It feels overpowered only if you don’t check the numbers. Once you crunch the numbers, it immediately becomes obvious that it isn’t OP in most situations. Spirit of the law called it early. Similarly, this is overpowered (and is bad design) once you crunch the numbers.
Absolutely not. The entire game is balanced around pierce armour. Copying from my edited original post,
Eagles are supposed to be a cavalry replacement and supposed to be similarily strong against Archers. And this may be true against Archers, but it is not true against Composite Bowmen. However there are other ranged units that are already better against Eagles than against Knights. Hand Cannoneers. Armenians don’t get HC so maybe we should think of the Composite Bowmen as a Hand cannoneer replacement.
Basically units do not need to have same strengths and weaknesses. And Composite Bowmen do not need to have the same streangths and weaknesses as normal Archers. Huskarls also don’t have the same strengths and weaknesses as normal infantry for example. If Archers are an Anti-Infantry unit, why do Huskarls then not create a balance problem every time a new Archer unit is introduced? If an Anti-Archer unit is ok, why not an Anti-Anti-Archer unit?
@AriesXBox90
Armenians could have been wonderful colonizers considering how well they deal with Eagles.
Light cav, onagers
Or archers + some meatshield
I dont like the composite bowman and I think it will probably be OP, but once its nwrfed it should be strong but counterable
That’s because in late game closed map and nomad TGs there are siege onagers, houfnice, ballistas and all kinds of crazy power units. Technically multiple units are broken. Ethiopian or Mongol siege, Khmer ballistas, Houfnice, Persian elephants, Mangudai.
If you’re going for late game combos which you can manage to produce, there are so many deadly combos. Ballista-hussar, halb-houfnice, Mongol hussar-mangudai and many such.
Mayans aren’t that great of a pick for closed and if you’re able to beat them with another civ which would otherwise lose to Mayans on open maps, that’s fair enough. This civ doesn’t have bombard canons nor siege engineer if I remember correctly, so its not going to be an insane civ on closed maps as such. Why would you consider it problematic if it beats a civ that’s average on a particular setting?
And on the contrary lets say this unit isn’t good enough. Now you’re talking about a slow civ with mediocre military composition. That’s weak. It can neither win on open maps because of being slow nor can it win in closed maps because of mediocre imp units. The Dravidian story all over again.
In general, if the civ’s economy is fast, you can justify weakening the unit more. From what I’ve seen so far, the warrior priest stats and healing rate might end up being the actual problem and the only ones that might require an adjustment from this civ.
How about you don’t see this as an archer at all. Rather see it as a high dps ranged unit. Like Gbeto or OG chakrams. You just shouldn’t engage these with non-ranged units and rather used ranged against them. Skirms or even generic fu arbs in larger numbers.
You also have 6 other projectiles being fired with spread effect. And that scales well in terms of dps in larger numbers. And this unit in large volumes will also do overkilling. Like 50 units firing on a single paladin when 25 might be sufficient. These 2.91, 3.45 things apart what I’m trying to say is that we have ranged units with significantly higher dps than usual. Like Mangudai have insane dps, also counter siege and have a crazy good rof, Arambai with spread effect, some gunpowder massive damage multiple bullet units etc. Raw dps especially on a 4 ranged slow unit is not going to make it broken or anything. If it also belongs to a civ that’s an economic powerhouse through all stages of the game, then it will be a problem.
I think its just an initial draft with all default values. There are some missing stats like frame delay, training time etc which shows this page could potentially be updated. Even with these stats lets say the unit ##### ### (30) to be produced. That will still balance it out. It will be a very powerful unit like those but it will be very difficult to get a good number of them.
It is. That’s the rock-paper-scissor rule. In large numbers archers are supposed to counter mass produced infantry, infantry are supposed to outnumber and kill cavalry and cavalry are supposed to kill archers even with lesser numbers and not die to them soon. Huskarls, Eagles and ghulams are considered powerful because they break this rule. But still are balanced for the most part because of the tech tree of the civs they belong to.
