Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

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Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

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Post by Astaroth »

On RE, Ger in my experience likes to make a lot of uhlans in Age3 vs France. Even when you have goons, 40 vet uhlans with cav combat aren't so easy to hold. Sure, you can micro and all, but uhlans snare, goons are squishy in melee and you don't want to sacrifice your 2 falcs.

So how about just adding like 10-15 halbs in early Age3? Sure, halbs aren't great units, but they are a nice meatshield and can defend falcs. Musks would be an alternative, but age2 musks are less tanky and have less melee atk. The vet upgrade is also kinda expensive.

Obv halbs have other disadvantages, such as their lack of speed, them getting kited etc. But here France has the advantage of 2 falcs, so you should be able to deter his skirms from poking.

Naturally Germany has other options to deal with falcs, such as BR or WW. But France can also mass a lot of skirms and send 8 of them, making the engage kinda costly.

I am not saying this would be a great strategy at the pro level or VS a German player who can adapt nicely (just not commit vs 2 falcs and halbs, raid around, build TCS etc), but it might work nicely VS a uhlan heavy timing.

Depending on how aggressive he is, you could go like 1k wood, 8 skirm, 2 falc. Use the wood for a second rax and a stable, first train like halb/skirm from raxes, then pure skirms, add goons for some dps from behind.

Sth similar could also be helpful vs a Spain FF, although the halbs might be too slow and musks during age up proly better.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by tedere12 »

you can add cuirs instead. Halbs can be decent bodyblock but are otherwise useless and die super fast to germany's skirmisher mass.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by Astaroth »

Cuirs are very expensive though and die to uhlan in mass...
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by Kawapasaka »

Leftover musks from age 2 usually serve the purpose, assuming you did some sort of musk-semi which I'm not sure is meta or not vs Germany anymore.
Obviously vs Germany you never want to commit to musks and make enough that vet'ing them is worthwhile, though.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by tedere12 »

not sure what you mean. Cuirs destroy uhlans, especially with a bunch of goons behind them
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by RefluxSemantic »

Going halbs + skirms can allow you to go for a 2 rax opener. I honestly think it has some potential as the Dutch in some match ups, where you just get a huge skirm mass with some supporting halbs and then get the infantry upgrades.

Ive mostly tried that against ports. Halbs are nice pressuring their forward tcs with their high siege and theyre possibly more effective against mamelukes than goons/ruyters are. So against Ports they actually have some real things going for them. It's probably still just worse than skirm goon stuff.

I dont think theyre good against germany though. I'd say you need a good mass of cuir/goon, as that counters the ideal ruyter uhlan comp for germany. The cuirs will be tanking already so you dont need these slow and weak halberdiers.

EDIT: I meant skirm uhlan as the ideal german comp
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

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Post by Mitoe »

ruyter/uhlan good comp
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by dansil92 »

If halbs were age 2 for dutch and shadowteched up maybe they'd be all right but as an age 3 up exclusive they are disappointing. They have their place and their purpose but its definitely not as a mainline unit in most matchups. They are quite tanky, hit hard, siegey, but slow, fairly expensive and underwhelming. Heavy infantry is not france's strongpoint and cuirs or even huss will tank better vs aggro uhlans most of the time
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by gamevideo113 »

Also halbs have only 10% melee resist so they eat pretty much all of the uhlan's DPS. They have a high attack but a low multiplier. They are considerably more expensive than musks and train more slowly. If you want an infantry meatshield just tech your musks into veteran and keep making a bit of those, they are quite good overall.
As france vs ger you should have black riders in your deck which are basically the best meatshield to cover your cannons vs uhlans considering their 40% melee resist.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by RefluxSemantic »

gamevideo113 wrote:Also halbs have only 10% melee resist so they eat pretty much all of the uhlan's DPS. They have a high attack but a low multiplier. They are considerably more expensive than musks and train more slowly. If you want an infantry meatshield just tech your musks into veteran and keep making a bit of those, they are quite good overall.
As france vs ger you should have black riders in your deck which are basically the best meatshield to cover your cannons vs uhlans considering their 40% melee resist.
Funnily enough melee musketeers are more cost effective against cav than halberdiers.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by gamevideo113 »

Halbs are just too expensive for a unit that performs barely better (cost wise) than musk in few, unusual, situations, and a lot worse than musks in every other instance, imo.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by Astaroth »

gamevideo113 wrote:Also halbs have only 10% melee resist so they eat pretty much all of the uhlan's DPS. They have a high attack but a low multiplier. They are considerably more expensive than musks and train more slowly. If you want an infantry meatshield just tech your musks into veteran and keep making a bit of those, they are quite good overall.
As france vs ger you should have black riders in your deck which are basically the best meatshield to cover your cannons vs uhlans considering their 40% melee resist.
Musks vs halbs: yeah, musks are clearly better in most situations, but halbs have some advantages if Ger goes almost pure Uhlan for a big timing push (RE): they have more HP, making them more tanky with WWs and especially skirms firing from behind. In my experience, musks melt pretty fast in that situation. Can also put a few halbs into cover mode if the uhlans go back or don't attack them. Halbs are also easier to micro because you can put them in defensive mode, whereas musks have to be put into melee and then microed to

Ultimately, I mostly question the effectiveness of goons VS Germany before you have a large mass with CC (aside from a few to kill raiding uhlans). On RE, they can't defend your 2 falcs. If you don't go 2 falcs, uhlan/skirm should beat skirm/goon at least early due to larger mass.

