(Trying to get this before the eyes of the devs, hopefully with some feedback from players about whether this is a good idea)
There's been a bit of drama in the AoE2 community lately. Hera made a video calling Urumi Swordsmen the third-worst unique unit in the game. TheViper reacted and disagreed, having called Urumi Swordsmen an S-tier unique unit in a ranking video last December. This spilled over into the general debate about the strength of the Dravidian civ, with GL members joking that they had succeeded in the "long con" of getting Hera to pick Dravidians in a tournament by saying that Dravidians were a great civ in AoE2. Most recently, TheViper struggled to find evidence that he was able to win with Dravidians in a tournament setting.
I'm not here to say that Dravidians need buffs. If anything, I prefer nerfing the strongest options in a game to prevent power inflation over time. This post is solely about making Urumi Swordsmen a more attractive unit to make.
The fact is that Urumi is too much like the Champion in normal fights, being stronger in a few situations but with the disadvantages of lower pierce armor (0 base and no Gambesons) and requiring a separate upgrade (900F, 450G while champion is only 375F, 175G as Dravidians), as well as castles to produce from.
Compare other unique melee units: Woad Raiders are very fast. Samurai counter other unique units. Berserks are faster than champions, heal, and have slightly more attack and armor. Throwing Axemen and Gbetos have range.
Let's make the niche of Urumi, "good against numerous units." Buff this capability in return for nerfs elsewhere.
Change 1: make Wootz Steel ignore up to 5 armor for barracks units and cavalry, but just 2 armor for Urumi Swordsmen. This is no more confusing than making Thumb Ring give different firing rate boosts to different units (none for Slingers or Skirmishers, for example). This is basically just a buff to Teutonic Knights and those few units (Bulgarian 2H swordsmen, Gurjaras with Frontier Guards) with more than 5 melee armor. It's just sad when Elite Teutonic Knights don't counter Halberdiers.
Change 2: Urumi Swordsmen do 50% splash or trample damage on every attack, not just their charged attack. Make them use those flailing metal ribbons!
Change 3: Buff movement speed of Urumi Swordsmen slightly, from 0.9 to 0.95. Not as fast as the Samurai, Berserk, or Huskarl (which were all 0.9 in AoK then buffed in AoC), but at least a slight difference so you can say, this is why I'm making them rather than Champions. They aren't a heavily-armored unit, and we've already got Karambit Warriors moving at speed 1.2.
Result: a guy clanking around in full armor that makes him slower than a Monk with Fervor can actually counter the metal ribbon attack, while Urumi Swordsmen increase in their damage output against numerous lightly-armored targets like halberdiers or packed skirmishers.
Suppose that in a dense melee each Urumi Swordsmen is next to three enemy units:
Old damage vs anything:
First hit 29/14.5/14.5, subsequent hits 14/0/0
New damage:
Vs Elite Teutonic Knights:
First hit 18/9/9, subsequent hits 3/1.5/1.5
Vs Knight-line with 2+3 melee armor:
First hit 26/13/13, subsequent hits 11/5.5/5.5
Vs units with 0+2 melee armor:
First hit 29/14.5/14.5, subsequent hits 14/7/7
Current Urumi Swordsmen are not a bad unit. In MikeEmpires's videos, comparing the performance of 39 Dravidian champions or 30 Elite Urumi Swordsmen, the results are very similar against most units even with 9 fewer units (with Lanchester's laws predicting that in a 39 vs 30 fight between the same unit, the bigger side would win with about 16 units remaining which in reality is probably more like 25+ units left varying between almost dead to full health). Some of the biggest differences:
Someone asked why change Wootz Steel. My reply:
Teutonic knights!
I mean, originally I was thinking of suggesting just don't make Wootz Steel affect Urumi (I think I suggested this when they were released, and I've seen other people suggest it). But this is a bit more like how Parthian Tactics used to work: it gave the Cavalry Archer-line +4 vs spearmen, and gave unique cavalry archer units (which was originally just Mangudai) +2 vs spearmen. Then the description would have been something like, "makes barracks units and cavalry ignore 5 armor" or "ignore some armor" or "ignore armor" (because we don't want to leave out armored elephants, so not just barracks and stables).
