Any Uses for CA Without a Thumb Ring?
- This topic has 12 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 1 year, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
As someone who is new to the game but loves using Khmer spam tactics, I find it frustrating when my cavalry archers are almost fully upgraded but missing just one upgrade that renders other technologies useless.
Even with Parthian Tactics, it feels like a waste without Thumb Ring.
Can anyone suggest situations where cavalry archers without Thumb Ring might still be useful?
I’ve heard they can handle castle age knights reasonably well, but I haven’t tried it myself.
Can anyone think of any other reasons?
if you want to, go for it.
Its just not competitive.
There are plenty of other answers to cavalry besides cav-archers.
CA without TR are really bad.
TR gives 100% accuracy to archers and CA line for shooting stationary targets.
Archer line has 80,85,90% accuracy in feudal/castle/imp whereas CA has 50%!
Imagine missing half your shots at Max range even with ballistics.
Also, TR is more valuable than ballistics vs knights in most cases, such as hit and run.
You are underestimating parthian, it gives bonus DMG vs halb line.
I’ve never played ca with a non TR civ so I’m not sure exactly how much it matters.
It’s only good for annoying raids, that’s it.
For CAs in terms of importance TR > Bracer > PT > Ring Archer Armor imo.
So yes this is probably the most important tech to miss.
For dealing with infantry, mainly.
Maybe small vill raids.
Well, their main use is style points.
You’ll either win in style or get wrecked, with no in between.
If your civ lacks Thumb Ring but you really, ***really*** want to go CA, you need to play to your civ’s strengths first and transition to CA behind that, most likely in late Castle Age.
This gives you time to get the eco to add a supplementary unit, like Light Cav/Hussar (or Celt pikes I guess).
CA need a meatshield already, doubly so if they lack Thumb Ring.
​
For example, Celts can pull off a wicked Xbow+mango/scorp push; this helps with the CA transition nicely as you’re already making wood+gold units.
​
Or if you’re vs Aztecs on Arena, and don’t want to lose a bunch of actually powerful units like Onagers/Knights to conversions.
Chances are they won’t have been going for Arb or skirm play anyway, so a surprise CA switch can work.
Plus they, too lack Thumb Ring.
There’s niche moments when you go CA without thumbring.
It doesn’t happen ask the time, but situationally they have a use
Still ok for raiding, the accuracy is much higher than the on paper 50% especially if you run really close to the target.
This is a really good question.
I’m not sure why Khmer get Parthian / HCA and not Thumb Ring– they’re the only such civ in aoe2.
Thumb Ring is so important though.
Not only does it increase maximum range accuracy from 50% to 100%, it also decreases the reload time, meaning that whether hit-and-run or standing still, it increases DPS.
It’s hard to see a Khmer use case for HCA on any normal map when they already get good scorpions / ballista elephants to be their ranged damage options.
And HCA, including all necessary upgrades, is so expensive that you really have to commit to it.
Maybe on a really big map with a lot of gold?
You could go cavalier / hca as a very mobile army.
But in 1v1 Arabia I think there’s no real purpose to heavy cav archer.
Castle age Cav archer can be used as mobile raiding units, especially if you were already on bodkin for xbows or something.
You can’t really use CA against a knight civ though – CA deal with knights only when the CA are massed, and you don’t want to commit to large numbers of CA you’re not going to upgrade.
See above for why you wouldn’t upgrade them.
If you have superior micro you can do wonders with a small group of CA (look starcraft 2 levels of micro).
But other than that they can be useful against teutons.
If people start playing swords they could also countet sword armies.
Honestly you can do it as a surprise tactic, like go CA with Teutons or anything like that.
More than that, they will be very bad.
the best use of CA without thumb ring is to fight knights in castle age???
That is a crazy, crazy opinion.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