So until you can mass goons, a 2 rax halb/skirm (or vet musk skirm) might be better than goon/skirm to protect your cannons... You could try 2 stable goon cuir instead, but it's too risky imo.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by Interjection »

Do halbs need a slight buff?
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by gamevideo113 »

You can even do musk cuir falc. I think any combo is very likely to perform better than halbs+skirms. Halbs just die to skirms and even if they make contact with uhlans or ww they deal basically the same damage that musks do due to bad multiplier. On top of that, musks can shoot from a distance and deal damage a lot more consistently.
Imo hand infantry has to be mixed with melee cav and skirms to be effective in the fortress age. That’s why you see skirm dopp uhlan/skirm rod lancer/yumi samurai nagi and never skirm+rod (or other) alone.
If you really want to try to make halbs work with france, your best bet is skirm halb cuir imo. If you connect, halbs provide some relatively cheap, high dps.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by gamevideo113 »

Interjection wrote:Do halbs need a slight buff?
In the EP7 beta, they received a+5 attack buff (from 25 to 30). Imo they kinda still die before accomplishing much, though. Making them cheaper instead would make them more dispensable on the battlefield. I’d be less hesitant to throw a few halbs into my army comp if they costed 50f 50g.
Melee infantry units kinda need to be dispensable to be viable, since their number 1 counter (skirms) is the predominant unit of the fortress age.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by harcha »

I think at the very least the speed should be increased to 4.5, changdaos being the precedent here.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by gamevideo113 »

The problem is that if you increase their speed you'd have 5.85 speed dutch halbs (with military drummers and military reforms), which might very well be broken.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by dansil92 »

gamevideo113 wrote:The problem is that if you increase their speed you'd have 5.85 speed dutch halbs (with military drummers and military reforms), which might very well be broken.
Rodeleros but with 100 more hp and hussar level attack :hmm:
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by Luciofrancosi »

I like the idea!! U definitely wanna test it sometime, it might be enough to survive the early fort timming from Germany without taking too much damage and get a stronger eco mid game!!
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by jgals »

is the french musket upgrade any more expensive than any other civ? Even if its the 200 200 hat's not really expensive for french IMO
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by gamevideo113 »

Yup it's affordable
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by ShinkuroYukinari »

If you have excess wood, don't be afraid to splash in a few pikes as well :)
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by Astaroth »

Luciofrancosi wrote:I like the idea!! U definitely wanna test it sometime, it might be enough to survive the early fort timming from Germany without taking too much damage and get a stronger eco mid game!!
Yeah, maybe just try it. I feel on RE vs midlevel players (~pr 25-27 and such) it can work fairly well if they just go for mass uhlan and timing push your 2 falcs. Obviously a good player will adapt, instead raiding you like hell and abusing your slow halbs, making them kinda useless, but still. This approach still makes goons and only like 15 halbs as an early meatshield. Otherwise it can be hard to deal with builds like make 10 skirm, then only uhlan, vet uhlan, cav combat, 9 uhlan (pure goon is too risky imo).
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by Kawapasaka »

ShinkuroYukinari wrote:If you have excess wood, don't be afraid to splash in a few pikes as well :)
Best thing to do if you've overgathered wood (very common after a fight when you have tons of free pop space but had vills chopping the whole time) generally is chucking down an outpost on an exposed hunt/mine. Especially vs Germany. Alternatively an Arsenal can be good if you still have a decent goon or cav mass. Pikes are a truly sad unit in age 3.
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Re: Halbs as France vs aggressive Ger, Spain?

Post by ShinkuroYukinari »

Kawapasaka wrote:
ShinkuroYukinari wrote:If you have excess wood, don't be afraid to splash in a few pikes as well :)
Best thing to do if you've overgathered wood (very common after a fight when you have tons of free pop space but had vills chopping the whole time) generally is chucking down an outpost on an exposed hunt/mine. Especially vs Germany. Alternatively an Arsenal can be good if you still have a decent goon or cav mass. Pikes are a truly sad unit in age 3.
Note that you will quickly assemble an army that can hold the line vs Uhlans due to their cheap cost letting you mass them, plus your Cuirassiers will be healthier for when you beat back the Uhlans and start pushing into his base. I'd rather lose a few Pikes than Cuirassiers.

Plus if you have some surplus wood remaining you can put it into upgrades, say Veteran Pikes if you've assembled a bunch of them
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