Since this seems to be what everyone’s talking about
0 voters
The elephant in the room before all else is giving them a reliable answer to archers.
I’ll make the cases for the ones I support in my response
Give Arbalist - I personally see this as the Occam’s Razor. This doesn’t compromise their civ balance as being a heavily gold reliant civ and gives an answer to enemy Arbalests in the form of matching with your own, similar to matching against Goths infantry with your own. Naturally you will probably be up against better arbalists (vietnamese, ethiopian), but it’s better than lacking skirmishers AND arb, and it isn’t bad considering immediate bombard cannons. “But they already get Sipahi Cavalry Archers” This is a good argument and one that I initially rationalized for Turks not needing arbalist, however they are tied with Magyars for best cav archers in the game (As Magyars ca with full upgrades match the range of arbalists) and the function of arbalist over cav archer is completely different context in post-imp. Arbalists counter cav archers and even with the bulky extra HP turks get, it’s not realistic to fight them since arbalists are cheaper and have more range and more importantly, rate of fire. You never see Magyars making arbalists because their other options (specifically their cavalry) trade more than fine in niches where Turks would need arbalest. This keeps them reliant on gold without having such an obvious weakness.
Knights + 1 / 2 pierce armor per age - This is basically just a more flavored version of my Arbalist argument. Still rely on gold, but since they don’t get paladin (and it’d be funny if they did) this gives them a cost effecient trade for archer civs. Knights are still very expensive, and most civs going arbalest in post imp have halbs (ethiopians, vietnamese, incans, mayans, portuguese, britons) so it’s not like it locks civs out of a counter unit. Most cavalry civs (Persians, Berbers, Teutons, Franks, Lithuanians) wouldn’t struggle against it even if camels were on the field since their cavalry is either stronger or more cost effective, and either have access to halbs or camels; not to mention most cavalry civs aren’t making range units anyway outside of skirmishers and hand cannons.
No Changes - Ultimately, my arguments are on the basis of “IF Turks are to get buffed”
I still think they’re fine as is, but if I were to give them something, it’d be something like this. It’s true they struggle vs arbalest, but there’s a lot Turks can do before someone gets to mass arb. They’re an aggressive, gold reliant civ and should be played as such; you can’t sit in your base and boom with Turks, you have to raid and take map control, so I’m fine with them playing out this way and not having trash units. My problem with them as a civilization is that despite being the most gold reliant civ in the game, their options are fairly narrow compared to something like Portuguese. If they rely on gold, then they should have access to plenty of hard hitting gold power units. They do - cavalier, heavy camel, sipahi, and janissaries are all units that you could knock someone out with - but they don’t have as much flexiblity in their options such as a civ like Teutons, who can go for Paladins or Siege Onagers or Champion/Heavy scorp.
Additionally, there are things Turks can do against massed arb. They still have artillery bombard cannons, and as long as you protect them they can pot shot a ball of arbs all day. They still have free hussar and Cavalier, which take a while to mass to trade worthwhile vs arbs, but it’s still definitely possible.
As for other options, giving Onager same argument as Arbalest, and I don’t think Janissaries need to be buffed since they can trade effectively vs everything except siege, but free guilds would be nice since it saves the time and resources of having to research an absolutely necessary part of the Turks post-imp.
remove arena from the pool to balance Turks outside of Arena
They’re fine on Arabia
I think you can just give Turks’ scout line +1 PA starting from Feudal Age.
At the same time if you don’t want to have the unique stat units overlapping with Tatars UT then change Tatars’ UT to be influencing Cavaliers instead of Hussar.
Anyway: scout line +1 PA starting from Feudal Age
Scouts are trash units themselves so it goes well with their lack of other trash and would improve Turks against archer civs, especially Britons.
At the same time the bonus kicks in from feudal age so it helps out Turks in early game.
Problem of giving trash is their identity, if they are granted with it they would becomeinto another Spanish or Portuguese. In this way Chinese nver get gunpowder and even today is the case, I can see the same to the Turks.
I would give them either Foodless economic upgrades or Blacksmith technologies costing 50% less food, which both could help on saving saving food to their hand cannoners or hussars.
Don’t forget to make both Artillery and the Elite Upgrade of the Jannisary affected by the gunpowder bonus, at the end both are gunpowder technologies.
I’d give them Elite Skirmishers and Pikeman + Elite Janissary +25% accuracy
.
or Light Cavalry +6 damage against archers instead of trash units.
I think onager sounds great and I doubt it’d be OP considering they don’t have SE. I mean for “the gold civ” they sure do lack an awful lot of gold options
if we stick to turks gold dependence, i think we can give them onager or buff janissary or even give paladin. but giving arb can change their gunpowder characteristic.
another option buff hussar or give trash units or unique trash unit.i dont think this harm to turk character because EVERYONE have these units bro.
but especially what do you think about artillery if it affect mangonel?
Nothing strong and Koreans have that.
but koreans have siege onager
Yes but Artillery have gunpowder units in mind, not mangonels
Fully agree
This is a fair point, but then again civs like Portuguese and Italians are cornerstone gunpowder civs and they both have amazing arbalests. I think Janissaries are strong enough to not go with arb as your main offensive unit, though they do cost more economy than arbs
italians are not fully gunpowder civ their definition is archer civ with one gunpowder bonus so arb is sensible. portuguese arb is result of historical reasons maybe?
in castle it is ok. but in imp, most player prefer arb i think
true you are right. if i think again with considering koreans siege onager have same range with turks mango, it is totally useless.
I agree, plus getting those will give Turks another way to get some good milleage out of their free chemistry.
I have never thought about this and I like it, at least the concept of more damage. They would still be fragile against massed arbs, but once they get close they should do some damage. We would be giving them an answer to archers, not damging their identity and kind of historically accurate.
I like the idea, but I think an arbitrary damage buff isn’t the way to go about it. Someone recommended giving them the Tatars silk armor as a stacking civ bonus, but that just takes away from Tatars; which is where I thought of giving their knights extra pierce armor instead. Maybe one other way to do it is make Sipahi also affect Hussars - this steps on the Mongol bonus so I’m not sold on that idea either but I think it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world since the context is entirely different. I’m in support of any way to make their cavalry trade better against archers but I don’t think an attack bonus would be the way to do it since attack isn’t the issue, it’s getting the arbs in an engagement. Not to mention, Persians also have this
Exactly but still people will want that things so hard because other civs have overlapping bonuses.
Actually worse range since Turks don’t have siege engineers, so it’s 7+2=9 while Koreans have 8+2=10