Firelancers OP

[Feng Huang]

It isn't. You don't know cause you only 1v1, just 3v3 or 4v4. We've heard this repeatedly online.

The problem is the lack of early aggression in large team games. So people can mass lancers and snipe landmarks.

I'd argue scouts are a lot better at doing this than lancers. 30 lancers + Yuan is worth the same as 90 scouts. But 90 scouts have more speed, more hp and you can start massing from feudal. But honestly, you just need like 60 scouts.

So let's show these people that mass lancers isn't the problem. Let's go queue up in 3v3 and 4v4 games. Mass scouts, then snipe landmarks. Mongols is probably the best civ to do this but feel free to choose any.

Ive done this in 2 4v4 games already, and I'd do more this weekend. Sadly im only one guy and I don't play a lot. So let's do this maybe when theres at least 10 of us doing it well find "Scouts OP" posts in a week or two.

[Cacomistle]

90 scouts costs at least 50% more than 30 fire lancers (50% if none of the fire lancers were built around spirit way), take 60 more pop, and perform far worse vs units.

With scouts you're just trying to cheese someone out of the game before they realize what's going on. After that first group of 90 scouts, they're just worse than fire lancers. Its not really the same because you're basically trading the scaling fire lancers have for an early timing. I don't really play team games much but my understanding is that they go long because the maps are ridiculously big, so I'd prefer the scaling option. Definitely for 1v1s fire lancers are better because landmark sniping isn't anywhere near as viable.


Also if your goal is to just cheese someone out of the game with the first group of scouts you build, rus is probably your best bet over mongols. You could do the professional scouts into fast castle build, but instead of pumping out cav archers spend your wood on hunting cabins. Then on top of having a cheaper version of stables to produce scouts from, you're probably getting 200-300 gold in case it doesn't work.

[Feng Huang]

90 scouts = 5,400 food.
30 fire lancers=3,600 resources+ 2nd landmark =1,800 resources =5,400 in total. Anyway you don't need 90 scouts just 60 is fine.

It doesn't matter how they perform vs units. You just go right for their landmarks.

Me too I don't play team games as well. I've just played it team games twice, to do this.

But yeah I agree, you can't do this in 1v1. Because 1v1 people are usually aggressive.

Nope, I don't need professional scouts. People in team games are too passive, they don't punish spread out economy. And yes I do that build when I play Rus in 1v1 its the current meta after all.

This suggestion is really just to show people that firelancers aren't really OP units. They can only snipe landmarks because people in large team games are too passive and refuse to wall. Cause I've seen too many posts complaining at how firelancers are OP because they can just come in and snipe landmarks. And when you suggest to people to wall up and/or be aggressive at the start they just tell you that it's different in team games compared to 1v1.

[Harris]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Feng Huang:

The problem is the lack of early aggression in large team games.

What are you going on about? You think it's funny when the game ends by 10 minutes in because you got double-triple-quadriple teamed as soon as you hit feudal, with you being able to do factually nothing about it? And your teammates being able to do nothing either, because the maps are huge and moving armies around takes time? Well, I don't think it's the problem here.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Feng Huang:

I'd argue scouts are a lot better at doing this than lancers.

Lancers can charge into a lot of units and just - boom - delete them from existince. They deal 45 torch damage as opposed to 20. In Yuan they are able to ignore every attempt to contest them because the only thing in the game that got higher speed than fire lancers is Mongol cav under movement arrow, and that for 5 seconds only. Second-best are camel riders, btw, being just able to chase fire lancers around, so it's technically could work as counter for them.

Scouts just won't work here for a ton of reasons:
- you don't have enough economy as China to vomit a ton of scouts early
- your speed will be lower, so you can be contested
- you can't wreck anything other than buildings

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Feng Huang:

Let's ... snipe landmarks.

There you are, endorsing one of the cheapest and abusable strats there is in the game right now, that hinges on people not building walls and maps being too large in team games. Go ahead, I'd say the more of this we seen, the more awareness and the higher possibility fire lancers will be adressed moving forward.

As for scouts, good player will wipe your base when he sees you commiting to scouts all-in early, and bad player will learn it's not simcity and you gotta build some walls and army. It's a win-win.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Feng Huang:

I don't play team games as well. I've just played it team games twice

I rest my case.

[Viscule]

I do agree that in team games, people are too passive. The assumption that "they won't attack early because of the distance on the map, so I'll just econ" is a pretty big problem in 4v4.

I don't think the game should be balanced around 3v3 or 4v4. Which is where fire lancers are really good (I've never played 2v2 or 1v1, but the common competitive play is typically 1v1)

[Harris]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Viscule:

I don't think the game should be balanced around 3v3 or 4v4.

I don't think the game should be balanced "around" anything. A choice between the competetive scene minority and casual majority is not a choice - both are needed for the game's health and both deserve to enjoy a balanced experience. If there's a need to tweak some stats or settings specifically for team games (like make wonders more expensive) - I have no problem with it.

That being said, fire lancers ceased to be the obscure issue noone really heard about because it left the realm of low ELO 4v4 games that are never casted (while they really should be, they are fun) and became the trend in 1v1s. While you can't win the game with a blob of flancers in 1v1, you can use them to raid and harrass, once again gaining huge value for little investment and with little risk involved.

So by now this is by no means a mode or skill-specific issue.

[RubTheDuck]

Every team game there is at least 1 or two guys just fire lancer spamming. It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dull.

[ARCAGNELL0]

Chinese main here, just coming in to say my piece on Fire Lancers, mostly in a 1v1 scenario.

