Hey guys, Spirit of the Law here.
I was browsing through the Age of Empires forums and found a controversial topic that
piqued my interest.
Like all internet discussions about unimportant things it even got a bit heated.
The question was whether or not hand cannoneers are in a bad state and need a buff, citing
the fact that with equivalent resources arbalests hold up better against infantry at close range
than hand cannons.
For example, here I have 3000 resources worth of hand cannons and arbalests each being attacked
by 3000 resources worth of elite samurai.
If hand cannons are the more anti-infantry unit, they should win right?
Or at least do better than arbalests.
What happens, though, when you run the test is the arbalests consistently do better.
Of course, both are anti-infantry, at least when used properly and not completely surrounded,
but the argument goes that hand cannons are theoretically supposed to specialize in being
extra anti-infantry, so is this a sign the unit needs a buff?
The comparison between both units has actually been discussed for a while and Googling hand
cannons vs arbalest I found a poll from as far back as 2013.
It only has 42 votes, but even then Hand Cannons weren’t getting much love.
In this video we’ll investigate whether or not hand cannons do in fact have an edge
over arbalests against infantry, and what factors go into your decision of which units
to pick.
Let’s check it out.
To start of by simply looking at their stats, the hand cannon has 7 more attack after all
upgrades, and 1 extra melee armor.
At the same time Arbalests have 1 more range and 5 more HP so right away it’s a muddy
comparison, though I think could say the hand cannon is a bit more of a glass cannon, so
to speak.
The higher attack, though, is offset by a higher cost as well as a slower creation time.
Of course, you also have to start thinking about bonus damage, which is why the hand
cannoneer is so often seen as an anti-infantry specialist, with 10 extra bonus damage against
all infantry except condotierri, and +11 against spearmen.
The arbalest, in contrast, just has +3 against spearmen.
Against infantry, we’re talking about more than double the damage for the hand cannoneer.
This is one of those cases, though, where the stats don’t tell the whole story.
Despite 7 higher attack, the arbalest easily wins in a direct fight with equal numbers.
Now there’s a few reasons for that.
The arbalest after thumb ring fires at about double the rate after, it has perfect accuracy
compared to 65% accuracy for the hand cannon on paper, though in practice it’s more like
75 to 100 depending on the distance, and finally there’s probably a bit of wasted damage
by the hand cannon through overkill.
These are all things that work against the hand cannoneer and make a purely stats-based
comparison incomplete.
In fact another really important point that stats can overlook is how much easier the
arbalest is to micro.
Both units have the same movement rate, but the faster reload and quicker draw for arbalests,
sometimes called “frame delay” means it’s a lot easier to hit and run.
Hand cannoneers you’ll probably know from experience feel much more sluggish and awkward
to control.
Arguably that’s less of an issue in the late game, but to some extent it’s a hidden
advantage for arbalests.
The hand cannon also doesn’t benefit from ballistics, so it has a harder time converting
all of its theoretical damage in practice against moving targets.
That’s not to write the hand cannon off right away, but just to say that any sort
of scenario editor test that doesn’t include micro is going to be showing it in the best
possible light.
Another factor that makes the two units hard to compare is their upgrades.
Fully upgrading a hand cannoneers require just chemistry and the archer armor technologies.
Fully upgrading arbalests takes the archer line upgrades, armor plus attack upgrades
at the blacksmith, as well as thumb ring, ballistics and technically chemistry, as well.
I’ve seen the argument both ways.
One argument is that since archers can be created through most of the game as well as
while their upgrades come in means archers are easier to tech into as mass, whereas hand
cannons can’t be created until chemistry is researched, so they’re a harder transition
with more of a technology barrier.
On the other hand, I’ve also seen it argued that the archer has a lot more technologies
to pick up, whereas hand cannoneers only really need the one technology chemistry and they’re
good to go.
I’m a bit more sympathetic to that argument, and there’s no question that teching into
fully upgraded arbalests is more expensive and takes more research time overall.
