If you improve SL Elite upgrade you would see them more in castle age.
But they will also overshadow the Keshik and Cavalier units.
Changes of cost will do nothing, if they will have no role.
They are too expensive to be raiders, and Hussars always will be cheaper (because they are trash)
They are too fragile to be frontliners as knight-line.
They arent as fast with killing raiding units as Camels.
SL should be better in something in comparison to the standard 3 units. Not much better, but in something, to give players reason to make them in some cases.
I sugested give them some Cav armour and slight bonus vs infantry (or just spears) - to make them as good vs pikes as knights, for smaller price.
2 Likes
3 civilizations have SL right now, Tartars is just one of them (the one that has Keshik).
Despite of that nothing needs to be overshadowed. As I stated those unit’s have their
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And those unique usage and abilities don’t matter in the scope of a regular game. You “can” go for steppes and raid. But isn’t getting the infrastructure of your base towards knights better?
Let’s look at an eco designed to run 2 Stables non-stop. (The slashes denote each upgrade changing the requirements).
Steppe Lancer:
19/16/15 Farmers
10/9/8 Gold Miners
Knight:
13/11/10 Farmers
14/12/10 Gold Miners
Hussar:
17/15/14 Farmers
2 Stable Steppe Lancers requires 29/25/23 villagers to keep constant production
2 Stable Knights requires 27/23/20 villagers.
Steppe Lancers actually require MORE infrastructure than Knights. And this isn’t counting the roughly 7/6/5 - 13/11/10 Farms required to keep 1 or 2 TCs running. Mix this in with the fact that before Elite, Steppes produce at 26 seconds, versus a Knights 30. Steppes lose to Knights a bit more than the 4s production rate can make up for.
Using this website for my numbers: https://aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com/villagers-required.html
The costs across the board are simply put: cheaper for the heavier, and more versatile unit. The Knight Wins. This if anything is a big reason why the Steppe Lancer doesn’t see any real amounts of play. Not even mentioning that you technically need more woodcutters to support the higher farm count on Steppes as well.
So the harder to use, more narrow unit, is harder to sustain production on while simultaneously also losing the heads up fight to the cheaper to produce unit with less weaknesses. Why would I spend gold on this unit when I could just spam Knights. They aren’t so much weaker at what Steppes do that it’s a bad move. If anything, you will be able to take a higher variety of fights, or I could save my gold for Siege and spam Hussars, who are dramatically cheaper in infrastructure, and still do that raiding, onager sniping, reinforcement picking job that Steppes sort of do.
4 Likes
Perhaps the SL could be saved if it had no Food cost, and cost only Gold.
Reverse-trash?
THis is new thing, now units witch cost only gold are only monk-like.
I think it could be OP in Team Games - just make trade and spam Lancers.
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Paladins are also OP in Team Games, so I do not think it would that big of a deal.
SLs would also need tohave their Gold price increased, but it would also give them an unique function, as a non-Trash raider that can be made alongside mass Trash, with whatever Gold you still have trickling in, in some way or another (Relics, Trade…).
But you still have to have food incom, and, what follows, wood incom. So You have to have balanced Eco. If this will cost only gold, so you can set your eco only for this.
Cool website. At the point of the game you mentioned I would assume most players would have wheelbarrow.
Screenshot from https://aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com/villagers-required.html
Yeah, at that point, if you assume that upgrade it’s still more infrastructure for the Steppe Lancer than it is a Knight. That’s not right IMO.
A lot of players would upgrade Gold Mining which would end up having:
25 vills for 2 stable production of SLs
23 vills for 2 stable production of Knights
Because of unit time production you would make
5 Steppe Lancers for every 4 Knights.
Based on research made by sotl (1:21):
for generic SL vs generic Knight in castle age
Knights win the fight with about 47% HP left - pretty much half (if resources spent are equal).
I would love to see SL in a better position.
Step by Steppe we can get to the equilibrium.
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Which would also free us to remove Knight-line from Mongols and Tatars especially. Considering these two lines are so similar. We can givte the cumans the Imperial SL as replacement for the Paladin.