Why I think the Light Cavalry line should have 1 range (but reduced other stats)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

First I know this is controversial. But please give me at least the chance to explain why I think this is the right now to re-establish scout rushes in the meta. And especially continouus Scout production in feudal.
It has one major drawback and I will bring it right away.

Scouts cost 80 food and are trained in 30 secs. That means you effectively need 8 feudal farmers to sustain continouus scout production or 14 farmers to sustain scout + vill production. That’s a lot of farmers just to sustain the production. Not even to get up to castle. This means in the common meta of 20-28 minute castle timings you basically can’t macro to castle behind scout production, you have to stop at some point. Archers as we all know can and probably also should be produced continouusly.
That means from the sheer strategic eco balance perspective the scout player will always be in a disadvantage in prolonged feudal battles as long as this 80 F cost is there. This isn’t possible to change by stat adjustments.

As we all know scouts in feudal have the timing advantage - if your opponent isn’t walled then they can seriously damage his eco. But they fall of after that cause once the opponent has his walls done and some own military you can’t do much with the scouts to damage him directly.
With the 1 extra range scouts would maintain that early agression potential but also become dangerous again if massed. As we all know how dangerous steppe lancers can be when they are massed. BUT with the low melee armor, low damage output and a serious tech investment for that stage of the game they will have problems against castle age units, especially knights with their 2 melee armor. The idea is to make scouts more viable to mass in feudal, not to make them the new steppe lancers.

So I propose the following changes to the scout line stats:
A) Scout Cavalry gets +1 range but only +1 (from +2) attack when hitting feudal age
B) Light Cavalry gets +1 range but 6 atk
C) Hussar gets +1 range but 6 atk, 2 ROF and 70 HP
D) Steppe lancers get +1 range, +5 HP but -1 atk
D) Elite Steppe lancers get +1 range, but -1 atk

This would effectively mean that the mini walls that can stop drushes and maa rushes wouldn’t be sufficient anymore to stop scouts. You need to be fully walled and you need to be done with it before they arrive, cause they can hit your walling vills through the palisades.
With the extra range scouts would become more efficient against palisades and houses in higher numbers. Despite having -1 atk, if you have high enough numbers of them they can outperform repair vills on houses quite easily and also break palisades kinda fast, so it will become really awkward to backwall for the opponent. The only way to then deal with scouts is to have some kind of defence up like towers, archers, maa or spears to force them away.
Especially the new negative house armor is really nice for scouts, especially massed scouts which then would become kinda counter to house walling. Not that house walling would become useless because of this, but the scouts would probably preferably target the houses then cause they would shred through them in a nice time and cost the opponent a lot of attention to not become housed and not allowing you to get in.

The extra range would also make scouts more viable vs archer play. Currently single stable play loses vs 2 ranges archers + fletching. One reason is that to make scouts work you need at least the armor upgrade and bloodlines. Before that you basically can’t engage vs the archers. The only “chance” you have is trying to pick up reinforcements which is not always possible and also a danger cause sometimes opponents send spears or collapse on you, or you can’t find the reinforcements but still take damage at home.
And if you have all the upgrades on your scouts but haven’t reduced the archer mass yet the opponent has so many he can get a good fight even despite you having all the upgrades.

With the extra range it would be much easier to get good engagements vs the archers in feudal. You would still need all the upgrades on your scouts, but it would probably be a more close fight after that.

Someone said that he thinks if this unit gets +1 range it has to go down to 1 PA. But I don’t think so. In my opinion the best compensation is the reduction in damage output. Steppe lancers were so dangerous because of that DPS, cause no other unit could dish out so much damage as them when they were stacked. By reducing the damage of the scout line I think i compensated quite nicely for the extra range. The HP reduction for the Hussar is essential though as in their Case they would be way too strong lategame unit if they would maintain their current HP. They will probably be at the same level as currently.

I have a lot of other thoughts about this but the Post is already long enough. Maybe we will get to the other points during the discussion. But ofc it’s possible I also missed some important counterarguments.

2

Unless the unit has a long weapon its going to look ridiculous visually.

7 Likes
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argh the whole hitting units from behind walls is pretty cheesy and looks stupid and the fewer units that are able to do it the better in my opinion.

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Not a fan, I think it’s map gens that need changing, not scouts.

1 Like
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Why make huge changes to “fix” a unit line, which is in a decent spot?
Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Lategame Hussar is heavily used. You nerf them, which some people might even see as a good change, but I think they’re fine. Good&cheap raiders, but not amazing at fighting.

Light Cav in Castle Age is actually not that common, but I’m not sure if your changes would even fix that. Also there are still some uses for the upgrade, like fighting for relics in Arena, or cheaply upgrading Scouts if you have 6+ left over from Feudal Age. If you want to push them, just give them 5 more HP or something like that, but even for that I don’t really see a need.

Scouts are still a very good opening, which is played at every level of play. Just because they fell out of favor a bit for pros, doesn’t mean they need a change. Scouts is an economic opening. You dont need to kill 5 villagers for them to be worth it. Get some map presence, see what your opponent is doing, maybe pick up a walling villager or force some quickwalls → you’re fine. You don’t need more than that.
Then there’s the option to fully upgrade them and get the best Feudal Age unit - then you need to do some damage, but that’s something you just shouldn’t do if the opponent is safe at home.

