Halbediers are stupidly OP

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

Consider Imperial Age counters:

Hussar -> Monk
+12 bonus attack, resistance to conversion, fast, making it a good counter

Elite Skirmisher -> Archers
+4 bonus attack, some nice pierce armour (four), and a range makes this an effective counter. Shame that ESkirms are only Castle Age, but the range makes them still useful in Imperial. ESkirms are dirt cheap too against expensive archers.

Elite Skirmisher -> Heavy Cavalry Archers
The -1 range hurts HCAs rather badly. ESkirms get an additional +2 attack bonus vs HCAs, and HCAs cost a lot of gold, making ESkirms actually a pretty decent counter & the reason I don't train CAs/HCAs myself.

Hand Cannoner -> Infantry
17 damage is already high and a +10, combined with seven range, makes this quite effective against infantry. Shame that HCs are so expensive & not all civs get them, & their aiming is relatively poor and advanced aiming doesn't apply to them.

Siege -> Archers
High pierce armor (7 for Hscorp and 8 for SOnager) and higher range makes Onagers and Heavy Scorpions quite effective against archers. But the reload time is high for siege, the area of effect is not huge and fully upgraded archers can deal 2 damage (especially Chu Ko Nu) = twice the damage dealt. Still, they're great for stuffing behind walls.

Siege -> Infantry
0 melee armor and a minimum range makes these guys still not ineffective because of the ability to just pelt them from a rather high range. As infantry is clumped this means if the onagers fire at the first they'll probably hit the last. So they're not too bad.

Heavy Camels -> Cavalry
First of all, very very very few civs actually get Heavy Camel (two? three?). Those that do get a quite good +18 attack bonus.... too bad their default attack is 7, meaning they're useless against anything else. Normal camels get +10. Oh, and for 55f 60g you may as well train a Knight instead and be done with it.


Enough of that.

Halbediers vs Cavalry

So the highest attack bonus we've seen is +18 on a really crumy unit What's the halbedier attack bonus vs cavalry?
+32

This is stupidly insane. Infantry and cavalry are on equal ground - no range bonuses, no particular bonus to cowering behind walls, all they can do is meet on the field and go melee-to-melee. (HCAs are another point) And this dirt cheap unit that costs 35 food 25 wood has a +32 attack bonus against all cavalry UUs (the ele attack bonus is a further +28 for a grand total of +60).

One paladin will beat a Halbedier.. So will a Elite FU Cataphract.

Except that all of those are really expensive, really rare units. Only 1 civ gets Cataphracts and they're not cheap (75f 75g). Same goes for Paladins - only "few" civs get them and they're still expensive (60f 75g). They're also expensive to fully upgrade (1300f 750g Paladin)

Halbediers are cheaper to upgrade fully (300f 600g), spammable at the Barracks (so are Paladins, but something like Catas isn't), and cost no gold. Their train time doesn't matter as you can just throw down a couple more Barracks-es and get more out.


And these dirt cheap spammable units get a +32 attack bonus against really expensive units that not everyone gets & cost annoyingly large quantities of gold?

Of course, Halbs get countered by everything else quite well - for some reason ESkirms have a +3 attack bonus vs Spearmen-line, but the sheer absurdity of a +32 attack bonus is completely bonkers when you look at other +3, +10 attack bonuses. Why is it so darn large?

[talgaby]

You do not remember the AoK days, where paladins were effectively the same as a Mammoth tank rush in C&C was: you could not do anything about it. If a civ managed to fork out the gold for the upgrade and 20-40 paladins, you either had your own paladins or hoped to the gods that you had enough barracks and food+wood to spam an infinite amount of the meager pikemen. The halberds were the only thing that prevented civs like Franks to faceroll anything that was not Britons or Chinese (or maybe Byz or Goths who could spam pikemen by dozens).
As for why this large, partly because cataphracts, most likely. Those really did not have any counter, since they were armoured, used the heavy infantry speed (so only light cavalry were faster), and their anti-anti-cavalry special hidden armour made them resistant to even pikes. Even now only halberds get enough anti-cavalry attack to actually pierce that special armour. (And maybe imperial camels, but those are broken in many other ways anyway).