This is just true for Dravidian infantry, Leitis. Dravidians are considered one of the weakest civs overall in the game and Leitis while strong are by no means broken or seen to be stomping everything in the ladder. If you have units that do a massive amount of damage, but its difficult to produce and mass enough of them without taking too much time, its not going to be broken.
This I agree. Its just a poor lazy design. Its not unique because the mechanic already exists. And it doesn’t fit the civ either. Its not an anti-archer unit and archers or ranged units will be commonly seen against this civ.
Out of all these I see skirmishers as the only problem. Rest are unique units. Much similar to how certain melee units like Serjeants, Teutonic knights or any teutonic melee units for that matter are supposed to be good in melee fights but get countered by Leitis, these unique units are not supposed to be played against this civ. And that’s totally fine. Ignoring skirm armor could be an issue. Unlike halbs against Leitis, skirms kill archer units by surviving long enough and not dying against them. This will be the only issue. They should get like -10 archer class armor or something like that to compensate for killing skirms fast.
I’ll sum it up, but I know people will just ignore this comment and keep arguing. A game is fun because it is like a puzzle: you have to figure out what to do, often based on partial information, and then (in an RTS) execute correctly. When your opponent has made a move (consider the original AoE2 cinematic with a chess board, tower, countered by trebuchet, countered by knights, etc.), there are two main things to consider when evaluating what move to do in response: how the unit you make will damage your opponent’s choice, and how your unit will be damaged by your enemy’s current and future choices.
Armor-piercing removes half of this calculation, because damage is the same. This is especially true for an armor-piercing ranged unit: a Leitis cannot damage a unit if it dies before it gets close, but with 7 range the broken archers can damage most other units in a reasonable scenario.
So armor-piercing objectively makes a game less of a game, and therefore less fun.
That is the player’s perspective. The developer’s perspective (and, to some extent, the player’s other consideration) is that there are a limited number of mechanics to exploit.
But the Armenian bonus is offset by the fact that:
Archer civs will always be able to outproduce them because they will have an unlimited number of ranges only costing wood vs. however many castles you can afford. All that time you spend collecting stone for castles for production means your age up times will be much slower. If you collect stone early to afford an early castle, you’ll be massively behind in economy since you can’t add TCs til later in castle age.
Arbalest and Elite Skirms have 5 range vs. Composite Bowmen who only have 4 range. Arbalest also have less attack delay (0.35 seconds vs. 0.5 seconds for the unique unit). So in theory, normal Arbalest should be much easier to micro. Arbalest and Skirms also have 7 line of sight vs. only 6 for Bowmen.
Armenians don’t get Thumb Ring
Enemy can treb down your castles you need for Bowmen production but Armenians don’t have bombard cannons to counter the trebs. Enemy can also use Onager to counter Bowmen, knowing you don’t have BBC.
We’ll agree to disagree here. There are much better and more balanced concepts for archer UUs that could have been chosen before they decided to scrape the bottom of the barrel for this.
How is this ever relevant. Most units can do this if the archer player doesn’t micro for some reason.
Yup, it’s basically equivalent to a UU whose design is “does bonus damage to every (non-siege) unit.” If it was presented that way, perhaps more people would agree that the design is stupid. And there’s a lot more pierce armor spread over a lot more units than melee armor, so giving this ability to any ranged unit is much more powerful than on a melee unit, other factors being comparable.
I would. Because then it’s just a wasted UU that could have been fun and interesting, but then the devs paint themselves into a corner and have to nerf it into oblivion because they chose a bad starting point with the unit’s identity. It’s definitely not as much of a problem as a blatantly OP unit, but it’s still a problem.
And this would make it extremely un-fun for anyone playing with them.
Skirms are one of the biggest issues, but being almost as good vs. generic cav (and eagles: not UUs) as Genoese, but significantly better against almost everything else seems problematic in the aggregate, even if many of the individual matchups are not necessarily in “OP” territory. Remains to be seen exactly how it will play out across the range of civ matchups, but it seems silly to have an archer whose only semi-hard counter will probably be stronger archers and siege.
Maybe they’ll have to end up doing something like this (or a smaller negative armor value), but if so we return to the unit concept being so poorly thought out that these awkward compensatory nerfs are required.
