If you know a unit is bad, will you train it? I will not, even if I am a noob
They make no sense. There was no point in creating them and it was a mistake, to be honest. They tried to add some flavour and variety, but there is only so much you can do when you already have scouts, knights, camels, cav archers and elephants. Steppe Lancers try to fit a niche that in reality doesnt exist.
For comparison, look at Hand Cannon & Arbs - notice how they fit a similar role (anti-infantry) and get countered by basically the same units but have key differences in terms of cost and upgrades. Also, when one is available, usually the other is not (or is capped due to lack of Bracer).
There is no point in having two units produced from Stables, costing the same type of resources, fitting the same role, sharing the same upgrades. Switch them to 50w 80g, 90w 30g, or whatever wood/gold balance is necessary and they would fit a niche. Make them get upgrades from the University instead of the 3x/3x from Blacksmith and they would fit a niche…
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Exactly. But now that they do unfortunately exist, a good plan would be for them to be a Knight Substiture for the Mongol, Cuman and Tatar armies,
with Cumans recieveing the Imperial SL as replacement for Paladin.
Cost: 70F 55G (+10 GOLD) , TT: 24 seconds (unchanged, 12s for Cumans)
Fire rate: 2.3s (unchanged, 20% slower than Knight)
Steppe Lancer (Cheaper faster Knight with 1 range but less armor)
HP: 80 (up from 60, 100 with bloodlines) (124 HP for Mongols with bloodlines)
Atk: 9
A/PA: 1/1 (up from 0/1) (1/2 for Tatars)
Speed:1.45 vs (Knight’s 1.35)
Elite Steppe Lancer (Cheaper faster Cavalier with 1 range but less armor)
HP: 95 (up from 80, 115 with bloodlines) (144 HP for Mongols with bloodlines)
Atk: 11
A/PA: 2/1 (up from 0/1) (2/2 for Tatars)
Speed:1.45
Imperial Steppe Lancer (Cumans ONLY)
HP: 120 (140 with bloodlines)
Atk: 13
A/PA: 2/2
Speed:1.45
Upgrade : 1500F, 700G and 90% research time of Paladin tech
So basically, my recommendation is almost the same as @Walkop, with the same price and base stats,
except for that I keep their movement speed as it is (as I feel running from camels should be a feature of SL), and the respective bonuses of Mongols and Cumans as they are.
I made the Imp SL upgrade extremely costly and time consuming for keeping that Cuman SL speed, making sure the Cumans don’t get to spamming stage that easily.
With this, the Cumans would turn into “the Franks of Asia”, relying heavily on SL as Knights and ISL as Paladin, having a food bonus(Feudal TC) and having a UT that creates SL much faster!
As far as my experience goes, I feel they are balanced at 70F 55G considering their slow attack speed. Only viable in a brief window in Castle Age for Mongols.
Rightfully Bested by Tatar Keshiks.
And Rightfully function as Paladins for Cumans.
The problem of the meta isn’t that there aren’t other possibilities, it’s that from too many years people use those strategies and struggle to deviate from them, since it would mean train their brains to have too many implicit and fast behaviuours in mind, which isn’t possible.
You don’t have to send an army, a few units are enaugh, and incastle age, SL are great raiders, maybe the best.
I appreciate the idea. But saying if it is balanced is difficult
This topic is about their purpose, not about potential changes. Could you please stay in the topic.
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Of course, if you say so
The answer to the question of this topic is:
There is currently no function of the Steppe Lancer other than wasting gold.
Just like there is no viable function for War Elephants, Shotel Warriors, Elephant Archers, Siege Towers, Ballista Elephants and Teutonic Knights other than wasting gold.
Discussion over lol
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Thank you.
It’s only because there already is a topic dedicated for that, so it’s in order to avoid being flagged.
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Do you just copy and paste this on every topic?
Yesss Sir, at your orders.
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If want to find a role to SLs, clearly raiding is the closest answer. They are in between knights and scouts.
