The original post has been edited to reflect general ideas up to here.
You’ve made the argument, legitimately, that Tatars die to a trash composition, specifically halb. You are wrong. That position is not reasonable. Pike isn’t even something you want to use against Tatars because they generally do not make heavy knight play a thing, it skips all their bonuses to do so. Your position is unreasonable. I’ve explained now in three separate occasions now why it’s unreasonable.
My quitting your discussion after not being able to make you understand how mistaken you are on the simple things is not personal. It’s a refusal to spend time trying to convince you of what you are missing. Taking said opportunity after I have left the discussion when I felt like there was no progress to be had to specifically lambast me on three counts in the same post, in which nothing in said post touches on anything to do with what you or I have said in the discussion is incredibly disrespectful, regardless if you start out your post with the words “with all due respect.”
If you had any amount of respect for me you’d have put literally anything in your post relating to what I had said on the matter as opposed to taking a parting shot because I didn’t want to argue with you anymore about your claim that Tatars can’t beat pikes and your best option is tossing Keshiks into them so you get some gold out of it.
I don’t care what your argument is for thinking this, but let me tell you, asserting I’m out of my depth in a passing comment as I’ve already left the thread, whilst saying something like this, is a special kind of special accusation. I don’t suppose you know what the tech “Parthian Tactics” does? Because the Tatars get it for free.
Well, to state pikes or halbs would do anything against tatars is for sure wrong.
Nevertheless it seems as they wouldn’t perform as they could. In my eyes Tatars are overall one of the best civs.
They have a smooth early game with the sheep bonus. They have a bonus to their archers and a very strong castle age UT for their scouts in castle but also a bonus to their boom.
They have one, if not the best cavalry UU.
Their lategame comp is insane, I’m still looking for a reasonable counter against cav archer/flaming camel/hussar. And they have arguebly the best trebs, maybe tied with britons.
Not mentioning the hill bonus, which can possibly decide games especially in certai maps.
So why do they have a negative winrate? It makes no sense. They have basically everything you want from a civ. I mean ok, they lost their 2 sheep in feudal which allowed them that insane 20 pop into 2 fu archery ranges build, but they should still be able to make insane builds even without these 2 sheep.
Am I missing something?
High population of meso civs, combined with a very, very poor militia line. Not having chain mail armor makes them especially bad against eagles and huskarl raids. I think that was the purpose of the steppe lancer change TBH, making them more efficient against eagles so that they can do anti-raiding, but the much higher food cost is a big problem still, and they don’t win as hard as you’d like for a unit that almost costs twice as many resources.
if the goths, the mayans, the incas, and the aztecs were all terrible and rare, Tatars wouldn’t be so low on the winrate chart as a result of having so many matches against them. They lose more games because they have a bad matchup against very popular civs. Same way the Mongols might have a really poor rate if the Berbers were insane and super popular.
Tatars are very cavalry oriented - more so than Franks yet more on the archer and light cav side. It’s like saying halbs do nothing against massed frank palladins. I don’t see any melee units that can help the tatars counter the pike line - they pretty much only have the cav archer line to take on that job alongside siege which can be sniped easily enough and any mixed army of pikes+anti archer and/or anti siege formations will do the job. The Keshik statement was a joke towards the Steppe Lancer line in how bad their hit count is and if it were improved their ability to lightly counter pikes without becoming a hard counter would be a big improvement.
The Franks don’t have Bracer. Or Parthian Tactics. Or Thumb ring. They have melee units to handle pikes because they don’t have a workable archer unit. The Tatars have a strong, if not oppressive archer option, through the entire game. That handles pikes.
You are looking to solve a problem the Tatars do not have and insisting that they have the problem anyway doesn’t make your argument look any better. Trying to upgrade a unit they have to solve a problem they don’t have isn’t doing them any favors.
The solution in the long run I support, the change that actually makes sense for what the unit is supposed to do for the Steppe Lancer is bonus damage against eagles. That’s it. That’s the only way you could even make it a considerable option for any of the civs that currently have it available to them, because none of them need a halb killer, because literally all of them have a strong CA option with Parthian Tactics which is the designed option of the civs to kill pikes, and also the core competency of those civs.
Nothing you’ve said to this point makes even a remote amount of sense on the subject of how the civs are actually played and I get tired of informing you of this in a different way each time until you get the point.
Something tells me you’re forgetting franks get Throwing Axemen and Hand Canoneers.
Even Goths can counter Teutons with hand canoneers.
