hey guys spirit of the law here along with the new expansion coming out today there's also a ton of
balance changes including to the elephant archer which i want to focus on in this quick video the
elephant archer is of course being moved from the indians castle to being a regional archery range
unit for the three new civilizations depending on how you count it it's receiving either 9 or
10 changes just to give you a sense of how large the overhaul actually is so let's check it out the
first changes reflect how much easier it is to spam archery ranges than it is to spam castles
they're going from 25 to 34 seconds to create and the elite upgrade research time is being bumped
from 60 to 80 seconds for reference camel riders battle elephants and step lancers are all in the
22 to 24 second training time range crossbows are 27 and the knight and scout line are 30
seconds each going up to 34 seconds puts elephant archers on the same level as hand cannoneers and
non-heavy cavalry archers even with that longer training time saving on 650 stone per castle
means if anything i think they'll actually be a little easier to mask than they were before
something else helping them at least subtly is their food cost is being dropped by 10.
so they're now 90 food and 70 gold they also have their movement speed increased from 0.8
to 0.9 tiles per second before husbandry which is the same as the militia line without squires
with husbandry elephant archers actually move faster now than the crossbow line though most
infantry with squires will still outpace them so far we have a picture of a cheaper faster easier
to mass unit that seems much more functional and easy to integrate with different army compositions
here's the catch though they're way more squishy to start with their hp is dropping by
50 for both the elite and non-elite version to put that change into perspective functionally every
hit they take hurts about 20 percent more their armor is also being changed quite a bit not only
is there pure summer being slashed from three to two but there's also some more funky armor
changes happening behind the scenes the short takeaway is elite skirmishers are gonna be doing
plus 13 bonus damage against them now instead of plus eight the details of how exactly that's
working isn't necessarily important but for those familiar with aoe2 armor types the elephant archer
is going from negative 2 to negative 7 cavalry archer armor that means any unit that has bonus
damage specific to cavalry archer armor which is admittedly a pretty small list are now doing a lot
more damage against elephant archers after all of those changes just two elite skirmishers with all
upgrades are almost a match for an elite elephant archer now clearly overall they're less tanky but
that's not where the bad news ends they're also having an accuracy reduction from 100 to 70
and 85 for non-elite and elite respectively at close range units tend to perform much better
than their base accuracy would suggest and it is improved back to 100 with thumb ring but that's
an extra step and something to slow down the damage output of at least early elephant archers
bengalis also don't have thumb ring at all so their elephant archers are permanently inaccurate
and finally the last change is they're losing their attack bonus against buildings and stone
walls this was a plus three or plus four bonus and apply to everything from gates and walls to
houses and stables it makes sense moving them closer to a regular archer unit but again
it's objectively another nerf my overall impression here is that elephant archers are
gonna be a little easier to mask and faster moving but have the trade-off of being weaker especially
against skirmishers and even have some hidden nerfs like to accuracy and against buildings
personally i like the idea of a ranged unit that can soak up archer fire and the fact they can move
around the same speed as infantry and archers now is going to make them feel like less of a burden
to your army's mobility they still win cost effectively against the archer line they can
survive manganese shots better than an archer all while adding a bit of variety to the new sieves so
hopefully we see them used more often than they were before but that's just a quick look at one
of the big changes coming in the patch today thanks for watching and i'll see you next time