AOE3 Forums

Look for the *notice* to skip ahead of all the introductory and evaluation and get straight to the point because I know people won't read it all and will just call me a Treaty noob.

    Not many other units have had the controversy of the Cuirassier. Maybe only Abus Guns or Longbowmen have been brought up as many times. And as many times as it has been brought up, the unit remains unchanged.

     Some people think this unit is OP, but with it's price tag, is too expensive to be a balance concern. Some think that this unit needs a small nerf late game when it is easily spammed. Some think the Cuirassier is actually inferior to Veteran Hussars. Some feel Thoroughbreds is the only real problem. And we all know what Treaty players think. But I think in small numbers the Cuirassier is fine and needs no change, but with some significant numbers, Cuirassiers are a little too strong.

    I have seen many balance ideas floating around on how exactly to fix this unit late-game without screwing it over early game. I will list what seems to be the most popular ideas.

-Give Cuirassiers Colonial stats
While this would help with the insane late-game stats of this unit due to multiple upgrades, I don't think the stats are the underlying problem. Lancers and Halberdiers both have veteran stats, yet no one complains about them.

-Nerf Cuirassier Imperial upgrade
I don't think ES would want to do this because it simply changes the design and layout of the game. I know I wouldn't want to pay 3000 resources for a unit upgrade that didn't upgrade by 50% when all my other units did.

-Add a build limit
This one is just a silly implementation. I know Spanish players would be mad if their lancer was capped and dutch players would be mad if a build limit was put on their halbs. While this would work, I don't think this is the best answer.

-Add .5/75 negatives vs HI/LC
This is the 2nd best idea I've seen so far on forums only behind colonial stats. But IMO, this idea unnecessarily nerfs Veteran Cuirs, which are fine in the numbers one normally sees them in Fortress.

Out of all these suggestions, I don't feel any of them address the underlying issue of Cuirs. And that underlying issue to me is splash damage overlapping when several Cuirs are present.

Thanks to AI Guy for his work here at HG.

    Look at this picture, notice how the Cuir damages 5 units. Now imagine 2 more Cuirs above and below him. Now you have 3 Cuirs all doing splash damage overlapping each other's splash damage. But 3 hussars for example can and will only attack 3 units at once until killing that unit and moving to the next one. While Cuirs attack all at once. Using 3 Cuirs in that situation would almost be like using 9 smaller weaker hand Cavalry.

*notice*

    And as I was looking for a suggestion for this problem, I told myself that what ever change I made would have to make sure that Fortress age Cuirassiers were still viable to use and only the late-game mass of Cuirassiers was effected. I began to look at the damage cap of Cuirs to see how that would work.

    If you don't know, the damage cap, according to the above link, is supposed to help control the damage output due to area of effect. There is more info in that link. A Cuirassiers base attack is 30 with an area of 2 and a damage cap of 60. According to the studies, a Veteran Cuirassier should be able to inflict a maximum of 90 damage to units with base damage and the cap. It is also stated that the cap is upgraded whenever base damage is upgraded and that most caps are 2X the damage of the base. So my suggestion is to give Cuirs a damage cap of 45.

 I ran a series of tests to determine and gauge the effectiveness of Cuirs. Note that I did use attack-move for the Hussars and Cuirs to try and reduce path finding from being a factor in the outcome.

I started out with 80 Veteran Musketeers(8,000 Resources) on team 2 and 60 Veteran Hussars on team 1. 80 Musketeers beat 60 Veteran Hussars(12,000 Resources) easy enough, not bad for a 4000 resource difference and muskets came out on top.

Next I tried 40 Veteran Cuirassiers(12,000 Resources) vs 80 Veteran Musketeers (8000 Resources) with the default damage cap of 60 for Cuirs. Cuirs won with 22 Cuirs left over. I expected this. The average over several trials was 21-22 left over.

Now I tried the test again with the same numbers but this time with a damage cap of 45. Cuirs still won but 9 Cuirassiers left over. Average was 9-10 Cuirs left over.

I think this is a significant improvement over the 60 damage cap. These trials show that Cuirs will still be better than Hussars vs HI and most other units, but have the issue of splash damage overlapping reduced when large numbers of Cuirs come into play.

 I'm open to suggestions, comments and opinions. If you have an opinion please back it up with reason. And please no flaming.
 

I think that most of the ideas up there are BS (except for the idea on damage caps, which is very good), in my honest opinion I think that changing Thoroughbreds to affect speed instead of train speed is the best solution. However, I also think that we could make the Cuirassier more like a dopple. Heres my idea.

