As of now, Solingen Steel is close to useless, as it merely buffs HP by 20% (600 → 720) and attack by 22% (46 → 56) . The speed penalty remains 33.7% (5.85 → 4.37).
Congrats, you now spent 4 cards on exclusively one unit (not counting unique church card which is required for these stats. Tilly’s discipline also affects skirms etc. but arguably makes everything worse due to the cost penalty) that is already very niche, now lame af (in a literal sense) and still gets countered hard by every other heavy infantry that isn’t a pikeman, especially Samurai. Might as well just make Landsknecht instead, they win by every metric aside from siege and splash damage. I’d rather take 600HP/46 attack doppels with 5.85 speed, but either way, they die like flies and cost 220 res.
Germany severely lacks in the heavy infantry department, 4 mercenary camps and spamming giant cancers/landsknecht isnt really a solution for Treaty/FFA. So I suggest to either:
- Reduce the speed penalty to 15-20% to better reflect the trade off
- Remove the speed penalty and HP/Attack buff altogether and give them 40% melee resistance instead. That would make them about equal to Samurai (less attack, higher melee resistance) and an absolutely devastating threat to cavalry, as is their niche.
- Make it similar to the Uhlan card (Lipzanner Cavalry) that gives another 15/15 buff in industrial with no speed penalty.