Meteor hammers

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Great Britain Riotcoke
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Meteor hammers

Post by Riotcoke »

After watching Skirmisher play some games vs Soldier and soldier complaining about Meteor hammers as a whole, mostly due to their snare and range. It would be interesting to see what people think of the odd unit.

If i were to give my opinion the unit is weird and obviously compliments china's z move nicely, although i feel the 2x multipler vs art is probably too high?
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by iNcog »

Where is China at balance wise?

I don't like artillery/falconets vs China. China just z moves into enemy armies and swamps them with melee units. I don't think Falcs do overly well in that situation, Falcs seem to do better in Ranged vs Ranged army standoffs. Those are my 2 cents. The Chinese army can be tricky to deal with for sure. Meteor Hammers are definitely one of China's best units too.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by howlingwolfpaw »

The unit is good, basically because of its range and ability for units to hit from behind other cavalry. Its otherwise a fairly low attack, 2 pop unit. so giving it that extra vs artillery seems good to me. Its a somewhat niche unit you have to buy, otherwise I would rather have some more iron flails as they do area and bonus vs inf which is a little more useful, together though, they make a well rounded group, that when u send melee cavalry can deal with anything with good efficiency with a little micro.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by dansil92 »

Its a fantastic unit. It half doubles as a dragoon a lot of the time, can fight behind your changdao, and with double-face becomes a cost effective counter to several weaker musk types (assuming the musks dont bayonet charge, im talking where they soak the ranged attack). The double multi vs artillery seems to be a product of chinas "infantry civ" design and also because hand mortars are just so awful.

I wouldn't call the unit overpowered or anything, its a solid unit, one of chinas best, and highly unique. If it were removed or the range was removed it would drop china down the civ list quite drastically as far as im able to tell
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by helln00 »

Yeah without the art multiplier china would have sevre problems against falcs in age 3 since chinese infantry has so little hp that a single shot might wipe out half an army.

Now if Crows has the same range as a falc in age 3, that might change things abit.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by occamslightsaber »

Yeah the stats don’t look very impressive on paper, but it seems pathing is much less of a problem with 5 range. I think there was a France vs China game during EPL2 where a mass of China cav managed to come out on top versus cuirassiers of roughly the same resource value due to better pathing. I feel like meteor hammers provide much of the offensive power in the China cav composition while the iron flails are just there to tank incoming damage.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Astaroth »

China is fine. Stop looking at strong individual units. What matters is overall balance of a civ. As long as the civs are balanced, it doesn't matter that eg forest prowlers or abus are strong on their own. It is good and fun if civs have unique, weird, wacky units that are actually usable.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by fei123456 »

it's something like aoe2 mamelukes.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Astaroth »

Also if you look at the one game in which Soldier lost his whole army with 2 falcs vs skirmisher easily, the game wasn't won by OP units but more by decision making and strategy:

Soldier made like 10 huss age2 and did like no damage with them, killing 1 villager. Meanwhile, skirmisher got away with the greediest possible FF with tower+1k gold+mercs. Also, sending 2 falcs early is probably questionable vs China to begin with.

Now I'm not saying I know it all better or that Soldier played poorly, obviously he's a great player. But if one player gets away with a super greedy build and the other just does normal stuff with a slow semi FF into unit shipments, then obviously you'll have a massive advantage.

Without knowing the MU too well, I am also not sure skirm/goon is the way to go anyway, but you'd have to ask someone like Kaiser or so.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Scroogie »

What makes the China cav so strong is how well iron flails and meteors comlement each other. They basically micro themselves, irons going forward due to shorter range and soaking damage (they are tanky) while meteors have space behind them to dps.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Kaiserklein »

This is true, but at the same time if you could have only meteor hammers I'm pretty sure it would be easily superior to the flails / hammers mix
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by dansil92 »

Meteors only would be a bit more uhlan-like, with lower hp and high dps (due to superior pathing and targeting, not necessarily the unit attack stat). With flails they form a literal wall. I am not actually sure which exactly would be better, though both are quite strong
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by helln00 »

Yeah meteor on their own feels even more like paper than uhlans, they melt to musket volleys without double face armor and even if they dont melt to skirm they dont clear them out that quickly due to having lower attack than hussars.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Kaiserklein »

You guys seem to forget that focusing / splitting is also a thing. You don't have to z move on the iron flails, I usually try to focus the meteors with my goons when possible. Though It can be hard sometimes as they're in the back due to the melee range, but that's not thanks to the iron flails. If anything the changdaos are what forces your units to kite away, not the iron flails.