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

I haven't actually played AoK - only AoC and these days I play modded (with nerfed pikes and buffed camels among many other changes). It's also worth mentioning I mostly play co-op against AI.


But if you let somebody grab all the gold they need to grab an entire army of Paladins you shouldn't be able to stop them with a couple of halbs spammed out at your barracks-es as a last minute defense. That's currently the state with Halbs.

Same goes for Catas - if you're silly enough to let them build an entire population worth of Catas they should not be countered other than an entire population worth of good counters (not Halbs, since those are cheap infantry)

I get that in AoK halbediers didn't exist, and I can see why an upgrade was thought to be a good idea - except that Pikes have a +22 attack bonus anyway which is more than enough for a unit that is only good at mashing cavalry. Of course you need to pump out masses of them - they're cheap units & ones that don't cost gold (though on 75 pop trash wars were less common)


And Catas aren't impossible to counter without pikes. Sure, they're beastly - but that's the point of a UU, isn't it? Especially a fully upgraded UU? To be a powerful unit in some regard or other (a.k.a not Elephant Archers, which are hard countered by two trash units and soft countered by the third trash unit). If they come at you with a mega-army of Catas, you shouldn't be able to shrug it off with some Halbs you had loafing around.

[talgaby]

You are thinking in solo play style, but the game was geared towards teamplay, and gold is the smallest concern in team games thanks to the market. This is why team games can and often are ending when one group manages to break the defence line and kills the enemy's trade line, because they will now get infinite amount of gold units and the others have to use trash. (Granted, some civs can survive for a while on trash, like Byzantines, Burmese or Malays, to a degree Japanese, or maybe even Magyars if they have at least 5-6 castles. Partly because people really tend to underestimate the general usefulness of elite skirmishers.)
This works even in single-player, as long as your ally does not plant a market right in your face. Granted, it is not as optimal as humans building markets at the opposing ends of a map.

So… massing tons of paladins is not a particularly difficult task, you only need some lumberjacks, a healthy amount of farmers, and many trade carts. Only in AoC they finally stopped being the ultimate go-to unit. Partly thanks to halberdiers. Heck, with these HD updates, they are even more downplayed thanks to some insane new units or civ bonuses.

Additionally, halbs are foot soldiers using foot soldier speed. hey are ment to be defensive, and with so many advantage on the offensive side (right now only Byzantines and Teutons can be considered defensive civilisations), the game needed something to break a wave of heavy cavalry crashing into them.
Plus, well, even if you play a cavalry civ, you either will hit and run or bring along something like hand canoneers against halberdiers. Not even Frank players use only paladins, they always bring along some axemen to get rid of the halbs.

I agree on one thing, that halbs with some civs are stupid. Japanese halbs can turn even elite war elephants into mincemeat in nanoseconds and Burmese ones just push through any defence with their additional +3 attack, that is plainly stupid. (At least Aztecs and their Garland Wars did stop at pikes.)

[Shade-O]

I think that unless your civ has very good camels or your monk micro is godlike. You wont have other good options to deal with them besides the spearline units. Ridiculous bonus damage? Maybe but it keeps the knight-line in check for sure who can brute force through many other units.

Also the Halbs are weak to a lot of other units. Although certain civ can justify a bulk of halbadiers for their army, most of the time they will be used defensively or support but judging on your story it appears you created a mono paladin army in which case i have question the valadity of your claim.

Are halbs OP? Imo only in thrash wars :p

[Gyropilot]

Halberdiers aren't OP. Anything that isn't on horse can kick their asses. Just don't make a single unit type. Have a bunch of arbalests and your knights are free to ride
BTW Cataphracts don't take extra damage from pikes. They do take half the extra damage of the halbs though

[Lord Commander]

+32 attack bonus might seem OP, but Halberdiers have a very slow atack speed, and no armor, so a halb will only manage to hit the paladin a few times before he dies. on the other hand, the paladin have 180 HP 2/3 armor, 14 attack and a faster attack speed... Without the +32 bonus the halbs become useless.

[YuenHsiaoTieng]

The real problem with the spear line is that they're one trick ponies. I'd love to tone down their anti-cavalry bonus in exchange for buffing them against everything else. But, if we're not going to improve their all around stats, and they're going to have only one job in the world, then they'd better do that job well.

