“Turks” in the game represent both the Ottoman and Seljuk era, but not the pre-Seljuk era, which is represented by the Tatars. That’s why the Turks still have Middle Eastern architecture instead of the Central Asian one.
And the Ottomans were indeed a prominent naval power.
I came up with an idea before
BUT I don’t think that Turks need a new unique unit! They are probably fine as is and just need something to help them in Arabia a bit more
Problem with doing something like buffing janissary is that it is really annoying for noobs (like me) where Turks fast castle/fast imp is very common and one of the best strategies on Arabia. They aren’t bad on a higher level either as: You will likely be building a castle anyway and you don’t need to build a barracks or archery range.
If you want to buff them you have to somehow keep them the same on arena (DONT REVERT RANGE NERF)
All the Castle Age unique units must bring a specific combat value over their Imperial Age counterparts. That’s the case for other units such as Mangudai, previous Janissaries, or Genoese Xbow.
If the range is not going to be this value over Hand Cannoneers, then it must be damage.
Hence, the Janissaries will have a +3 attack advantage against non-infantry targets over Hand Cannoneers, thus bringing this specific value.
The Turks are a Middle Eastern[note 1] civilization in Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings , representing the Turkic people west of Persia/Iran (called “Turkish” people). The Turks are based on the [Oghuz Turks](Oghuz Turks - Wikipedia) which included various Turkic dynasties (i.e. Seljuk Empire, Sultanate of Rum, and the Ottoman Empire). They focus on gunpowder units.
They very much go into the pre seljuk era, and Tatars are NOT the civ to cover that. Material for changes can even come from as far back as the gokturks, since there’s both a strong connection and it fits the timeline.
How about you accept that Janissaries and Turkish Hand Cannons are not the best.
There is no rule saying that Turks must have the best Hand Cannons in the game.
It would be trivial easy to make a list of Cavaliers/Paladins and Cavalry Unique Units that are worse then Frank Paladins.
Just because a cavalry unique unit is worse then Frank Paladins doesn’t mean that the unit or civ are bad, you always have to see it in context.
Turks also have good Hussars, other gunpowder units, Heavy Camel Riders and tanks Cavalry Archers.
Turks definitely don’t struggle in late game. They are the most popular fast Imperial civ for a reason.
If Turks need anything it’s a Feudal Age buff and maybe even an Early Imperial nerf.
Hera cant pull of a fast imp with turks on ARENA. Granted its against vs Mr Yo, but the top player known for his defence cant make this fast imp strat work on the best map for it??
Popularity doesn’t indicate strength, and there’s definately something wrong when the civ feels strong only when you ignore its unique unit.
Why are we even bothering to reply. This person just claims themselves more self important than us then blocks us when we give any meaningful pushback.
The problem is at its core: Il Salem makes 15 different turk threads so EVERYONE is punished by there now being only one place ANYONE legally can
Am I the only one who finds that a tad disconcerting?
Turk hand cannoneers are fine, Janissaries aren’t.
Why do Janissaries have to be the only unique unit that brings zero combat value over their Imperial Age generic counterparts? No other unique unit immediately gets outclassed by their Imperial Age counterparts in every single aspect.
Janissaries are more expensive, less accurate, lack bonus damage against infantry, and require a castle compared to Hand Cannoneers.
If it’s a gunpowder civilization and its unique unit is a generalist Hand Cannoneer, this unit should be better than Hand Cannoneers against non-infantry targets to offset their 4 huge downsides.
If they are countered by a non-gunpowder civilization’s Hand Cannoneer by a large margin, then something is very wrong.
Also, both Janissaries and Elite Janissaries’ attack dispersion is still 0.75, while Hand Cannoneers’ is 0.5. So Janissaries’ accuracy is actually even lower than it appears.
You can see the difference from 9:54. It’s obvious that they also forgot to lower Janissaries’ attack dispersion when they buffed Hand Cannoneers.
Janissary isn’t the only victim of the power creep. For example, I hated it when I learned that Gurjara Camels can beat Cataphracts cost-effectively. They should never be countered by Camels, it was never part of the deal.
Well, Ottos WERE good at sea, but spot on that the civilization is about TURKS not that single particular empire.
As much as I like the direction of focusing on the horsemen, the sipahi sounds painfully weak, even with the extra armor. Plus, the cavalry archer became a medium cavalry unit in the ottoman/timurid era so that goes back into the same issue of overly Ottoman centric.
The noise of the janissary talks drowned it out (thanks for the merge /s) but consider my redesign for the civ;
Cavalry and Gunpowder civilization
The current turks hyperfocus on the end of the period where the civ transition into the ottoman empire. Valid, but it takes it a bridge too far when 3/4 of the civ is ignored. This concept aims to reflect the other 800 years of the turks in the time period - Oghuz and Seljuks mainly.
To make this, yet 'nother CA civ stand out, the focus would be on the OG horse archer tactics - in game, they have a natural compatibility with hussars, but irl the complement was cataphracts.
The cavalry gold cost reduction aims to make it a bit more feasible to have knights and CA at the same time. Otherwise the more practical, CA/huss is always there.
The easy access to ballistics and husbandry are to further reinforce the highly mobile, missile based approach. In the endgame, Janissary and Artillery is really all they need to cover the link to ottomans.
Janissary:
Unique upgrade to the hand cannoneer.
HP - 60
Attack - 22 (+5 vs infantry)
Accuracy - 75%
Reload - 3.45
Frame delay - 0.2
Range - 8
M. armor - 4
P. armor - 0
Speed - 0.96
Upgrade - 1000 food, 650 gold
The period does fit when the janissaries started using guns over bows but having it in age 3 doesn’t make sense, chronologically. The improvements to durability are reflect the operating tactics of janissaries - shoot their ammo bag, then go in for melee. Tercios weren’t adapted by ottomans for a while (if ever).
