arambai vs conquistador

[Bomjus]

genuinely curious what the arambai has over the conquistador.

they both have about the same damage but:

the conquistador has 5 more hp. ridiculously more armor. have one more range. costs food and gold instead of wood and gold. which is much better considering 1 farm can supply the food of multiple conquistadors but an arambai costs almost the same as 1 farm. plus the spanish have all of the blacksmith upgrades so their trash isn't hit as hard as the burmese

also the conquistadors have 50-65% accuracy i believe? depending on range from target, while the armabai are much lower at 30-40% with ballistics

honestly the only benefit i see from the arambai are their ability to quickly demolish buildings.


i am not a pro at this game but want to know what the arambai have that i am not seeing. some speed bonus? a bonus vs some unit types? or are they specifically only a building raiding unit?

EDIT: to test the building aspect i used 36 armabia and 36 conquistadors against a frankish barracks and castle (wanted to test against a normal building and a castle) the arambai destroyed both in just 2 minutes while the conquistadors took 3:57. but the conquistadors still have 5/6 armor while the arambai only have 1/3 armor. so in all combat situations the conquistador must be better...

[Cats. Just Cats.]

I agree that the price and stats differences are small, except for the accuracy, which is 2.5 times higher for the Conquistador. Also there is this big difference in armor. So generally, the Conquistador is the better unit. I don't see an advantage of the Arambai either.... hm.

But you are wrong that the price of the Conquistador is better, because food is cheaper than wood. No, it isn't. Wood is the cheapest of the resources.

Let's assume a field gives you an average of 300 food (it depends on the technology, of course). It costs 60 wood. That means for each 5 food, that you can harvest from this field, you first have to invest 1 wood.

In other words: To pay 60 food for the conquistador, you need to harvest it from a field AND you need to pay a fifth of it in wood, to pay for the field. So, additionally to the 60 food, you pay 12 wood. So the "real" price of a conquistador is

70 gold
60 food
12 wood

And the Arambai:
60 gold
50 wood

So, the Arambai is cheaper. You are right that food has one advantage: There is MORE food on the map available than wood, because you can get 5 times as much food from a field than the wood cost. So food is the most available resource. But wood is easier to gather, you need less working time.

So, generally wood is the cheaper resource, except when there is very few forests on the map, then food is the "cheaper" resource. But on most maps, wood is not a problem. The problem is usually gold and stone.

It's recommended in the late game, to sell food on the market, because you have more food than wood. Don't sell wood. However, in the early and middle game, wood is the resource that is easier to get.

[TheBattler]

Arambai are sort of like weird, fast moving Mangonels.

They're supposed to miss their targets; If you target a mass of units and attack the center guy, some of their projectiles will miss and hit other units, doing half damage to them.

Conquistador projectiles will also miss and hit other targets, but they have higher accuracy and their projectiles move forward away hitting far fewer targets than an Arambai attack.

[Bomjus]

arambai attack almost twice as fast (idk the exact attack speed but it is much faster) than conquistadors. so that makes up for their lack of accuracy.

also arambai are not cheaper than conquistadors. what you are saying, Cats, is that it is faster to gather the resources to build an arambai beecause the wood does not need to be "refined" into food. when i talk about the price being "cheap" im talking about the resource value of that unit. the resource value of an arambai is higher than a conquistador.

6x arambai cost:
360 gold
300 wood

6x conquistadors cost:
420 gold
360 food
and (according to your assumption above) 72 wood.

this still means the arambai are spending 228 more wood than the conquistadors and with just the measely 1:5 ratio you have stated that is still over 1000 food. with crop rotation 228 wood is nearing the 2000 food mark.

post imp spanish farms have a ratio of 1 wood to 6.25 food and post imp burmese farms have a wood to food ratio of 9.17 so if we apply your wood cost to the conquistador we can likewise apply a "lost food cost" to the arambai.

60 gold
50 wood or 458.5 food. so a conquistador costs 70 gold 60 food and ~10 wood with the spanish ratio

the arambai costs 60 gold and 458.5 food.

as you said "wood is easier to gather, you need less working time." you are correct that it is faster to chop wood and then spend it immediately rather than turning wood into food but you are losing value on each wood spent which i would not define as being "cheap" considering you are losing out on ~460 food per unit. that is almost 4 battle elephants worth of food spent on just one arambai.

better phrasing would be wood is the easiest to gather resource. which it is. with all lumberjack technologies villagers gather wood faster than any other resource.

[Devang]

Accuracy is 65/70% (Base/Elite) vs. 20/30%.

Attack Dispersion is 0.75 (Conq) vs. 0.50 (Aram).

Arambais have no natural bonus vs. Buildings. Manipur Cavalry gives them a +6 bonus vs. Armour Class 11 'All Buildings'. Masonry and Architecture give +3 bonus defense each as Armour Class 11 'All Buildings' to most buildings (except Farms) completely nullifying Manipur Cavalry. Franks do have Architecture, test vs. a non Architecture Civ (Teutons etc) and Aztecs (no Masonry). Edit - Masonry and Architecture doesn't apply to Walls, but Walls already have +16 and +24 bonus defense as Class 11.