[talgaby]

Celtic and Japanese (and I assume, Burmese) ones are half-decent as melee-attacking cannon fodder trash until you can get some gold production back.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

Originally posted by Lord Commander:

+32 attack bonus might seem OP, but Halberdiers have a very slow atack speed, and no armor, so a halb will only manage to hit the paladin a few times before he dies. on the other hand, the paladin have 180 HP 2/3 armor, 14 attack and a faster attack speed... Without the +32 bonus the halbs become useless.

That is true, the DPS is rather low.

Originally posted by Shade-O:

I think that unless your civ has very good camels or your monk micro is godlike. You wont have other good options to deal with them besides the spearline units.

In open battle Crossbows will smash Knights in the Castle Age (you need a lot of crossbows - but they're cheaper than Knights), and HCs aren't ineffective in Imperial. Also some UUs are quite good against cavalry.

Maybe but it keeps the knight-line in check for sure who can brute force through many other units.

That's the point, that's the point - the knight-line is expensive and hard to kill. They should be able to brute force through many other units (and yes I've just detailed some non-pike ways they can be countered - if you have enough of basically anything you can beat a smaller amount of something) - to have something that stops them so easily is overpowered in my opinion.

Originally posted by YuenHsiaoTieng:

The real problem with the spear line is that they're one trick ponies. I'd love to tone down their anti-cavalry bonus in exchange for buffing them against everything else. But, if we're not going to improve their all around stats, and they're going to have only one job in the world, then they'd better do that job well.

True - Halbs suck against anything that isn't non-cavalry. Infantry mulch them, archers mulch them, they're just cannon fodder for siege - but they're cheap trash units, that's to be expected. Their low attack speed makes them even worse.

Originally posted by Gyropilot:

Halberdiers aren't OP. Anything that isn't on horse can kick their asses.

Very true. But consider the Arbalest case - that's only doing, what, ten damage a hit (base is 7 plus 3 attack bonus or something?) - which is still pretty large for range. Meanwhile those Halbs are dealing 30 damage a hit (and yes they do hit slowly) and there will be a lot of Halbs. HCs and Arbs are annoyingly expensive whilst Halbs are dirt cheap and yes that's in Gold price - I find even in team games 2v2 (human + human vs AI + AI) gold supply isn't unlimited while food and wood are easily gathered en masse. (Maybe that's because I'm not spamming enough Trade Carts early enough - I usually don't get more than 30 on a 200-pop game).

Plus, well, even if you play a cavalry civ, you either will hit and run or bring along something like hand canoneers against halberdiers. Not even Frank players use only paladins, they always bring along some axemen to get rid of the halbs.

I genuinely don't understand why anyone would use Throwing Axemen. They're hard to train (being a UU), have cruddy damage, pathetic range (though that's not the point), and are soft-countered by a great deal of units.
HCs also underperform against infantry in my opinion - they just don't deal enough damage.




I get that cav needs a counter but it's just the idea that this counter is so darn cheap and so hard-hitting. That's why I went into detail of everything else - the countering is just much less drastic. But everything else does counter Halbediers..... but not to the extent that Halbs just massacre cavalry.

[AromaticTreeRoots]

1. theyre attack bonus may be quite alot especially v. elephants. even reducing the spear/pike/halb bonus by something like: 2/4/6 v cavalry. and double that v elephants would hav real impact on the battles.

2.the nature of the game can be quite chaotic, making "theoretical" army formations/unit counters difficult to manage, , making technically difficult to use cavalry in a battle and not have a lot of them wiped out by spammed trash units.

2.a becasue of that, units that DO counter halbs, are countering them slowly, while halbs are able to counter cavalry/elepahnts very rapidly.

2.b. and example of "chaotic" theres no real controlls for units, like "hold maximum range" or "avoid type of unit", "priority target type of unit" etc... +the game speed, speed of units, rapidity of battles.

[talgaby]

Axemen are infantry with ranged melee attacks. They have few to no hard counters and unlike the militia line, they can get rid of many enemies before they come within melee range.
Basic infantry in general is overlooked by many, even though they are the ones who lack all kinds of hard counter and the last two form of them is strong enough to wash through any city. In the case of axes, they are great defensive units against any siege (similarly to woads) and they can get rid of any infantry handily.

