They don’t provide any real role. Building them en masse simply serves as a flex to tell your opponent that you are macroed so hard they have absolutely no hope of getting back. Let us break down their supposed role:
1: They counter infantry. They are actually ineffective against infantry, if not bad as hell. Lets compare them to a generic champion. Both have the same damage and attackspeed. Champion costs 45f 20g with supplies, 70hp and one extra armor. WR costs 65 food 25 gold, 80hp. 0 melee armor. Already a horrible start. The only thing going for WR is their twice as fast training time, but then again, you can spam barracks, but not castles. Woadraiders are quite fast you say? Well so what if they are meant to be anti infantry in this case? They still lose out. A single woadraider and GENERIC champion are equally matched in a fight. Woad raiders are nothing but champions on wheels. Champs also have an 5 more dmg against eagle warriors (who last I checked are infantry). Furthermore, they dont beat ANY of other civ unique infantry. Jags, TKs, Samurai, laugh in their face. Even karambits with their zerg rush can overwhelm them.
2: They are good against buildings. Guess what. They actually suck. Elite version has 3+ bonus against buildings, whereas champs got 4+ (ROFL). Whats the point of having a nonsiege anti building unit when your whole civ is centred around the siege workshop anyway? Tarkans are far far superior at killing bases since they actually have respectable damage, over twice the hp, AND godly pierce armor for a cav unit, which makes them tank towers, tcs and castle fire with ease. Woadraiders are worse than GOTHS. Good god this unit is absolute trash.
3: Cant fight cavalry
4: Cant fight archers, regardless of their speed. They just drop like flies.
5: Cant raid. Too fragile against base defense, and costs gold.
6: Only good for fighting trash units and monk massers who cant be bothered with microing against pesky speeders.
Please fix this unit. Celts are too much of a one trick pony these days. No future in cavalry/archery and just resorts to pike/mango pushes to end the game as soon as possible cause they got no hope later on.
Sadly i agree, There are few if any situations where you wouldnt be better of making either celtic knights or celtic longswords, even after woads got buffed.
When you aren’t making siege, this civ whole civ sucks. Worse Paladin than Byz and they still can make Hvy Camel. Archers sucks like everything on this civ. Lumberjack bonus is ussles at a point.
JUST MAKE CELTS AGAIN PLAYABLE OMG
1v1 woad might lose to a champ but 50 vs 50 woads will reck champs. Try it out in the editor or aoe2 combat sim. Why? You ask. Because the movement speed of woads allow them to move on the next target much quicker so allowing for less delay between engagements. Which snowball. This is true for all engagements en masse so that would apply vs cav and archers and monks too
Secondly woads absolutely reck archers in some engagements which champions just cannot do, because they can catch up so much quicker than regular champs. Archers cannot kite woads to the same effectiveness like they can to champs. Archers can beat woads but only if they have meat shield in front or they are in a choke point or the numbers are not right etc. But in ALL cases woads are greatly better than champs against archers in ALL cases
Thirdly they are much better for raiding since the movement speed makes them almost like cav and they have the same peirce armour as champs but also 10 more hp.
Fourthly they are much better vs seige. Slow champs might get flattened by a good onager shot or two’s but good luck trying to land on woads. You’ll never catch them unless in choke points.
And lastly , movement speed is OP in general. Getting to the place of battle or be able to run if you need has so many strategic implications. Why are plumed archers so much better than regular archers? Why are teutonic knights hardly ever seen in pro games?
This unfortunately is low elo questioning my friends
That theorycrafting is REALLY impressive. Sorry but we are playing actual real games here man. That 50champs vs 50WRs is such a rare scenario it borders on the hypothetical. Remember, woads are more expensive, and they are supposed to counter infantry hard, yet they have to rely on having overwhelming numbers to gain a signicant advantage. In high elo, games are won with many small skirmishes, not massive final battles.
Yes they are better than champs at countering archers. But neither is meant to fight archers anyway. I am not bemoaning their performance vs archers or cavalry, since their stated role is fighting infantry and raiding. The infantry part is lackluster, since as you stated, it needs to be one big battle. I’d rather invest in a few knights.
No point in raiding when you cost gold, unless you are an eagle warrior who is actually faster and dont have pathetic pierce armor. Better to use weaksauce celtic hussars.
I’d rather face enemy woadraiders trying to kill my siege than faster hussar, sorry.
Speed is indeed good. But there is a balance to be had. Elite eagles warriors are faster, but they also have better armor and in some cases more hp. Also, when i face mayans i see more arbalests being massed than plumes since the latter fall off abit in the lategame considering their 1 less attack damage. They are far more powerful in the early stages of the game, as opposed to woadraiders, who you said need to be massed to stand a chance.
