I like the basic idea a lot. Please keep in mind that:
All 3 SL civs (as well as potentially Turks) receive camels. So loss of knights is not that scary. You can use camels for defense, SL for offense. Or a mix for best results.
SLs are a bit overpriced right now for their stats. They are too low on HP and too low on pierce armor, that they don’t compare well against LC or knights. My feel is that they need a minimum of 0/2 armor, and either increase HP or decrease price. They are still a melee unit with 1 range, they need enough HP to get close.
Idea was for a 3-unit imperial army, Hussuars as meat shield, followed by SL, followed by Cav Archers or Kipchaks. You hit, and by the time Hussars are dying, you pull back both SL and Cav Archers. This combo is promising and balances need for food/wook/gold, with all 3 units being faster than knights for hit-and-run. But the SL part of the equation is too weak to survive even for a little, so people just went with the other 2 units. Notice that for both cumans (faster production) and Tatars (more pierce) all 3 units receive the bonus together.
Cumans getting imperial SL instead of Paladin would actually help them, once SL is slightly buffed. They have cheaper cav archers (Kipchacks) so for the gold of one paladin you can produce a trio of hussar/SL/Kipchak. Would you rather have 40 paladins or 30 of these trios?
Having some differences between civs gives variety to the game, as you need to adapt your army to counter your opponent.
Brilliant idea overall.
I am strongly against any plans to replace knight-line units with steppe lancers, unless steppe lancer gets buffed so much, that I could use it with similar efficiency. I am not interested in losing all-around effective power unit for some crappy replacement.
And the only way to do that, is to make the Steppe Lancer into a reskinned Knight, which goes againnst the Regional Unit design philosophy of the game, and is pointless anyway.
Maybe there is a way how to buff steppe lancers while keeping +1 range so that they are reasonably powerful, but not overpowered. Maybe limit stacking, so that they could use their range, but not abuse it to silly extent. This way people would use them more.
Anyway, having better steppe lancers is no reason to remove knights just because some people don’t like knights. Seeing more steppe lancers in game should come from people preferring to use them in certain situations, not from being unable to train knights.
The big problem with these “special” units is balance. Eagles for example are still not really balanced in 1v1. Indians with their special camels has been incredibly OP at the start. Now after tons of nerfs in 1v1 they kinda suck (no arbs, no knights), while in TG STILL being incredibly strong, probably even OP.
Elephants are useless in 1v1 and in TG they didnt play role until khmer received an eco bonus. Suddenly Khmer is broken, because of the access to elephants and a good eco.
Than take Condotierri, incredibly OP at the start, now not really relevant anymore.+
The point im trying to make here is not a simple “TOO MUCH WORK” as OP likes to call these arguments, but its just so incredibly hard to get to a point where these units are balance. Within 1v1, within TGs and within the civs that have them itself.
In theory im not against the idea, since with 35 civs, these could really use some more diversity. But the more of these things we introduce, the harder the balance is. And even little buffs/nerfs can suddenly make something broken or useless.
I do agree that there are many posts here that show an attitude problem. I have to agree with Parthnan - there are so many people in this thread that are avoiding factual discussion on an ongoing basis based on illogical/strawman/emotional reasons. That includes Parthnan himself in some cases, however.
Anyway, my thoughts.
Steppe Lancers are only used as a raiding unit, and typically not ever as part of a serious army composition. They’re barely better than LC, and are still being thrown away if you’re raiding with them which typically means throwing away 200 + gold instead of using LC which will raid almost equally. Not the same, but almost.
Knights are region specific - just currently all but Meso. I fully disagree with making Knights exclusive, though - why? Only for Steppe Lancers could I see that being a thing.
Not really. Eagle Warriors function fine without being a “knight”. Steppe Lancers don’t have to be Knights to work. They need to be a strong option to work. Buffing their unique features, like they used to have, would be better - i.e. shrink the hitbox slightly again, and increase attack rate. Make their unique advantage of being stronger in numbers more valuable, making them stronger en-masse than the Knight line.
Base HP should be between Knight and LC IMO, but that’s secondary to removing some of the early debuffs done to the Lancer.
If we accomplish this (returning their unique strength of old, but in a balanced way) then we can have the discussion of whether or not it would make sense to remove Knights from the Khans civs. Right now they’re not very unique. They’re weaker Knights (or slightly better LC, take your pick) that aren’t really strong in groups, and can take out villagers a little better. That would also give their UUs a lot more value - they’re already better than Knights in their own ways. Now, instead of overlap, they’d have a unique but strong unit choice in the Steppe Lancer, and then also the Keshik/Leitis (and to a lesser extent, Kipchak).
if you’re buffing them to fulfill a similar role as the knight do you think the cost is going to remain the same as it is now?
right now a castle age steppe lancer attacks almost 33% slower then a knight (1.8 vs 2.3), 1 less attack, has 2 less melee armor and 1 less pierce armor, and more importantly, 40 less health.
without significant changes, it couldn’t fill the same role as the knight currently does.
I have not played with them much, not done any tests, so I do not have great info on how they work. However I think at the current cost and stats, making them extremely stackable would make them viable. I could be completely wrong, but that would make them strong in mass and weak individually like the description of them implies.
SEA civs did not lose the Knight when they got Battle Elephants, and both units are Heavy Cavalry.
Why should Steppe civs lose Knights to replace them with Medium Cavalry then?
Also, let us not make SLs into just reskinned Knights. SLs are fine, just ask Viper.
Yes, I did play with them all the time then. However then the had better stats in every way plus they were cheaper. Put them somewhere in between and I think they would be viable. You couldn’t fight equal numbers of knights, still die to camels and halbs, and still weak vs archers, and still great at raising, however if they get massed, then they could become interesting again. Perhaps
Hmmm… I guess they would be significantly worse than knights. Perhaps at a pierce armor, but then it is really getting into quite a significant rework. They should probably have more piece armor to raid anyway though. Then they would need to cost more, then they end up like you say as basically a different Knight 11
How about just reverting the SL attack speed to the original. Makes the game a glass Canon with their extra range they can really melt stuff again but they also die fast to archers. It they are still not good enough then we reduce the food cost to mass them easier.
Worse meat shield but can annihilate stuff fast in some situations.
Especially the pierce armor should stay low to allow the step lancer be countered by massed archers easier than a similar stack of knights since step lancer deal better against pikes since they nuke them so fast (after this attack change again). If you buff SL tankiness and damage they propably dominate again.
Tatars have keshik, Mongols buffed light cav, both got a bonus to SL, removing knights is a great change togethee with this buff in my opinion.