The Tatars also get hand cannoneers. You’d never use them because their CA is vastly superior, but it’s there. Do you have a point? Another civ having an option to answer a unit doesn’t mean the Tatars have a problem with it if they don’t have that unit.
If the Saracens have the Mameluke and the Berbers don’t, do the Berbers not have an answer to Paladin?
Making their hitcount more like a kamayuks’ would also help them against eagle lines and any other unit as well. Fixing the patrol for all units to remove open battle field stacking is also a high priority item for all units not just Steppe Lancers.
Why are you deflecting?
Why are you arguing that the Tatars have problems with the Halb and using that as a justification for buffing the Steppe Lancer? Will you just save yourself the trouble and walk back the nonsense of trying to assert the Tatars have a halb problem so I can drop it? Because this is getting absurd.
I’ve had six posts of you telling me all the things you want to claim makes Tatars have a halb problem and all I want you to do is just say “yeah, you’re probably right, Tatar will play into CA as they always do, so halb will practically never be the problem for the Tatars.” Then I’ll let you muck about with your Steppe Lancer ideas.
Regular/small numbers of halbs are not a problem.
En-mass halbs are a problem.
Particularly when paired with anti archer and siege/anti-siege formations. We’re not talking about a trickle here.
The kind of numbers that push the archers to flee while the enemy pushes to the eco. Slaughtering any light cav on the way
Mass halb is not a serious concern for the Tatars. Not even remotely. There’s a reason Hera is known to say 80 farm hussar kills all. The more mobile army just raids you. Halbs are a terribly inefficient raiding unit. If you split off army to kill the hussars in your base, they kill what you leave on the front, if you don’t they kill your eco, and then clean up your army afterword.
Halb does not kill CA mass. Of any sort. With any composition. If your opponent is going CA you want to be into skirms or cav, not Halbs. This is not my opinion. This is basic level ■■■■ you’re arguing with.
My play style is a defensive eco type - hussars are not a threat to me so the army stays in full throttle.
And yes. Halbs alone have a hard time against cav archers - we are not talking about them alone.
I am well aware of my own weaknesses. Hussar raids are not one of them, cav archers are - but we’re not talking about Teutons’ struggle against archer civs here. Even Teutons can take down Tatars with enough halbs and anti archer formations. As for the defensive eco - as long as the army is self sufficent they can stay in the town center for a good hour for all I care only to bring 5 out to farm and a few out to chop wood if needed while the rest do their diligence.
(Response to deleted comment)
No, Teutons can take out Tatars if they completely seal out the raids and then push with siege.
Getting to that point is the problem, because the Tatars kick the everloving shit out of the Teutons in feudal, castle, and early imp. They literally do not get to the point where they get to play any version of the word “aggressive” until late imperial unless they do siege monk on arena or something of that nature. When it does come to the lategame, if the raids come through an overchop, or any bust, Teutons lose there too.
Mind you, at no point does anything about this have to do about the Halb. Win or lose, the Halb means literally nothing in the matchup, because the Tatars do not have trouble handling halb. End of story.
Again, we are not talking about halbs being alone, and anti archer formations include siege/skirms/or even mass scouts just to play chase for a few if massed well enough
We are talking about the halbs being an irrelevant part of the gameplan unless it’s part of a generic gameplan that works against any civ (which is halb siege) which makes the argument about Tatars being bad against it totally moot because most civs are bad against it. You aren’t pinpointing a unique problem. Siege halb flattens throwing axemen too, so what? Kamayuk? Carpet. Chu-Ko-Nu? Chu-ko-No. Where is your magical army that handles it, why is it the Mangudai, and why do you think that makes Tatars have a halb siege problem?
Tatars do not have a halb problem. They are significantly better off against halb than a lot of other civs.
The baseline is halbs - siege is just one option of a few anti archer formations to utilize alongside them.
They don’t have any melee units to counter even hun pikes even with 11 monks and 20 hand canoneers backing them. No matter what unit you pick, the halbs will flood and conquer
Your playstyle won’t work st even a halfway decent level. And not because it’s defensive.
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No, Teutons are among the worst choice against Tatars xD
Tatars have no problem against halbs, not even remotely. Please stop amphetising this.
True, good defense is an art and very hard to execute. And you can’t theorycraft it.
Ayway, if I look into the stats, it seems like Tatars perform very well against anti-archer civs like koreans and viets, but bad against cav civs like franks and berbers. Maybe that’s the reason. They have a nice start and insane lategame, but the transition is hard for them. Maybe not as hard as mongols, but still.
But this can’t be solved by the SL, as it only gets its power if massed.