If thry are throwing that many hussar at your siege that 10 or 15 tk won’t defend them, what is the rest of your army doing during this time?
2 Likes
so by my math - shotels have 22 attack, 50 health, and 3 armor fully upgraded.
champs have 17 attack, 4 armor, and 70 health fully upgraded.
so champs do 14 damage (17-3) requiring 4 hits (4 * 14 = 56 damage) to kill a shotel.
a shotel does 18 damage (22-4) requiring 4 hits (4 * 18 = 72 damage) to kill a champion.
they both have the same attack speed, so who kills who comes down to who gets in the first attack.
on one hand champions are made at a barracks and thus much cheaper production.
on the other hand shotels train in just 8 seconds base, which is even faster post conscription and royal heirs, being just 3 seconds. that means a single castle accounts for 5 barracks worth of production.
still that said, i’d rather take the less risky approach and just use shotels as a raiding unit, or maybe against archers since they can close the gap quickly.
3 Likes
And they still do 
Samurai and berserks absolutely slaughter other infantry, but karambits have always been awful in straight up fights against longswords so I’m not sure where you’re construing that.
Oh no, longswords cost a little less food! How will my samurai ever win??
This isn’t serious, right? The units you mentioned are infinitely more cost effective than longswords. They’re stronger and more resilient and can take out outnumbering groups of longswords if you actually committ to using them. This isn’t even mentioning how the civs that have the units you listed have amazing archers, which are way cheaper and safer to use anyways lol
Oh, and this is to say nothing of teutonic knights they can take on like double or triple their numbers in longswords and still push forward. It’s actually ridiculous how strong they are - all of these civs have amazing economies and should have no issue affording these units btw. Vikings are top 5 on land maps because of their eco, teutons have virtually half cost farms, aztecs have their collection bonus, japanese have tanky fishing ships and half cost dropoff sites…
That would suck and disbalance how strong infantry unique units could be 
you’d have to then nerf the infantry unique units to balance them because it’d be way too easy to just go full berserks in castle age and slaughter everything since they cost nothing
This is kinda subversive, castle age berserks are easily the vikings strongest food unit in that age since their knights are so awful. After chieftans the only thing that counters them is archers, and vikings have amazing range to match that. Why do you arbitrarily have to be in imp to justify using them? They’re faster than swordsmen, can chase down skirms better, have amazing attack and hp, can kill knights after chieftans which you’re going to get if you’re committing to them, regenerate… Massive understatement to say they’re weak in castle age. Same for woads, they’re amazing at raiding
There’s a lot of things you can’t do in 1v1 simply because if you could then TGs would be rape fests… Imagine we could spam big blobs of FU battle or war eles in 1v1? How bad would they be in TGs?
So i think i agree with most of the reasoning behind these except:
Teutons have amazing champs and paladins the TK can fulfil its unique role as is.
Condos with pavis will already be much better than they currently are, i would wait and see how they pan out before adding the additional PA, but i think i might support additional damage more.
The res changes might be a bit high on most of them , we could swing from tough matchups to situationally OP (example goths vs jap, samurai will slaughter goths only real option even faster)
A 10 res swing is pretty big when compared to opposing troops, shotels aren’t awful, neither are samurai, they just have specific tasks… and bad pathfinding combined with archer stacking creates a skew game balance. But when people try to use infantry to fight CA they’re just doing it wrong anyway… (I’ve seen this a few times when players try to use samurai)
Champions are already very situational. Shotels and Samurais are even more situational that’s the reason I’d make their cost closer to the Militia-line and Japanese already destroy Goths like other Infantry civs.
Condotteiro is the terrible version of the Champion:
- They are super expensive
- Very easily die to archers
- They would be good against Eagles but Italians would lose Champions. Condotteiri should be balanced for the Italians first
- MAYBE Pavise should give Condotteiri +1/2 but +1/1 for Genbows and Archers
Why are you comparing everything to champions?
TK, Shotels, and Condos are NOT champion substitutes.
TK are great defensive anti melee units.
Shotels are raiders pure and simple.
Condos are anti gunpowder units.
