Are Hand cannoneers bad ? Here's a pro player's take on that :
tbh I think that Video was pretty bad and didnt compare HC vs Arbalest in real situations.SotL made a video on the subject almost a year ago.
tbh I think that Video was pretty bad and didnt compare HC vs Arbalest in real situations.
Well.. You are right. But even in real situations HC sucks.tbh I think that Video was pretty bad and didnt compare HC vs Arbalest in real situations.
Exactly, I even think HC are portrayed too good in his video 11Well.. You are right. But even in real situations HC sucks.
Which is exactly what everyone does.It’s fine, just make arbalest then.
That is not quick at all, chances are you have been using Archers since the Feudal Age, and you may not even have an University when you reach Imp.They are quick because it takes only 1 upgrade (chemistry, which takes 1:40m to be researched)
In the words of our prophet JonOli12:
Nicov5151:
Which is exactly what everyone does.
Unless you are Turks or Italians, no one make HCs, and Italians only make thyem because they are massively discounted.
I did not ignore the rest of your comment, it is just wrong.
Cheers.
Nicov5151:
That is not quick at all, chances are you have been using Archers since the Feudal Age, and you may not even have an University when you reach Imp.
Chemistry is the longest upgrade to research, and funnily enough, it benefits your Archers/Arbalests.
since they even lose to Halberdiers.
If the situation they are in it is not favorable, yeah then they can look bad.
maybe that was in the january patch?Wut? Last time I had this fight I killed like 40 halbs with 10 HC. It just took a little micro to avoid getting surrounded... and i'm sure anyone can do that
The unit does fine as a support unit. It's never supposed to be the main unit to go for unless you are going fast imperial on arena or black forest...
For the same reason units like skirms, genitours, pikemen, camels, light cav and others are not meant to be the core of an army. They're all units that fulfill an important role in certain circumstances but wouldn't, with few exceptions, be units you build your strat around. HC are there as a quick counter to infantry. In fact, one could argue that we don't see HC too often largely because we don't see infantry too often, and when we do we check our available counters to see which would be more cost effective - sometimes skirms can deal with limited numbers of pikes, so no HC are needed. Sometimes going for militia line units will be enough to kill eagles or husks (sometimes it won't). And for some civs it definitely hurts not to have an HC or HC-like unit in their arsenal - Mayans or Vietnamese will struggle against Goths due to lack of HC (while gunpowder is a no-go for Mayans, I think we can agree that slingers are often good in the HC role for Incas).@Nicov but why are they not supposed to be a main army composition? Like whats the idea behind ? Did we hear a dev saying what they wanted to achieve with the unit ? And even so, they are no gods, we can still change things 20 years later.
The only thing HC need is to benefit from ballistics. The idea that soldiers who know how to aim at moving targets with a crossbow could not do so with a primitive firearm is absurd from the perspective of in-game continuity and this is a major contributor to how terrible they feel to use.For the same reason units like skirms, genitours, pikemen, camels, light cav and others are not meant to be the core of an army. They're all units that fulfill an important role in certain circumstances but wouldn't, with few exceptions, be units you build your strat around. HC are there as a quick counter to infantry. In fact, one could argue that we don't see HC too often largely because we don't see infantry too often, and when we do we check our available counters to see which would be more cost effective - sometimes skirms can deal with limited numbers of pikes, so no HC are needed. Sometimes going for militia line units will be enough to kill eagles or husks (sometimes it won't). And for some civs it definitely hurts not to have an HC or HC-like unit in their arsenal - Mayans or Vietnamese will struggle against Goths due to lack of HC (while gunpowder is a no-go for Mayans, I think we can agree that slingers are often good in the HC role for Incas).
And since you bring the historical argument to the table (an argument I'm normally loath to use myself because the way the game works is largely bullshit from any historical standpoint) gunpowder units didn't constitute the core of any army during the period covered by the game - they only did so by roughly the 17th century. Soldiers bearing firearms were usually set behind pikemen and other such 'melee' infantry due to the fact that, while their volleys could be devastating, long reload times made them highly vulnerable. This is not to say that they couldn't prove decisive in combat, but they made up but a fraction, and a small (and expensive) one, of armies in that the period. Furthermore, during the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and quite in contrast with the image portrayed by the Spanish UU, firearms were not as widespread, even if they were effective even in small numbers, largely due to the fact that they were being seen by the first time by their adversaries. Finally, outside Europe and the Americas, firearms were an important part of armies in some places (the "gunpowder empires"), but they didn't necessarily replace archery, and certainly weren't the most dominant weapon of the age. In fact, it could be easily argued that it took even longer than in Europe for firearms to become dominant.
TL;DR: There are both gameplay and historical reasons for HC to be expensive (a slight adjustment could be made, but bot much) and considered a support unit. They fulfill a niche role quite well. There are way more useless units (steppe lancers, anyone?) than the HC out there.