Arambais do have +0.05 Speed compared to Conqs (1.35 vs. 1.30) and train faster (21 vs. 24 Seconds). Their purpose to 'carpet bomb' formations of enemy units. They grow exponentially stronger as the numbers on both sides increase. To counter, set your units in a staggered formation.

[Ashur_Arbaces]

In combat preformance they are roughly the same for the castle age version but the elite arambia is noticably better than the elite conquistador.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

Also worth noting that despite being a cannoner unit, the Conquistador has no anti-infantry bonus, which is why they get absolutely shredded by Halb spamming

[Vityaz]

They don't have a bonus, right. But the Janissary doesn't have one, too. This doesn't mean they are weak, quite the contrary, but you should use Conquistadors with micro or spam handcannoners instead if you have to focus on your eco etc. Since Spanish handcannoners fire faster, why not use them?

[Bomjus]

Originally posted by Devang:

Accuracy is 65/70% (Base/Elite) vs. 20/30%.

Attack Dispersion is 0.75 (Conq) vs. 0.50 (Aram).

Arambais have no natural bonus vs. Buildings. Manipur Cavalry gives them a +6 bonus vs. Armour Class 11 'All Buildings'. Masonry and Architecture give +3 bonus defense each as Armour Class 11 'All Buildings' to most buildings (except Farms) completely nullifying Manipur Cavalry. Franks do have Architecture, test vs. a non Architecture Civ (Teutons etc) and Aztecs (no Masonry). Edit - Masonry and Architecture doesn't apply to Walls, but Walls already have +16 and +24 bonus defense as Class 11.

Arambais do have +0.05 Speed compared to Conqs (1.35 vs. 1.30) and train faster (21 vs. 24 Seconds). Their purpose to 'carpet bomb' formations of enemy units. They grow exponentially stronger as the numbers on both sides increase. To counter, set your units in a staggered formation.

im almost positive that arambai also attack faster than conquistadors. since you are putting a lot of numbers in your comment can you put both their attack speeds as well?

also idk if you were asking me to test vs a non arch and non masonry civ but ill test it out vs aztecs in a second.

EDIT: 36 arambai test vs frankish and aztec castle (i used 36 for every unit mentioned below)

frankish castle 1min 5 seconds 34 attacks from the arambai

aztec castle 34 seconds 17 attacks from the arambai

franks have hoardings masonry and architecture aztec have none of those.

However, even with masonry and architecture a frankish TC is destroyed in just ~16-17 seconds. which is pretty crazy for a cavalry archer. it takes conquistadors 30-31 seconds

arambai also have 2.03 rate of fire vs the 2.93 rate of fire of the conquistador. so they attack roughly 31% faster.

the frame delay for the conquistador is only 4 compared to the arambai's 10 so the conquistador excel in kiting compared to the arambai since their projectiles come out faster after ordering them to attack a target. arambai are faster though so perhaps an even trade here?

also according to the wiki arambai are affected by ballistics. how affected? i don't know. i assume it just helps them hit moving targets but their chance to miss their dart is still the same. conquistadors are not. so hitting a target moving parallel to them at max range is more difficult for them then an arambai.

hidden bonuses: arambai have +2 vs rams
conquistadors have +6 vs rams (elite) and +2 vs buildings (elite)

the fact that conquistadors do so much better against rams alone makes me like them more than the arambai. a couple of siege rams can seriously screw with arambai auto targeting and get your arambai killed very quickly if you don't have the proper melee units with them at the time. conquistadors have 8 LOS (9 elite) compared to the arambai's 5 so they are better at scouting. and the undisuptable fact that all armor upgrades and 90 health is so much better than 85 health and 1 armor upgrade...


like am i crazy to think this unit needs a buff? besides their building kill time, which is not crazy enough to warrant the unit's weaknesses, i don't see how good they are...

[Cats. Just Cats.]

Originally posted by Bomjus1:

as you said "wood is easier to gather, you need less working time." you are correct that it is faster to chop wood and then spend it immediately rather than turning wood into food but you are losing value on each wood spent which i would not define as being "cheap" considering you are losing out on ~460 food per unit. that is almost 4 battle elephants worth of food spent on just one arambai.

better phrasing would be wood is the easiest to gather resource. which it is. with all lumberjack technologies villagers gather wood faster than any other resource.

I disagree with your definition of "cheap". You look at the map and you're saying "food is the resource that I can gather the highest amount of, multiple times as much as wood", and so it must be the cheapest resource. But that thinking is flawed for a real-time strategy game.

In an RTS game, what's most important is "How many units can I create in a short amount of time?" Time is the real currency of the game. How cheap a resource is is entirely defined by how much time and effort you need to gather it. Easier to gather = cheaper.

You are arguing with how many resources there are available on the entire map. But that is only relevant when the game is very long and food / wood start to run out. So, if you can foresee that a game will be very long, and you are planning to conserve resources by building units that cost food, instead of wood, you can win such a game because your resources will last longer than your opponent's. True. But I would argue that the normal situation is: on most maps, gold and stone are limited, but you don't run out of food or wood. In this "normal" situation, wood is cheaper than food.

