Urumi Swordsmen - Made simple

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Friends, this is just my take on how Urumi swordsmen can be made a viable unit by removing some unnecessary gimmicks and tweaking their stats to function like a proper unique unit which covers the civs’s weakness and functions like a swishiy batttle elephant.

Urumi Swordsmen - Ideal to fight against multiple opponents at the same time

Removed gimmicks :

  1. Charge attack

  2. Armour ignoring splash damage.(No benefit from woots steel)

Changes

  1. ROF - 1.5 (Increased from 2 to 1.5, Urumi becomes the fastest attacking infantry in the game (excluding Samurai benefitting from civ bonus), 33% faster attacking than now)

  2. Melee attack - 5, 6 (Elite) (No charge attack and regular attack does splash damage always)

  3. Ability - Splash damage of 50% strength in 0.5 tiles radius (Every attack does area damage to nearby units)

  4. Pierce armor 0 → 2 (Increased by 2)

  5. Cost 40 Food and 40 Gold (Balanced to be better value than longswords in castle age , but not spammable in late imp)

Result - Fast attacking ability which deals splash damage in a 0.5 tile radius. Urumi’s weight was on the handle. So it was very handly to strike quikly compared to swords which weighted towards the middle. The weapon itself was good to fight multiple opponents at the same time better than sticks. The fluidity is what contributes to the pace of attacks. So a faster hitting Urumi design is ideal. Dravidians struggle against skirms in castle age. Urumi with these stats will be good against bunched up units like skirms. Knights can intervene. But it will cause them at least 1 dmg in due to blade splash. Urumi’s speed makes them good against Siege as well espcially once they close the distance. Most importantly, this design does not overlap with swordsmen role. Urumi will not have some in-significanct role in Dravidian gameplay once this change is implemented.A swishy shirtless infantry doing charge attack like heavy cavalry or elephants just does not look possible and especially with the charge bar working like a battery bar of a plugged in smart phone.

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Trained at

Castle

Food

40

Gold

40

Training time

9 seconds

Statistics

Hit points

55, 65 (Elite)

Melee attack

5, 6(Elite)

Attack bonus

+2, +3 (Elite) vs Shock infantry
+1, +2 (Elite) vs Standard building

Reload time

1.5

Melee armor

1

Pierce armor

2

Armor class

Infantry
UU

Speed

1.1

Line of Sight

5

Ability

Deals a blast attack of 50% strength in 0.5 tiles radius

Below is the damage calulations, which point to an Urumi swordsmen who is extremley good in situations where numbers are not in Dravidian favor just like real Urumi fights vs other weapons.

2

Why though? It’s gimmick makes the unit unique.The Urumi already demolishes many units in melee, weak vs archers, done. Unit is one of the worst nightmares for the Teutons.

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3

These are the only parts that I agree. Such slow attacking melee units will be too bad because other units will just hit and run. Even players now can use hit and run against spearman when playing as cav units.

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4

Not really, Urumi just combines charge attack of coustilier with splah damage of Dzrushina of slavs. A man on a horse or an elephant doing a charge attack makes sense. A squishy infantry unit does not seem to make sense.

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Teutons are still far more mobile than Dravidians despite lacking husbandry. Dravidians have a far worse castle age play compared to any civ in the game and have no options against teuton cavalry since even monks are ineffective due to teuton team bonus. By chance for the game to go beyond castle age, Dravidians need to rely on range units. Nobody makes Teutonic knights as the go to unit against Dravidians and +1 melee armour knights are good enough to deal with pikemen. Besides woots steel is too costly and comes in too late to swing any games. The cost should of the tech should probably be dropped to 500 food, 500 gold.

I get your point then probably the rate of fire can be increased to 1 and attack redued to 5. I came to 5 as the value by computing the older charge damage of 12 and then normal attack 9 over 24 seconds which is 12+(9*12 times) = 120 which divided by 24 seconds gives the current attack value of 5. This change will make them better against trash units and vills with less armour.

A +2 pierce armour would make them good at raiding too like a light cav replacement.