Even a generic unit, the Eagle Warrior have more identifies than Shotel Warrior but Shotel Warriors die from basically everything while Eagle Warriors are super cheap (dont need a big economy), faster than shotels and have the same raiding ability especially with unique techs + pierce armor
90% of the civs can use mobility or range against the super situational, slow teutonic knights
There is no point making anti infantry against italians so this unit makes zero sense as a 100% gunpowder counter
Yeah but one belongs to a civ with lots of options available to them, and one belongs to 3 civs with not a lot of options.
also one costs far more gold then the other. and Elite Shotels 2 shot villagers.
maybe so, but like i said, they make great units for siege unit defense, or defending a choke point to your base.
except the condo is clearly more of a team game unit. i do agree that it should probably have been designed with something else in mind seeing as Italians rarely use Infantry by design, but you have to talk to the devs about that one.
1 Like
yes i agree they are good on closed maps but too situational in opened maps
and also italians dont have halbs so gunpowder against them makem 0 sense and nobody makes infantry and hand cannons in team games. thats the main reason why they should be reworked
Yeah well good luck getting them buffed, Teutons are already a top 5-10 civ as is, can you imagine how good they would be if TK wasn’t situational? if you buffed every infantry UU to be not situational, you’d have to completely re-balance almost every infantry civ.
yeah well like i said, talk to the devs about that. frankly i doubt they get redesigned but that’s your crusade to fight.
1 Like
In practice I agree with all these proposals, but notice that every civ you are mentioning, with the exception of Italians, does not need a buff. And for italians the priorities are others (free archer armors + reduced TT of genoese xbow?).
However every listed change makes really sense to me
I like the idea of an Italian champion tbh. The anti eagle bonus could be much higher. Notice that the other Italian UU is never used, and, even if the TT will be fixed, you will never go GCs vs mesos… so al least they could go condos vs meso…
1 Like
Italians
- Archers (except) skirmishers +1 pierce armor in the Feudal Age
- Genoese Crossbowman’s training time reduced to 16(13) seconds
- Lose Champion
- Condotteiro buff
I’ve already discussed Condotteiri and Italian Champions. I think their Archers should have +1 free pierce armor. It gives them a strong military bonus throughout ages and a stronger lategame. I think with free armor they still would be the different version of Vietnamese while +1 pierce armor would make a difference. Genbow is a counter unit so they need much less training time especially in the lategame when Italians don’t have Halbs
2 Likes
They can’t kill knights, and I also don’t see how 9 attack and 61hp is amazing.
Pocket Vikings still go knights even if they’re one of the worst because Vikings can train more than most civs with their eco
With 10 attack, they will beat champs. They die to archers? So does every non eagle/huskarl infantry unit. 1 pierce doesn’t really make much effect, champs and condos die to same amount of arb shots. Condos are better vs arbs because of their speed.
Reducing their food cost is better, keeping in line with their mercenary theme
1 Like
These buffs are fine. Free archer armors is probably more useful in the early stages, but also +1 PA is very meaningful
I would say that the comparison makes sense.
Shotels, however, are not just raiding units imo. They are the best unit in the game to provide immediate support. If you are under attack for instance, you can spam them. The problem with them is the high cost combined with their fragility.
TKs are a bit underwhelming imo, despite they could work vs some civs like Franks or Goths. However, similarly to Ethiopians, Teutons do not need any buff, so it is less urgent (compared, for instance to a UU buff for Portuguese).
Because of this condos are one of the worst designed units in terms of a role (in addition of being the most misspelled unit in the game 11).
The idea of making them useful at least for italians makes senses to me, and to do that you can just exploit the Italian UTs:
- condos need an attack boost in general, at least +1, but if replacing champs they need a pretty large bonus vs eagles (considering that they have terrible attack). This would affect all the condos…
- pavise would make their stats closer to an imperial age unit
- silk road should adjust the cost of the condo to make it similar to champions (no more than 25g since it has to perform the trash-killer role of the champion).
This way you also completely avoid the problem of a potential fast imp into condos for italians, since to have a decent condo you need to research 2 techs from a castle.
If you do this, you can remove the champion from italians: this would nerf them in castle age vs mesos (but they already suck vs mesos), but would give them (arguably) a better version of the champion in imp (after researching the UTs).
I guess that the issue is that, for Italians only, it is good if condos are a champ replacement (so remove champs to italians). In this moment condos are totally useless, so I guess that, if at least one civ has a reason to make them, is fine. This would require a cost/stats modification for the italian one only (via UTs)
1 Like