Now, it's simply a question of which game situation occurs more often. I would argue, in most games, you don't run out of wood (as long as you do a healthy wood / food mix, I don't recommend building ONLY units that cost wood). So, in the majority of games, wood is cheaper by definition.

EDIT: I just realized that you can throw another argument into the mix: Which resource is easier to defend? Defense costs money because you have to build towers, etc. Thereby, the resource will become more expensive. Are wood choppers more difficult to protect, or food farmers? I have to admit that farms are easier to protect. If you build a couple of town centers or towers between them, you can defend your farms well. In comparison, the wood choppers need to migrate over the map, to find new trees, so you have to rebuild your defenses constantly. With the farms, you just stay in one place.

So considering the cost of defense, I have to admit that you are probably right. Food is easier to gather, because it is cheaper to defend your farms than your lumber camps. Which means that food is the "cheapest" resource.

Summary: I think that food and wood are rather similar. It can be argued that one or the other, depending on the viewpoint and game situation, is maybe 25% easier to gather than its counterpart. Therefore, it is very hard to define which one is "cheaper". They are close. But there is certainly no gigantic difference as you imply, food is not nine times (800%) easier to gather just because Burmese farms have this amazing conversion ratio for fields. This big difference which clearly makes food cheaper will only come into play in very long imp games.

[Bomjus]

we are using two different definitions of "cheap" i am referring to the real world defintion where something is worth more than it costs (like buying a game on sale for "cheap"). you are using a niche definition that includes time, and not the value of the resource.

food is worth more than it costs. 1 wood to 9.17 food (with crop rotation) 1:6.25 with plow and 1:4.17 with horse collar. therefore it is cheaper to produce.

that's it. that's all there is to it. im not talking about a theoretical game scenarios (for example) where you are archer rushing and want to end the game in the first 30-40 minutes and their wood cost doesn't matter.

i also conceded in my above post that wood was easier to gather. i don't know why you are bringing this up again. and i would also like to clarify i NEVER said food was 9 times easier to gather. i said wood and food had an exchange ratio of 1 wood to 9.17 food. and ANY CIV's farm with crop rotation produces 9x the food of the wood invested.

you can't say wood is cheaper by changing the definition of cheap to suit your arguement lol...

[Cats. Just Cats.]

I brought the topic up again, because I wanted to think it through and figure out, once and for all, whether there is a big difference between the efforts to gather wood or food. I felt the topic was interesting. Didn't mean to offend you.

Besides that, I thought that you used the term "cheap" in a wrong way, which is still my opinion. One of the possible definitions from dictionary.com: "costing little labor or trouble". As I've argued, the most basic currency of an RTS game is time, or effort. You have to compare your resource to that reference, in order to determine whether it is cheap. Another definition that I might accept is measuring the cost of wood or food by their gold prices. But what makes no sense is your approach to compare wood and food directly TO EACH OTHER, because neither of them constitutes a base currency.

you can't say wood is cheaper by changing the definition of cheap to suit your arguement lol...

I haven't changed any definition to suit my argument. Rather the opposite: I tried to find the best possible definition and it exactly supported my argument.

food is worth more than it costs. 1 wood to 9.17 food (with crop rotation) 1:6.25 with plow and 1:4.17 with horse collar. therefore it is cheaper to produce.

A very narrow definition that won't hold up if you dig a little deeper.

But let's end this now.

[Lord Puddington]

Can someone please explain the concept of "attack dispersion" Devang mentioned back there?

[Whakahoatanga]

Originally posted by Sw1ft:

Can someone please explain the concept of "attack dispersion" Devang mentioned back there?

The accuracy of the Arambai is so low that it will probably hit another target than the one you choose. E.g. it will not hit the Champion in the Champion group you selected , but probably another one in the same group.

[Devang]

Originally posted by Sw1ft:

Can someone please explain the concept of "attack dispersion" Devang mentioned back there?

'Attack Dispersion', or as it was called in the earlier versions of Advanced Genie Editor, 'Inaccuracy Error Radius'. I suppose 'Innacuracy Error Radius' is quite intuitive/descriptive.

Think of Unit A aiming at Unit B. Visualize it as:

A - B

Then the inaccuracy error radius would be

A < B

Basically the spread. This is the maximum deviation the shot projectile can have.

Accuracy % is the # of times the attack will hit or miss. For ex. an unit with accuracy of 80%, 4 out of its 5 shots will be on target.

Thumb Ring gives 100% accuracy to Archers and Cavalry Archers, but does not effect the Attack Dispersion.

The spread of Conquistadors is 0.75 tiles, while the Arambais have a spread of 0.50.

Edit - Only the inaccurate shots are affected by Attack Dispersion. So the Conquistador will have far more accurate hits, but the shots that are off target will miss by a larger margin compared to the Arambai.

Edit2 - The question I have about these mechanics, is it possible to have a lucky shot? Is the attack dispersion value the maximum possible deviation or the set deviation? Can the deviation be randomly chosen to be zero for a shot that is % wise supposed to miss? I know the opposite can occur sometimes, melee units which have 100% accuracy, 0 error radius and a 0 frame delay can completely 'miss' an attack on random.