  1. It maintains the anti-trash speciality even without woots steel and does not die to skirms
  2. Its good against villagers
  3. Armoured units +2 melee armour and above take only 1 damage from splash assuming other upgrades are equal
  4. ‘Charge attack by infantry’ gimmick can be taken up by a different new unique unit of some other civ. Comitatenses already adds a charge attack for Roman units as an unique tech otherwise it could have applied for elephants as a replacement for medical corps.
5

Why can’t you leave rate of fire as it is?

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6

Not really sure what the point is. This kind of changes their current utility for something completely different, without a clear reason why.

From my perspective, they are pretty good already. They are a very specific and Niche unit, but are extremely good within that niche. They do need their current charge attack for that niche, though. If you want just general combat capability, you probably want the militia line instead.

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7

The 50% area damage will be pretty high with 10 as base attack. Its is like a knight having trample damage. Against units like skirms, crossbow or infantry, 5 attack as passive trample damage is extremely snowballing. It is like having Dhruzina as civ bonus. For comparison, Ghulam does 5 damage only to the unit behind main unit. Ratha does 2 trample damage. Even elephants get only 3 as trample damage. These units cost higher than Urumi. This is one of the reasons Urumi is so snowballing and needs 0 pierce armour as a balancing mechanism which renders it useless. It is suppose to be a better swordsmen for Dravidians. However it works like petards in reality.
The best way to counter urumi blade by historical accouts was to use heavy armour. So high armour units perhaps should not fall prey so easily. With a main attack of 5, blast damage will be 2.5 which will effectively be 1 damage/sec for knights in castle age when adjusted for a rate of fire of 2 is as good as melee ratha. But Dravidians have cheaply upgraded pikes against knights. So there is an answer. The Current problem is that both Urumi and pikes die to skirms. And as you said, knights can hit and run against spear units. Urumi having a relatively weightless blade can be swung fast to prevent such tactics becoming a nuisance and they can be paired with pikes.

What utility are you talking about?

What niche are you talking about?

What is needed is a unit like light cav with full armour upgrades capable of tanking arrow fire and kill squishy units like archers, infantry and villagers. Militia-line cannot perform this role. I think @Pulikesi25 had this discussion with you in the other thread.

8

They need that to compensate the charge attack and armor ignoring attack. In fact, I fell like they will be weaker in melee combat after the change.

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9

No, they will be far better and well rounded in combat.

Without woots steel for castle age:
Currently they output a max potential damage of 150 HP (12 plus 9x12 times) in 24 sec before recharge is complete. With the change ROF of 1.5, for every 24 sec without charge attack, they will output 5x(24/1.5) + 3x2.5x(24/1.5) = 200 max potential damage.

Outputs 200 damage in 24 sec
In castle age, potentially Urumi will be twice as good in melee. Of course, this will be against clumped up units.

With woots steel assuming a +5 damage,
Current - For 20 sec elite Urumi
Max potential damage = 15+11+5 + 16x9 + 31x0.5x3 = 221.5

with change and elite upgrade giving +1 attack and no woots steel
Max potential damage = 6x(20/1.5) + 3x3x(20/1.5) = 200

Outputs 200 damage in total in 20 sec
Same damage in less time is the benefit of elite upgrade. Less than previous snowballing version. But good enough just 21.5 less potential dammage than current version and no need of woots steel benefit for Urumi. Unit is good on its own against units with less armour which is how the design should have been done originally.

10

Urumi swordsmen generally dominate in massed melee battles. Largely due to the charge attack hitting multiple opponents. Wootz steel also helps, though that’s also true of Dravidian champs.

I’m not certain what niche you’re aiming for here. The pierce armor and speed would help it as a raiding unit, but low attack weakens it at that role, and high ROF and splash damage mean little for raids (as vils won’t bunch up and will often need to be chased before launching a second attack). Are you aiming for a unit that is strong against low armor targets, while leaving champions as a well-rounded unit that is better against high-armor targets?