Scouts are just not played like Archers, where you always continue to produce. Either you don’t and you will be up faster than an archer player, or you do and get upgrades, which will make you get up later, but also gives you a timing window, where you’re stronger.

The only thing this unit needs is decent pathing to reliably take fights like you’d expect them to vs grouped up units.

3 Likes
6

Not a fan.

I would like to mention one issue - you buffed scout, mentioned how to make them useful, but have you considered how the opponent counters (buffed) scouts?

Esp. spears and MAAs are useless now (it’s really easy to micro with 1 range), small number of archers get destroyed as well you basically have to go scout yourself, or full wall minute 10.

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It’s really not about the pathing. Yes the pathing could be better and it is annoying but it’s not the main reason why melee has a bad time.
It’s just about how we currently micro, that makes it extremely hard for meleee units to engage. Yes the pathing doesn’t makes it better but even with like “perfect” pathing you will still have the problem that only a few melee units can actually attack while all archers can.
So no, pathing isn’t the solution. It’s just the truth.

Well I think in general there are a lot of ideas out there how this could be approached. In a first step I would just increase the speed of spears. DE has made unit control way easier and we make use of it excessively. If spears move just a bit faster it would compensate it exactly where the root of the problem is - making it harder to outpace the counters, just getting a few more occasional hits here and there like it was before DE.

But that’s a different topic.

Maybe you can micro, but with one less attack you have to heavy micro and can’t really macro behind that. I doubt this is worth it, really. Especially as you give the opponent time to react like adding walls or towers.

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Well you have to buff spears - I think it is not a different topic (your buff, applied alone, basically destroys all other melee units in feudal)

Maybe in imperial age it’s difficult to macro behind that, but in feudal age, esp. the first 4 to 5 units, it’s really easy to micro (as you can see the skirm dance / archer dance / scout blocking villages from TC micros)

9

Would actually be historically accurate. Scouts with Swords is just ridiculous, one of the biggest historical inaccuracies in the game. It’s almost the worst weapon you can possibly use on a horseback.

Melee weapons usually used were spears, horseman’s axe or horseman’s pick.

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Nah. Dont get ms wrong its definitely inaccurate but one of the biggest? Not even close

1 Like
11

Lets not go down the path of historical accuracy with a sword throwing bacterian camel called a mamluke.

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So you want a historically inaccurate long melee weapon for scouts… A bit weird if there are so many historically correct to chose from, but to each his own I guess.

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I dont want to give scout or light cavalry a spear they are fine as they are.but you idea to give a sword user range is bad visually.

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I just said it to reveal your strawman.
You’re one of the people here in the forum with the most insist on historic accuracy.

Sorry but that’s just not true in the current meta with longer feudal. You can’t just open 3-4 scouts anymore and then go up to castle /except for limited civs and siituations).

The reason why we had this repeated changes to walls and also maps in the last years is just simply that scouts are insanely strong when the opponent has no walls up, but terribly weak when he has them up. But if we nerf walls we don’t make only scouts better, we make all feudal military better.

I want to tackle it there were it is, make scouts better vs walled opponents. Especially higher number of scouts, bec of the reason explained above.

Aren’t you sick about this repeated discussion of “walls OP” and “archers OP” and so on? It’s just cause the current scout design is flawed. And unnecessarily flawed cause if scouts had spears and the associated 1 range from the beginning they would be way more useful in the situations they currently struggle.

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Or meso civs with steel, xbows/arbs, the wheel and siege

16

rofl

so someone disagrees with your redonk suggestion and they strawman? wake up

you want far too much of a change that would massively affect balance, as well as requiring a graphical rework of the unit(otherwise it will look super stupid as mahazone pointed out). changing numbers is one thing, gfx is another all together

realllyyyy doubt thats a nerf, its a huge buff. due to dps when massed. you are no longer doing 7 at 1.9 rof with like 4 hussars due to body blocking, you are now doing 6 x 8 or however many you can stack together. that range is the whole reason SL are in the position they are. now you put that on a nearly infinitely spammable unit…

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I think you are mixing me up with sosomeone else.I have always said this is a game not a historical simulation.
It would be great if the unit skins look historically accurate like the teutonic crusader knight but a total reskin for all units is pretty unlikely no matter how hard people will shout.

1 Like
18

I agree in some point about your analysis, but your suggestion sounds terrible for me.
I wonder if scout-line’s cost could be changed from 80F to 60F 30W and TT from 30s to 25s.

1 Like
19

I actually already though about adding a gold cost to scouts in feudal that could be changed to food some later tech.
But I don’t think this can solve it tbh. It also adds some other interactions that could change how the game is played entirely.
(And it doesn’t changes anything about the interaction with walls…)

20

Scouts main role in the early game is to scout map, or do a scout rush if you can. But if you can’t rush with the scout due to wall, just boom, and get later techs to break the walls down.

Hussars in the late game, need no buffs, or nerfs. They perfectly designed, and even do okay vs champions, and great at killing villagers.