Landsknechts are the most useless unit in game - change my mind

[HAKUNA MATATA]

60 food, 100 gold - same HP as crossbows but no armor at all... well, thanks no!

[PeteSkTemplar]

For me they do not exist.

[HAKUNA MATATA]

Originally posted by PeteSkTemplar:

For me they do not exist.

Then I'm glad to tell that you don't have to see the doctors.

[Harris]

You just don't know how to use them.

First of all, landsknecte tie into HRE castle economy perfectly - you've started getting an absurd amount of gold from 3 relics inside Regnitz and you're probably making more gold than what you know what to do with right now.

Secondly, landsknechte only start to shine in blobs, don't build one and expect value out of it. Now, when they're blobbed, their lack of armor or hp ceases to matter. They got huge aoe damage and run even faster than m@a. They absolutely wreck things that are supposed to counter them - any kind of ranged, or any kind of melee units.

Still gotta be afraid of charging knights, horse archers and mangonels, and generally micro them well, cuz they are about as valuable as bombards, but you can get a metric ton of value out of them.

Oh, and don't charge them into elephants...

[Gundalf]

On higher numbers at around 10, they beat every single Melee unit exept Elephants on equal ressources. Their low hp just makes seem very weak vs ranged units, especially Archers.

They could make their HP equal to Spearman and let them be affected by Rivieted Chain mail in exchange for 2 or so Attack.

[HAKUNA MATATA]

Originally posted by Harris:

You just don't know how to use them.

First of all, landsknecte tie into HRE castle economy perfectly - you've started getting an absurd amount of gold from 3 relics inside Regnitz and you're probably making more gold than what you know what to do with right now.

Secondly, landsknechte only start to shine in blobs, don't build one and expect value out of it. Now, when they're blobbed, their lack of armor or hp ceases to matter. They got huge aoe damage and run even faster than m@a. They absolutely wreck things that are supposed to counter them - any kind of ranged, or any kind of melee units.

Still gotta be afraid of charging knights, horse archers and mangonels, and generally micro them well, cuz they are about as valuable as bombards, but you can get a metric ton of value out of them.

Oh, and don't charge them into elephants...

I've seen the video from age of noob on youtube, but it's not covering all facts. Even if you got all relics and make a huge amount of gold per minute, they are not worth it because they lack durability and versatility. There is close to no situation (apart from some very rare defensive situations) where you should choose LK's over M@A,
Keep in mind LK's got less armor than crossbow men.

So LK's are practically only of use to attack melee units that got no cover from crossbows, archers, arty or castles/towers/outposts: This is rarely the case though...

[BONITTO]

I only play HRE and I never even produce 1 landsknecht.

[Harris]

Originally posted by HAKUNA MATATA:

I've seen the video from age of noob on youtube, but it's not covering all facts.

I do not judge by the video alone. I tried this myself in 4v4s. I wrote my friend yesterday "30 Zhuge Nu or 30 Landshreks, who wins?" "Zhuge Nu" - he said.

But guess what? They are fast, even faster than HRE's m@a. They run up to Zhuge blob - SWING - and there's no blob anymore. It's just that easy. They don't get as much hp, but they don't need it, because fights end quickly. M@a, on the other hand, are damage sponges - they can take a lot of damage, but barely dish out any in return. They are a defensive unit whichever you look at it.

So unless you got mangonels or horse archers to erase landshreks from existince, you best stay away from them.

[Sir Moisty Capybara]

Originally posted by Harris:

Originally posted by HAKUNA MATATA:

I've seen the video from age of noob on youtube, but it's not covering all facts.

I do not judge by the video alone. I tried this myself in 4v4s. I wrote my friend yesterday "30 Zhuge Nu or 30 Landshreks, who wins?" "Zhuge Nu" - he said.

But guess what? They are fast, even faster than HRE's m@a. They run up to Zhuge blob - SWING - and there's no blob anymore. It's just that easy. They don't get as much hp, but they don't need it, because fights end quickly. M@a, on the other hand, are damage sponges - they can take a lot of damage, but barely dish out any in return. They are a defensive unit whichever you look at it.

So unless you got mangonels or horse archers to erase landshreks from existince, you best stay away from them.

With Zhuge Nu pricing they kinda should do that.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Gundalf:

On higher numbers at around 10, they beat every single Melee unit exept Elephants on equal ressources.

How well do they deal with fire lancers?

[[OG] Brandoid]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Originally posted by Gundalf:

On higher numbers at around 10, they beat every single Melee unit exept Elephants on equal ressources.

How well do they deal with fire lancers?

hre doesnt deal with firelancers. your best hope is to get them to attack you head on and hope youre army of maa and lancers will tank them long enough for your mangos to kill them all. somce hre spears dont brace otherwise spears would be the answer. lanck would just instantly melt to fire lancer

[Cacomistle]

I think on paper they should pair well with knights.

They have a really bad matchup into archers obviously because they're squishy melee units. But archers aren't really that common in castle age, and knights are a counter to them.

They're also pretty bad vs mangonels because they're so squishy, but if you're going knights, knights are already decent vs mangonels because of their hp, and you can easily just make a transition to scouts to snipe the siege (as much as I hate that a non combat unit is the only hard counter to siege other than springalds).

They're not great vs maa, but they're passable, and again knights are pretty decent vs maa. If you engage first with the knights the landsknechts should be able to engage after, and honestly you should be decently happy vs maa because you can go you can just switch off knights and go your own maa. If they don't add siege, a few lands that you make sure don't engage till after your maa do would offer a lot of extra damage.

Obviously they're not great vs knights, but knight vs knight is an even battle. This is a problem with them, as you don't have other great counters.

