Cav Archers need upgrades from 6 different buildings to be fully upgraded

[Hunyadi_]

Archery Range

• Thumb Ring
• Parthian Tactics
• Heavy Cav Archer upgrade

Stable

• Bloodlines
• Husbandry

University

• Ballistics
• Chemistry

Blacksmith

• Fletching
• Bodkin Arrow
• Bracer
• Padded Archer Armour
• Leather Archer Armour
• Ring Archer Armour

Castle

• Conscription
• UT techs such as:
  • Sipathi (Turks)
  • Recurve Bow (Magyars)
  • Silk Armour (Tatars)

Monastery

• Faith
• Heresy

Now obviously the monastery techs are rarely, if ever, researched but still even 5 different buildings are a lot to build to get fully upgraded Cav Archers. I think that's way too much and is one of the main reasons people rarely tech into Cav Archers and even when they do, it rarely works. Too expensive, slow and too much research time invested to make it work. Maybe there's a way to streamline things a bit? Here are some of my ideas:

1. Moving ballistics to the Archery Range
2. Having Bloodlines and Husbandry available at the Archery Range as well (not just the Stable)
3. Moving Cav Archers & Parthian tactics to the Stable. That still leaves TR at the Range ... maybe have TR available at the Stable as well similar to point #2. Although, and sorry to be a history nerd here, historically speaking a thumb ring is largely a Cav Archer tech...or at least should be considered an eastern way of shooting the bow and arrow. A thumb ring can only work with a bow and arrow and the fact that it applies to Crossbows and Arbalests is a complete joke. I have no clue how one would even use a thumb ring on a crossbow, you'd probably severely injure yourself.

Anyway my solution to that would be to split up Thumb Ring and apply to Cav Archers and available at the stable only and then have a separate tech called Target Practice for foot archers at the archery range. Both do the same thing but that way teching into Cav Archers is more streamlined.

Thoughts?

 

[AttilaTheHun]

Isnt this just one building more than any unit in the archery range?

 

[SaladEsc]

Kinda misleading, i think every unit needs upgrades from multiple buildings. That said, I would love to see CA get better frame delay before researching thumb ring

 

[Hunyadi_]

Ok let's talk just about being effective in castle age.

Barracks buildings are very streamlined, which is fair enough since they're slow and quite vulnerable to archer fire. But still it's literally barracks + blacksmith = 2 buildings

But stables units are not slow and still only 2 buildings - stable + blacksmith

Now contrast that to Cav Archers: archery range + stable + blacksmith + university. Total of 4 buildings.

Granted the xbow line also needs a university but xbows are considerably cheaper and easier to mass and fire much faster.

Unless you're Huns, going Cav Archers always feels like such a liability. So slow to mass, so expensive, so time consuming and risky.

 

[iViktorius]

I wouldn't mind bl and TR to be also available in the range if it's possible. Option 2 seems reasonable to me.

 

[dataidiot]

FU HCA are way stronger than Arbalests, it seems reasonable to me they are also more expensive to be fully upgraded. Even FU CAs should beat Arbalests. 70 hp and 6 piece armour is quite impressive for a ranged unit.

 

[Hunyadi_]

FU HCA are way stronger than Arbalests, it seems reasonable to me they are also more expensive to be fully upgraded. Even FU CAs should beat Arbalests. 70 hp and 6 piece armour is quite impressive for a ranged unit.

Right I agree with you. And this isn't a call to make them cheaper, just a bit easier to tech into them. Another factor to keep mind is that Arbalests can be massed starting in Feudal Age. Also generally speaking Arbalests can be preferred over even FU Cav Archers due to their superior range, stackability and reduced frame delay.

There's a lot going for the archer-crossbow-arbalest line and it shows because we seem them in nearly every game of AoE2. If Cav Archers were so superior, then we'd see them far more frequently. I think this is one of those cases where yes on paper CA are superior but in practice it plays out differently.

