Rangers card is one of the few cards that can make you lose the game…
Anecdotally, my friend and I played against a double dutch pair, and he accidentally sent the rangers card and lost all his longbowmen that where shreding the reuyters. Rangers do significantly worse against LC compared to LBM. Fortunately, I was able to turn the game back in our favor by sniping their banks and factories with petards.
I think a good buff would be that rangers card unlock rangers in addition to longbowman. I still find longbowmen to be more valuable in almost all cases except very late treaty where wood is out. Even in a long drown out supremacy where the enemy spams infantry, I feel redcoats and cannons still do better than rangers. They perform poorly even in the situations I expected them to perform in.
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This card is basically “replace a decent unit with a mediocre unit just to save wood” and it costs 1 age 4 card. This makes no sense. Many civs do not need to invest one card in the first place and they have decent skirmishers.
And an age 4 card that only unlocks one unit (and also eliminates another unit and potentially another card at the same time) has too low value compared to its cost. Just look at other age 4 cards or even some age 3 cards that do similar things…
I think a better model would be similar to that of Ottomans, ie get a very good musketeer/skirmisher along side a decent musketeer/skirmisher, but with limited numbers.
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And this obvious design flaw by all means from cost to stats is still not touched…Maybe it will stay for 1 year like the British logistician. Why make a new card so bad that no one is ever gonna use?
Also seeing the Italian bersaglieri, what about just making it an age 4 unit available by default without replacing the longbow, then the ranger card does the transformation and comes with a small buff?
The core problem is the card not just gives less value for an age 4 card. It even gives negative value. It is a design that should not exist in the first place. This bothers me.
Another example would be the old British logistician (also British, surprise) which changes vils from manors with longbows. It by all means is an investment with negative outcomes.
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Yep, It’s a bad card it gives it halves their Rof (but the damage stays the same), and reduces their range. Everything else is the same as a longbowman.
I like the Ranger (other than the name, they ought to be called Greenjackets) as they perfectly fit British. But they’re not implemented well.
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I mean I can accept cards or options or units that do not turn out to work very well in practice. But not one that is objectively bad, like having significantly less value or even negative value compared to its counterparts.
Even a unit with underwhelming stats has the advantage of being cheap. Like I’d say most “high dmg low range” skirms like wakina or salteador are kind of underwhelming, but at least you do not need an age 4 card to obtain them…
Rangers should definitely be an age 4 unlock by default and be separately upgradable and concurrent with longbows. It would make them consistent with Italy who also has a great Crossbow replacement and strong late game skirmisher.
The low initial range is to balance the early version sent by Roger’s Rangers so it’s reasonable to keep it that way. This could be remedied by having each upgrade increase their range.
A Baker’s Rifles card similar to the Long Guns for the USA could improve their range instead ofYeomen.
Longbows should also be nerfed somewhat to make room for Rangers. They’re not the only age 5 option anymore so their imperial upgrade could be scrapped.
The insane range boost from Yeomen could also be cut back. It could be reworked to instead be +2 range, and enables Longbowmen to gain promotions. Longbows took a lot of practice to master so promotions make sense for them.
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I do not think longbows need a nerf. They have clear advantages (high theoretical dmg) and disadvantages (cannot HR, large dmg waste, spending time picking new targets etc.). Longbows in late games are not bad but more of a compromise because there is no decent skirmisher.
If Brits got a decent and more accessible skirmisher I believe people would naturally transition to skirmisher in late Fortress.
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Brits are already strong, so they don’t need a skirmisher that’s just straight up better than current Longbows. Also, Longbows don’t really have high damage waste, their high damage comes from attacking twice as fast so there’s not so much waste there.
Archaic units not having imperial upgrades is pretty standard so removing that from Longbowmen now that they don’t need to fill the late game skirmisher role is reasonable.
Yeomen making them have 26 range is also absurd. They shouldn’t outrange every single rifle infantry unit in the game. Making it instead enable them to have promotions would make sense and expanding a new feature to old units would help make the game more consistent.
A fully promoted Longbowman on a map with native archer upgrades could still be a strong late game option, but in other scenarios, Rangers would be the go to unit.
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Yeah damage waste is not accurate. I mean because in practice they keep finding new targets after killing the current one, the real rof is not always 1.5.
It seems you just want to replace longbows with rangers, by nerfing longbows so they are worse than rangers. I personally think this is wrong move for the diversity of the game.
What needs to happen is to give them very specific niches. Longbows can continue to be good against LC and LI, and rangers vs HI. They can surely coexist, the rangers just need some twinkling.
We’ve been through this before, stats for stats, brit units are average. Even their royal guards are matched by other civs
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I think rangers should outclass longbowmen. AOE3 now has many civs with unique archer units that are more thematic there is no need to keep Britain as the ‘Archer civ’ for diversitys sake. The longbowman is avaliable from Age 2 while the ranger can not be reliably built until age 4 and requires a card its reasonable to expect it to be an overall upgrade not a situational ‘side-grade’
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I was responding to a comment saying Rangers should be buffed to make people naturally transition to them instead of using Longbows. That would be too strong in my opinion. Brits also have some of the strongest Hussars, Dragoons, and Musketeers so they don’t need two top tier light infantry units too.
What I’m suggesting is just making their range actually realistic and removing their age 5 upgrade to make them not always just straight up better than Rangers.
Rangers could be buffed a little with improved range. With the promotion mechanic Longbowmen could still be able to get to levels comparable with the imperial upgrade, they just wouldn’t start out that strong immediately after being trained.
I’d say most British units (triple-carded) are A-tier but none of them are S-tier. There are many civs especially after DE that have S-tier units. And you cannot include all 6 cards at the same time.
The true advantage of British is they reach more advanced stages faster with booming eco. But the result is average. The longer it lasts the more average it becomes. You may compare it with the updated Spain which keeps its good FF and now has a pretty good late game eco and also an S-tier unit.
I’d say their hussars are approaching S-tier. And all around A-tier units with an S-tier economy is pretty darn strong.
The eco strength is mostly in the early mid game. The end point is quite average.
Unlike many other early game civs, Brits do not really have good late game options. Average eco. Rockets are not good compared to heavy cannon (3 rocket card is good though but not sustainable). So I think it would not hurt to give them some viable late game options.
Did some testing 2 days ago about the ranger. At the post imperial stage they have the following stats:
20 range
40 ranged attack
19 melee attack
199 HP
30% range resist
Multipliers;
x3 heavy infantry, x2 light cavalry, x0.75 heavy cavalry and shock infantry.
The upgrades from longbows carry over (vet, elite, imperial ups, HC, etc). Description from the HC cards do not adjust stats as advertised. Yeomen boosts range by +2 rather than +4 and no bonus to range base damage. Sorta like the nizam stand ground - should give 14 range, but gives 20. Yeomen does add +0.25 multiplier vs heavy infantry. Not sure if Infantry Breastplate does not seem to carry over.
Didn’t see a stat breakdown while skimming, so here’s a donation.
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