The Ratha (DLC unique unit quicktake)
The Ratha (DLC unique unit quicktake)
This is the first AoE2 unit that can be both melee and ranged! Sounds overpowered, but there’s a few major drawbacks. We’ll see how it performs in each mode, and investigate some questions about its UI and controls.
0:22 Cost and stats in castle age
1:10 Upgrades
2:20 Fully upgraded stats
2:40 Speed
3:05 Bonus damage
3:44 Switching between ranged and melee
4:35 My thoughts
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Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition
I just got wrecked playing Ethiopian flank vs Bengalis flank in Arabia 4v4. In the heat of the moment I didn’t remember that skirms counter them.
I played a lot with ratha units in campaign and i noticed one really fun thing.
If you attack with the bow and switch into melee as the arrow is still in the air,
the dmg the enemy would take is the same as the melee dmg.
Dont know if its a bug or a feature 😀 but i could take down building pretty quick switching it around every shot
I want a new unit that has absolutely atrocious base attributes but EVERY research applies to them including Loom, Wheelbarrow, Architecture
It shouldn’t be pronounced "raatha", but rathaa (with a short "a" on "ra-")
This is not historical accurate. According to assassin’s creed origins. You can only shoot bows with the chariots.
It’s pronounced Roth not Ratha
This unit will have such a high skill cieling with micro.
And such a low skill floor. Looking forward to seeing these annihilated by skirms and pikes at LEL tier.
"Wow, I’m so glad the devs are designing units that utilize both melee and ranged attack!"
> Mamelukes: "Are we a meme to you?"
Out of all the new civs this sounds the most interesting to me. Elephant civ with such unique unit, i like it.
You’d think two horses pulling a charriot would be faster than a single horse with a rider on its back?
SoTL did not show Elite Ratha vs elite skirm with equal resources. With equal resources and fully upgraded they trade close to even. Now losing a gold unit is not the same as losing a trash unit. What helps the Ratha is its strong melee attack kills an elite skirm in 3 hits. While it takes 15 skirmisher hits to kill a Ratha. Anything less than 15 will lose focus firing. Then the 20% faster attack almost makes the Ratha twice as fast. 3.0 to 1.6 to make up for having twice as many skirms.
I love the concept but forcing the player to micro the mode will be the downfall of this unit. I think it would be stronger if it were automatic.
I think best way to balance this unit is to lower the gold cost, increase movement speed a bit and make the toggling take up about 15 to 20 seconds… After thats done their armor class should change as well. When they are in knight form they’d decimate skirms without taking bonus damage from them. and when they’re in cav archer form they’d dominate halberdiers without getting poked for increased speed. So their counter would be gold units and camels.
dude i have so much trouble making this unit and this civ work lol, i dont know what to do against simple skirms and pikes, everything you make just get so hard countered its ridiculous
That death animation is awesome!! 3:36
This one looks pretty similar to Schythe Chariot in Rise of Rome. It’s more historically accurate, because of the thing that you have a melee soldier, and an archer in chariots. Real ones had 4 horses, and 3 soldiers.
When you do the Bengalis Civ Overview, please make reference to how their theme sounds like a track from Homeworld. I know the two were just using stock Bengali wedding music, but the similarity is impossible to ignore.
i dont like it. That has to be much nerfed or removed.
Interesting you don’t talk about there bug … When you switch while there projectile fly too Meele the arrow is counted as an Meele attack and uses the Meele DMG which makes it kinda busted
Bengali!! great, as a Bengali I love to see the civ!
This has to be the greatest game. I mean it’s over 20 years old and they are still adding to it and it’s still great.
I wish they had made a howdah the Bengali unique unit instead of chariots. It would’ve been historically accurate and could have gone great with their unique elephant bonus.
Is this even AoE2 anymore?
reminds me of AoE 3
Do you think we can get them to update the samurai now? Would that be broken?
expected them to really strong seeing as chariot archers are really good in other age games
I absolutely hated playing ratha it was hard to micro and dies to All trash its just ok to good against things which don’t have bonuses against then like paladins arblest etc.
Should have A/B buttons rather than one switching, right?
Just to be sure you get the weapon you really want atthe moment
I like how they’re basically a merged rendition of the Chariot and Chariot Archer from the first game, an aesthetic I am fond of.
siegetanks in a mixed group in starcraft 1 always made you siege up.
Calvary armor should effect that
The melee version looks really OP. Outperforms kt/cav while costing less resources and no food (way easier to harvest wood). On imp they are only beaten by pallys which take a lot to upgrade. Elite upg also really cheap
do you have a video about why the camels have bonus against cavalry? Does it have a historical real meaning?
