But they kill them in the end and they still a counter right?!
They never kill them, the Mamelukes kill the Pikes. Castle Age Mamelukes will slaughter even FU Halbs.
You are not supposed to let the Mamelukes stand still, just go back and press Stop let them kill a few Pikes, go back again and repeat.
30 pop of Mamelukes, can win againt 200 pop of FU Halberdiers, easy.
Well a few things to look at first :
UU isn’t a synonym for “upgrade of a regular unit”, that is just a misconception. UU, like every others units, are dedicated to a role, which is sometimes niche.
Castles are very expensive buildings that can’t be rushed without funneling all your eco into it, which is a high-risk low-reward gamble. So far I found only Ethiopians and Saracens could pull it off relatively well, and I wouldn’t call it a good strategy anyway.
Given that it is quite obvious why UU are not the star of every game, but that does not make them bad.
On a side note, the argument against the Mameluks is pretty funny. Because they are both cavalry and archer, they are bad? Well guess who is cavalry and archer, and is considered one of the best UU? Mangudai.
If anything, Mameluks are way too expensive right now, otherwise they would be picked a lot more. They can easily kite and be macro-ed against melee units, and since they deal melee damage they can shred many of the usual anti archers units.
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Well, they problem is many units don’t have a dedícated role, or have and extremly poor one.
A GC is pretty good Unique with an Unique role that arbs can not fill. If they have a problem is not with the unit design
Compare that with a Tarkan… Is any melee unit with extra dmg against building usefull or player Will prefer siege? Does a more expensive and slower unit as persian elephants do something better than paladin or are they a weaker option because the extra dmg from halbs and monks?
I agree that not necesarely UU should be upgrades of a genéric unit, but Niche is q ver decieving way to Say useless in this forum
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No opinion about Tarkan, but War Elephants can be very useful in team games. A giant mass of Elite War Elephants takes a LOT of effort to stop. Probably woudn’t try to use the unit in 1v1 though
Oh this $&^% again. Still remember another member creating a giant list of almost all UU and claiming they are not viable, arguing with everyone else against him with no end in sight, while refusing to accept the main reason UU are not seen often is because games ending in feudal or early castle age happens much more often than before. You can’t even build a castle, how can someone built UU? Does that mean ALLL UU are useless because I never got the chance to build one before I win/loss?
As for individual units, quite a few are limited by cost, such as mameluke, war elephant, Arambai and such. Give those civs infinite res (not just infinite gold), Mameluke spam is prolly one of the worst nightmare of all UU. So far only paladin war elephant spam can halt mameluke spam, and thats only because the enemy does not build enough archers. Goths? Got melted. Mangudai? Can’t even stand a chance. Japanese? I need on average 2-3 samurai before closing in the distance and landing a shot.
Oh, let me fix the request for you: change RM start to Castle Age start, and end in post-imp as usual. This way, everyone has the option to start building unique units as they dont need to go through stressful aging up process.
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11
LMAO
Siege Ram, Eagles, Camels, Pikes say hi
Mamluks are not THAT great, just considering cavalry and cavalry archer civs half of them has camels or a UU to counter them. There is no reason for them to be so expensive and hard to mass.
Many units are just overpriced, specially cav ones
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The least used UU’s are the ones that are most expensive.
Has nothing to do with strength, really. Some of those units also happen to be brutally effective, but if it costs more than a Mangudai it’s probably not getting used.
High price tag is the easiest way to bar good stuff behind. And if they are not THAT good, I’m not sure why I need to spend at least 30 min as Persian to kill a Saracen with mostly war elephant, paladin and trashbow.
Also, infantry aside, which ranged melee damage unit is cheap? BBC? 225 gold. Mamelukes? 85 gold. Onager? 135 gold. Correct me if I miss a unit that does melee damage from range, but those three are all expensive, for a good reason.
I cannot be 100% sure because I didnt watch that game, was it a TG? If mamluks was the problem… why didn’t you use camel? did they have arbs? was not better to combine camels and paladins than elephants?
SL is a cheap ranged melee unit that is not infantry. Also I wouldn’t compare mamluks to siege units, bbc and specially onager can kill several units at the same time because they have blast radius.
It’s not a team game. It’s a death match but without gold and stone problem, so UU can get full display, as well as spamming paladin all day long.
In this mode, saracen player spammed mameluke, SO, camels and some skirmishers. Saracen rarely build archers. Me as Persian need to use elephants (600HP), paladin and trashbow to basically halt the mameluke camel advance and try to snipe down production buildings one by one using BBC (yes, trebs would be way too slow). I dont use camel because Persian camels are worse than saracens. If I use camels then mine would get quickly overpowered while paladin got massacred by mamelukes.
the persian crossbows still beat Mamelukes, no joke. They are that weak to archers.
UUs aren’t unviable.
You just don’t play well enough in 1v1s to make them viable.
TG is just knights and archers - that’s just how TG works.
1v1s they’re much more viable and for some civs, for example vikings, can form a key part of army/
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What I see is that whole idea that UU are trained at castles origin from times when AoE II was a 75pop game. Right now UU are not that common because it is much easier and cheaper to build 15 stables rather than 4 castles. Smart aproach forces players to ditch castles since you cant spam them, and focus on regular army buildings. It is simple min-max - if something is not giving good result, leave it.
So, the problem are not UU, but they availability. Since it is hard to spam castles, and game is not balanced around it, another solution has to be found. With Sicilians and Bulgars devs came up with some kind of solution to bypass this issue.
But i have different idea - what about making some completly new upgrade to castles that allows you to train more UU simultaneously? It can work simillar to blacksmith upgrades, with each level being more expencive and each level giving +1 to specific building (so not global upgrade). It could end with max 4 units trained simultaneously, so with three castles it would give a total of 12 units trained at once. Just as with 12 stables or barracks.
It can cost wood on first level, wood and stone on second, and wood, stone and gold on third. I know that is big game changer, but maybe UU will find more use?
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All of you have said the same, and i will say the same again: THE PROBLEM IS NOT CASTLES BUT THE UU ITSELF IF IT IS WORTHY OR NOT.
You see Mangudai right? You see Keshiks, you see War Wagons, you see Organ guns, you see Conquistadors, you see Woad raider, you see Arambai, you see Plumed archers, etc. So the problem is not with castles but if the UU is worthy or not. There are 4 classes for UUs in this game in my perspective:
1-usless or bad UUs
2-good UU but no need to use because their civs have many better options but they are still viable to use.
3-good UU but too expensive and it is fine for balance and still viable to use
4-good UUs and you see them many times.
My topic is to make the useless UUs able to use at least.
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List the “useless” UUs
On the other hand, if Mameluke is not weak to archers, I would have to micro like crazy with siege to kill mass mamelukes, something my skill level cannot do.
It takes roughly 4 Villagers mining Stone for 5 minutes to get enough Stone to build a Castle. This isn’t something that can be done easily while rushing to Castle Age, since one has a limited number of Villagers to get all the Food and Gold needed.
Any opponent going for a Knight rush will use that delay to put up a few Stables and start pumping out Knights, meaning by the time your Castle is up and running you will have Knights in your base picking up your Villagers.
On the other side of the spectrum, if one wait until his eco is running smoothly to get a Castle, by that time he will already have many military buildings with a stream line of units coming out, so it makes little sense to halt it and build up a new army from scratch.
false. anarchy does not change the time it takes to make a huskarl. in fact due to the team bonus, making huskarls at a barracks is FASTER then making them at a castle. furthermore, once you factor in perfusion their training time becomes truly insane.
furthermore, both of these units have huge glaring weaknesses even when used in mass.
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