 

[SouFire]

There was a time, a black time where 2.5k players were only using CA with 2 or 4 farms ur fellow canadian hera was one of them, do you want to go back to those times?

 

[rmcoo]

There was a time, a black time where 2.5k players were only using CA with 2 or 4 farms ur fellow canadian hera was one of them, do you want to go back to those times?

Unless you were Tim_ and somehow managed to stone wall half of the map every game and play kts+monks. Ah, good times.

 

[Freezing_Point]

There was a time, a black time where 2.5k players were only using CA with 2 or 4 farms ur fellow canadian hera was one of them, do you want to go back to those times?

They were also only using one civ, because only Huns made doing that halfway practical.

 

[Roechelrochen]

Not sure if I agree with the premise in general or not but anyway one problem I have with the proposed solutions:
It kills the advantage of proper scouting (and in turn also to hide buildings) if you can build CA in stables/can get bloodlines and husbandry in the archery range.

 

[Tarsiz]

CA are fine as they are.

 

[RogganWololo]

CA are fine as they are.

+1
If it ain't broke, don't fix it

 

[Miral]

Thread title is a huge bait...

When read monastery and castle I was

 

[Rylo]

Let's talk about how much slower CA fire rate seems to be in DE, pratically useless v kts even when you have husbandry now

 

[lecracheursagacite]

They were also only using one civ, because only Huns made doing that halfway practical.

Wait so the Huns war on Arabia memeta came from how good CA were with the Huns cost bonus?

Let's talk about how much slower CA fire rate seems to be in DE, pratically useless v kts even when you have husbandry now

Honestly yes the best buff the CA could probably receive would be to reduce their frame delay to something above the Mangudai but still low enough it doesn't feel like trying to slap yourself in the face with a cooked noodle to kite micro with them properly.

 

[Double_N]

The high upgrade cost is one of the most important aspects to make CA balanced in the first place. Mobile, tanky, ranged units are by nature of the game super strong and a lot of civs can't properly deal with that as it is already.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

^ One of the problems the preposterously long range of the upgraded elite skirmisher attempts to paper over.

 

[Hunyadi_]

The high upgrade cost is one of the most important aspects to make CA balanced in the first place. Mobile, tanky, ranged units are by nature of the game super strong and a lot of civs can't properly deal with that as it is already.

Yeah sure, they're balanced alright. Balanced straight out of the game. I wish Arbalests, Mangudai, and Plumed Archers were so well balanced.

 

[Hunyadi_]

Thread title is a huge bait...

When read monastery and castle I was

I admitted as much on the monastery but technically I'm right.

Regarding castle you're very wrong. Conscription is one of the most essential techs in the game. Also you're telling me if you have Magyars, Turks or Tatars, that you're going to skip on the UT?

 

[AceW]

yeah right because I always tech faith at my 13xx level

 

[harooooo]

I admitted as much on the monastery but technically I'm right.

Regarding castle you're very wrong. Conscription is one of the most essential techs in the game. Also you're telling me if you have Magyars, Turks or Tatars, that you're going to skip on the UT?

Every barracks, archery range, stable unit (and many more) is affected by Conscription, Heresy and Faith.

Why did you specifically point it out for cav archer?

Only unusual thing is that they are upgraded in both archery range + stable, which is just 1 more building 11.

 

[IYIyTh]

Let's just let all the upgrades be made from one building, automatically, whether or not you have resources. For historical accuracy, because technology is assimilated quickly.

 

[Ghazna]

Let's talk about how much slower CA fire rate seems to be in DE, pratically useless v kts even when you have husbandry now

Can someone confirm this, may be test AoC & DE side by side.. If indeed there is more fire delay, this needs to be passed onto devs and fixed

 

[HumzaCrumza]

Ngl I have a personal bias against CA being strong since I think they're already a super powerful unit. That being said, they feel pretty bad in DE with how long their frame delay is so maybe just keep them the same and reduce slightly reduce frames