What is the point of steppe lancers?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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So, the mongol civ gets steppe lancers and knights. But… really what is even the point of steppe lancers?

What is the role of steppe lancers?

If steppe lancers cost high gold, low food, thats an economic role.

If the steppe lancers outperformed knights? Ok. But they dont. Knights are beefier, deal more damage, and while you could make the argument that they are better at raiding simply cause they can get in two hits vs knights 1 in very specific situations… yeah no. Cav archers are better.

But lets take a step back and look at ALL civs that get steppe lancers. Tartars get them and also have cavaliers. Cumans get them… and have paladins. Like… WTF cmon man.

I really feel steppe lancers are in a bad spot role wise. Knight line units are always eclipsing them as meat shield roles, and the benefit of two rows of steppe lancers being able to attack same unit really does not matter much beyond attacking structures.

What would make steppe lancers REALLY interesting role wise would be if their melee attack caused units to experience lowered ranged armor. That would make them synergize well with cav archers, and make mixed knight/steppe lancer armies really sensible. Knights for soaking dps, steppe for breaking defense, cav archer for dps.

As a meat shield they are useless in current state. As dps, they are subpar, and they need a change of some sort. Even if they only cost gold, that would be a nerf in most cases, but in team games could be a buff if you had strong trade lines but weak farms?

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Steppe Lancers are insane at:

  • Raiding, a small group (read 5) of them will 1 shot a villager easily, whereas a Knight can’t.
  • Breaking walls, you have two rows attacking one tile at once, which melts it incredibly quickly, and you can one-shot foundations behind if you’re fast enough.
  • Fighting anything melee when microed, you just pick them off with hit and run (especially good vs spears).
  • Fighting melee stuff when massed, as the 1 tile range lets you get a lot more units hitting at once, which then melts the enemies.

In a lot of cases, SL are quite a bit stronger than Knights, especially in early Castle Age. They aren’t in a bad spot role wise at all. I’ll also drop this video from Hera here, as I think it’s very good at explaining this:

Also if you just want a raw example of their strength, here you go:

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They have problema tough since basically past early Castle are not very good. Heavy steppe lancers is something you never see in imp for example.

Also only mongols basically use them cause they have a bonus for free and Better timing and food eco

I do believe they should have a bit more to differentiate from knights or to make their role more clear.

Like are they supposed to be strong in melee with their range? Buff their MA, so that is clear that missiles are the way to kill them

Are they supposed to be raiders? Lower their Gold cost a bit since there is no reason to use them over hussars which every steppe civ get

And so on