Flying crow is really really slow. It is probably the slowest artillery in the game. It is such an awkward unit, because it always moves behind the bulk of army, getting picked off, bugging or rotating around and fails to reach the target, or just blocking other units or getting blocked by other units. If you move the whole army together just to protect the artillery a bit, the whole army is super super slow. The damage output is already not amazing, no multiplier vs infantry, and is only from wonder or shipments. Those are not the problem, but China doesnt have the advanced arsenal techs that speed up artillery, the ridiculously slow flying crow is probably the most annoying artillery in the game.
P.S. the other artillery for China, the hand mortar also feels so slow, and block each other trying to hit something. They are meant to be massed and that results in the terrible pathing of a group of that slow artillery. Compared to mortar or culv which doesn’t block themselves easily because of fewer numbers.
Plz speed them up a little bit, to the same level as rocket or heavy cannons without advanced arsenal upgrade, that should be a fair change. The speed of heavy artillery seems to be related to it’s cost. For comparison cost wise rocket < great bombard < heavy cannon < papal bombard, speed wise it is the same order from fastest to slowest. Flying crow is as cheap as a rocket but why is it slower than heavy cannon? It is so annoying.
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Does speed even matter for this unit?
you get it for free from the wonder, so just send it at your leisure
can spam it from shipments so you can just plop a blockhouse, village or castle and then dont even have to walk
and they benefit from like 5 cards plus the brit consulate, so they are more then worth it and they basically ■■■■ on all other non culv artillery since unlike other heavy artillery (rockets, bombards, heavy cannons), they dont have the 0.5 multiplier against other artilllery so they always 2 shot other cannons
You want to play china like you are digging in defenses, spaming castle and bases forwards so that all the artillery dont have to move
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Flying crow is not free it is 600 res. 2 of them costs an age 4 shipment. The wonder auto producing is a part of the Chinese eco by design so i don’t know why you think it is free from wonder. It is same cost as a rocket but much slower, so it is terrible to use can’t really hit anything and can’t escape from culv. Rocket is already considered a bad artillery, but is still better than FC.
You build the wonder as a part of the age up so its like getting the value of a factory trickle for free. in most 1v1 game where you build it it doesnt even matter since you build it when getting pressured and most games ends before the first one even comes out so its effectively a bonus if it ever pops for me. Their res cost is effectively meaningless since you will never pay for one, same with most other heavy artillery.
Like im not seeing a situation where the speed of it actually matters, if you are in bombard mode then no artillery is getting out once shot by culvs and the higher hp of the crow makes it better anyway since it can tank more shots or just fire back if you get lucky (also in bombard mode the speed difference is nothing)
In limber mode you always want to keep artillery barely out of range of culvs anway so it feels moot trying to escape it, if your opponents bring up culvs and you are trying to escape it knowing the range of the culvs matter more then the speed. if the culvs are in bombard more ready to snipe you will be faster anyway
The unit has tonnes of unique advantages that other artillery doesnt have in the same package, it has the bonus vs buildings that heavy cannon but rockets dont while having the rockets faster rate of fire. it doesnt have a negative multi vs artilery so against other basically anything that is not culvs they can just tank the shot and fire back so in artillery duels they are pretty strong.
also the age 4 shipment is infinite so you can just spam them indefinitely from a forward, one of the best shipments in the game arguably.
Couldn’t it be dragged by animals?