Now where there is such a big problem with SL’s, the Konnik is easily overlooked by the majority. In fact i see with them the next balance issue. They can easily massed thanks to the Krepost in combination with Bulgarians stone discount on TC’s. In castle age they dominating the knight line by far. Konniks are cheaper than knights and starting at the same level as the Cavalier. In Imp Elite Konniks kill Paladins(frankish too) even without beeing felled due to their high attack rate. Counters like Helbs dont work either cause of their Infantry form. Monks arent that great either aggaint massed Konniks and their effect is with Heresy researched minimized due to the fact that Konniks survie conversion in their infantry form.
In my opinion, Konniks need a small nerf to be in line with other cav units. Therefore, I suggest that they need to be more expensive(60 food, 85 gold) than the knight line and should get doubbled training time in Kreposts. Another option to balance them would be to remove Bulgarians last cav armor upgrade.
I think creation time isn’t the issue here. They are ok. Problem is high HP. Their armor and stuffs is fine. Give Cavalry 90+20 HP and elite 110+20 HP. 130 HP for non elite is broken.
The most unbalanced unit in the game is Mamelukes. Ii is super fast unit. It is ranged cavalry with bonus vs other cavalry units. And at full upgade has 130 HP. Now, the Mamelukes may defeat all other cavalry units.
Actualy at Medieval age, the Mongol Mangudai was the best cavalry archer.
I suggest the Mamelukes to be returned to their equivalent
from Aoe 2 age of Kings and remove their bonus for fast firing from Aoe 2 Definitive Edition. So they will have only 80 HP at full upgrade, and remove Bloodlines from Saracines. But even so the Mamelukes are better than Konniks. From Aoe 2 Kings until now, the Mamelukes are only 55 food and 85 gold. SO if you want to increase the price of Konniks, it will need an equvalent increase of the price of Mamelukes to 70 food and 110 gold and they to have only 80 HP at full upgrade.
Other overpowered unit together with Mamelukes are Battle Elephant. They have enormous 250 HP and are fast as Champions and Halberdiers. But the Battle Elephant cost only 120 food and 70 gold and are faster to recruit than knights. Battle elephant may become at price 120 food and 110 gold.
And finally, about Konnik. It is at the same price as 1 Halberdier and 1 Champion. But Halberdier and Champion may defeat - Konnik and Dismounted Konnik-infantry. But Konnik need stones to be recruited. Also the Teutonic knight defeat the Konnik( and the Dismounted Konnik- infantry) in the game.The Mamelukes and all Elephants also may do that.
Hmm, first all the units you mentionned need more stones than Konniks, second Mamelukes are REALLY expensive (and did lose their original no delay bonus) and take bonus damage from anti-archer attacks, so you can use skirmisher if halb are too slow. Elephants are SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, die super fast to halb (wich are much easier to produce) and are free convertions for your monks. And for the end, teutonic knights are gods in melee combats, but chances are you have at least crossbowmen, who counter them 100% of the time. The konnik’s matter is that it’s like having the Cavalier and Two-handed swordsman upgrade before Castle age as soon as you have 350 stones.
Yes Mamelukes can be a very strong post imp unit, but they are extremely hard to get to. Zaelotry for +30 HP is the single most gold intensive unique tech in the game. We’re talking 1350f and 1300g just for elite upgrade + UT, not even counting bloodlines, husbandry and all the cav archer armor. To add to that, Mamelukes is also the single most expensive Unique Unit in terms of gold cost. Oh and did I mention that you have to mass them from castles and they have one of the slowest train time for a unique unit ?
They are much easier to counter than you make it to be. They get mowed down by camels on account of not having any bonus against them while taking 16 extra damage in return.
They take bonus damage from both halbs and skirms. They actually take more extra damage from halbs than any other Cavalry unit, dying in only 3 hits despite having 130 HP.
With only 0 base armor, they die to archers pretty fast, dying faster to arbalest than Hussars for example.
They were absolutely unusable in AoK with no bloodlines and Zaelotry, no one in their right mind would suggest reverting to that.
DE didn’t make them fire faster. Their firing delay was reduced from what it was on HD, but it’s still more than what it was in AoC where they were absolutely super easy to micro.
Mamelukes in DE are still weaker than what they were in AoC and if anything, they are underpowered, not overpowered.
Of course they would win because they are designed to kill cavalry. But it doesn’t show us how AoK mamelukes would be better against all counter they have right now, like arbalests, halbs, camels ect (all units buffed since AoC)
Why do I even bother making comprehensive list of the weaknesses of Mamelukes, how expensive they are to tech into and produce, how hard they are to mass, how easily countered they can be, when you’re not even going to address any of it.
Of course they would beat Cavalry, that’s what they are designed for. But with 80 HP, they would die like flies to any sort of ranged unit and camels, and their only hope to not die to halbs was to abuse their 0 fire delay, something they no longer have.
I really dont understand why this thread is shifting torwards a balance discussion about the Mamelukes. Yes they are a potential counter to the Konnik. Elephants and Teutonic Knights arent. Why should someone fight aggainst those slow untis with fast cav units?