I agree (although more WRT to pierce than melee). This is similar to what I was alluding to with it being a bad idea to trivialize such a large portion of the game, even if something is “balanced.” Like wow, another unit that can almost singlehandedly shut down the infantry play that Goths are designed around, among others. wHaT aN inTErEstIng DyNAmIc! No, at least in some unit interactions, they’ve crossed the threshold from being “strong and interesting” to annoying and un-fun because of how completely they invalidate so many normal counter dynamics. Like how Shrivamshas are needlessly and annoyingly good at trivializing defensive structures, apart from their more essential roles. Stuff like this I think will make the game less, not more interesting.
source?
lowest pierce armour: 0 (many units), highest pierce armour: 10 (FU elite huskarl 10, FU Incan eagle 10) [11 for a lithuanian imperial skirm]
lowest melee armour: 0, higest melee armour: 13 (elite teutonic knight), 11 (elite boyar)
ignoring siege, since all these ‘ignore armour’ effects don’t apply to siege afaik
This makes me think the Armenian UU should have been a heavy cavalry unit called the Aspet, somewhat making up for their poor cavalry.
Is it the same discussion about the Wootz Steel being OP as hell?
Or is it a new discussion?
We have plenty of ways to balance this unit, make it expensive, make it slow in fire rate and move speed.
Anyway, according to the previous experience, most of the new civs are overpowered upon release in order to grab money. This game has becomes less historically accurate overall due to too many civs.
If you want to make each civ unique with their bonuses or unique units then it’s just inevitability. If there are too many civs, you will just start repeating bonuses, which would be boring.
Then don’t make so many civs.
This is super obvious if you look into how armor tends to be distributed in the game. TKs and Boyars are outliers and it’s very uncommon for any other unit to have melee armor that approaches them:
Units with 13 MA, PA: 1, 0 (ETK)
Units with 10 MA, PA: 0, 4 (I-EEW, EHuskarl, L-Eskirm, ERattan)
Units with 9 MA, PA: 2 , 1 (EBoyar, B-2H) (B-EBE)
Units with 8 MA, PA 0, 7(A-EEW, M-EEW, EGenitour, ETarkan, ESerjeant, EWarWagon, MChampion,)
So in the top part of the range (8+) there are 4x as many units with high PA than MA. This improves somewhat in the lower ranges, but not enough to change the fundamental point of high PA being much more common than high MA. Even more so if you consider my earlier point about high PA units generally being more useful - in practice you’re going to face up against Elite Skirms and Eagle Warriors far more often than you’ll run into Boyars or Teutonic Knights.
I’m not going to go throughevery unit/civ, but it’s quite clear that the average pierce armor of affected units is higher than the average melee armor, which is closely related to my original statement. Even generic Imp armor techs provide 1 more PA than MA.
I would say some civs might struggle against the composite bowman. The implementation of composite bowman mught show a lack of consideration. Similarly they implemented the Ghulam and then people discovered that Mayans have no answer to this unit.
Composite bowman seems to trade badly vs ranged unit in general, and destroy anything melee with a bit of micro. Siege unit is not a very reliable counter to ranged units on open maps because of mobility issue and hit and miss of siege units.
So thise civs with good ranged units should be fine vs composite bowman, and Armenians in general because they are an infantry civ. However civs with bad archers will have no answer to this unit, with a bit of proper micro composite bowman shut down ANY infantry and ANY cavalry. I think this type of extremely good vs some civs and extremely bad vs some civs is bad design. It is probably just an oversight from devs. It shows laziness or lack of innovation.
I would be happy if they copy something from aoe3 or aoe4, instead of continuing this ignore armour thing. Too many new units ignore armour, and it breaks the traditional counter system that has been established for 20 years. Units like boyars/Teutonic knights/serjants/tarkans/huskarls/eagle warriors which rely on high armour are in an awkward position.