Basically, we have this mechanic called armor, and it's used to make some units and upgrades good. Serjeants, Boyars, Teutonic Knights, as well as all the units with just 2 base melee armor (Obuch, Elite Berserk, Elite Jaguar Warrior, lots of cavalry).
Then we have a mechanic that just ignores the first mechanic. That's lame.
It's not like ignoring armor makes sense. Compare a teutonic knight and a monk, or a villager with no loom. One of them, you hit them with a sword and do more damage. Then because your steel is really hard, you now do the same damage to the heavily armored knight and the monk? It makes no sense. Really all it is, is a unique bonus for a civ, so we don't duplicate bonuses. We can improve how it plays in the game while keeping the general theme or idea behind it.
If making Teutonic Knights more useful against Dravidian infantry means Teutonic Knights need a nerf, we could do that. But seeing as how Viper put them in C-tier (his lowest), I don't think they would need that. Same applies for the other units affected by the armor reduction cap: boyars with 11 armor, Bulgarian 2H with 9, serjeants with 7, Teuton knight-line with 7, Gurjara camels and elephant archers with 6, Teuton champions with 6, and I guess Centurions with 6.
The well-known MMO World of Warcraft also had an armor-ignoring mechanic, back around 2009. (Before then there were character class talents, like for rogues, that did it a bit, but it wasn't a common stat on items.) It was removed after a few years, mainly because it didn't scale well — you either wanted a bunch the stat on your items or none, because in small quantities it was worse than other stats but in large quantities it was great — but probably also because making armor not matter was not fun. I think the same is true with AoE2.
There's been a bit of drama in the AoE2 community lately. Hera made a video calling Urumi Swordsmen the third-worst unique unit in the game. TheViper reacted and disagreed, having called Urumi Swordsmen an S-tier unique unit in a ranking video last December. This spilled over into the general debate about the strength of the Dravidian civ, with GL members joking that they had succeeded in the "long con" of getting Hera to pick Dravidians in a tournament by saying that Dravidians were a great civ in AoE2. Most recently, TheViper struggled to find evidence that he was able to win with Dravidians in a tournament setting.
I'm not here to say that Dravidians need buffs. If anything, I prefer nerfing the strongest options in a game to prevent power inflation over time. This post is solely about making Urumi Swordsmen a more attractive unit to make.
The fact is that Urumi is too much like the Champion in normal fights, being stronger in a few situations but with the disadvantages of lower pierce armor (0 base and no Gambesons) and requiring a separate upgrade (900F, 450G while champion is only 375F, 175G as Dravidians), as well as castles to produce from.
Compare other unique melee units: Woad Raiders are very fast. Samurai counter other unique units. Berserks are faster than champions, heal, and have slightly more attack and armor. Throwing Axemen and Gbetos have range.
Let's make the niche of Urumi, "good against numerous units." Buff this capability in return for nerfs elsewhere.
Change 1: make Wootz Steel ignore up to 5 armor for barracks units and cavalry, but just 2 armor for Urumi Swordsmen. This is no more confusing than making Thumb Ring give different firing rate boosts to different units (none for Slingers or Skirmishers, for example). This is basically just a buff to Teutonic Knights and those few units (Bulgarian 2H swordsmen, Gurjaras with Frontier Guards) with more than 5 melee armor. It's just sad when Elite Teutonic Knights don't counter Halberdiers.
Change 2: Urumi Swordsmen do 50% splash or trample damage on every attack, not just their charged attack. Make them use those flailing metal ribbons!
Change 3: Buff movement speed of Urumi Swordsmen slightly, from 0.9 to 0.95. Not as fast as the Samurai, Berserk, or Huskarl (which were all 0.9 in AoK then buffed in AoC), but at least a slight difference so you can say, this is why I'm making them rather than Champions. They aren't a heavily-armored unit, and we've already got Karambit Warriors moving at speed 1.2.
Result: a guy clanking around in full armor that makes him slower than a Monk with Fervor can actually counter the metal ribbon attack, while Urumi Swordsmen increase in their damage output against numerous lightly-armored targets like halberdiers or packed skirmishers.
