A question about Britons and their lack of Thumb Ring.

[Pimpin Pippin]

I am just a casual player of this game, but one thing i found a bit strange was that Britons (as an archery civ) are lacking the crucial Thumb Ring upgrade.

To me the thumb ring upgrade seems extremely important.
I know Briton archers and longbow-men get increased range, but still it seems strange to me that an "archery civ" would be lacking one of the most important archery upgrades.

Is the extra range that briton's archers/longbows have the reason that the Thumb Ring is missing?
Would the briton's archers/longbows be too strong if they could have the Thumb Ring upgrade?

I do know that Thumb Ring only helps against units that are not moving - but even that seems very important in big battles where a lot of units will just stand and attack.

Literally every archer civilization in the game has the Thumb Ring available - except the Britons?!

While the increased range is pretty good, i kinda feel it is not worth losing the Thumb Ring.
To me the Britons seem to be the "weird long-range but almost-blind archer" civ instead of "THE superior archer civ"...

[Kilowag]

well let's clear this up right now then... the britons are"THE superior archer civ" their archers are already so good, that thumb ring would make them very overpowered... that said, I don't think it's as necessary as you say, especially when you have ballistics already.

[SalaciousCrumb]

thumb ring would be op, they're already the best archer civ, with their 12 range elite longbowmen

[Laptop]

Can you imagine Elite + all blacksmith upgraded army of Longbowmen advanding across the map with Thumb Ring? They would be unstoppable.

[hot_gril]

It's like how Celts get a wood chopping bonus but no two-man saw and how Byzantines get a building HP bonus but no masonry and how Saracens…. and Franks….. They're still the best, plus they don't have to pay for another upgrade to have good archers.

Actually, isn't the lack of thumb ring BETTER in some cases? Say you have a mass of archers firing at a mass of enemy units. Groups of archers in this game tend to target only 2 or 3 units at a time, meaning that they overkill them, wasting shots. If they miss and hit other units instead, it's better, right?

[🤗]

Just because the britons are an archer civilisation does not mean that they should have every upgrade unlocked for archers, the extra range more than compensates the lack of thumb ring. The huns and the mongols are cavalry archer civilisations, but it are the turks who have fully-upgraded cavalry archers. The goths miss the last armour upgrade for their infantry, and as sudo started, the celts miss two-man saw as well.

Originally posted by Kilowag:

well let's clear this up right now then... the britons are"THE superior archer civ" their archers are already so good, that thumb ring would make them very overpowered... that said, I don't think it's as necessary as you say, especially when you have ballistics already.

Originally posted by SalaciousCrumb:

thumb ring would be op, they're already the best archer civ, with their 12 range elite longbowmen

Actually I would think the Mayans are the best archer civ. The plumed archers not only fire faster, have significantly more HP, and move only slightly slower than knights, they also are incredibly cheap, and combined with rams and eagles they are pretty much unstoppable. In black forest however, and probably some other closed maps the British are stronger.

[gagman]

few skirmisher and longbowmans cry

[robo_boro]

I believe that Thumb ring also makes archers fire faster?
So that would make mass Briton longbow/arba spam way OP

[TerminallyGrill]

I always found it odd that Mayans, having the better unique archer unit and arguably better archers, got Thumb Ring.

[Mamba]

They were the new civ in aoc, the devs of the expansion back then were smart enough to make the new civilisations OP and fun to play which made many people want to buy it.

[hot_gril]

In a game with lots of units, I'd still prefer Britons over the Mayans just for the range. There's a point at which you can't even send skirmishers at British archers because they all die before they get close enough.

[MrToffee]

I just like the playing mayans because they get that extra villiger at the start.

[🤗]

Originally posted by sudo:

In a game with lots of units, I'd still prefer Britons over the Mayans just for the range. There's a point at which you can't even send skirmishers at British archers because they all die before they get close enough.

I would prefer units that are 30% less expensive, besides siege rams and eagles do a great job of dealing with longbowmen. An even better way to deal with massed longbowmen them is to simply avoid them, attack the enemy from multiple sides and he can't use that range advantage that well as if they were in a single group. Eagles and plumes are much faster and are therefore more capable of performing effective hit and run-tactics.

When gold gets rare (though this will happen roughly 20% slower for Mayans because of their longer-lasting resources bonus), the Britons are indeed superiour to the Mayans, but mostly the Mayans will win before that happens