Tirailleurs

[Kawapasaka]

I've used this card a bit lately, vs Japan, (mostly on no-TP) and it seems really great for any sort of fortress follow-up to colonial play. You can pump out as many xbows as you like in transition and turn them into actually useful units as soon as you hit up. I'm not sure what the break-even point is compared to a 1000 res crate shipment, but if you were going to have a bunch of xbows anyway it already saves 400 res not having to upgrade them. It also gives you more army straight away when you age rather than stockpiling resources in transition and waiting for fortress to spend them.
Thoughts on the use-cases of this card?

[[Armag] diarouga]

Pretty sure you'd rather have 2 falcs.

[Kawapasaka]

Pretty sure you'd rather have 2 falcs.

Sometimes, but Japan rarely seems to have the Yumi mass to contest 50 skirms at that stage anyway.

[Djigit]

I think this shipment has a great potential, but nobody figured out how to use it smoothly with a standard BO.

[Astaroth]

Sounds good in theory, problem being that it seems very situational and rarely useful.

If you have crossbows as France, you either only make a few to defend a heavy rush or you use them to push hard, eg VS Japan. In the first situation, you will never have many xbows anyway. In the second scenario you will want to use your xbows to push, not to sit around.

But if you are pushing, you lose xbows, making the card not worth it. If instead you sit back massing xbows, you would be better off saving those resources and age up sooner.

The card only seems worth it if you have to mass a large mass of xbows, so maybe in some sort of prolonged colonial play in which the opponent is too defended for you to push but a straight age up on your end would be too dangerous. That is a very rare scenario, however.

Realistically, you will instead only have like 15 xbows before clicking the age up button. Now you have 2 options:

Make another about 15 crossbows in transition an until the card arrives, granting you 30 skirms.

Or stop xbow production, make 15 musks in the meantime and ship 2 falcs.

30 skirms vs 15 xbow, 15 musk and 2 falc?

Also note that xbows are very weak to cav, so if you make that many, it is very risky or you also have to make more pikes, which are useless in Age3.

[Kawapasaka]

Make another about 15 crossbows in transition an until the card arrives, granting you 30 skirms.

If you're double rax with a mid-late colonial french eco I think you can spit out 30 pretty easily between clicking up and the card coming in.
Last game I used it I just did some passive shrine sieging with a 2tp stagecoach where a decent xbow mass in colonial is nice to scare off Ashis. I guess it was only good because my opponent made the mistake of going full Ashi.

[duckzilla]

Converting an xbow to a skirm nets you 35 resources of "profit". Since you paid wood, but end up with a coin unit, your effective profit is slightly lower. You would need at least 30 xbows (30*35=1050) to make the card worth 1k of resources.

[Garja]

It is a fairly known good card va Japan. Can send that instead of 8 skirms

[Kawapasaka]

It is a fairly known good card va Japan. Can send that instead of 8 skirms

Any other MUs you think it can work in? Interesting to hear it's well-known, I don't think I've ever seen it on stream or in a tournament game, then again I guess you don't see France-Jap that much.

[Garja]

I have it on one of my fre deck, I remember goongoon having it too.

[dansil92]

I find the card similar to china's "new army" card, it seems great on paper but is hard to work into a build order.

[[Armag] diarouga]

If Garja has it in deck, you kow it's viable !

[scarm]

Meanwhile Tercio Tactics is basically the most useless "Transform x into y" card ever.

[duckzilla]

Meanwhile Tercio Tactics is basically the most useless "Transform x into y" card ever.

Yeah, would be better if it was the other way around. Pikes ftw!

[deleted_user0]

Man there used to be an excel page somewhere which listed all this stuff, including the break even points for all these conversion cards. Iirc the only cost effective ones were strelet to musketeers and axe rider to rifle rider. Also because they change the function of the unit.

Bow and or pike to skirm and or changdao or rods is only cost effective when you have a lot of units, more than 50 i think. And then there was onw which was completely terribad, but i dont recall which one.

I think in general if you can age to fortress while having 50 xbows, you can also just win in colonoal, so i dont see why you would make so many xb and not have them die in combat.

[Garja]

I find the card similar to china's "new army" card, it seems great on paper but is hard to work into a build order.

As french it is easier since your standard strat vs jap is xbow pike semi. As China you prefer to straight FF most of times.

[scarm]

Oh yeah speaking of it, is morning star or whatever really that bad? Like Colonial Rifle Riders sounds pretty strong and they are also pretty expensive.

[Garja]

In general all these transform cards have to be considered for their strategic value and not their resource value. In a 1v1 game they are hardly ever breaking even resource wise. The only exception might be suvorov card only because strelets are extremely cheap.

[scarm]

@deleted_user maybe the one completely terrible was sepoy resistance lol?

[deleted_user0]

@deleted_user maybe the one completely terrible was sepoy resistance lol?

vils to sepoy? actually that one isnt bad. it's super all in, but it's like a revolt, except sepoy > militiamen and you can still make vils after.

[edeholland]

Man there used to be an excel page somewhere which listed all this stuff, including the break even points for all these conversion cards. Iirc the only cost effective ones were strelet to musketeers and axe rider to rifle rider. Also because they change the function of the unit.

Bow and or pike to skirm and or changdao or rods is only cost effective when you have a lot of units, more than 50 i think. And then there was onw which was completely terribad, but i dont recall which one.

I think in general if you can age to fortress while having 50 xbows, you can also just win in colonoal, so i dont see why you would make so many xb and not have them die in combat.

I believe that Excel page is slightly outdated, it wasn't made after the newest RE patch.

[gamevideo113]

Imo just upgrade crossbows if you have a good number of them and send ranged infantry attack later.
If anything it might be a really good card when you run out of gold mines - you can mass up a lot of crossbows and then turn them into skirms. If you have 50 xbows the card is worth 1750 res so it's really good. Skirm+pikes isn't even that terrible when there is no gold on the map.
The other cards of this kind aren't great, with the exception of suvorov and evening star.

Tercio tactics would be decent if it also upgraded rods to veteran instead of just turning pikes into rods.

New army instead isn't worth it. Chinese upgrades are so cheap that it's simply better to upgrade pikes and ckn, also because china has a 13 ckn shipment in age3 which is really good imo. Also repelling volley affects ckn too, so having them in fortress isn't bad.

[dansil92]

Oh yeah speaking of it, is morning star or whatever really that bad? Like Colonial Rifle Riders sounds pretty strong and they are also pretty expensive.

This card has strategic value to some extent, you make lots of axe runners while running around a heavy infantry civ's base (brit, india and otto are ones i have successfully used it on) to trick them into going musk heavy, then ship evening star. Its quite efficient resource wise since axe riders are essentially pure food and RR are expensive, they are only available fortress age usually, and shadowtech if you age up afterwards. Its also often overlooked that you can still ship it in fortress after aging if you have lots of axe out for whatever reason. Once again, stategic, not necessarily an 'objectively' good card

[Challenger_Marco]

what is that card?

[Kawapasaka]

what is that card?

French age 3 card, transforms all xbows into skirms