Anyway, it's simple, we often see the 5 meteor hammer shipment works wonders on its own, without iron flails.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Darwin_ »

Yeah the 2x artillery multiplier always seemed too high to me, however they don't have goons and hand mortars aren't very good and are impractical to train, so I guess I understand why there is a decent argument that they should have it. I would personally be in favour of nerfing meteors and buffing iron flails (only by a little bit though) for the sake of making meteor hammers less insane and comparatively more specialized, and making the black flag army (3 skirms and 2 flails) more practical to train, which IMO gives more depth to china's fortress. That could look like this:

- meteor hammer base attack reduced to 27, from 29 (this would make their fortress attack 32.4, down from 34.8, a ~7% damage reduction)
- iron flail base attack increased to 22, from 19 (this would make their fortress attack 26.4, up from 22.8, a ~16% damage increase)
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Darwin_ wrote:Yeah the 2x artillery multiplier always seemed too high to me, however they don't have goons and hand mortars aren't very good and are impractical to train, so I guess I understand why there is a decent argument that they should have it. I would personally be in favour of nerfing meteors and buffing iron flails (only by a little bit though) for the sake of making meteor hammers less insane and comparatively more specialized, and making the black flag army (3 skirms and 2 flails) more practical to train, which IMO gives more depth to china's fortress. That could look like this:

- meteor hammer base attack reduced to 27, from 29 (this would make their fortress attack 32.4, down from 34.8, a ~7% damage reduction)
- iron flail base attack increased to 22, from 19 (this would make their fortress attack 26.4, up from 22.8, a ~16% damage increase)
I don't think that we want to buff the flag army. China has to train batches and it's a disadvantage because you can't pick your units. Buffing the 3skirms+2flails army would be a big buff against skirm/goon compositions, it's already viable in some situations (like against jan/abus).
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Cometk »

Darwin_ wrote:Yeah the 2x artillery multiplier always seemed too high to me, however they don't have goons and hand mortars aren't very good and are impractical to train, so I guess I understand why there is a decent argument that they should have it. I would personally be in favour of nerfing meteors and buffing iron flails (only by a little bit though) for the sake of making meteor hammers less insane and comparatively more specialized, and making the black flag army (3 skirms and 2 flails) more practical to train, which IMO gives more depth to china's fortress. That could look like this:

- meteor hammer base attack reduced to 27, from 29 (this would make their fortress attack 32.4, down from 34.8, a ~7% damage reduction)
- iron flail base attack increased to 22, from 19 (this would make their fortress attack 26.4, up from 22.8, a ~16% damage increase)
ironically, zoi wanted to do something like this for EP7 but it was voted against :ohmy:

maybe it was voted against more because of dissatisfaction with the patch process/wish for a minimal changelist than that the changes would be bad/unnecessary for balance
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Re: Meteor hammers

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Post by [Armag] diarouga »

I think that we should stop changing China ye.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Darwin_ »

Cometk wrote:
Darwin_ wrote:Yeah the 2x artillery multiplier always seemed too high to me, however they don't have goons and hand mortars aren't very good and are impractical to train, so I guess I understand why there is a decent argument that they should have it. I would personally be in favour of nerfing meteors and buffing iron flails (only by a little bit though) for the sake of making meteor hammers less insane and comparatively more specialized, and making the black flag army (3 skirms and 2 flails) more practical to train, which IMO gives more depth to china's fortress. That could look like this:

- meteor hammer base attack reduced to 27, from 29 (this would make their fortress attack 32.4, down from 34.8, a ~7% damage reduction)
- iron flail base attack increased to 22, from 19 (this would make their fortress attack 26.4, up from 22.8, a ~16% damage increase)
ironically, zoi wanted to do something like this for EP7 but it was voted against :ohmy:

maybe it was voted against more because of dissatisfaction with the patch process/wish for a minimal changelist than that the changes would be bad/unnecessary for balance
Yeah I remember him bringing it up and thinking that it was a good idea, but the fact that it was proposed along with so many other absolutely mind-numbingly nonsensical changes made people overlook it or be overly critical to it I felt. However, I still think it is a decent idea and worth a shot.
[Armag] diarouga wrote:3skirms+2flails army would be a big buff against skirm/goon compositions, it's already viable in some situations (like against jan/abus).
That's true, but because iron flails have such low base attack, meaning they get obliterated cost-effectively by every hand cav unit without a multiplier, I personally wouldn't be too worried about not being able to counter it.
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Great Britain I_HaRRiiSoN_I
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

I think it depends what your EP vision is, for me i dont see the unit as too OP or too broken. It has features that make it slightly OP and slightly broken at the same time but in my mind thats ok as most civs have some 'broken' units. I wouldnt recommend any changes too the unit. If there was a vote for a change and was passed then i would only suggest a slight artillery multiplier reduction to 1.7x. The unit vs other cav 1v1 is pretty average/poor actually but the developers clearly intended for this to be an anti artillery cavalry like some of the native cav units.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by chronique »

Prob the best cav age 3 i would said. I have played on ep7 with 2 range lancer and i understand how strong range on cav are. Their dps are insane because of not pathing issu, and i am quite sure full batch of MH are better than MH+IF because more meteor you have, more damage you can deal before getting hit. We now what happend when aoe2 added one hand cav unit with range lol (the biggest nerf of one unit ins the history).
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Hazza54321 »

i think its the most obnoxious unit in the game because they even destroy goons
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by UpMySleeves »

memeor hammers
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Re: Meteor hammers

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Post by dansil92 »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:I think that we should stop changing China ye.
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Re: Meteor hammers

Post by Challenger_Marco »

Meteor Hammers is actually fine ,they are the only unit which can counter art.
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