Silhadhar
Heavy cavalry, strong vs most units, especially cavalry. Weak vs spears and monks.
HP - 130, 140
Attack - 13, 16
Reload - 1.8, 1.7
M. armor - 2, 2
P. armor - 3
Speed - 1.45
Bonus: +3 vs cavalry, +5 vs cavalry
Cost: 70 food, 55 gold
Elite upgrade - 1200 food, 800 gold
For castle age, a heavy horsemen unique unit to highlight the Seljuks. I know that it was a cavalry type present in the seljuks and lasted well into ottomans. For a castle - imperial time span, it fit right in. The stat spread is to mimic a paladin thats stronger in melee but weaker at range with an overall advantage of being faster. The anti cavalry is a nod to the regional development of a sword type dedicated to horseback duels developing in the area.
Unique technologies:
These are already perfect, imo. A nice and relevant boost to CA in age 3, and the very nice boost to siege related gunpowder is alot more in line with the real gunpowder specialty of the later Ottomans.
Missing: Halberdier, Gambesons, Arbalester, Elite skirmisher, Paladin, Camel line, Steppe Lancer line, Siege onager, Siege ram, Fast Fire ship, Herbal Medicine, Block Printing, Seige engineers, Stone shaft mining,
Gains: Pikeman, Onager, Illumination, Crop rotation
Yeah maybe I should stop.
There is a hand full of people in this forum that think that their personal experience with the game is more important then the selective experience of everyone else.
And then there is the other type that just really wants to buff their favourite civilisation (very often Ottomans/Turks) because that’s the only thing they care about in the game.
But hey every game is like that. Some people want to play a certain strategy, build, hero, character, class, weapon, etc. in a certain way and then complain if it’s not meta. They want their favourite strategy to be meta at all costs.
Longbow. There is nothing about a none Elite Longbow that isn’t better with an Arbalest.
Janissaries are better against high pierce armour targets like Cavalry.
Many unique units out there are only very situationally better then their generic counterparts.
In recent years the devs have tried adding UUs that compliment the generic roster instead of filling too similar roles. Again Longbow is a prime example since they are barely and different from the Archer Line.
Why shouldn’t they?
Cataphracts are anti Infantry not anti Camel. I think their effectiveness against Camels is kinda of a relict of older times like the fact that towers have attack bonus vs. Camels and Spearman vs. Ship from a time where the armour classes were still set up differently.
Those are things that should be “cleaned” up in my opinion.
The game now supports negative attack so maybe just give all Infantry negative attack vs. Cataphracts.
Wanting back the stolen range and establishing the previous Janissary–Hand Cannoneer balance is not the same as asking for a buff.
Hand Cannoneers got a triple buff while Janissaries got one major and one stealthy accuracy nerf. And despite this, I still think that Janissaries can be compensated without giving the range back. Not as good as bringing back the previous Janissaries, but still better than nothing.
They outrange generic Arbalests with Yeomen and they cost less gold. And to get Arbalest, you need to pay for both Crossbow and Arbalester upgrades, while Hand Cannoneers come with a cheap Chemistry tech.
They might not be an anti-camel unit, but they were never intended to be cost-effectively countered by camels either. The same as how Janissaries were never intended to be countered by Hand Cannoneers.
Current Samurais also counter Cataphracts by a huge margin, and I don’t think that was the case.
i didnt watch the whole vid but didnt mr. yo just feudal tower rush? like ofc you arent going to be 2 ages ahead of someone, especially someone as good as yo.
You should try asking the mods. That’s how I got this thread made in the first place.
@FloosWorld @EliteRiflemann what do you think?
Spoilers. The tower rush failed. Hera defended and got to the jan/bombard comp.
Maybe make it so they only use their ranged attacks against non-siege land military’s units (can’t be used on villagers, buildings or siege) because it would be really op in dark age/tower rush but much worse vs rams and buildings. They should have really low attack so they cant just easily kill melee units from behind walls.
The civ idea is really unique and I feel like its being ‘wasted’ on Turks when it could be some other civ!
Makes sense about the numbers. Taking the base range at 3, how about if the damage was 1/2/3 in from age 1 - 3?
The logic for the design is for the dark age to reference the gokturk connection, feudal is the oghuz, castle for seljuks, and age 4 for ottomans.
Age 3 and 4 are easy, since the time periods line up well enough with the seljuks and ottomans.
Ages 1 and 2 are for the gokturks and oghuz, respectively. Given that the UT’s and UU’s go to the later polities, the bulk of the former come from the civ bonuses - they’re intended to be most relevnent in age and 2 and fall off after.
The vill + eco bonus together are meant to hint at the early 6 century where their lifestyle of following animal herds around the steppes on horses and hunting with bows eventually culminated in the primary tactics of the horse archer based armies.
Having a large bulk of your population being master archers by default gave then a decent bit of security, and the ancient turks didnt really do ANY fortification - the total reliance on mobility and missiles felt unique enough to be worth including.
Given the number of nomadic civs, the idea here was to distinguish the turks as a safer and slightly slower paced civ as a hidden nod to how they tended to assimilate into settled areas more than the likes of mongols and tatars.
In fact the only Indian civ I remember being called overpowered is Gurjaras, though that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore lmao
Dont worry he calls Gujaras broken too
That’s not the case at all. Keshiks, Boyars, actually every single cavalry unique unit loses to Imperial Age Paladins.