Like in my initial post I dont want the Konnik to be weaker. Its a great unit to be clear. I just feel they are way to cheap and to easy to get, cause of the Krepost. Imho the Mameluke is fine cause you need a castle for it and its pretty expensive, too.
I did some testing in scenario editor with post-imperial saracens vs japanese. I microed saracens and standard difficulty DE AI controlled japanese.
10 elite mamelukes won vs 10 halberdiers without losing a single HP (easily done with stop micro).
10 elite mamelukes won vs 10 halberdiers + 10 elite skirmishers while having 7 elite mamelukes remaining.
10 elite mamelukes won vs 20 arbalesters while having 7 elite mamelukes remaining.
10 elite mamelukes won vs 10 camel riders while having 6 elite mamelukes remaining. I would have used elite camel riders, but couldn’t for japanese.
I have been under the impression, that elite mamelukes are by far the best unit in game and these tests proved that clearly. I didn’t even bother to test how ridiculously they melt cavalry, because everyone already knows it.
Perhaps being castle-restricted and requiring a lot of resources for upgrades limits their usage in multiplayer, but at least for post-imp fighting vs AI these units are wayyy too strong.
why do people even make comprehensive lists including costs if others are just going to ignore it.
If you fight 10 mamelukes with your 10 halbs in game, thats up to you. But USUALLY you dont have 1 barrack vs 1 castle but more like 5-10 barracks vs maybe 3-4 castles. And then hf microing your mamelukes back forever until you run out of gold while skirm/halb player can make siege. o.O
back to topic: I do agree that the Konnik is op and I do agree that nobodys talking about it because cumans are just broken. I also agree that they should be more expensive and maybe somewhat similar to a Bojar, since I kinda feel like, those units are quite comparable (somewhat countering their counter halb while still usually not going to fight it due to cost effectiveness)
You are the one, who is ignoring other people texts (at least partially). I specifically made 10 elite mamelukes vs 10 halberdiers + 10 elite skirmishers test to account for more cost effectiveness sensitive situation (not at pop limit).
But for completeness I made 20 elite mamelukes vs 40 halberdiers test. Pay attention to health situation of mamelukes and have fun counting dead halberdiers.
Mamelukes are extremely expensive, slow to produce, and have lots of associated upgrades, and can only be made in a castle.
Mamelukes may be powerful on paper, but you’re comparing an abstract number of them to a random number of other units in a vacuum.
Why 10? Why 10 mamelukes? Why 10 spears? It’s easier to make 10 spears in the time it takes to produce 1 Mameluke, because barracks cost less than castles and are created more than twice as fast. Why skirms? Skirms don’t counter mams. Why compare them in some abstract micro- contest? When is anybody going to send 40 halbs after mamelukes in an open field and not look?
There’s no reason, your numbers are random and don’t reflect any real situation. You’ve conducted an experiment which you designed to give your preferred outcome. That’s not very persuasive.
The same type of experiment could be conducted that would show how elephants are crazy strong, or how Teutonic Knights are the best infantry in the game. It willfully ignores the aspects that make the mameluke not as strong as you think.
There’s a whole game to be played before mamelukes ever come into the picture.
Your 20 mamelukes in your example cost you 3995 wood 3295 gold and a castle to train and upgrade, and 16:40 to train (completely ignoring the time it takes to actually get upgrades). Plenty of games are ended before even hitting the 16:40 mark, let a lone in the ridiculous amount of time it takes to mass mamelukes.
In the time it took you to get mamelukes, your enemy had a wonder victory.
I know about needing a lot of resources for training/upgrading and castles. Those limitations are heavy indeed. Mamelukes are quick to train though if you have castles.
10 vs 10 are simply nice round numbers and applicable in maxed-pop situations. 20 vs 40 are also nice round numbers and applicable in cost-effectiveness sensitive situations. I included halberdiers, skirmishers and arbalesters in tests because they were mentioned as more or less counters before. Haha, lazy human or AI might indeed manage his halbs like that
If I would have tried to get preferred outcome I would have tested 10 elite mamelukes vs 10 paladins. Like you saw, I instead tested them against counters mentioned in this topic. I wanted to get honest results.
You seem to only consider humans vs humans standard game from dark age situation. There are also many other ways how to play this game and imperial age start with castles is frequent in scenarios. If I do turtle and boom strategy vs AIs I may very well mass elite mamelukes. Although I admit, that I usually ignore castle-locked units, because it is hard to mass-produce them, especially on the offensive (need forward castles).
It may seem, that I am a fan of mamelukes. Actually I dislike this unit, because based on my tests it is extremely hard to fight against them when they are managed by AI because of AIs unlimited micro. AI can indeed micro like I showed in my last screenshot. Halberdiers, arbalesters, heavy cavalry - nothing really works well against them. Only heavy camel riders are a good choice, but they are not available to every civilization. I couldn’t find any way how to beat them as spanish in scenario editor in comparable numbers.
Also: I don’t like, that this mameluke discussion is mingled into konnik topic, but what can I do, when it was already started and I have things to say?
