The Fire Lancers were a lot more nuanced than I originally anticipated, leading to the longest edited game analysis video I've ever published so far on the channel. I hope I was able to share a few meaningful insights on the Chinese unique unit with you folks! Let me know in the comments below on any other topic you'd like me to explore. As always, thanks for tuning everyone, and more content is on the way!

A 20 minute edited video from Age of Noob on game mechanics? Hell freaking yeah!

Knights are usually not faster due to yuan dynasty's movement speed bonus. So unless ur fighting another yuan knights or mongol knights you'll be able to run away and reengage after the charge comes up again

The fun fact: Yuan Dynasty was a Chinese Dynasty that was built by Mongolian conquerors. (see also the Mongolian Campain. And you may tell the difference fire lancers' iron helmet goes with Mongolian style ) however the Original Mongolian are difficult to defend the Fire Lancers rush their Landmarks. "You dare use my own spells against me?"

it’s basic speed is 1.5 yuan dynasty gives speed boost to all units

i recommend self damage for balance, also historically accurate

I remember my first encounter.. we had a rus team mate that walled up, and a blob of 50 fire lancers instantly burned through that, eliminated him in a minute, then me, and the rest of my team The siege damage is really, really ridiculous. Feels like stupid fast petards.

Age of Springalds is over - Age of Fire Lancers has begun

Really loved the longer form video giving us an in depth analysis on the firelancers Age of Noob ! I can tell A TON of effort went into this, and it may take a lot more time and energy than your shorter videos but I'd love to see more of these ! I just can't overstate how well made this one was, getting major spirit of the law vibes ! Also am i the only one that feels like the developers need to give us more information about mechanics and abilities in game ? Like i feel all passive abilities should have an ability card on the unit which we can hover over and read, like they should tell us what the minimum tile range is to execute a charge and show us a proper cooldown timer every time it goes on cooldown, I read somewhere that someone did some testing to show that ALL units have a charge ability which gives them enhanced movement speed for 5 seconds when running into enemies from a certain (not calculated) distance and that this ability has a 10 second cooldown (most units do not even have real visual indicators to show when this charge is ready ) and the Knights have a special charge which deals bonus damage, gives the speed/ lasts for 7 seconds and has a 15 second cooldown instead of 10(id love to see you do a video on the charge and other hidden mechanics someday ! )... I also read that spears had a bracing cooldown, but that seemed to have been a bug more than an intended mechanic i guess, and before the current patch the spears used to only brace when holding position or idle/given the stop command...i feel these are things we should NOT have to research ourselves, the mechanics of the game should be clear to make learning easier and playing a lot more intuitive (also will help us realise and point out bugs when mechanics aren't so mysterious instead of considering those bugs as the intended function of the features )

Just came across you recently due to grubby, love the way you display the troops in close, subbed

Something most people don't seem to take into account regarding the Chinese unique units (mainly the grenadier and fire lancer) is that it takes quite the investment to even unlock them, having to spend 1200 food and 600 gold (more than any upgrade in the game) just to be able to build fire lancers, and a whopping 2400 food and 1200 gold invested on a Stonewall (if you built spirit way first) to unlock grenadiers. If you simply make them as good as other units in the game you encourage people to ignore them, what's the point of that?

Man, this makes me miss the mass strelet and oprichinik in aoe3 so much

Thank you for confirming I'm not insane. I main HRE and I have died to mass fire lancers so many times recently. Now I know why even mass spears has failed to help me against these annoying units

So we nerf the torch damage for sure. Maybe decrease the splash damage but bump the speed ever so slightly to make them more like a proper light cavalry unit?

Man, your thumbnail game is good but this time it was especially crazy. Super well done.

so spearman counter them so why all the fuss?

Takes a second or so to bombard a stone wall too, and when that happens you may as well resign when against the FL rush.

I disagree on the price part. They are not cheaper than horseman due to the age 3 lock and also investing an extra landmark. I do think the aoe dmg needs a falloff.

I've watched a match up. The gu spread his unit out to counter play the fire lancers which worked out extremly well

To make a balance change for fire lancer, Don’t reduce their damage. Just make their explosive charge attack would hurt themselves.

damn didn't realise how stronk they are

Had a 3 vs 3 game where i overchopped trees and made a gap in my stone walls, and just like that i'm queuing for the next game 😂

Do they benefit from the University gunpowder upgrade? I wasn't sure there would be something I hate more than french knights but the fire lancers running through people's bases unchecked is unplayable. People aren't even using them to fight unless they see easy kills. They're just destroying every building they touch and move on. Doesn't help that the Chinese can see all your villagers ahead of time and get free vision of where most everything is. Just split your lancers up into 3 groups and take out three landmarks at the same time.

While I think they are too strong in some situations - I am not sure what you say about the correct price point for them since you have to invest in a 2nd castle landmark which costs 1200/600 to unlock them. I think especially torch damage to buildings needs to be lowered.

I played a team game last night against a Chinese player. At one point, he built 100 fire lancers and just ran through my mate’s base in 60 seconds, destroying all the landmarks. The torch damage is insane.