I get the sense that you want to rework the Urumi swordsmen because you dislike the civ design (and firmly believe that Dravidians can’t be balanced without a raiding unit). Some people (like myself) like the current design for Dravidians. And while their overall performance is meh, their win rate isn’t so poor to put them in 1v1 F-tier. Arabia win rate is statistically above 45% for all ELOs, 1000-1200, 1200+, and 1900+ (seems like a C-tier performance to me, but definitely not F-tier). Arena and Megarandom seem to be around 50%. And Dravidian win rate is clearly positive on the maps “Nomad” and “Four Lakes”.

In team games, Dravidians do much better, though I suspect their team bonus is doing a good bit of lifting there. And allies can cover their need for a raiding unit.

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11

Sounds great, almost perfect. Now devs be like “Hey Cysion, we are done crafting the next dlc’s infantry and naval civ’s uu”. Meanwhile changes for urumi swordsmen they’ll bring - tt reduced by 2 seconds, charge attack increased by 1, elite upgrade food cost reduced by 50 food. And a bunch of folks would go bonkers over that “triple buff” :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Right, with melee pathing improved the old story of dying to cav raids is back.

But the gimmick isn’t unique, charge attack was introduced for Coustillier, armor ignoring effect for Leitis. So its a non-unique gimmick that doesn’t make much sense for a castle infantry unit.

Changes their utility - yes. Currently they’re absolutely useless and never needed instead of militia line. So you’re right, the utility does change giving the unit some purpose in mid game.

You always want the militia line instead because of more hp, more p.armor, no necessity of several castles and the net cost of upgrades is 550 food 280 gold. This isn’t like the new jaguar or samurai which are more pop efficient in a reasonable number of situations. You want to kill cavalry, you have halberdiers for that which cost no gold.

Except the opponent won’t take a head to head fight (the teutonic knight situation) or use throw away units like a few light cav to drain the charge. Practically speaking in higher elos, no one will even have the time to go for urumis if game is even. Get imp asap bracer, chemistry, arbalester+halbs, canons, trebs and push. Later you can do urumi like a flex but it’s never necessary for Dravidian gameplay. They’re basically like jaguars from voobly.

The core design is fine but the eco bonuses are insufficient to compensate for the lack of 2 important and fundamental unit lines. A very powerful long term eco benefit is necessary to justify such handicap.

45% winrate and low pickrate on Arabia is fine if they’re top tier on Arena and closed maps. But its bottom 10 on Arabia and bottom 20 on Arena. Yes, its 48% winrate on Arena in live patch at 1200+ and 36% (small sample) winrate at 1900+. Also one of the least picked civs. So no it’s not a decent civ on Arena by any means. Not the worst but definitely below average. Overall you’re looking at D-tier Arabia and C-tier Arena civ..
Hybrid and water maps don’t have good civ balance and account for less than 2% of the games. Less than 10 civs have dedicated bonuses for such maps and rest of them are generic. A civ being good in such maps can’t justify being abysmal on land maps.
Japanese were S-tier civ on Four lakes but still got +2 attack vs ranged units on their CA, multiple buffs for samurai and yet an average but playable civ on land maps.
Same goes for Italians, S-tier water civ but got 3-4 buffs for land maps in the past 2 years.

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12

It’s pretty broad really. Since they got their speed buffed, they are remarkably effective against everything from archers to Eagle Warriors, though the place they truly Excel is against the Spearman line. A strategy I don’t see used hardly at all except for by me is a combination of elephant Rams and urumis. The charge attack makes it virtually impossible to do any damage with Spears, they just get obliterated in a fraction of a second, and combined with medical corps, armored elephants become ludicrously difficult to take down.

In all honesty, the only thing that they really aren’t good against is skirmishers, which is a very common mistake I see people make. The biggest problem isn’t even the fact that you take more damage, the problem is that skirmishers automatically attempt to pull back, which makes them separate and nullifies much of the splash damage. If you are going against skirmishers, you either need to be using your own skirmishers or the militia line. They aren’t super good against Cavalry either, but to be honest they can emulate a Pikeman fairly well due to the charge attack.