Current Cuirassier stats in Fortress.                New Stats at Fortress

Resources: 150 Food 150 Coin                           Resources: 120 Food 180 Coin

HP: 500                                                            HP: 440

Speed: 6.25                                                      Speed: 6.25

RR: 20%                                                           RR: 30%

Siege: 30                                                          Siege: 44

Attack: 30 Area 3                                              Attack: 24 (60 against skirms) Area 3

My changes

By the end of these changes, the Cuirassier should be better against LI (its primary target), but worse against everything else. 

Firstly, I would remove 30 from the Food cost and add it to the Coin cost, which increases the VS time for it by a small amount, making them harder to mass.

Then, the HP is good, but maybe a little too good, so I would probably decrease this by 60 and add 10% to the Ranged Resist (making them better against skirms)

Speed is well balanced, so that wont be changed.

At the moment the Cuirassier hand attack and splash damage means it can almost beat its counter cost effectively. So, I say that we decrease the Cuirassier's base attack to 24, but give it a 2.5x bonus against LI, meaning that it will do more damage to skirms, but is worse against heavy infantry and hand cav.

Since this now leaves the Cuirassier as less of a field fighter, as it is more easily countered by Halberdiers (now takes 9 Hits from a halb to be killed and needs to hit the Halb 8 times to kill it, as opposed to taking 10 hits from a halb and killing the halb in 6 hits) and other hand cav which have a higher base attack, but no bonuses or splash damage. To be kind, I think Ill increase the siege attack from 30 to 40, otherwise the cuirassier wouldnt be very cost effective.

Does this sound like a good idea?

That's an interesting look at it. It does make sense that the splash becomes more effective when massed and later in the game. The more splash troops you have, the more indirect damage and kills they get to units they aren't even targeting. Later in the game you have more troops running around and closer together, so splash is more effective too.

Imo that's overdoing the changes GuitarHeroMatt. Reducing base attack and giving them a multiplier like asian cav is good (and something all euro and native cav need :P). That and either reducing their damage cap or giving them colonial base stats make the most sense, but nothing more.

some good sugestions are made now, and i really think we should make the cuirassier and LI eater but you should have done the test on pop limit to so 40 cuirassiers vs 120 musketeers.

the main problem is that cuirassiers destroy their counters such as ruyters,dragoons,cav archers, halbedeers and musketeers and all the other anti cav units i didnt mention.         

this is all because of the area damage but also people should make combiantions to beat cuirassiers. combos like halbedeers with dragoons or ruyters or musketeers with LC

the cuirassier isnt OP the only time they were OP was when the card was that gendarmes only cost 2 pop that was OP now their just fine.

Daemien

Yea man, if I had polar bears, Cuirs would never be an issue.

GuitarHeroMatt

Your ideas are good, but I wanted to avoid changing the Cuirassier's HP or Damage in fortress as I feel they are balanced in this stage of the game in small numbers.

 Changing them to be TAD like is a good idea too, but I think by design, ES made Cuirs a general purpose unit, so I don't know if this would happen. I think a Cuir's cost is fine and most would like to see thoroughbreds turn into a Hussar--->Cuirassier card I think, or at least not take down a Cuir's train time.

I think with the damage cap lowered then the massive damage output of Cuirs when massed would go down. And with that, HI would be a much better counter to them.

TheGroovyGuy

I agree that TAD-like status, colonial stats, or damage cap reduction are the best ideas.

Amersfoort

I didn't test 120 Muskets vs Cuirs because 80 muskets were beating 60 Hussars which cost the same resources(12000) and pop (120). So I thought Hussars would make a good base for what should be the abilities of Cuirs. I know that Cuirs should still be more worthwhile than Hussars however, and with my change they are.

Yea they do tend to do too well vs their direct counters late game. I'm sure you've seen Cuirs eat your jans before and just been dumbfounded.

While the LC+HI combo works vs Cuirassiers, I don't think it should be necessary to build this combo to beat Cuirs. It isn't necessary vs Hussars.

I agree that the only time Cuirs were massively OP is when they were 2 pop. But I feel they are still a little too strong vs their counters when massed. I think the damage cap nerf is best because the last thing I want to see is Cuirs hit so hard with a nerf that no one builds them anymore.

I like the idea of lowering their damage cap late game. They wouldn't even be a problem if they didn't have splash. Lowering their cap on splash damage would really make them more manageable.

I'll second the change in Thoroughbreds  to a Hussar > Curs card.

It already is 6.25, unless u have vanilla.