u/Marsman3354

I think getting things one age earlier is a pretty unique concept, and has only been done with Hand Cannoneers as far as I know. Cav Archers are potentially the best unit for something like this since they normally rely pretty heavily on both Castle Age blacksmith upgrades and stable techs. They'd probably need some stat nerfs while in Feudal but I can see it being a really interesting alternative to standard Feudal play.

Is this a feasible concept by any means?

https://preview.redd.it/ctqjxi43acah1.png?width=755&format=png&auto=webp&s=6c0ffd21685c5b3a166a7a218e740199836f07a2

It costs a pretty steep 400 gold for a (from what I can gather) pretty insignificant effect. 4/5 of the ships you can face deal melee damage and there are really only two sources of pierce damage your ships can take: Fortifications and Galleons.

Galleons already have really high bonus damage vs. other Galleons so the +1 pierce armor seems pretty insignificant, not to mention you'll likely have Carracks/Fast Fire Ships in the front anyways. Carracks already get shredded by Galleons and Fast Fire Ships hard counter them, so not sure how much it would affect either of those dynamics. Galleons also have far more base attack than normal archery units so +1 pierce armor would theoretically block a much smaller percentage compared to land archers. Fortifications already shred ships with bonus damage so pierce armor doesn't matter at all for them.

Am I missing something or is this just an incredibly niche tech, even for water standards?

This strategy feels like a meme but there's a lot working for it that make it feel almost pretty decent. I've won a few games with it and while it isn't top tier it still feels pretty viable. Burgundians have a lot of odd bonuses that line up strangely well for a fast Imperial

The main one is the 25% damage bonus on Gunpowder. Your main fast Imp units are bombard cannons and hand cannoneers so this bonus essentially gives your entire early Imperial army a massive damage boost. It especially helps chew down high pierce armor units like Knights and Skirms that would give normally your hand cannons some trouble.

Another weird interaction that can come into play is Flemish Militia: Their stats get upgraded automatically, and pack quite a punch in Imp for their cost. Their cheap cost and no unit upgrades means you can theoretically immediately start pumping them out in Imp, having them beat most Castle Age units through sheer stats, or just as support for your Hand Cannons

Another small thing is the early echo techs. They let you get Double-Bit Axe and Horse Collar in Dark Age, giving you a pretty handy boost in farming which is quite important for a fast Imp.

The team bonus is also not insignificant. Picking up a few relics can give you a vital eco boost during your main push due to the food bonus, and give you an edge in drawn out trash wars if it ever comes to that

Probably the most major thing though is that nobody expects it. It can throw people off quite a bit and not always getting pushed early like Turks can lead to a fun surprise for the enemy

Has anyone else tried this strat? Even if it isn't amazing it's still a lot of fun imo

I'm probably far from the first person to try it out but was expermineting and came up with the Teuton comp of mass Scorpions + Halb + Bombard Cannon which felt nearly unstoppable

Unlike a lot of other Siege Civs Teutons get BBC so you can snipe enemy Onagers and having Siege Engineers means you can match enemy BBCs as well. The Halbs get the Teuton armor bonus and are incredibly tanky and both Scorps and BBT are affected by Ironclad which makes them much more resilient to being sniped

It's a bit heavy on gold but especially in a team game it felt very affordable and managed to push 1v2 on Black Forest despite the enemies having Onager, Heavy Cavalry and their own Bombard Cannons

Is this a known comp? Couldn't find anything when searching up online which is surprising because it felt extremely powerful

I know many people like this campaign, but the general execution of it really disappointed me while I was going through it. I'd heard people praise it as the definitve Cavalry raiding campaign, coupled with the Tatar's unique unit and the overall aggression and brutality of Tamerlane my hopes were high going in.

Throughout the campaign you're often given leagues of Cavalry at the start, coupled with objectives that tell you to raze certain locations to weaken the enemy or burn down rival towns and such. With the overall Cav Raider theme of the campaign you'd expect to dish out raids on enemies, weaken them with strikes from behind, and raze their economy leaving them crippled and vulnerable while plundering the riches for yourself. This is often a smart move when you have heavy starting army and many enemies, for example the final mission of Saladin where you're greatly rewarded for doing so. Despite this, the campaign is filled almost entire with isolated enemy strongholds with practically nothing to raid; most missions don't even have enemy villagers, a very odd choice for a campaign of this nature.

This lack of economy to hit (and most missions having 3+ enemies) means your starting horde of several dozen cavalry units can't do anything until you get enough eco to support them with Siegecraft. You're almost always punished for trying to raid with your early units, even locations that seem like you should be able to hit early (like the Italian Traders in Scenario 3) are often at the opposite corner of the map, entrenched under a Castle or other fortifications. There are no spread-out and open bases or large battles that Cavalry would flourish in, only cramped, fortified strongholds. Even the mere act of going across the map will often be punished as enemies swarm you from multiple sides due to how little space is between said strongholds. Missions boil down to waiting around and building eco until you have enough Siegecraft to finally push, while your starting raiding units idly sit by.

The first three missions are particularly sour examples of this. Restricted to Castle Age, they all revolve around being extremely passive until you have enough economy to flood the heavily fortified enemy bases with Rams until their towers and castle fall. Your primary units being Cavalry provide almost no value here: Most of the fighting takes place in a cramped stronghold with a steady trickle of annoying yet ultimately inconsequential enemy units while you slowly batter down buildings.

The 5th mission also suffers heavily from a similar problem. Despite being the one mission with villagers to kill, it has a whopping SIX enemies that are all heavily fortified. Even if you can raid one of them they'll quickly find their footing and get back all their eco while you're dealing with the others. It's a lot less tedious to wipe them off the map since you have Imperial Age now, but the lack of meaningful raiding (minus the one enemy you flatten at the start) is still disappointing. (Not to mention most of them still have infinite resource trickle)

The 4th and 6th missions, while being much more fun and leaning a bit more into raiding, were far too easy compared to the previous missions which made the campaign feel lopsided. (Trying to push into a base while the enemy had Cannon Galleons in tiny lakes was also really annoying and certainly a bitter way to end the campaign)

The enthralling concept of raiding the enemy with your powerful cavalry is entirely devoid from this campaign, which was a huge disappointment for me. I'd heard that Tamerlane executes the "raiding cav campaign" scenario far better than Genghis Khan or Atilla the Hun (as those missions also had few or no opportunities to raid), but from my experience it was significantly weaker on that front. It wasn't a bad campaign by any means and might even be a good one from a different perspective, but considering what I anticipated and what was built up it certainly didn't live up to my expectations.

Something that's always irked me is how Paragon levels are designed in a way that after a while, the only way to get Degrees is by Geraldo Paragon Totems. Not only that, for any mid-high cost Paragon Power Totems are always significantly cheaper than just shelling money or grinding pops for degrees, making them practically essential. Almost the entire roster of lategame towers being fully dependant on a single hero to get to high degrees feels pretty restrictive, and it's kind of sad how nothing to address this has been done so far. There have been a lot more complaints recently of how few heroes are good in boss events and I feel like this is one of the main reasons: Even if other heroes buffed Paragons in some way Geraldo's ability to cheaply get degrees on expensive Paragons is such a fundamentally powerful ability that unless major reworks happen it's not something that's possible to change.