Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Australia Kawapasaka
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Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by Kawapasaka »

Some recent games vs Sioux got me thinking about this. Obviously you wouldn't use them against any sort of skirm-goon composition, but consider an opponent relying primarily on heavy infantry as his anti-cav like age 2 Brit with pike-bow or Spain with rodeleros. Maybe Aztec with coyo-puma-mace, or any civ going musk-heavy (though I can't think of many instances of that). How often is it worth actually making Rifle Riders outside of the one shipment as your main anti-heavy-infantry unit? The two main pros I can think of are mobility and benefiting from the cavalry upgrade cards that Sioux typically like to send anyway. What are the drawbacks?
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by deleted_user »

It's an expensive unit that excels only in that one niche scenario. It's too poor to be a part of any long term unit composition - they are easily picked off. The shipment is used to hold Age 2 timings/pressure with maybe an additional RR batch trained - the rest of Sioux resources are better put into skirm BR AR, because if the opponent sticks with HI composition they will get out-tech'd anyways - it's much more versatile.
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by dansil92 »

Rifle riders are more of a culv than anything. You sacrifice em to snipe a cannon or a caravel that got to close to the shore. They tend to do well vs an otto ff build where the units are jans, falcs and mams, but other than that bow riders and wakina are better
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by gamevideo113 »

Drawbacks of RR are cost and the fact that they are countered by both skirms and goons.
For me they have been effective in team games (vs musk+cannon pushes) or just mixing a few inside my army in 1v1 as well, because they have an insane dps and if they don't get sniped they can do some serious work. It's very important to use them with attack dance because they are very fragile and you want to conclude the fight as quickly as possible.
When fully upgraded they have 40+ dmg iirc, but twice the fire rate of a goon, they are probably up there with abus guns in terms of dps (not considering abus has bombard attack).
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

They're too expensive. You can ship the 5 RR and the 4 RR but don't train them. Wakinas are usually better.
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by dansil92 »

I'll make a few here and there but generally i prefer an axe-wakina combo with just a few RR behind the wakina in case of a flank. Rifle riders are good vs a musk mass though, better than wakina, but more expensive and easier to counter.

In my opinion and experience, rifle riders are specialist units you wont make too often, much like training artillery or making halbs. They have a time and a place and it isnt in fortress skirm wars
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by Lukas_L99 »

Good vs civs who donā€™t use goons and have lots of melee inf, like China, Spain, Japs.

But you still need some wakinas usually.
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

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Post by deleted_user0 »

RR are very specialized, you rarely need specialized units en masse for exactly that reason. They are only good vs what they counter, and shit vs all else, but they're so good vs what they counter that you never need too many of them. Of you do mass them you risk losing all to a simple unit switch by your opponent.

It's not bad to train RR, it's just bad to mass them. Cost doesn't really matter for that tbh, though it's bad if you train them and lose them easily, as sioux can't really afford to lose units early. And RR are very vulnerable without a meatshield. But in general you judt never need more than 10-15 RR no matter what your opponent does.
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by SoldieR »

Is it actually true that that have 2x the ROF compared to goons?
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by tedere12 »

IAmSoldieR wrote:Is it actually true that that have 2x the ROF compared to goons?

yeah, also better animation for kiting.
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by dansil92 »

Rifle riders have no frame delay and rof of 1.5 they are disgusting vs their counters. I agree 100% with umeu that you never need very many, they are so efficient
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by jgals »

Anti Culv? I'm not sure how many people are making culv vs sioux (or any art)lol but they do own artillery especially with the relevant upgrades. If you are going to sacrifice a unit though I would sacrifice the chief. He does it better although that upgrade is expeinsive AF.

It always helps to have a few more RR when pushing with an axe rider mass if you FF vs a colo japan or something. If I don't already have a warhut (which happens more than it probably should) its better to just train some rifles

rifle riders dont have a chance vs goons in protracted goon wars though, even if their rate of fire is better....unless you have tepee FU and maxed out which you won't in sup. Bow riders are better vs goon as they win unless ports
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by deuxballesman »

I know that I have already mentioned that but RR are classified as heavy cav so they are hard countered by goons. So ROF and so on don't really matter as they take a x3 in the face!

If I recall they don't have the range resist of a goon either so yeah no rr are useless against ports (except against musk/huss but who does that with ports anyways)
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by jgals »

deuxballesman wrote:I know that I have already mentioned that but RR are classified as heavy cav so they are hard countered by goons. So ROF and so on don't really matter as they take a x3 in the face!

If I recall they don't have the range resist of a goon either so yeah no rr are useless against ports (except against musk/huss but who does that with ports anyways)


Are you sure about this? EP fix pls
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by gamevideo113 »

Yes, they are rightfully classified as heavy cavalry
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

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Post by Kawapasaka »

jgals wrote:
deuxballesman wrote:I know that I have already mentioned that but RR are classified as heavy cav so they are hard countered by goons. So ROF and so on don't really matter as they take a x3 in the face!

If I recall they don't have the range resist of a goon either so yeah no rr are useless against ports (except against musk/huss but who does that with ports anyways)


Are you sure about this? EP fix pls


Pretty sure it's intentional. A unit that is both a skirmisher and dragoon, that gets hard-countered by both skirmishers and dragoons. It's like poetry.
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by Amsel_ »

I wouldn't use them as a Wakina substitute. I feel like the Sioux army (in the fortress age) should revolve around a core Wakina mass, and your cav should be more dynamic. Because of raiding, it's not as big of a deal to train the "wrong" cav unit as it is to train the "wrong" infantry unit. But against a bulky, well-rounded army, I'm a lot more comfortable having Wakinas there. It's kind of ballsy to mass hand-cav against Sioux, so it just makes sense to have a nice mass of well-protected Wakinas that will almost certainly pull their own weight during fights.

But there's no reason to think of Wakinas and Rifle Riders as mutually-exclusive. They can actually work pretty well together. I like Wakina/RR against Ottomans, and oftentimes China. Due to price, it doesn't make sense to mass a bunch of Rifle Riders, but you don't need a lot of them. Certain civs need quite a bit of time to build a well-rounded army, so if you've just finished a big fight and neither of you have a lot of units - having like 5 Rifle Riders going up to his barracks/stable and mowing down whatever comes out can help a lot. It's like there's an inverse relationship between Rifle Rider strength and the total number of units on the field. The more units, the weaker Rifle Riders get. They're sort of like having musketeers in age 3. Yeah, you don't necessarily want to be training them, but that doesn't mean they don't have their place, or that they aren't nice to have.
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by jgals »

Kawapasaka wrote:
jgals wrote:
deuxballesman wrote:I know that I have already mentioned that but RR are classified as heavy cav so they are hard countered by goons. So ROF and so on don't really matter as they take a x3 in the face!

If I recall they don't have the range resist of a goon either so yeah no rr are useless against ports (except against musk/huss but who does that with ports anyways)


Are you sure about this? EP fix pls


Pretty sure it's intentional. A unit that is both a skirmisher and dragoon, that gets hard-countered by both skirmishers and dragoons. It's like poetry.


and is insanely expensive for a civ with a shit eco, its like bullshit
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by gamevideo113 »

Rifle riders are fine really, even cost wise
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Re: Rifle Riders as a substitute for Wakinas

Post by deuxballesman »

they are just a niche unit countering the fearsome (broken bcause of musks according to gs in his guide) musk/huss combo. They are actually jaguar prowlers on horse if I am allowed to compare them this way.

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