The idea of this game and the UUs that every civ has is that you are bottlenecked by a Castle in their production. Very often, to compensate for the limited amount of Castles you can get, UUs have a very GENEROUS production time (on the broken side in cases like Obuch with its 9s, but always low even for your average case of say Cataphracts with their 20s vs the 30s required for a Knight).
So why is it that in some cases, the devs thought: “oh, this is not enough, the UU must be made from generic building!” and gave civs techs like Marauders or Anarchy?
Is Huskarl really needed to be spammed from a Barracks? (probably yes but only cuz Goths is so bad and uni-dimensional otherwise)
Is Tarkan a bad unit if it was locked behind a Castle? (probably not?)
not really. 650 stone is a lot for one building, period. so yeah, they have faster production times, but what’s easier to get? 1 castle or 3 stables? I mean look at the meta right now, how often do we actually see Unique units used? they are very rare, even the best ones aren’t exactly common.
Anarchy is obvious. just based on how goths are designed, they need to be able to spam out their unique units, and thus allowing them to be produced in the barracks lets that happen.
as for Marauders, my guess on this one is quite simple - they needed a way to give Huns (and Mongols with Nomads) a unique tech without substantially increasing the power of the civ.
I wouldn’t say its a BAD unit, but its not really a solid unit either, it’s very niche and excells only in certain situations. and back when the UT was added, Tarkans were actually much worse then they are now.
And what justifies your reasoning at the end? Did you design the game so that what you enonce is an absolute rule? The way UU works, is that you have to invest 650 stone to access it. That’s it. The fact that you can research a tech to build UU in generic buildings do not breach any “sacred law”.
Because Arambai are a much stronger power unit than Tarkans are? Tarkans aren’t bad if your goal is to just run in and destroy buildings as much as possible, but compared to the knight-line they perform much worse against units, so they’re sort of balanced. The tech actually makes Tarkans viable to make right now, through Castles they’d just be harder to mass.
Imagine if you could make Conquistadors from Stables/Archery Ranges now, though - same problem as with Arambai. They’re much much stronger than e.g. Cavalry Archers as a power unit, so the Castle prevents them from being massed as quickly.
Fixed that for you. Tarkans do not die to TC fire and/or scattered defenses meant to deter raiding. If Tarkans are in your base, after the huns cleaned up your army, resign.
Tarkans actually kill Archers slower than Knights, as per Spirit of the Law’s video. They’re sturdier, but attack so slowly that they’re still not the preferred choice.
And you rarely fight just Archers anyway, so you don’t want to make Tarkans the main unit in your army.
yes, they kill slower, but take less damage doing so. they also are cheaper and faster to train. they win out in every metric vs archers except in time to kill. even those sotl videos you reference show this.
I’ve even seen viper decide to use tarkans against an opponents archers, going as far as researching marauders to do so. if knights were better, why not just use knights?
obviously - i’m just saying, tarkans aren’t as bad as people make them out to be.
my point was not that tarkans were bad, it’s just that they’re not as big of a power unit as conquistadors are, or other cavalry UUs like keshik/leitis/boyar for example
Still better to pick them over knights. Paladin is not often possible in 1v1. But E.Tarkan can be researched very comfortably which is as good as Paladin if not better against archers. Also against CA, I think there should not be any question that Tarkan is better.
That’s true. Which is why Marauder didn’t make Huns OP, nor even stronger than AoC days.
The answer is easy: because civ bonuses, unique technologies and unit abilities are exceptions to the rules. Cav units thrown at spear units die except if they are a cataphract or a Sicilian knight. Mangonels are created in 46 seconds except if you’re on a Celt player’s team. And yes, some UU can be built outside of a castle. And you’re probs only bickering at those that were used to defeat you, I bet that if missionaries were good you would be outraged that they come out of a 175 wood building without needing anything to be unlocked 11