Boyars and Teutonic Knights were already in the truly bad spot before DE many years ago, with the buffs the units are better now, Serjeants are just akward not because of that but rather how poorly designed Sicilians are, Ignoring armor on melee units isn’t broken as many want to be because very few rely on that high melee armor (and a smart player won’t throw those units vs the ignoring armor ones) and the ones that do such amount of damage are all balanced by having low pierce armor and HP so ranged units work vs them (Plus either requiering a castle and even UTs to work, or to go for relics to improve that), but for ignoring pierce armor things change and by alot because the range of units having depending on that high pierce armor is completely nullified, sure comp bows have 0 PA, low ROF, low HP and 7 range, but a huge difference is they are cheaper to mass, and can be kept alive much more to get insane value of those and the supposed weakness vs siege is invalidated with FU monks.
We already saw this with Burgundians and Sicilians and look how broken both Flemish Revolution and First Crusade were at launch to the bpoint both UTs had to be nerfed MANY times to be even in an acceptable balance spot in the AOE 2 context.
Skirms are still cost effective vs them (as shown in Mike Empire’s video), just not totally dominant. Think of skirms more like pikes now: knights and pikes can kill each other, so do skirms and composite bowmen. Not to mention skirms have more range usually.
People in this thread are overreacting hard about the Armenian Castle UU (I’ll call them Compos), we already have a Ranged UU in this game that ignores Pierce Armour, and deals massive damage to near every unit in the game and has same ROF as the Compo. It’s called the Gbeto, but TAXmen, Chakras and a couple others are also very comparable but to save some time and pain I’ll focus mainly on the Gbeto.
BUT WHAT ABOUT MELEE ARMOUR GBETOS DO NOT IGNORE IT LIKE COMPOS DO PIERCE
This is true, but is not as significant as you believe because the Gbetos very high base damage and weaker Melee blacksmith armor improvements compensates for this.
I don’t want to agonise too hard by looking at every unit in depth so I might of missed something, but this should be comprehensive enough to prove my point of Gbetos dealing roughly the same or even more damage in most instances compared to the Compo bowmen. Remember Compos do not ignore the PA of Siege and Buildings also and will only deal 1 damage to them even FU
BUT COMPOS HAVE OTHER STRENGTHS OVER GBETOS
I am aware that, but now the point is being shifted away in a sense that people are mainly terrified about the high base damage overwhelming everything and being broken, but this is evidently isn’t fundamentally the case with Gbetos currently which display similar qualities, ergo Compos shouldn’t be. but I’ll still talk about this.
Compos do not ignore the PA of Siege Units and Buildings like how Gbetos still deal Melee Damage to them, for the former this notably includes UU like the Hussite War Wagon and Organ Gun. The damage difference is quite insane with Gbetos dealing the full 17 (or 14 against Teutons lol), whereas Compos will deal only 1. Armenians do not get Siege Engineers or Bombards also
Compos still have Archer Armour class, base 4 range, no base PA (they cap out at 4) and no TR (they shoot slower than Xbows with TR). They will still be beaten by other strong Archer units (even Rattans), Skirmishers and get beaten with Equal Res against generic FU Arbalesters (which have the advantage of being far easier to mass).
Compos have better (2 in both ages) range than Gbetos, but Gbetos have a much higher base speed of + of 1.25 (KTs have base 1.35) alongside Squires for 1.37 total speed, which is +0.41 more than the Composite 0.96 (same as Archers)
Don’t interpret this as me saying that Compos will not be strong at all, and personally I do think they should still get a nerf to their PA (Armenians should lose Ring Archer Armor) so they lose harder against other generic Archers, but to imply it should have 20 HP or 1 (5 with FU) is ridiculous lol.
Honestly, according to what is known, hand canonneer will be a fairer comparison than ranged melee. (More similar Rof, range, hp) and both of them should do much better against high PA units compared to other archers.
From the video, it is quite obvious that Composite bowmen shoot slower than longbow (rof 2). It should have rof like skirm (3) or HC (3.45)
Lets say when facing FU cavalier.
Arbalest deal 4 dmg per shot but with thumb ring (rof 1.7)
140/4=35 shot to die
Composite bowmen deal 8 dmg per shot but much slower firing rate. (supposed rof 3/3.45)
140/8=18 shots to die
Hand cannoneer deal 11 dmg per shot with 3.45 rof.
140/11= 13+ shots to die (only 65% accuracy)