Went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to win an internet argument about the Forest Prowler and ended up making some tables. Posting them here because I think people may enjoy having a look.
For context, this is the ceiling. This is what you can do in a treaty (or very long) game if you stack all the cards/buffs/techs/dances/drummers/flags/etc onto each skirmisher. This is the full opportunity cost.
Some of these skirms for that reason are therefore a bit more of a theoretical, others are much lower investment with only a card or two. For this reason, it’s especially unclear which is the best. Also anything which is quite high fire rate doesn’t overkill as much when you get that rolling fire going, so they punch a bit above their bracket.
Also, a couple have a tiny bit of ranged resist, but I didn’t really feel like units which get oneshotted by cannons regardless really needed a column for this.
Still, I was very surprised by some of the entries here, I feel like I learnt something.
Question for all the portugal-heads out there:
Is there any reason for a portugese player to ever build cassadores (tons of cards required) over organ guns (2-3 card Investment) in this scenario: casual team games, non treaty, but often reaching extreme lategame?
After grapeshot was added, ive never seen a point in investing in cassadores
Portugal’s Cassadores only have three cards. I’d personally not bother with the HP card on a backline unit in an actual game; I’d rather have a food or gold gather rate card, to have a few less vils, to have a few more units. Lanchester’s square law and all.
Those two remaining cards also buff the muskets, which potentially have extra range from the Age 2 politician or gigamultipliers from the Gran Colombia revolt, which also imperialises the Cassadores and Muskets, but not your artillery. I guess there’s also advanced arsenal, but you’d probably want that for the organ guns also.
Cassadores also hard counter dragoons. So if you were focused on Elmetti or supporting a cav focused teammate, they’re a better option than Organs, certainly early in Age 3.
In short, the Cassadore is one of the lowest investment skirms in the game. It’s a top tier unit in their best team game revolt. And it’s still solidly in the middle of the pack.
I could add a “villager seconds” column for a revised version. Maybe a subjective “investment required” thing also.
I’m inclined to say yes. You can start Cassadors sooner than it’s possible to start organ guns (imo you really want age 4 before heavily moving into organs). The civ basically can’t play age 2 and you can’t always just eco and go age 4 in a 3v3-4v4 Unknown game (I’ll take that as a reasonable casual game) because you need units. Usually it makes sense to be the Dragoon player, but sometimes the civs on your team make that less optimal. Also 1 Japan with Yab archers or an Otto with grens or the skill to use Culvs will shut organs down pretty hard. French culvs can do it too.
If I play cass early I might not bother with the switch. Cass/goon is still decent in a lot of situations, and some maps have good native techs that help cass.
Hm, definetly see the point with yabs and humbaracis.
Maybe im just too greedy and dont get punished enough for it and my teammates are a treassure.
They are a more conservative and always make some amount of army that protects me, while i’m going hard FI. If im preassured early, i go milita or wall up and send 3 organs. But at the time i’m sending my first military upgrades im usually in a scenario where i can mass dragoons + organs and dont bother to invest in infantry at all. Like idk… You save the 200w for each barracks, thousands of ressources for musk and cassador upgrades & advanced arsenal infantry techs, church & homecity infantry traintime.
I know that portugese infantry can be insane, but for me dragoon + organ gun seem the simpler and more effective combination… and when i need musks, the uncarded base ones are most of the times good enough
But yeah, at that point i’m maybe talking about a too specific scenario that never happens outside of 3v3/4v4 and in higher elos
British Rangers have excellent range, damage, and ranged resistance but that’s counterbalanced by having bad HP totals. Mexican Vigilantes have the potential to get really busted if all the cards are sent and they stay put near the flag and forts. Haud Forest Prowlers seem to have a balance of great DPS while not being too fragile.
I wonder how the chart of archer units would go. If I had to guess…
Maltese Arbalesters and Italian Pavisiers would be the top crossbowmen units. Yumi Archer would be the best bowman. The Arbalester would beat Pavisiers in a one-on-one match but it’s a toss-up to whether the Arbalester or Yumi Archer would win.
It’s my personal opinion there’s not really an archer ceiling.
Mass on mass, you can get skirms to stagger fire by attack moving in. Absolutely shreds through units.
Archers by the nature of the arrow flight time do catastrophic overkill in late game fights.
Archers are solid early game in small quantities, but their core mechanics cripple them late, in my opinion.
Related: The difference flight archery makes for the Ottoman cav archers takes them from being statistically the worst, to still statistically the worst but actually the absolute best cav archers.
The archer overkill is brutal. I wish they were less accurate but stray arrows did full damage.
Archers can vary due to their firing animations, specifically their drawing animations. Yumi Archer is great because of good rate of fire and quick animations, alongside the Daimyo/Shogun auras and upgrade cards…
Does the Polish Pancerni beat out the Ottoman cav archer? I remember them scaling well.
