hp 95
atack 10+4
armor 2+3/2+4
armor reduction -1/-1
cost 55 food 20 gold
Your thoughts?
7 Likes
IMO they are fine. Elite Obuchs are a good infantry unit, but they are slow and vulnerable to archers. With equal resources, they lose to Japanese, Burmese, Teuton, Aztec, Slav, and Goth Champions, as well as Bulgarian two handed swordsmen. Being created from Castles is a significant limitation.
You also have to consider Poles as a whole. Obuchs and Champions are the only fully upgraded units they get. No Halberdier, and both Stable and Archery Range units are missing key upgrades. Even their navy, siege and monastery are mediocre.
1 Like
Thye will get siege engineers, also they get siege ram and Onager, so their siege workshop is pretty solid for arena.
2 Likes
Yep, I heard that one was coming, but until then they do not have any fully upgraded siege. The Bombard Cannon and Siege Ram are useful tools to support their late game infantry, but Siege Onager would be better against mass arbalesters (Poles true weakness). Anyway, I’m not really saying they need more buffs to siege, I just don’t think their one strong unit should be nerfed.
Edit: I could maybe see some Obuch nerfs if Poles had Plate Barding, Halberdier, Paladin, Archer Ring Armor, or some other late game power option.
1 Like
First the obuch isn’t OP. It’s a strong unit, but not OP.
We must stop attempting to nerf anything that isn’t archer/knight (or specific “accepted” UUs) that is viable. I don’t understand why people are doing that. Every time. There were even People that wanted to nerf the serjeant cause it was “OP” in their eyes…
Every unit needs it’s situations to go for and the obuch has several of them. It is also the only unit of poles that can actually tank some arb fire. Even with taking the Folwark bonus into account, it is still like 1/3 worse in just tanking arb shots than the paladin. So obuch/skirm or obuch/arb are the only real comps poles can make against arb civs. And it’s not the worst comp against that. I think as long as poles can constantly widdle down the arb numbers poles have a chance and this is also shown in the winrates. Ofc it’s a volatile thing, either poles can widdle down the numbers of the arbs, then their comp works just as fine as others or they can’t and their army gets wrecked in no time. But the comp can work.
Where Poles get problems though is against cav archers. There the obuch isn’t a viable meatshield anymore and Poles have actually basically no tool against cav archers. Well, a lot of Civs don’t, but Poles are especially vulnerable to them.
Which is weird, cause historically it was right the opposite. Poles Cav fought a lot of fights against cav archers successfully. They were actually one of the best in dealing with them…
5 Likes
It’s not an overpowered unit.
5 Likes
The big problem I think is kind of how serjeants compare. If they knock off 5-10 gold of the serjeant cost it might be a reasonable unit to play outside of donjon rushing. However, if they got Obuch to receive another type of bonus damage that could be alright. Or just nerf the creation speed.
Luckily their creation speed is being nerfed in the upcoming november patch. Not sure if it will be enough though, 55 food 20 gold is insanely cheap. They wreck armored melee units like knights, have both higher HP and pierce armor than the regular infantry line, produce super fast, and are really easy to make coz Poles are incentivized to mine more stone than usual since they get extra gold whenever they mine stone.
3 Likes
I agree, Serjeants are too expensive. As you pointed out, I believe their price is being driven by their ability to build, so in theory they save villager work time. They’re really only worth making for a donjon strat, or by First Crusade. Otherwise swordsmen offer more strength for the cost.
3 Likes
they are not OP by any mean. The problem is for the higher price you pay for other UU infantries, they are just significantly weaker compared to Obuch, for exmaples shotel warriors, woad raider, teutonic knights, gbeto, serjants, etc, it’s not even a contest. Sure they fill different roles but still a meme in most cases. There are a few exceptions like berserkers, huskarls and eagle warriors which are really good for the price you pay for.
3 Likes
I will keep this, remove 1 PA from them, keep them as a melee specialist infantry UU, but makes up for their lower cost sucking vs archers.
As far as nerfs go, that one seems reasonable. However looking at Poles as a whole, I can’t support any change that makes the civ weaker against archers. If their Winged Hussars could be used as an archer counter (which would require more than 4 pierce armor after upgrades), then making the Obuch more vulnerable to archers would make sense
2 Likes
OP is questionable, lets say like the original steppe lancer killing even paladins and mass arabalest like flies, obuch is not broken in that way, but it is broken in the field of infantry units and UU, better than a champ at every single front, bonus against all units(and that is huge) more HP than a hussar with the same pierce armor, faster than a champ, elite upgrade is a joke since its really cheap, training time is quite fast despite the upcoming nerf, so at every single front the obuch does better price to performance than any other infantry unit.
You guys have probably a really low understanding of the game machanics, but original balance units used to have bonus against one kind of unit line, leitis and obuch are broken by design cause they don’t follow the same mechanics but instead they have bonus vs all units, the obuch bonus is quite broken once they have archers on their back, even paladins melt like flies once they have lost the armor so yeah obuch is broken by design and little nerfs are not going to change that.
In the other hand if you think obuch is fine, then you could also consider cobra car fine if somehow the civ is missing some upgrades.
2 Likes
It’s so funny to read this while we still wait for any pro to show us the power of obuch in a tournament.
Hell they don’t even try to pick poles, so much faith do they have in that civ.
I don’t think there were much more occasions to use them in a tournament since last time this was discussed? Also I suspect that one player getting a win with obuch spam during say, KOTD could motivate other players to go for it too, kinda how Bohemians becoming popular in RBW5 after Viper pulled out an impressive win with them.
Also at first I wasn’t too much on board with the OP/problematic accusations but my winrate with obuch spam is nearly perfect so I wouldn’t be so sure about myself anymore.
2 Likes
Yeah, the game is looking pretty good once you get to the point of Obuch spam. I’d say in that way Poles are similar to Spanish (conq spam), Goths (Huskarl spam), or Koreans (War Wagon spam). They rely a lot on their UU. However it’s not a given that you’ll survive long enough to have an economy able to spam units, especially with exposed Folwork farmers, or even get a castle up. I think this is why Poles are doing so much better on arena than on arabia.
3 Likes
Nice summary.
Playing against infantry is usually more a strategical thing. You usually don’t want to mirror the obuch players economic choice (1, 2, 3 TCs and so on). So if the Obuch player makes an all-in you want to play more greedy, get some raids in and try to use the defenders advantage against the expected push.
Obuchs are quite vulnerable to siege, especially siege behind walls.
In general you want to use your units to raid the opponents eco or at leas buy enough time for your eco to kick in then.
It’s clearly more strategical so I am not surprised there are several people having problems with it, if it is a good strat against some of the common meta plays. But I am also pretty sure that people will figure it out soon. As people also figured out how to deal with a war wagon all-in.
1 Like
are they op in comparison to the militia line definitely are they op in general maybe.
1 Like
There’s the big difference of Obuh needing castles to be trained. That’s a weakness of that strat that can be punished. Once the poles Player lose his castles he will have big problems.
And this will be even more so with the production time increase.
And btw, militia is extremely situational currently, so there is less danger in making a stronger infantry variant than making archer or cavalry UUs.
And imo the Coustilier is currently the most OP UU. And opposed to the obuch we have actually seen it working in tournaments. SO why do we talk about the obuch but not the coustilier? Only because Obuch is an infantry and coustilier a cav unit?
1 Like
Well Coustilier is actually not as used because Burgundians can tech into super early paladin really quickly.