When did I personally attacked you? I only wished you best of luck with your laddering adventures in hopes you would reach same achievement as last season, but when we’re on this topic. Do I have to dig around and find all the times how you called me liar or someone else? U should know thats more of personal attack than wishing someone best of luck
Only reason why I responded was because of your ridiculous claims and nothing else.
Firelancers costs 120 food which is still 40 higher than horsemen. You really think that 50% more in terms of food cost doesn’t affect economy any way?? Especially when the unit dies faster than horseman. Yes you can reach point where you can spam firelancers all you want, but you’re investing more to food economy than you would with alternative. Heck you can reach point where you can spam lancers from x amount of stables with enough economy, but I can tell you rn its not super viable if game goes to throwing units at opponent like late game nowdays is. Even if you spam lancers for raiding and as main army and even if your KDR is 2-4 and opponents is 0.5 to 1 you can still get overwhelmed by cheap trash units.
Because you think that FL do not burden your economy that much here is some numbers. Constant rate of FL from 20 stables player would need 234 villagers gathering resources (assuming the tool doesn’t count the economy upgrades) meanwhile horsemen would only require 176 with quick math thats 25% more economy required. Obviously no one is going to spam FL from 20 stables like they would with horsemen but it still gives very clear indicator that unit that has overall less value than horseman they burden the economy way more than they should.
Throwing waves after waves of trash units is the meta rn. Its much more cost effective from every stand point to use horseman over FL UNLESS player is actually getting lot of good connections out there before losing bunch of FL. At later stage of game its important to disrupt opponents economy and FL should fill this role but whats the point of unit that just dies to arrow fire from outposts / keeps or simply gets completely countered by like 0.5 ratio of spearmen? Yet alone the fact that horsemen can just chase them away and kill them.
Also each time you stop to torch something, you’re giving opponent chance to catch up so getting something like one or two farms at those stages is not really a big deal what you’re looking to achieve with niche unit like FL is to trade cost effectively and cause enough dmg. Then if we compare them to mangudai that cannot kill buildings but they essentially does same thing as FL is intended to do which is disrupt economy and kill villagers. They are several times better than FL even tho they can’t deal with buildings or siege at same level yet they’re more useful with main army than FL is especially if opponent manages to create choke points and stick bunch of spears on top of siege then FL has no value.
FL is like gambling. Player makes them in hopes of getting value out of them but when base is properly defended then they do nothing but die and lose value. Even 1 keep is enough to shut down 10-15 FL.
Only quoting this so it wont become mass quote post. You ask me how I rate unit trash. Simply. Its trash when you got option to go alternative that is cheaper and does the same role same way and can actually contribute to fighting with main army.
First issue with firelancers is that they’re not viable at any way to go during castle. 1800 investment to unlock yuan is too much.
Then when going for FL with stable economy you’re delaying Ming dynasty which is far better option than Yuan. With simplified logic we could say its 10 more population to your army. Don’t get me wrong I love Yuan movement speed, but as of it is now Ming is still superior choice.
Then Firelancers I do agree that if you get LUCKY and find location to get perfect connection they can kill 5 or 10 workers fast, but again the investment to do this with unit that costs 160 resources 100% more than horseman and additional cost of 1800 resources to use means they cannot be used during castle age and they’re supposed to enter field during castle age, but only way to achieve them without shooting yourself to leg is in imperial when the economy is high which again delays Ming or is less army and because they enter field during imperial age where almost always opponent is in equal terms of economy. (meaning they might got multiple TC’s / high villager production rate) Raiding like getting 5-10 villager kills IF player is lucky. Is just too much of gamble to put any value on them
Then the siege argument. They do kill siege fast and has splash but do you know what kills them as fast as FL? Lancers or Knights. They actually do similar dmg to siege ofc not splash. And be serious now? How many times you got possibility of actually landing splash to siege when the FL AOE radius was nerffed in past and made smaller? Yes obviously they can be used to kill siege but at that point you’re choosing to make unit that has heavy rng element on its side. It might get you value worth of getting, but 9/10 times it won’t and becomes just dead weight.
Then like I said horseman are cheaper and deal with siege less effective than FL, but HM got ranged armor and they actually counter ranged units well and they’re also faster than FL alongside the fact that they also can be used to torch down farms or low priority targets. With 10FL you can get 20 HM which are way better in any situation and if you just look to sent them to opponents base and cause havoc its better sent them in one group at first then split to multiple locations which is where HM is better than FL. FL needs to be stick together to maximize their value which also is weakness because if they get caught they die and you lose your investment.