i think its been established that their extra melee armor doesnt do much against their main counters
pikes and camels do anywhere from 29 to 42 dmg to cavalry so having an extra 4 melee armor doesnt do anything
compare in contrast the cataphract who have 16 bonus damage resistance, deals much better against pikes and camels
the boyar would benefit greatly from being more cataphract like and having some similar traits like bonus armor resistance and trample attack,
either that or something completely new, the game doesnt have a really high pierce armor cavalry that isnt an elephant, so this could be a new niche for the boyar
The slavs a have huge bonus in terms of farming. That allows them to get out more Boyars out faster. Their infantry in large numbers are deadly thanks to Druzhina. Plus, they have cheaper siege. Most of your army will infantry at any rate. Perhaps Slavs may need a buff. But I’m not sure.
Byzantines don’t have an economy bonus. Other than the Imperial Age being cheaper, which saves them some resources.
On topic not sure if boyar needs tweaks or not. It certainly isn’t a popular unique unit, but slavs are still a solid civ regardless and most games are ending before uu hits the field
Compared to other mounted units and UU’s, the price for what it offers is not worth going boyars.
Then again stop overrating slav farm bonus, 55 farmers of any average civ are equal to 50 farmers from slavs, such a giant bonus, i have heard stories about pro’s collecting 30k food from 5 farms in 5 mins with slav farms, come on just please stop pretending that bonus is huge.
Also druzhina is not something special, there are other civs with stronger militia line for free such as the burmese that is not even an infantry civ.
Back to topic, boyar needs a price adjustment like the leithis or keshik.
+1 melee armor will change nothing in boyar but with +4 armor vs camel/halbs, boyar would resist 1 extrahit from halbs and 2 extra hits from FU heavy camels.
First Boyars never were designed to be good vs camels and halbs, instead to excel in combat vs heavy cavalry and swordsmen.
Second the Cataphract already have that resistance so left that as unique to them.
The +1 melee armor is simply to allow them to defeat the Teutonic Paladin since they lose by a evry small margin, and people pointed that Teutonic Paladins are x4 times better in their tasks than Boyar
Well, they cost more gold then Paladins. When they first got introduced to the game they were supposed to be a very strong population efficient unit but hard to mass.
Now the creation time is faster but the cost still high.
Boyars are supposed to be good in melee matchups. But Cataphracts are better against infantry and Leitis are much better against Paladin. Boyars are kind of missing their niche.
I would change the following:
+1 attack
+10 hp
+1 pierce armour
creation time reduced from 15seconds to 25seconds
leave them armoured and slow (just like Teutonic knights are more armoured but slower then other infantry…)
make them good, but hard to mass (high cost, slow production time, need castles to be produced…)
+1 attack -> makes the matchup Vs Paladin better (still not as good as Leitis though).
+10hp + 1pierce armour -> makes them actually good Vs. Arbalest (however, good, not broken!) BUT only when you manage to mass enough…
The problem with armor increase is that people don’t understand what an immense impact it has on a unit. We see armor suggestions all the time yet this aspect should be the most conservative one to address. You can see how incredibly strong the teuton Knight is in Castle Age with just +1/0. If you increase the Boyar PA by one a FU Elite Boyar would have 6+3 / 4+4 armor. That way an Arbalest (6+3atk) will do 1 damage instead of 2. So instead of taking 75 shots the Boyar would take 150 shots. And this is even before your +10 HP is taken into account. If anything the cost should be addressed as the stats of the Boyar are already insanely good.
I very much dislike such kinds of arguments in general. First of all, in many cases we don’t know for sure, how a unit was designed to be, and many units and civs were just badly designed (just think of all the misleading information in the unit and civ descriptions of older game versions or the original AoK counter guide (cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZVbCmJ4IKM)).
So just saying that they were not designed to be X, and therefore they should not be X is the wrong approach in my opinion.
Another kind of argument that I generally very much dislike. There is no reason for any feature to be unique to a specific unit or civ. We already have many overlaps in the game and we already have many units that are quite similar. There would be still enough differences between Boyars and Cataphracts even with the cavalry armor slightly increased.
I’m sorry that your arguments now had to serve as examples of things I don’t like, FurtherLime7636. It’s nothing personal, I’m sure you are a great person !
Slight correction: Arbalesters have 6+4 attack (don’t forget chemistry!), so if the Boyar had 4 pierce armor, they would need 75 shots instead of 50. (Also compare this to the Elite-Cataphract who dies in only 30 shots.) Your point remains completely true, though: Especially pierce armor increases should only be applied very temperately.
A fast attack rate with low damage is bad vs armoured opponents and buildings.
Slow attack rate with high damage per attack is better vs buildings and high armoured enemy’s.
-> Right now every “Knight like” cavalry unit has the same 1,8s or 1,9s reload time.
I think it would be interesting to have a unit with 1,5s or 2,5s reload time. Stats would have to be adjusted of course but I think it could give a unit a more specific niche …
No, the thing is you just cannot add a thing to X unit because is underwhelming and needs tweeking just to give them a role that already holds, The Boyar is a unit designed to excel in melee combat agaisnt anything but their counter still defeat them (Just like Teutonic Knight against Jaguar Warriors and Samurai despite their high melee armor)
And yet we got the Leitis price and training time reduced (fortuntely) and the same with the Keshik because before that what was the difference between them and the Boyar (all units are strong in melee combats), right now the Leitis is even cost effective vs Boyars, without mentioning that at release Boyar, Leitis and Keshik even had all the same price!!! and all had the same attack and HP (12 and 14 attack, 120 and 150 HP), that was just silly and lazy design.
I think you are talking about the Samurai (1.45) and the Konnik (2.4)
No AoE2 is not Overwatch where a fraction of the attack is negated by armor chunks where different attacks are calculated differently.
You simply subtract the attack value from the armor value and that’s the amount that affects the HP pool. High attack speed equals more damage. If you had a unit that attacked every 0.1 seconds for only 1 damage against any armored target the unit will still deal 1 damage every 0.1 seconds. This is better than a unit that deals say 10 damage for every one second because the majority of that attack would be negated by armor.
The faster a unit can attack, the better the damage output.
Also if a unit attacks slowly the enemy can run away without being hit.
!