The Fire Lancer exists to punish eco and ranged infantry while provoking a panic response from the enemy, allowing you to both ease off pressure off your base and allow your actual main army to advance uncontested or fight a diminished enemy force. Let me elaborate:

Cost effectively using fire lancers more or less entails going to Imperial with the Spirit way and having 8 stables around it to pump out Fire Lancers. Castle Age fire lancers can be done but they won't generally be as effective, since upgrading them to Elite, getting Biology and upgrading their Melee attack, melee defence and ranged defence goes a long way into making them good at their job, not to mention their Charge also gets affected by Chemistry as far as I am aware.

The unit is very, very cheap to spam with the Spirit Way landmark, especially if there's 4 Imperial Officials supervising 4 of the 8 Stables you have around it (effectively turning them into 16 stables). It does however get hardcountered by two things: Walls and Spearmen.

Walls effectively turn Fire Lancers in a bunch of annoying flies trying to get to the good stuff when unsupported by one-use only rams that are just there to get through.

Spears will make fire lancers unable to activate their gunpowder charge and therefore take away what actually makes them superior to horsemen and actually cost effective. Their very low HP value even after all the upgrades also means spears absolutely decimate them.

Lancers have somewhat of a good time fighting Fire Lancers, but it also needs to be said that proper FL micro will allow them to handily defeat their equal cost in Lancers.



The best use of Fire Lancers in a vaguely competitive scenario is to have a sizeable mass of them run interference around the map, which will usually result in a lot of spears being produced and a lot of walls being brought up. You will then be able to modify your army in order to counter their army which is singlemindedly focusing on countering FLs.

Having some 30-45ish fire lancers as your "trash units" while the rest of your army made of Palace Guard, Nests Of Bees and Bombards gets to level anything that would counter your Fire Lancers is an extremely effective combination and it allowed me to defeat very strong civs like Mongols, French and Rus:

Using siege against fire lancers and chinese siege is almost a liability unless you got a wave of spears protecting them and A LOT of springs/culverins, clogging up your army pop.

Using mass spears will result in your frontline almost immediately buckling to Palace Guard Pressure, not to mention Spears are generally very population inefficient in imperial age fights, making the enemy army a lot less hitpoint and DPS dense compared to yours.

Using mass infantry will have it get run over by the very buggy yet sufficient Nests Of bees (which now by the way are cheaper to spam than Springalds in imperial, fter the "reusable barrels" technology is researched

Using mass cav can work, unless you're in a choke and the Chinese has walls or keeps to fall back to in order to mitigate the suicide rush and save most of the siege. Fire Lancers are also quite good at pulverizing mass scouts going for your siege, provided they have the charge loaded.


I don't really think the unit is overpowered just by itself, unless the enemy has committed a plethora of tactical and base building blunders.

I do however think that the unit is disgustingly good at its job when inserted into a functional imperial age army. Chinese need to keep the enemy away from burning their siege with a lot of fodder in front of it and the Fire Lancer does just that, with the added bonus of forcing radical composition changes from the enemy.

I Would say that making the Fire Lancer more expensive, reducing its Gunpowder charge and fire damage while at the same time giving it better HP and overall stats (not the speed) would alleviate a lot of the balancing issues concerning the unit.

Hell, it would even allow some QoL changes to the unit, like actually using the gunpowder attack every time it's charged (10 second intervals) without having to micro and attempting to get the finnicky charge animation to kick in.

Spearmen actually only deny a charge, they do not reset its timer.
If you charge your FLs into a wall of spears but then charge them into a group that does not have spears immediately after, their charge animation will kick in again.
They'd still counter this "melee charge" every 10 seconds, reinforcing their counter role even further.

[ARCAGNELL0]

Here's a brand new Firelancer-focused video by Age Of Noob, providing all stats accurately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKT9uXMv5kQ

Keep in mind that while the Chinese in Yuan Dynasty have Fire Lancers going slower than both Horsemen and Lancers by a considerable margin, all other cavalry apart from the Mangudai will go slower.

His idea of making them more expensive and having the AOE charge scale its damage based on point of impact are very solid rebalancing options for the unit.

I am still under the opinion that reducing the torch damage to sane levels, scaling back the AOE charge a bit but also giving them the same HP and armor stats of a horseman would work a lot better tough. They should also have a speed that's in-between a Horseman and a Lancer, logically speaking, not slower than both!

[RubTheDuck]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ARCAGNELL0:

Here's a brand new Firelancer-focused video by Age Of Noob, providing all stats accurately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKT9uXMv5kQ

Keep in mind that while the Chinese in Yuan Dynasty have Fire Lancers going slower than both Horsemen and Lancers by a considerable margin, all other cavalry apart from the Mangudai will go slower.

His idea of making them more expensive and having the AOE charge scale its damage based on point of impact are very solid rebalancing options for the unit.

I am still under the opinion that reducing the torch damage to sane levels, scaling back the AOE charge a bit but also giving them the same HP and armor stats of a horseman would work a lot better tough. They should also have a speed that's in-between a Horseman and a Lancer, logically speaking, not slower than both!

Fair analysis and criticisms, counterpoint: Just delete them from the game :)

[Harris]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von RubTheDuck:

counterpoint: Just delete them from the game :)

Agreed, they are broken by design and have no place in the game in their current implementation.

[Wolfsoldier5]

As balanced as a 1000HP bombard

[Despiser]

Hopefully in AOE5 they’ll pay more attention to history. If a strategy requires 90 scouts, almost half the cap, leaving room for about 30 troops after the obligatory 80 villagers, then the design team really dropped the ball.

[RubTheDuck]

Playing against HRE they absolutely melt all infantry in a charge.