Suppose that in a dense melee each Urumi Swordsmen is next to three enemy units:
Old damage vs anything:
First hit 29/14.5/14.5, subsequent hits 14/0/0
New damage:
Vs Elite Teutonic Knights:
First hit 18/9/9, subsequent hits 3/1.5/1.5
Vs Knight-line with 2+3 melee armor:
First hit 26/13/13, subsequent hits 11/5.5/5.5
Vs units with 0+2 melee armor:
First hit 29/14.5/14.5, subsequent hits 14/7/7
Current Urumi Swordsmen are not a bad unit. In MikeEmpires's videos, comparing the performance of 39 Dravidian champions or 30 Elite Urumi Swordsmen, the results are very similar against most units even with 9 fewer units (with Lanchester's laws predicting that in a 39 vs 30 fight between the same unit, the bigger side would win with about 16 units remaining which in reality is probably more like 25+ units left varying between almost dead to full health). Some of the biggest differences:
- Urumi kill a lot more cataphracts, but cataphracts still win easily
- Samurai do better against Urumi than against champions, but Samurai still lose to both even with bonus against unique units and faster attack speed
- Urumi do better against Jaguar Warriors, with about 13 Urumi left alive, while Jaguar Warriors beat Dravidian Champions (but Aztec Champions barely beat Jaguar Warriors with +4 instead of +5 attack so either side can win)
- Champions do a lot better vs Ballista elephants, since they can absorb more losses on approach and once they're surrounding the elephants there's almost no pass-through damage, but ballista elephants (with no micro from either side) win against both
- Konniks win vs Urumi, lose vs champions
- Leiciai win vs champions, lose vs Urumi (relics don't matter until 4 relics)
- Coustillier lose vs champion, win vs Urumi (Coustilliers 2-shot both with charge attack but there are more champions left)
- 30 Urumi beat 39 Dravidian champions with ~11 Urumi Swordsmen left
Someone asked why change Wootz Steel. My reply:
Teutonic knights!
I mean, originally I was thinking of suggesting just don't make Wootz Steel affect Urumi (I think I suggested this when they were released, and I've seen other people suggest it). But this is a bit more like how Parthian Tactics used to work: it gave the Cavalry Archer-line +4 vs spearmen, and gave unique cavalry archer units (which was originally just Mangudai) +2 vs spearmen. Then the description would have been something like, "makes barracks units and cavalry ignore 5 armor" or "ignore some armor" or "ignore armor" (because we don't want to leave out armored elephants, so not just barracks and stables).
Basically, we have this mechanic called armor, and it's used to make some units and upgrades good. Serjeants, Boyars, Teutonic Knights, as well as all the units with just 2 base melee armor (Obuch, Elite Berserk, Elite Jaguar Warrior, lots of cavalry).
Then we have a mechanic that just ignores the first mechanic. That's lame.
It's not like ignoring armor makes sense. Compare a teutonic knight and a monk, or a villager with no loom. One of them, you hit them with a sword and do more damage. Then because your steel is really hard, you now do the same damage to the heavily armored knight and the monk? It makes no sense. Really all it is, is a unique bonus for a civ, so we don't duplicate bonuses. We can improve how it plays in the game while keeping the general theme or idea behind it.
If making Teutonic Knights more useful against Dravidian infantry means Teutonic Knights need a nerf, we could do that. But seeing as how Viper put them in C-tier (his lowest), I don't think they would need that. Same applies for the other units affected by the armor reduction cap: boyars with 11 armor, Bulgarian 2H with 9, serjeants with 7, Teuton knight-line with 7, Gurjara camels and elephant archers with 6, Teuton champions with 6, and I guess Centurions with 6.
The well-known MMO World of Warcraft also had an armor-ignoring mechanic, back around 2009. (Before then there were character class talents, like for rogues, that did it a bit, but it wasn't a common stat on items.) It was removed after a few years, mainly because it didn't scale well — you either wanted a bunch the stat on your items or none, because in small quantities it was worse than other stats but in large quantities it was great — but probably also because making armor not matter was not fun. I think the same is true with AoE2.