Scouts don’t have 2 range, 1.7 speed baseline and bonus vs Villagers
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Actually they are sp weak, they are only good agaisnt vills, against othet units they are completely useless. It is ok if they are only for vills, but because they are good for vills then they must be cheaper and at least they must have more hp
You have proposed the idea of SL as a raiding specialist before. Am I right?
I like it.
How would you make them perform in overall combat? Maybe as strong as light cavalry - hussar, since they also would cost gold.
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i’d keep their stats right where they are right now except increase base PA to 2, lowering their cost to 60 f and 20 g. and then give them sufficient bonus against villagers that ESL could 2 shot them.
i’d also make the ESL upgrade cheaper.
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Then they would be broken again.
Even a 20 % cost reduction would make them OP with proper Micro.
They need a more specific role. Either make them situational or improve their raiding potential but further reduce their fight power.
No, they wouldn’t. they are still weak against archers. they can’t stack as well as they used to, and their attack rate is still 2.3
they still attack very slowly, can’t stack like they used to, and they will still get shredded by archers and the like.
there fighting power is already not very good to begin with. thus why i turned them into a pure raider.
they cost 20 more gold then a scout but get a bonus of beating villagers easier. they still do just as bad against everything else as before. yes, 1 PA ain’t going to do crap for them against archers.
With a discount of 20% they will trade cost-efficient against all archery type units except the Genoese Crossbowman. Against paladin + other melee units whith high armor you just need good micro to trade efficient then. There would only be a few UU wich could fight them, like the mameluke. But these are also hard to mass.
Therefor a 20% discount would make them OP.
are you sure of that? light cavalry stink vs archers and they cost zero gold.
you’d need insanely good micro to hit and run at one range, without getting hit back. I don’t think it’s possible. they have literally 0 melee armor baseline, meaning they take 14-16 damage a hit (or more) from paladins, depending on the civ.
in your opinion.
You just need to don’t allow your opponent to hit twice whilst you get en engagement where at least 2 times of your lancers hit the enemies than the other way around. If you achieve this 2 times your lancers will easily win the fight. Atm you would need to do so the whole battle to trade efficient.
You can destroy archers with light cavalry. It depends on the situation and micro. I just saw a video where vipers archers got swarmed by hussars and were demolished. It’s not that easy. But Steppe lancers have their range. They just need a good engagement against the archers and they can trade efficient already. With a 20 % discount archers will stand no chance.
So first you need twice the army your opponent has, and second you need to make sure you get in twice as many hits, all while using a unit with just 1 range, zero melee armor, and slower attack.
good luck with that. if people could do that right now, they would still be using lancers even at their current cost, because it would still trade very well against heavy cavalry.
so it’s extremely situational even with hussars, which move faster, cost less, etc.
lancers have extra range, which helps, but they move slower,attack slower, and cost more as well because gold is more valuable then food.
if steppe lancers just need a good engagement and they can trade cost efficiently as is vs archers, why don’t we see them used very much?
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Because Mangonels are so much more effective against archers and knight line is more versatile. So if you heavily invest in steppe lancers but your opponent goes for other melee units instead, they will become useless. Knight line can also fight other melee units very cost efficient even without much micro and can take much more arrowfire from defences.
If you just want to fight archers you can also still go for skirms, they trade even more efficient than lancers and cost no gold.
So in total: The lancer lacks a role in the game, that’s why he doesn’t see much play. In the current design lancers are either op or trash because of their extreme snowball effect. If the role isn’t changed significantly there will never be a “balanced” steppe lancer.
so? if its effective as you say it is, it would definitely see use, especially in todays archer heavy meta.
but you just told me that people with good micro could make them very effective against melee, which is it?
you get what you pay for.
no debate here. but your point was that they were already cost effective anyway. despite how good cheap skirms are we still see people use knights and mangonels against archers, if steppe lancers were as good as you say, they would see use.
no, they are just trash, i very rarely see steppe lancers get used. and thats why i want to give them a role. i change nothing about their combat potential and make them good raiders. i’m not adverse to adjusting the cost slightly, but i don’t think you’re right at all about them wrecking archers or melee units. especially seeing as you contradict yourself on the last point.
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I see and use it a lot. I don’t say you will win this fight every time, but when you hit a very good shot, your opponent may lose a whole army. Of course this often happens in late game with (siege) onagers because before against smaller groups off xbows other units are usually prefered.
In pro play you see this in almost every game.