Crossbow is another issue. On paper landsknechts counter crossbow, but crossbow can focus them out of a group, so you'd have to mass landsknechts to make sure they're not sniped, and then they just get easily countered by archers/aoe. However, if you catch them off guard with more landsknechts than they can snipe, you'll probably massacre them.

But the real reason I think they'd be decent is because your opponent is likely to counter with spears. Landsknechts will eat spears. And the important thing is they destroy spears fast. If you go maa, or even to a lesser degree archers, the spears will stay alive quite a while and have plenty of time to kill your knights. Not so with landsknechts.

So I think they should be a unit that you just add in a few of when you're going knights against an opponent who tries to counter with spears especially when you have relics (which generally give you more gold than you need early into castle age). If your opponent goes crossbow, you can switch to horsemen and hopefully they'll go spears to counter, and again you can catch them off guard with a small number of landsknechts (I wouldn't add a lot cause if you start massing them they'll switch to archers). If they go knights, well you probably either go maa or crossbows.

And last if you go siege, say you get 4-5 mangonels, and they mass scouts to counter, you can easily kill the scouts with landsknechts because scouts do no damage to anything but siege and landsknechts are one of the highest damage units.

Regardless, I think they're a unit you build sparingly. You should probably never base your composition off them. But I think their biggest advantage is a small number forces a reaction. If the opponent has 30 spears to counter your say 8 knights, and you add in just 5 landsknechts, you'll likely hard win the fight just because the landsknechts will kill the spears so fast. The same can't be said for archers (you'll probably still lose your archers).

So to me they're a niche unit that's just hard to make use out of. You need the opponent to build spears to make them really useful, crossbows without supporting archers (so catch them off guard), or you could mix them in with maa against other maa but your maa beat anything but other HRE maa anyways so it'd only make sense in the mirror matchup imo.

So keep them in mind if your opponent is building spears, or if they go crossbow in large numbers you can go landsknechts+scout/horsemen and just have too many units for them to snipe out the landsknechts. Only a few have to actually close into melee to wipe your opponent.


Oh I'd also like to add in if your opponent has weak micro you can mix them in with scouts and they'll beat most units. If your opponent forgets about split formation and doesn't have the micro to split manually they'll probably even beat archers. I find it surprising low level players dislike them so much, but I guess maybe mangonels dominate low levels for similar reasons and landsknechts suck vs mangonels.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Harris:

Originally posted by HAKUNA MATATA:

I've seen the video from age of noob on youtube, but it's not covering all facts.

I do not judge by the video alone. I tried this myself in 4v4s. I wrote my friend yesterday "30 Zhuge Nu or 30 Landshreks, who wins?" "Zhuge Nu" - he said.

But guess what? They are fast, even faster than HRE's m@a. They run up to Zhuge blob - SWING - and there's no blob anymore. It's just that easy. They don't get as much hp, but they don't need it, because fights end quickly. M@a, on the other hand, are damage sponges - they can take a lot of damage, but barely dish out any in return. They are a defensive unit whichever you look at it.

So unless you got mangonels or horse archers to erase landshreks from existince, you best stay away from them.

That fight is gonna depend on the micro. But even just with split formation I'd imagine its a pretty close fight despite landsknechts being twice the cost. Idk if I could win that fight (terran was my worst race as a random player in sc2, but that was cause my terran macro was leagues below my zerg/protoss, I think had good marine splits), but if you took someone like marinelord and gave him the zhuge nu I think the zhuge nu would win.

[Harris]

Micro wouldn't matter, and kiting wouldn't work. Landsknects are very fast. A couple will die before they get to their target, but it matters not, they SWING and delete the target.

While this thread is mostly theorycrafting, I just did 3 4v4 games, building only landsknecht blobs for memes. Basically I was going fast feudal, building a market, trading to speed up my fast castle, snatching relics, going fast imperial with Palace of Swaggia, and then getting all upgrades for landsknecht blobs.

My observations are that landsknects kill everything. Remember Age of Noob said you shouldn't fight elephants? Well forget it, elephant blobs are just DELETED from existence. Archers blobs are deleted. Landsknects can fight even things that are supposed to counter it. M@a or knight blob stands no chance.

There are downsides to this strat, of course. To begin with, they only arrive in castle, and while HRE can often boom safely in 4v4s, you will be punished for it in 1v1 and 2v2s, and you will be punished hard. Then you need 10k gold for 100 landsknects, and while they will buy you victories, they will be lost in great numbers. Which means that in practise you'd be better off with a good old knight blob, or m@a I suppose.

In all 3 cases as soon as landsknechts were deployed the enemy started spamming mangonels like it's no tomorrow, so the best unit to pair them with are indeed springalds. While HRE has access to culverins, those are in a bad spot right now - they move and fire way too slowly, they cost a lot and as such are valuable targets, while losing a couple of springalds is no big deal.

At any rate, in my experience fights between blobs do happen often, and while it is suboptimal to rely on them exclusively, you can still keep a detachment at hand to flank with them. They thrive in stealth forests, quckly dispatching an unaware enemy. Or you could throw them into your spear blobs for a somewhat better performance - spears are also squishy, so it kind of makes sense (also that's how they were used historically). And, again, one or two landsknechts won't bring you any value, so get ready to invest into like 10 of them to see where it's at.

[[OG] Brandoid]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

They're not great vs maa, but they're passable, and again knights are pretty decent vs maa.

they rape maa

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Harris:

Micro wouldn't matter, and kiting wouldn't work. Landsknects are very fast. A couple will die before they get to their target, but it matters not, they SWING and delete the target.

Depends on the dynasty. The speed difference won't be too great if China's in Yuan (and zhuge nu in Yuan are faster than landsknecht without infantry speed upgrade). Still wouldn't really be able to kite, though, and if China's in Yuan they should just use fire lancers anyway.