The creation time of a Genoese Crossbowman is 18 sec in Castle age and 14 sec with the elite upgrade, wherease it is 12 sec for a Composite Bowman in castle age, 10 sec with the elite upgrade.
In % a Genoese Crossbowman take 50% more time to train in castle age, 40 % when looking at elite upgrades.
Do you think this is normal ? Do you think Genoese Crossbowman creation time should be buffed, and/or Composite Bowman creation time nerfed ?
Exactly. The other day I wanted to play Genbow in castle age and damn they train so slow! I had an advantage but was simply overrun by 3 stable knights.
How on earth can a foot archer UU train at the same speed or slow than a cavalry UU like leitis or boyar? Every foot archer UU should be produced as fast as Composite bowman.
similar for cho ko nu: 16 (13) compared to Composite Bowman’s 12 (10). They are quite comparable as units in general, so I reckon the comp bow will have its creation time increased in future patches
It’s because they aren’t nerfed yet. New civs always start out strong.
I’d expect the creation time to be nerfed down the line as well, as the unit will be very hard to balance right.
The reason why Genoese Crossbowmen train so slowly is that the unit is like Mangudai. Very hard to counter in mass. If you do not have good Siege (and Italians will have answers for it) or Archers/Skirmishers (which Italians can also easily answer with FU Hussar, Condotierro), the unit is unstoppable, as it simply counters Cavalry and Infantry.
Therefore, the unit needs to be designed in a way where massing them takes time. We’ll see if Composite Bowman has the same problems, though I’d say they’re far more reliant on the unit than Italians are reliant on Genoese Crossbowmen.
The Italians do not have access to Halberdier, so they rely on Genoese crossbowmen to counter the cavalry in Imperial age.
I think that a small buff to 16 (13) seconds creation time (like cho ko nu) could be good to help the Italians, especially at the castle age: I have never seen Genoese crossbowmen viable at this age due to the need of a castle and their long creation time.
Genbows are better against both xbow and knights, the most commonly seen midgame units.
I also don’t think the issue for italians is genbow. I think their eco bonus (cheaper age-up) is rather underwhealming in comparison.
And if I would like to see any changes to genbows it would be to make them more xbow/arb like so you can just mix them in your archer mass.
Genbow are better than composite bow vs xbow? Yes. But this comparison is meaningless because genbow get destroyed by xbow too.
I think composite bow dies too hard against onager tho (because of no BBC)
Do monks not work vs onagers?
Composite bowmen has similar production time as infantry UU. If composite bowmen deserve such short production time, I would argue that infantry UU should deserve to produce at barracks.
I think halbs can be given to Italians and no need to buff genoese crossbowmen prpduction time then.
I think they need both halbs and faster training genbow. No reason to rob their anti cav options this hard when there are a bunch of civs getting both halbs and heavy camels.
The worst thing is that genbow still gets eaten by cavs before having a critical mass.
I even believe that Incas can lose halberdiers because of Kamayuk on top of the cheaper castle.
It is fair that GC get killed when surrounded by cav before critical mass coz they are too oppressive against cav civs.
GC is harder to mass compared to other foot archer UU and harder to KEEP the mass even compared to cav archer UU. Maybe this is the intended design that GC is much more viable in team games/closed maps. But it is hard to rely on GC in 1v1 so giving halbs would be easiest.
Why is even giving Halbs an option to start with? To turn Italians into another Arbalest+ Halbs army civ? cmon we already have several civs that can do that, variety is needed.
Having more than one options is not a problem. Incas still need halbs vs cataphracts, otherwise they get destroyed without a meatshield.
I’d happy to ignore halb if GC trains in 12s.