You may say 2 things:
- they do the scout job of low cost raiding units better than knights and the knight job of strong fighter better than scouts
- they do the scout job of low cost raiding units worse than scouts and the knight job of strong fighter worse than knights
I am more on the second option
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Come on, man. Steppe Lancers are useless in fights. You are throwing gold away if there’s Knights (or literally any other gold unit) on the field. IMO I’d rather produce Light Cavalry than Lancers. They attack too slowly, have the same HP as Light Cav, less peirce armour (why???). And they cost SO much gold for this.
I’m pretty sure they are one of the worst units in the game right now as to cost effectiveness. Even Longswordsman, which are not good in melee fights (it takes double numbers Japanese Longswordsman to beat Knights) melt Steppe Lancers.
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Oh yes I forgot they do have an actual role where they’re useful, so they don’t just waste gold
They look cool
Especially the Elite
Happy?
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They attack 15% slower than LC. 28% more damage, so almost the same DPS. As Light Cavalry! A trash unit!
They have less peirce armour. They have low HP.
They have every downside of Light Cavalry, and every downside of Knights, while costing a ridiculous amount of resources. The only thing they have going for them is range, but that’s useless because they’re so weak any other unit is still going to do the job better. Being massed doesn’t matter at all.
The one thing they’re supposed to be strong at, being strong and groups, is a total lie. They’re pathetic in groups. Their damage output is awful, they can’t tank anything, and they cost as much as Camels which are a far more effective unit. You have no real reason to make these guys in Castle Age, because Knights and LC do everything better and now cost effectively. On top of this, you have no real benefit in committing resources to mass them.
Can anyone here give me one answer as to how this makes sense? It totally goes against every principle of balancing in this game.
Genuinely? My thoughts are the devs felt they made a serious mistake when they released the Steppe Lancer in the state it was in, and made an irrational decision in overnerfing it (IMO, to save face) when all it needed were minor changes.
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The other points you make are all true 100% agrree but not this one
Castle age camels are just as pathetic cost wise for anyone other than Indians and Byzantines
Counting food they do, don’t they?
My math is probably off. That was the one point I didn’t double-check before making.
Edit: they’re the same total resource cost. 60 gold 55 food vs 45 gold 70 food. Edited my original post.
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It’s a very not well thought out unit from any perspective.
From a historical perspective, the civ designations are absolute nonsense. Lancers were more widely used than knights were in European armies, as that was what developed from Classical armies. Putting ‘Steppe’ before it means almost nothing historically as well. Steppe civilizations had good cavalry in every regard, but not exclusive cavalry.
From a game perspective, they didn’t test it enough. Beta testers largely ignored them to be honest, since Cumans and Tartars had other things (arguably too many things) to play around with. On release, everyone figured out they were broken and it led to an overnerf.
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Well, to answer that, let’s analize the general options for raiding in castle age with cavalry units (so let’s put aside for now infantry and foot archer):
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The scout line is used in feudal and late imp, but almost never in castle (with some exceptions, that we won’t look at them for now), despite saving gold (which isn’t usually a problem in castle) they do a poor job, so you use them only when you just spam them in the enemy base in late imp.
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The knight is strong, and difficoult to counter (it resist to arrows and can run away from pikes) but isn’t that good at killing vills, since it need to pursue them, hit them, then pursue them again, and repeat it about four times for vill.
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The cavalry archer is a lot more effective in killing vills, a small group of them can just run around and on-shot them, but it’s a lot more easy to counter, since it’s weaker than a knight to defensive buldings, and ES counter them hard, especially with ballistics.
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The Steppe Lancer in the end, is a middle ground between a knight and CA, it can pursue better enemy vills (it’s faster than a knight, and it can reach them better thanks to the +1 range, so it take less to place those 4 hits) and you can group up them like CA. It also have more HP and PA than a CA and it isn’s counter by ES. It also cost less gold than other units.
So, in my opinion, SL take the positive aspects of both CA and knights in raiding.
The problem is, that when DE was released, everyone just focused on how they were ridiculously powerful when stand ground-patrolled. When they, rightfully, nerfed that (it actually still work if you have enaugh of them) everyone thought that they suddently don’t have a role anymore, without considering that they are fantastic raiders.
Well, look is always important.
Do the opposite reasoning, look at their positive aspects.
Why all cavalry have to tank? Some are just made for deal damage.
It’s funny that Viper has them on A tier.
Ahhh now I remember OK
I guess he said againts “NOOBS”?