I get that cav needs a counter but it's just the idea that this counter is so darn cheap and so hard-hitting.

The counter of a 225W/225G bombard cannon can be a 60F/20G soldier. Or, heck, with the associated tech, a 50F villager. The counter to any expensive spiffy archer (except rattans) is a 35W/25F skirmisher that is cheap as hell to upgrade to elite. The counter to the 100G monk is a simple 80F scout.
This is the point of this rock-paper-scissors system, that there is not a single unit, not even the most expensive ones, which cannot be countered by a civ with less resources. The only exception used to be the war elephant, that needed monks.

This is why AoE2 remains a strategy game, because you cannot just faceroll an enemy by spamming one common unit type. This avoids the game to be a clicking speed contest like StarCraft, as even slow players can be successful. (DauT used to dominate the game for nearly a decade, and if you look at his recordings, his action/minute is like half of the Viper's.)

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

The counter of a 225W/225G bombard cannon can be a 60F/20G soldier. Or, heck, with the associated tech, a 50F villager. The counter to any expensive spiffy archer (except rattans) is a 35W/25F skirmisher that is cheap as hell to upgrade to elite.

Except that Bombards suck against units in general, a villager will take enough time to kill a BBC such that you can send some backup, and ESkirms perform only decently against Arbalests - decently enough to make them a counter, but nothing spectacular.

Meanwhile Halbediers just murder cavalry. They're just such a devastating counter for a cheap spammable unit. That was the point of the long wall of text about other counters - no other counter is so absurdly devastating.

---------------------

Axemen are infantry with ranged melee attacks. They have few to no hard counters and unlike the militia line, they can get rid of many enemies before they come within melee range.
Basic infantry in general is overlooked by many, even though they are the ones who lack all kinds of hard counter and the last two form of them is strong enough to wash through any city. In the case of axes, they are great defensive units against any siege (similarly to woads) and they can get rid of any infantry handily.

Mangonels perform much better against siege (but worse against infantry), but Elite Throwing Axemen also don't perform very well against infantry because Champs & Halbs can be trained in far greater numbers due to being a common Barracks unit.... I just can't use Axemen, they die too easily to anything - cavalry, archers, siege (though my experience with them has been the Joan of Arc campaigns which are a nightmare anyway + some maps)

[Xautos]

halberdiers are easy to kill, so their counter only works if you let it. so no, there isn't anything op about them. they are as dangerous as any other military unit which has their own strengths and weaknesses.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

Originally posted by Xautos:

halberdiers are easy to kill, so their counter only works if you let it. so no, there isn't anything op about them. they are as dangerous as any other military unit which has their own strengths and weaknesses.

While basically everything does have an attack bonus against spearmen-line (archers, towers, skirms, CAs, militia-line) they are so massable and counter such expensive units with extraordinary ease. Furthermore, they counter cavalry A LOT quicker than anything counters Halbs - so by the time the Halbs are all dead there goes 3/4 of your nasty expensive cavalry while your opponent is just pumping out more cheap Halbs.

[talgaby]

Originally posted by aidenpons:

Furthermore, they counter cavalry A LOT quicker than anything counters Halbs

That is not exactly true, halbs take time to kill paladins and they are actually, despite their INSANE bonus, fall super fast to war elephants. To stop an oncoming paladin rush with halbs alone, you need at least 4 barracks and constant production. Not to mention that paladins are usually accompanied by something when they come to attack and not just to raid or harass.
Halbs are a shield wall against heavy cavalry, like a fortified wall that can move. Nothing more. A semi-decent player can easily go around them as long as they can keep their own cavalry under control. Halbs are deadly when you send in the cavalry and try to rely on their AI choosing targets while pillaging a city. Then your cavalry is done for, yes.

(This is why base halberdiers, in themselves, alone, worth nothing against an elephant rush and why it is a terrible idea to ever let Persia boom and get 70 farms and 6 castles up, because they are the only thing which can actually turn impossible to beat unless you are an Aztec with a solid gold income.)