Yeah I thought about it a bit. And I think it actually synergizes very well with the double TC play.
If you want to make double TC you want to wall early and not too close to give space for your eco. But you also will set up a big wood eco to make farms. Both of this synergizes very well with quickwalling tools like that much cheaper stables. And yes, I would make mostly stables. Because the only thing that really threatens that kind of play would be siege. To snipe siege you just make some scouts while preparing to go up or already going up yourself.
And then with the better steppe lancers you just spam them once hitting castle. As you already have set up the food eco itās the natural transition also reflecting how fast SL can snowball. As you should be way ahead ecowise, SL could make the deal for you. (Yes SL snowball better than knights)
It could turn out to be completely broken. But itās indeed hard to estimate already, as there are so many soft factors involved.
I would call FU arbalest with gold discount a mediocre archer civ.
And I donāt deny Lithuanians would be an acceptable pocket, but what i donāt understand itās why they need to have 4 relics to be at the same level than franks, than got all their bonuses for free, and a Far better eco
Because lithuanian paladins with 4 relics and no blast furnace will still beat frank paladins. Itās 13 hits to kill a frank paladin vs 14 hits to kill the lithuanian paladin. 3 relics makes it 100% even. 4 relics used to be 12 hits.
And as a pocket itās possible to mix leitis and paladin. If the door opens up for leitis to be mixed in with the paladins, leitis+ paladin will clean up paladins. A 2 relic leitis will kill a paladin in 9 hits (10 for franks) if it gets buffed to 16 attack. It takes 12 hits for a paladin to kill leitis, while costing more.
A good lithuaninan pocket has more tools to he useful than a frank pocket.
Except the frank player is going to reach paladin first so it doesnāt mean much. Literally everything is streamlined for the franks player.
No. Itās not. Thereās a reason you donāt see leitis in team games. Archers straight wreck them. 30 shots to kill. Half what a paladin takes. A good flank will focus fire them down with ease and youāve just wasted all those resources.
If this was true franks wouldnāt have double rhe pick rate of lithuanians right now
I also agree with this. In fact, a lot of us wanted this for Italians or just a new civ long ago. This would be better without neither being OP (in some situations) nor being weak.
This type of response ignores statistics/formal logic to such a large degree I donāt even know how to address it.
The short answer is that a good lithuanian player would still be able to kill arbs with fewer paladins only using the leitis to counter cavalry or siege. No good player allows a unit to get countered unless forced into it or making an error, regardless of unit. Iām not even sure why you would think your points here were remotely plausible. Itās basically throwing out properties of a joint distribution and making up new ones.
Burgundians also get paladin before Franks and can also be streamlined. Clearly this is an insufficient criteria.
Pick rate is not indicative of balance as much as win rate, current win rates are balanced and the difference for the change is 1 hit to kill less. Thereās also a ton of confounders with pick rate.
I mean no one who is being intellectually honest could use your response as evidence at the margin even if they wanted to.
Is it hard? No. Is it harder then āfreeā? Absolutely. Also Iāve seen pros shut out of relics before.
also. The fact that you can lose it is already a large downside no other civ has to deal with
Franks win in winrate too. So clearly superior paladins (according to you anyway) doesnr mean much does it? And next patch that lithuanians win and playrate are both going to drop and franks will go up