 150 health depending on how the math works, and 1 range. it costs 10 more food and 30 less gold, and trains 6 seconds faster.
I don’t feel this is okay at all.
Tatars?
115 health vs 140 health, and no loss in armor. this i’m fine with.

Cumans? well the big red flag for the cumans is he wants them to retain the faster training speed bonus from the Cumans unique Tech. you think Goth Spam is bad? wait till you have a cumans player spamming out 1.67 speed, 17 attack, 1 range, 5/6 armor, 140 health, units that only cost 45 gold in 9 seconds each. you can’t even spam halbs fast enough to keep up with that.

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Would be that bad to increase the TT of the imperial SL? Reducing the cost of the upgrade, basically you ask the cuman player to research both the UT and the imperial upgrade to have the desired TT (desired to avoid to be OP)

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I’m doing these based on what Parthnan wants, to show why i think its a bad idea. but its not just the Cuman one i have issue with. look at the Mongol one.

10 more food, 30 less gold, 6 seconds faster, 1 less pierce armor, 1 more range, less dmg/dps, but more health, and speed.

the tatar one i have less issue with

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Big problem with steppe lancers is, that their stacking combined with the +1 range makes it incredibly hard to judge the unit by pure “stats”.

If looked at the stats before DE and was like " ya this unit is garbage probably". No good pierce armour, not much HP/attack, congratz it has range but no attack boni like Kamayuk.
Only with the first video by ZeroEmpires i began to question the unit. And with time I noticed how incredibly wrong I was.

So if I look at it the stats dont look okay, but they might still be no answer to xbow (making cumans pretty much impossible to fight xbow/early imp arbas) or might be suddenly very strong again.

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That’s right. This is why it is necessary to create and test data mod with suggested steppe lancer changes

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