If you profess to be so wise in the art of aoe2, then pray tell me, since woadraiders are so fast and all that,why DONT we see them used in pro games?
the unit has always been fine
the problem is the supplies tech. i don’t even think scorpions counter champions anymore because they got so many buffs
celts were a decent civ that got completely destroyed by letting people choose spawn locations and see the map before they pick a civ. their economy is good on every map, but they can’t do anything when the game got dumbed down by letting people always just pick the best civ for each map. there is no place in the game for average civs anymore. same thing happened to byzantines
It is still cost-effective fight for Champion. Woad Raider is good all purpose unit from one side, it can counter everything if it gain small number advantage. On the other side, it lose against everything when you are little behind against opponent. It is simply Jack of all trades master of none unit.
Despite its speed advantage, the Woad Raider is no good against archers. You always need to have lots of Woad Raiders and few archers as enemy so that Woad Raider is good at killing archers. I don’t think Woad Raider has to be good at melee fighting. Devs could make Woad Raider more useful by giving 1 PA and nerfing it elsewhere. For instance, 2 PA but 60/75 hp can be applied.
Even in its current state, Woad Raider isn’t a bad unit, but it’s really hard to use successfully.
Woad Raider by my definition is a Halb-Resistant Hussar, with 1 less Pierce Armor yet double the Damage.
And just like Hussars they serve as a bulk of army that choose their fights wisely and raid, rather than man-up against mass of Arbalesters or a composition of Paladins.
One of the best Unique Units in the game in my opinion. Very hard to counter because how generally good this unit is, the high movement speed, high damage and high HP makes them efficient versus all type of units including HC to a solid degree.
That’s an interesting way to look at it. Would you be in favor of reducing the gold cost to maybe 15 to make the price reflect its similarity to a trash unit?
Elite Woad Raiders are evenly matched with Magyar Huszars, each killing the other in 8 hits, and both serve as a raiding UU that must be produced at Castles. If WR had a price of 65F + 15G it would still be more expensive than MH’s 80F after the UT. The 2 units do have different strengths, with WR better against spears and buildings, while MH is better against siege, gunpowder and archers, but overall power is similar.
but overall Hussar is far better than Woad Raider in terms of raiding and fighting against mass Arbalesters. That is why I proposed to give 2 PA in return 60/75 hp to Woad Raider.
Against old HC, Woad Raider traded well but with recent +5 hp buff, HC tank 4 hits (old was 3 hits) of Woad Raider. I don’t think Woad Raider can trade well against HC now.
Great idea. Useless stronghold tech can switch with Woad Raider cost -10 gold.
Yes, but Woad Raider is supposed to satisfy Celts lack of raiding unit which is Hussar in other civs. Therefore, we can compare Woad Raider with other civs’ FU Hussar. Hussar is very good at raiding, on the other hand Woad Raider is clearly worse than Hussar. Making the Celts’ champion main frontliner, and increase the Woad Raider’s raiding ability is useful for specialization. I don’t think this is strictly necessary, but I think it will be useful for strategical gameplay.
Each unit should specialize in its own field. After I upgraded Elite Woad Raider, I don’t switch into Champion because Champion doesn’t give a significant melee advantage over the Woad Raider. Woad “Raider” is already an unarmored warrior, it’s only natural that it specializes in raiding.
I really don’t understand what you are trying to say here.
hard to adjust Woads…they are fast so giving them melee armor isn’t logical. 2PA will be slightly OP as an all-rounded unit?
Maybe a 5-10 hp buff is the best?
Woad raiders is a nice unit when combined with hallberdiers and onagers/rams. I don’t think it should be buffed too much. Sure +1 pierce amor is nice, but maybe this would be too op.
On the other hand, I would like elite skirmisher to be buffed to better represent the massive use of javelins and darts by the gaels. Maybe a technology to replace Stronghold ? Like Kerns : +2 attack and +1 range for skirmisher (but still no bracer). It could bring a somewhat decent gold-free antiarcher unit to the celts.
That’s a nice idea, though Celts as a civ is already way too efficient when it comes to gold, in a wholistic point of view it won’t be that elegant of a change. They have no use of gold besides some addition of siege.
Also we have to remember that Infantry units have the best Armor Type in the game, resistant to most units and get stronger the longer the game goes, if they only had mobility they’d be an ideal unit, and that’s what Woad Raiders have, mobility.
I’m still not sure what kind of change is needed here, @AbledManatee867 has a reasonable change of increasing their pierce armor to this of the Hussar. Which totally makes sense, however may strip the purpose of using Siege in their composition, with 2+4 pierce armor Woads are capable of dealing with mass Arbalesters.
I’m highly against mono-unit-composition-to-rule-them-all, just like developers mistakenly done with Sicilians Knights.
I would start gently by decreasing the food cost of the Elite upgrade from 1000f 800g to 600f 800g. Allowing the Celts player to slowly massing them as he builds up his farm economy, I think that the problem with this unit is reaching this stage of having a mass. As a mass they’re good against Cavalry since Celts can mix in some Pikes, just like Aztecs do with Eagles, it’s unfair to judge them sterilely.