Yes, atm you need insane micro and have to focus on this unit all the time, because your opponent just need one chance of you not paying attention and your army is gone. You also need a considerable high amount of lancers (about 15 units) to make it even possible to work. That’s a high investion if you can lose it that easy.
Also, speaking about compositions: Steppe lancers don’t have
good combinations with whilst they lose to almost every type of enemy composition if they can’t get to the backline. That’s why a high discount would make them OP, because you would be able to get enough of them out to use them against front- and backline at the same time. A unstoppable mono-type army. At moment this is thankfully not possible.
You wanted to reduce their cost to 60/20 which would be a 30 % decrease in total ressources, and more than 50 % in Gold. Whilst i think, raiding units shouldn’t be as gold intense as core units, this is a much too high cost reduction, which would indeed raise their fighting potential. I’m not sure, but with this they might also be able to fight knight line without their range, maybe barely, but this would make them just broken again. I think if i had to chose 16 knights or 27 steppe lancers i think i would take the lancers all the time.
I didn’t, it’s just a bit more complicated and i wanted to make it easy to understand. I just don’t wanted to write an epos about the steppe lancer.
He just needs a role then he can be fine. It’s just not possible that he can ever be a core unit in his current design, because he snowballs to hard and has the potential to overcome almost every other unit in the game.
Yeah, i rarely see the steppe lancer used at the pro level. the constant threads to buff the steppe lancer are very telling of how good the unit is.
not even viper can micro his steppe lancers without them getting hit. but nice try.
yes, and turn it into a pure raiding unit. the only thing the SL would be good against is villagers.
except the 27 steppe lancers would take longer to field and be worse against almost everything. i’ll take he knights.
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OK, then i misunderstood, i though you would just reduce their cost. But ok if you then reduce their attack by 3 or 4 and give them bonus against villagers they would be fine.
My way would include some utility: Increasing their range to stop house-quickwalling and shred more effective through defensive structures. This would make them unique, because other raiding units lack at least one oft it. Also giving the potential to destroy enemy forces which have not the numbers to fight them and higher speed to be able to run away from every fight you don’t want to take. This could be a unique role which would make them also viable in pro play.
If they are just good in fighting villagers your opponen just have to bring up his defences in time, which he should have done in castle age. Of course they would be annoying against forwarding, but actually, if your opponent has the opportunity to forward, your raids were just not effective and you might even not have the chance to dish out some lancers to stop it. So i don’t see them in higher ranked games when they are just good against vills, that’s why i considered a different way to specialise them. Also Raiding units need some utility to be viable.
Maybe a high attack(maybe 20) , long reload(around 4) and low health(about the same they have now) and melee armour combined with high speed of 1.6 or 1.7 and higher pa would give them a decent role of sniping high value units of the enemy like siege, monks and archers while having no chance in melee against anything but huscarls and vills. Would also be a good representation of light cav
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SL already have a role, they’re just too weak. You trade durability and pop-efficiency for numbers, speed and overwhelming offence. (Compared with the Knight line.)
Cuman ESL could be more cost-efficient than Paladin and it would be balanced by the unit being less pop-efficient.
Argueing SL have no role because they’re weak Knights is like arguing that HC have no role because they’re weak arbelests. I know some people hold that opinion (and want too make both HC and SL hyper-specialised), but I think SL (as well as HC) would be fine with a simple buff.
And Cumans could lose Paladin if their ESL was sufficiently buffed.
I’d be slightly worried about Mongol SL balance (since they are 30% stronger than the Cuman counterparts), but that’s something we can work around.
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Actually this was never argued. Steppe lancers have their insane snowball potential which makes it almost imossible to balance them to the knight line, when they should have a comparable role. That’s why they need to have a specification to ever be able to be balanced in some way. Of course you could take away the range for the steppe lancer to make it a weaker knight line… something in between scout and knight. But, do we need this?
With the range and stacking there will ever be this mass steppe lancer to overwhelm anything thing wich makes it impossible to balance.
Another role could be a specification against counter units. This would make them a viable part of the cuman, mongol and tatar composition, as a more mobile variant of the champion. Just give them bonus damage against spear line, also a bit against camels and they are actually fine. Just Mongols need to be a bit nerfed then.
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no one would ever use Militia line now. Probably knight wont be used for SL civs as well
But that’s part of the point. SL civs dont have great militia line.
I don’t think i agree on reducing the cost of the SL alongside all those buffs. But otherwise they sound reasonable if the price is kept the same initially. Can always be fine tuned
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