In practice, they are more effective as a defensive unit than as an offensive unit. When you were attacking, you usually only hit a few enemies with the charge attack, whereas if you are defending, then they send enemies around you, which means the splash attack becomes like twice as damaging. The speed is more useful for staying back out of skirmisher range, while still being able to rush in and deal with attackers as needed.

13

40 gold for a 65HP frail unit that is not even good at close combat melee now? Why? 2 pierce armor and 1.15 speed is not going to make it suddenly good against archers to make it weaker in melee so much

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14

Did you even see the potential damage they would do at 1 ROF to all units including knights. A min of 2 damage as splash damage every 2 sec. 65 HP is more than enough for an infantry unit.

The idea is to change the unit into a useful one filling up a tech tree hole. The first one I proposed with a ROF of 4 was a good enough unit with a balanced weakness in my opioion.

If the Rate of Fire should remain at 2, then Damage @ 10(15 elite) and splash damage of 20% damage will be similar to current imp stats. But will improve castle age version total potential dammage output to 176 points every 24 seconds and 240 points evey 20 seconds for the elite version which is cmparabe to the 221 now. Its will be very similar to Ratha without the skirm weakness.

15

In a hypothetical situation they can do well against such units if both you and opponent boom until 40 mins and you get to mass 60+ elite urumi swordsmen with wootz steel while opponent made only halbs and skirms or a few number of foot archers. In a competitive 1v1 game, this is not possible.

Nobody makes halbs against Dravidians since their stable is abysmal. It needs a crazy amount of insane boom to mass this kind of double high food combo. And unless you’re playing against someone who is 400-500 elo below you, you’re not going to have the time to have such a peaceful boom. Before you get 3rd or 4th castle up there’ll be cavalry raids everywhere and while you’re dealing with it there will be trebs on your 1st castle.

Yes and this is a huge problem. Being a civ with abysmal cavalry and no siege engineers, the most likely aggressive units from Dravidians is Arbalesters, Hand canoneers or elephant archers. Opponents will 100% go for skirms. While Dravidian skirms are good, when the opponent mixes cavalry units in the fight while also raiding with a few more cavalry units, you’re unlikely to get the better trade. Even otherwise any melee unit that takes more than 2 damage from skirms and costs gold is terrible.

This is fair but 65 food per unit is too expensive in early and mid stages since there are better ways to use that food. And you get halberdiers free of gold that ignores armor in the later stages which makes defending with a gold unit absurd.

If Dravidians were a cav civ against which opponents would almost always do halbs or camels and almost never go for skirms, urumis would be a good fit. And this design flaw is one of the main reasons why they’re a terrible unit. Lets say Urumi swordsmen were a barrack unit for Franks, Huns, Wei or Lithuanians. A few urumis mixed with the main army of Paladin/cav uu + skirms will be perfect to thin down the halb numbers quickly. And since you fight with your own high hp cav units, urumis wont die right away before dealing considerable damage. But for a civ like Dravidians with no cavalry, urumis make no sense.

16

You are forgetting the elephant Rams. That’s why they build spearmen. Indeed, that’s basically the backbone of the entire strategy. Dravidian elephant Rams with medical corps are basically immune to archers. Even if they do die, they waste so much time taking them out you win either way.

You do underestimate the urumi, though. Broadly speaking you need roughly equal numbers against archers or infantry and you win. The big mistake so many people make is they only make a few, and they die, and they call them worthless. The thing about them is, because so much of their damage is in their initial attack, they very much are a win or lose unit. Either you are just across the line of sufficient numbers and obliterate the target, or you aren’t quite there, and you die and do basically nothing. It’s a common misconception that they need wootz in order to be effective, they actually benefit from that less than just about anything else in the roster.

But by far their greatest strength is defending elephants against spearmen. Pretty much any other unit, the elephants will die before the spearmen do, but not here. The splash charge attack means they can defend them perfectly. The two greatest weaknesses of elephants are monks and Spears, and for properly played dravidians, neither option is available against you.