I think it’s easiest to imagine them as cavalry archers with a bigger weakness to halbs, but with an easy counter to skirmishers with their melee mode.
That said, the Skirm + Halb Trash combo pretty heavily counters them.
Hhmm. So the way I see it, since Bengalis do not have the Knight line, you’re offered a unit that can function similar to it that can also switch to ranged mode if necessary. That’s nice in my book.
This unit is an interesting one.
I tested the melee stance and the FU Elite Ratha actually trades well against FU Paladin – up to a point where 25 Rathas consistently beat 20 generic (Spanish) Paladin (1500 gold for both).
I think the main point for the Rathas is, that Parthian Tactics gives them an additional Melee armor – 2+4. making 6 Melee Armor, while Paladins only have 2+3. In normal TG settings, where you have Archer/Cavalry combos, they should not do worse against Arbalest, in that they have the same pierce armor as Paladin.
Of course, in a long Arabia TG, this might be a bad idea, because the units do actually cost a lot of wood -Those 60 wood could feed 6 or more Paladin if converted into farms instead. On BF, they are also problematic in that they take a long time to get onto numbers and that they die to Siege – so when you’re having your 40 Elite Rathas ready to go, the other guy should have 20 Siege Onagers ready.
I would imagine that they do fine on Arena, where you have unlimited wood access, but also a very open map where mobile units shine.
What I do wonder is what the best approach for fighting other ranged units is: Stay ranged and just exchange arrows, or send some forward to charge in on melee stance? Daut recently used them against Chu Ko Nu and they did quite well. He started with just fighting them on range, but also sent some in on melee. But since both stances do have the same HP and the same pierce armor, it’s questionable if you want to sacrifice firepower now for firepower a few seconds later when the unit has moved in. Perhaps Hit&Run with the goal of getting closer to the enemy archers is the best strategy, with changing the first row into Melee stance when you’re in range?
Lot’s of interesting options and I would really like you, SotL, to dive into it a bit more detailed and see how the unit trades against other CA, Archers and Cavalry options, especially other UU’s.
Is anyone else getting AoE I vibes when they see chariot archers? =)
There should definitely be an option for them to switch automatically from melee to ranged and vice versa. It wouldn’t always be the most effective because like he said they would do better against skirmishers and archers in melee mode due to higher attack. But they would be better against melee units if they switched to the bow while they were in range but then switch to melee when they in striking distance. I think both ways have a positive and negative side so neither way would be overpowered but for lower skill level players they wouldn’t have to worry so much about micromanaging them.
The AOE2 makers are running out of ideas for units or what! The urumi and the chakram from AOE3, the ratha from AOM Egyptians civilization.
IF you can micro, I would rather separate the group into a forward and a backline, since you can only amass so many melee units against other melee or ranged units attacking at the same time, whilst you can amass as much as the range allows you to attacking at the same time in ranged mode. It would be rare for it to be fully efficient to just switch them all to melee when caught out but this is extremely micro intensive, which is detrimental considering the highest micro in the game generally stops at avoiding onager shots with formations and things like Mangudai micro or attack ground units. This is a whole extra step of having to divide the group effectively for type switching, so it will often times be too costly to manage. But not enough that some extremely dedicated players could practice enough to the point where it could be useful and potentially decisive in battles. It’s an interesting unit.
This unit belongs in Age empires 1
A change for the Ratha: make the range version its secondary form and change its armor type to melee cavalry. That change only would make it viable, that and change its speed to equal the paladin.
Is it just me, or when I quickly turn from ranged to melee and the projectile is still in the air the projectile gets the melee damage instead of the arrow damage?
That death animation is great, how the guy just leaps out of the chariot. Reminds me of the Bob Hope movie The Paleface, when he throws a rock at an Indian running away. It hits him, he stops, and jumps a full backflip flat onto the ground. Hilarious movie. You should definitely watch it.
This is the unit Chinese needs
Now we want throwing axemen to be able to switch betwen modes
Light Cavalry: oh no! A cavalry archer that’s also a knight! I’m screwed!
Elite Skirmisher: Oh no! A knight that can pretend to be a cavalry archer and still take advantage of my minimum range! I’m also screwed!
Pikeman: Finally! A cavalry archer I can catch! In your face war wagon!
Micro gods gonna have a field day in AOE
Was the manner in which you drag selected multiple units contributing to the priority to the top right unit? What if you drag selected starting from the left side of the screen?
This is going to make micro way more fun.