I’d like to see them keep their gunpowder identity. If Jannys are buffed then a hussar, Jan and BBC if a really powerful combo.
I think Jans are already pretty strong, and they can even fight xbows in castle age in even numbers, but it’s hard to buff them to be able to fight arbs and have them remain balanced. Elite jans are like hand cannoneers on steroids and, like arbs, once you get enough of them cavalry stops being enough. It’s hard to justify giving them even range so maybe something like pierce armor? Give them more durability while bbc fires on archers
Arbalest would just ruin Turk identity. The Portuguese example is interesting because you almost never see their HCs over the xbow arbalest play. They play more as a archer civ than gunpowder in shorter games. Same went with Indians when they had arbalest which even eclipsed the camels in 1v1 and the shatagni HCs never saw play
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Would it work if, instead of giving turks Arbs, you make sure that Turk HC can trade effectively against Arbs? Or would that lead to trouble because HC (and Janissaries by extension) would have no counter-units?
Nah, even going arb this is rarely true since organ guns are so strong. I’ve seen fast imp arb with ports, but not choosing arb over their better options like organ guns or arq hand cannons. That’s also kinda like saying them having some of the best HCA in the game ruins their gunpowder identity, which is equally false; cav archers counter most of the same thing that mass janissaries counter
I was thinking something like that, that Jans would be able to trade vs arbs better, but ultimately you’d have to completely re-stat the unit which is way too big of a change since it still has to have weaknesses. In castle age they trade vs xbows fairly but vs arbalests its too much
Organ guns are not really that common of a strategy, the deathball takes quite a while and lots of resources. Arq HCs being better is questionable, sure they’re a lot better than normal HCs but still have lower range, frail, low fire rate and all other HC woes. Archer into xbow into Arbalest is much more streamlined, easier on eco and has two strong powerspikes.
Well again arbs are cheaper, easily massable, strong and meta, so the cav archers comparison doesn’t work
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I would give turks pikes and elite skirms and nothing else. They have no cheap counter to xbows in castle age which makes them very bad against any xbow play so having elite skirm make your scout rush into skirms better because you can upgrade them in castle age, makes your transition into gold units smoother. Pikes are also a good response to a scout rush into knights play, if you make a lot of lancers in feudal age then you can upgrade them instead of directly going into camels. Pikes are also a good option against hussars in imperial age. then in imperial age you have good options with janissaries, free hussar, 100 hp CAs, FU camels and cavalier, siege ram, +2 range bbt and bbc.
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Just throwing up ideas:
Could just give them cav-archer armour to make them extra-weak against skirms (and camel-archers) XD
If you gave them PierceArmour instead of hp, they’d remain ‘weak’ against cavalry and siege
I agree HC have to maintain some kind of disadvantage compared with Arbs. Though seeing as Turk HC have 25% extra hp, it’s entirely possible for Turk HC to match Arbs whilst most other HC are way behind in a head-to-head.
Completely false. Before DE you’d see them all the time, and going for organ guns is what I do as portuguese at least half of the time and I can’t remember a time where it hasn’t worked out (matches I lost were team games were the rest of my team got overran). In post imp with portuguese my comp is usually hand cannon and skirmisher depending on the civ im against, since that’s one of the stronger and rarer compositions (hard to counter, but so few civs can do it), or halbs, organs, and bbc.
In castle age the deathball isn’t that hard to get to if you can pull the build off right, honestly, but the context of a castle age deathball and an imp deathball are completely different. With a handful of pikes and like 6-8 organ guns and a mangonel or two, you can deny any resource and pressure tcs. As long as you keep adding organ guns, pikes, and mangonels (since your biggest counter would be enemy mangonels) you’re good. It’s important to get to this as early in castle age as you can though, since you don’t want 10 chain barding knights coming out from the flank and wiping you; once you have 12+ organ guns with an appropriate number of pikes, knights stop becoming a threat. Cav archers are bad vs organ guns and archers need a big ball of them before they can start fighting, and this is assuming you don’t have mangonels, which you should.
In post imp, if you weren’t already committing to organ guns in castle then yes it takes a large eco to transition into them and produce enough. It’s a slow composition, but it’s good at holding map control.
Yeah, and their counters are pretty different than hand cannons. It’s harder to kill hand cannons with the same options you’d kill arbs with, especially once arqeubus comes in, and since we’re talking about a post-imp economy cheap doesn’t really mean anything. There’s only a 5 gold difference in their cost and by post imp when you’re ready to research arquebus you probably don’t need to pump out many more vils so them costing food instead of wood is also irrelevant.