The hand cannon’s short list of required techs works well in something like a fast
imperial strategy, where you want to put all your resources into advancing quickly and
then immediately transition to a powerful ranged unit.
Another situation would be if you have a lot of cavalry and need something cheap and quick
to counter halberdiers.
Like I said, you could argue it both ways, but again I think the hand cannoneer is the
easier transition, which at least gives it a use case where it’s arguably better than
the arbalest.
But that’s just all the stuff going on in the background.
The popular opinion in the thread I saw was that they’re not even better at what they
supposedly specialize in, and that’s really the heart of the matter.
Let’s put them to the test, and see if hand cannons’ anti-infantry bonus and high attack
make up for their slower inaccurate firing.
To start off simply and get a pure damage per minute comparison, I have some post-imperial
halberdiers at close range with 1000 HP.
The hand cannoneer ended up doing 33% more damage over several minutes, so at least they
have THAT going for them.
Of course their accuracy becomes worse at longer distances, and if we push them back
to their maximum range, the results are pretty interesting.
They end up doing almost exactly the same damage over time as arbalests.
That’s not a good look for the hand cannons, because remember the arbalest is cheaper,
has more HP, 1 more range, and a lot of those hidden advantages we saw before that make
it easier to micro.
Of course, missed shots that hit an enemy unit incidentally do half damage, so firing
into a mass of enemy units, assuming those missed shots hit another unit, we against
see a slight edge in damage output for the Hand cannons.
Also keep in mind the arbalest has +3 against spear units that it doesn’t have against
other infantry.
From this test alone, I’m pretty confident saying that with equal numbers hand cannons
are doing more damage to halberdiers than arbalests, as they should.
Now of course, I hear you, this isn’t taking into account their cost.
This is where things get slightly arbitrary.
Do you look at total resources or only at gold?
Ignoring wood and food means the hand cannon is 11% more expensive.
Weighting everything the same, hand cannons are 36% more expensive.
Maybe you don’t even think wood and food should be weighted the same.
Just to pick a middle ground, I’m going to value gold twice that of wood and foodThat
means hand cannons have a converted cost of 145 and arbalests have a converted cost of
115 per unit.
So now that we have a way to measure the cost of each unit, let’s apply it to both units
by taking their damage per minute and dividing by that cost.
Crunching the numbers we can see that the hand cannoneer and arbalest give very similar
value at close range, but from further away where the hand cannon’s accuracy comes into
play, the arbalest is giving you noticeably more bang for your buck.
Remember this is against probably the most common infantry unit in the late game.
At the end of the day, you really want to pay the least to get the most damage possible,
and it looks like the arbalest is winning out here.
To go a bit deeper though, there’s a factor here that hasn’t been included yet, which
is wasted damage from overkill.
With 1000 HP, all of the damage from each hit is being absorbed and counted, whereas
we can’t necessarily assume that.
To try to fact that in, I ran another test with 10 regular HP halberdiers, and again
saw very comparable results.
Both units are doing basically identical damage over time, with of course the hand cannoneer
costing more, giving the arbalest an edge in value.
As a slight hint of what’s to come, though, that’s not always going to be the case against
every unit.
Switching things up and trying it against the champion, we see about 25% more damage
being done by the hand cannoneer, which puts the two units at almost identical value.
Just to be really clear about the value calculation, it’s trying to address whether the higher
cost of the hand cannoneer is being compensated with a proportional increase in damage.
In this case, every 1 food, wood, or 1/2 gold you’re spending is giving you about 1.5
damage per minute from each unit, so the hand cannon’s higher cost is being almost exactly
matched by an increase in damage over the arbalest.
Doing the same test again against the samurai, we get a slight edge for the hand cannoneer,
and I think that’s probably a pattern that can be generalized to most of the infantry
unique units (berserk etc).
Their slightly higher HP in this case translates to less overkill, leading to an uptick in
the value of the hand cannon.
Again, you might wonder why we’re not having the samurai charge the ranged units and why
that test is showing that arbalests are better.
Certain the test can be done that way, but I think it gives the wrong idea about the
hand cannon’s value.