On top of that, if you have five elephant rams, medical corps only takes about 2.5 minutes to pay for itself.

17

Further optimisation of design -

  • ROF changed to 1.5

    Speed maintained at 1.1 tps

Result -

  • Normal urumi potential damage output improves from 150 to 200 in a 24 sec window, a 33% improvement.
  • Elite Urumi potential damal output reduced to 200 from current 221.5 in a 20 sec window, a 9% decrease.

New Urumi role

  • Less snowballing, usable unit in castle age against skirms as well as siege.
  • Good against low armour, low attack, low mobility units like skirms, halbs, vills and swordsmen line.
  • Okay against scout line, heavily armoured cavalry and unique units with high mobility stats
  • Poor against high dps range units like foot archers except skirms, cavlary archers, elephant archers, siege(except within minimal range) and gunpowder.

Elephant 5*120 food + 300 medical corps = 900 food

Elephant 5 * 95 gold + 200 medical corps = 675 gold

No thanks, I would rather go imp and make discounted trebs from that castle. In castle age, if I can get a tech like ‘Equestrian Archery‘ with a mass of cross-bows then the stone sunk in a castle would have definitely been worth it even without Urumi. If I am able to make two siege workshops in castle age, I would still make scorpions over Ram elephants which cost so much food.

18

No I didn’t forget since I already mentioned that its impractical to get to siege elephants + fully upgraded elite urumi swordsmen in a regular 1v1 game. Or if both players chill, your opponent will boom into Persian elephants or Elite Mangudai and drill SO, much more deadly combos like that. So its not a practical combo. To take out ranged units you’d have to do bombard canons, your own skirms. And ultimately those siege elephants are a ram and die to onagers or canons.

You don’t. Its not a scenario where you start with 4 castles and they spawn automatically. Nor does the opponent leave ranged units uncontrolled in the middle of nowhere for you to surround and kill. Realistically throw away units like light cav are used to drain the charge and ranged units take them out while kiting back to defensive structures.

And 90% of the time its the latter. Suppose if they had 2 base p.armor and 85 hp like Obuch or 30% more speed like woad raiders, the explosive damage could happen fairly often but not with the current stats.

Lol, otherwise they won’t even kill melee units well. Units like Jaguars, Japanese and Roman infantry would have higher dps. Anyways I’m not interested in the teutonic knight vs samurai kind of lame argument since that’s irrelevant in competitive 1v1. Generic ranged units, cavalry, gunpowder - these are the common units. If you want to go unique units they’d need a clear purpose against these or a differentiating factor over generic alternative.

If a gold melee unit has very low hp and takes more than 2 damage from skirms or a gold ranged unit takes forever to kill generic infantry they’re useless.

It doesn’t because all of them will die in 1 hit from 10 siege onagers, heavy rocket carts or houfnice. Realistically that and a bunch of other elite units will what opponent have if you somehow manage to get elite urumi swordsmen, siege elephants with medical corps

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19

Sorry, I think we are talking about completely different things. You are talking about late Imperial age, while I am talking about early Castle age, and as part of a larger comprehensive strategy. I didn’t dig into the specifics because there are 100 different ways to get through to having your first castle, but the dravidians are a front loaded civilization, so you are reliant on keeping the pressure on.

In my opinion, it’s a common mistake to go for a mango instead of elephant Rams, because your discount is not enough to make a huge difference in raw numbers at that stage, so you are still essentially doing a 1v1, and you can still lose the game very rapidly that way if you make a single mistake, not to mention the crippling vulnerability to monks.

So you transition into the armored elephants, not Siege elephants, in early Castle age, complementing them with whatever you used in feudal, and eventually build a castle, grab medical Corps to rejuvenate your damaged Rams, and then opportunistically build urumis.

Honestly though, I am very much getting the vibe that you have never actually given them a serious College try. You wouldn’t be making them out to be so bad if you had. I suspect that you have made the classic mistake of making like six of them, they got killed without doing anything, and you called them bad. I would suggest that next time you actually give them a legitimate investment, and you might see better results.

20

You are saving wood behind to set up farms.