Completely arbitrary, meta is constantly shifting. They’re strong for different reasons than hand cannons and vice versa; hand cannon base attack is much stronger than arbalest so they don’t need as many to get to a deathball where melee options like cavalry struggles to work, and hand cannons work in situations were arbalests aren’t as effective in (such as really any unit with high pierce armor.) They die to archers but portuguese definitely have options to deal with that - which is why I said elite skirmisher + hand cannon is strong in post imp in some match ups, and consequently why i understand why Turks don’t get elite skirm (e skirm + elite janissary would be almost unstoppable)
Why not give their HC/jannissaries extra Pierce armour so they are better against the Archer line?
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That’s countered by skirms, heavy cavalry or siege, doesn’t sound like a great comp
Which is all very expensive and very wood intensive. The production takes forever. Just because that’s the best unit combo Ports can have doesn’t mean they can make it every game. Cheaper archers into xbow-arb is common strat for Portuguese because it’s sustainable and streamlined
How? Having less range, accuracy and HP makes them more vulnerable to skirms. Their terrible RoF means they get wrecked by heavy cavalry harder.
Well except you can mass archers from feudal whereas HCs only in imp after a slow chemistry and slow HC production, so yes HCs are far more expensive and harder to mass. And 50 food is still not free even in imp
Like I said, the HC’s fire rate is awful so their extra 7 attack advantage isn’t really that big over arb in practice, it also makes them worse vs cavalry
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Skirms for skirms, and you obviously add cavalry or siege to take out siege. Once you have enough, hand cannons counter cavalry. I’ve beaten post imp aztecs with it several times lul
Doesn’t matter with a post imp economy lol. If pikes organ guns is realistic for early castle age, and it certainly is, then adding 1 a few bbcs on top of that doesn’t change it
The production doesn’t take that long if you have map control, and nowhere did I say ports could do that every game 
That doesn’t really factor in to how 1v1s play lmao, if you’re making nothing but archers (and siege presumably) all game then eventually your opponent is going to make an army to counter your composition, and once that happens arbalest doesn’t really do anything for you
Their RoF is a tradeoff for how high their base attack is. As I said, you don’t need as many hand cannons to get to the same damage output as arb. Hand cannons counter what arbs don’t have an easy time countering, which are units with higher pierce armor. There are always tradeoffs but when you have a gunpowder civ that has buffs for gunpowder (like extra hp or firing faster or affected by ballistics…) there’s rarely a reason why you should be making arbs instead vs a cavalry heavy civ. Like any composition, you pair them with something else so I’m clearly not saying “just make hand cannons”
If you were massing archers in feudal then you already have the production buildings to switch into hand cannons so that doesn’t make sense. Even if you were committing to xbow/arbs you’d want chemistry so it’s not a full stop transition
If you don’t have the economy to consistently produce units that cost 50+ food in imp, you’re probably dead
Nah, halb+hand cannon breaks up a cavalry charge waay more effecient than with the same number of arbs. The way hand cannons and arbs fight are completely different but having 20+ units that do 17 attack firing behind a bunch of halbs does more than you’re giving it credit for. The rate of fire is worse to compensate for the fact that they have high dps, and gunpowder civs like portuguese and turks and spanish have bonuses that make this much more practical since turks take forever to kill, spanish outright fire faster, and portuguese have impeccable accuracy
Also, going back to the context, we’re talking about Turks who have janissaries - those things have much higher hp, damage output (a whopping 22; meaning 20 janissaries firing at once has the damage output of 440), and have melee armor. Definitely not countered as easily as hand cannons, post imp Turks would probably still prefer Janissary since they’re such a strong lategame unit, and one of their best options overall; cavalry struggles against them more than hand cannons among other things
That’s a trade, doesn’t protect the HCs against skirms. You can easily pick off the HCs who are most likely at the front due to lower range
Then what’s the point of skirms lol
counter? I did a 30 generic cavalier vs 45 arquebus HC test, stacked and me controlling. The cavaliers won with 20 remaining despite the attack move pathing failing them for a while, not even paladins.
again wood and food is still not free, this is still imp stage, not post imp
And Portuguese with their amazing bonuses can beat other civs at map control ofc
but they did till that stage of the game which counts
the question is the need of going HCs if you already have 30-40 arbs at that point. The counters are the same and for the reasons I’ve stated before HCs are countered worse than arbs
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we are waiting for buff Turks , you see Redbull Tournament only people did not pick Turks… why ?
%68 of players waiting buff about Turks but you still doing nothing about them… its not fair … 
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Turks specialize on gunpowder units and struggle against archers. So wouldn’t it be adequate to further improve the one gunpowder unit, that is decent against archers: the bombard cannon?
While standard bbc most of the times only hit one unit and therefore have a low damage output, torsion engine bbc are much better. So what do you think about giving Turks a higher bbc blast radius - either as a civ bonus or as an additional effect of artillery? I think it would suit them much better than the Ethiopians and could help solving their archer problems as soon as they hit imperial.
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It seems like a nice idea but Castle Age Xbows still would be hard to deal with.
Also we need a solution for Turks without making them OP at arena games.
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