At the end of the day, with a ranged unit against infantry all I really want from them
is that they do the most damage to a group of enemy units as cheaply as possible, and
normally you’ll have other units in front to prevent them from fighting hand to hand.
Now I won’t do every infantry unit, but things start to get interesting now, as we
continue on to Mayan eagle warriors and Goth Huskarls.
This is where we see the biggest difference, with the hand cannon having a massive edge
in both damage output as well as value.
If you think about what’s happening, the arbalest is doing 1 or 2 damage because of
the units’ pierce armor, while the hand cannoneer has the attack to overcome that,
as well as +10 guaranteed bonus damage.
I think from this we can start to draw some conclusions, and to answer the question of
how they do against infantry, the answer is against halberdiers and champions they give
about the same value as arbalests, though of course with equal numbers they’ll perform
quite a bit better.
Immediately, though, as the enemy’s pierce armor starts to increase you quickly see overwhelming
value for the hand cannoneer.
Of course you wouldn’t send the hand cannoneer in alone against eagle warriors or huskarls,
you would have something like champions in front of it, and this would simply be the
supporting unit.
Just for curiosity’s sake, though, and since we’re all here, we might as well find out
how they do against some units that aren’t infantry.
A really common counter to archers in the late game is the Hussar and as you might expect
the extra attack alone doesn’t justify the hand cannoneer’s cost, so that arbalest
is giving better value.
Without the +10 vs infantry they end up doing about the same damage, as remember the arbalest
is reloading about twice as fast.
Now that said, as you go up against higher pierce armor and more HP, like the paladin,
we do see the hand cannoneer begin to justify its cost.
In fact, I think that leads a pretty general rule.
Even if it’s not infantry, the hand cannoneer performs better in general against units that
end with 7 or more pierce armor after upgrades.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying hand cannoneers counter paladins.
They definitely don’t.
But to take an example, if you’re up against halberdiers and paladins and looking for something
to give ranged support to your melee units, hand cannoneers in theory are worth their
higher cost in that case.
Of course, in a real game that would be only one of many factors you’d be considering.
Another example of a high pierce armor unit they work better against is the elite skirmisher.
tThe hand cannon’s high attack makes them much better, though not cost effective, even
before factoring gold.
Interestingly, they’re even population efficient against them as long as the skirmishers aren’t
making use of their greater range.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re not a counter to skirmishers, but I think it’s a fact
that I think is worth keeping in the back of your mind if you find yourself in a situation
with a lot of gold.
So putting it all together, it’s definitely a complicated couple of units it comparison.
You have to think about micro, population vs resource efficiency, and what unit compositions
you’re against, especially their pierce armor.
It’s not quite as simple as hand cannons are always better against infantry.
They’re more of a ranged unit that specializes in dealing with high pierce armor targets
– which reminds me a bit of the throwing axeman in that respect.
Obviously there are a number of civilization-specific bonuses, as well, that are going to make them
perform even better like Spanish faster firing, Turks with more HP, Indians with 1 more range,
as well as Italians and Portuguese who have discounts to their cost.
For quite a few civilizations the decision is also completely made for you by the tech
tree.
In fact, I think the question of whether or not they need a buff comes down to what role
you think hand cannons are supposed to fill.
If the intention is to make them the universally better choice against all things infantry,
then I agree with the sentiment the hand cannon does need a buff.
That said I think rather than playing with its HP or fire rate, I think a more direct
way to do it would be to just increase its bonus against infantry.
There’s certainly precedent for anti-unit bonuses much larger than +10.
On the other hand, while the arbalest gives better value against a variety of units, especially
ones with low pierce armor, I stillthink the hand cannoneer has a number of situations
where it’s a good option.
Up close against low-armor infantry just isn’t one of those times.
Special thanks to Samantha, Jean-Paul, Joseph, Connor, Brian, Noah, Gabe, Andrew, Harvey,
Dale, and Paul, and everyone else on Patreon for continuing to support the channel.
Thanks for watching guys, and I’ll see you next time.