Delhi once again totally OP!

In the thumbnail, I literally read "Are Fire Lancers *Overpowdered* ?"

Honestly starting off: I feel this whole discussion is scuffed. They probably are more an issue in teamgames where everybody sits in their base for 15 minutes building up, not scouting. Scouting solves so much of this. Imagine letting your opponent age up twice. Investing the resources for half an army extra and then build up enough mass after that. Second off: In a 1 v 1 (cause team game casuals that 15 minute no rush can cry me a river) elite firelancers hardly ever come out. It's the age up 2x issue and affording it's infrastructure + mass. It's more likely fairly naked firelancers come out vs upgraded units. Third: they are a glass cannon knight charge. Knights are not uncounterable either. You use the same tactics of a mixed defense. Walls, spearmen and archers behind the spearmen. And as a personal anecdote. In a china mirror my opponent tried to kill my mixed unit comp: zhuge , xbow , MAA , NoB and a few springald with mass firelancers. It fell flat on it's face a few engagements in a row. He too made a hole in my wall at some point and had them run ammock through my base but got cleaned up unable to torch all my landmarks. They go squish so easily. Especially in small skirmishes, well spread out, and after they charged. Honestly. If you get trucked over by firelancers you've failed on so many levels already. Scouting, agression (letting your opponent age up twice lmao), proper army comp, proper defensive reaction and setup. Are the numbers a bit bs? Probably. But it has no right in succeeding if you have even a semblance of measurable inteligence. Due to how obvious, expensive and monocompositioned it is. It's not different than letting mongols sit on their silver tree. Allowing the HRE to fill up their regnitz. Letting britz get 50+ LB. Etc etc. It's new and people need to learn to deal with it. This is just bandwagoning onto an easy target. I did like the video as a clear example of what they're capable of in terms of raw power. The way you shot it etc etc. Video quality is prime, it's just the premise / discussion isn't correct, fair and too much in a void.

would have been nice to see the fights without all enemies being clumped up. I'm sure the results would be quite different. (not different enough not to warrant a nerf, but enough to make the engagements less one-sided.) Also the keep should have had boiling oil, which would have made that engagement muuuuch worse for the firelancers. They'd still destroy it but take signifficantly more damage. Anyways, great video as always. Thanks for all your time and effort you put into these!

These are a lot better than I thought. Cool to see initial impressions from the betas evolve as the game is figured out.

Would love to see an update on this since Fire Lancers were changed some time ago.

if it takes much fewer resources to access the Yuan dynasty or the others, feel free to nerf it. Take it in mind, Chinese needs lots of resources to UNLOCK those unique units, but other civs come for FREE

To sum it up , china now has 2 insanely units in late game that can end games very fast , with players just going for landmarks kill. Fuck it then i will play only china in 4v4 and customs ... and mass firelancers like there is no tommorow and raid raid raid raid raid until no player will ever want to play with me. China as a civ needs some balance , as known for relic balancing team this will take a long time to be addressed

A counter everything unit that acts as a better siege unit than actual defenseless siege units?

I think the cost of the unit is fine, because you have to build two Age 3 landmarks to unlock them in the first place, but the area-of-effect damage and fire damage are ridiculous and absolutely need to be scaled back.

Too bad you haven't taken a quick look on the bonuses they get. Fire lancers usually have the dynasties speed bonus making them even more broken.

Thank you for this elaborate analysis. I've lost friends willing to play 4on4 games due to fire lancers. Even in 1on1 where I'd argue their (im)balance is less of a deal, it still is a deal. And yes: no fun at all. We now only consider 3on3 or 4on4 if we are all on discord. All merely to coordinate vs fire lancers. Last 80 games we played 4on4 where a chinese was present they went for fire lancer landmark victories. No exception. Sadly, this single unit in its current stage feels like the single reason to simply not boot AoE4 after a day of work.

great vid. i'd love it if you could explore the mangonel and how it fairs against the different generic infantry units. if it can be easily overrun by spearmen and or man at arms (using equal resources) for example. Does it really counter infantry or specifically only ranged infantry. Do xbow actually counter it. All these interesting questions

Here are some tips and necessary things to do not only against firelancers but general rules of thumb as well. 1. Stone wall always stone wall chocks i.g confluence, mingolian height. stone wall between player bases at least one layer. 2. hide eco/tech landmarks build them in corners, in the safest player base (imperial palace, abbey of trinity, guild hall, king’s palace, HRE’s big church, guardians court) 3.apply pressure, it cost them huge pop cap to landmark snipe, get ur army together and push with canons. 4. micro to win fights against it peal off if u using cav, mix in spear if u using infantry

I don't think they need to be nerfed by damage too much... Just reduce area DMG, like Lancekneghts And why not just make them more expensive? More closer to knight price

Thanks, I'm starting to rely on you a lot to figure out my game plan. I've been really wondering how inspired HRE units would do against or compared to their counter parts, like inspired HRE knights vs royal knights or inspired HRE crossbows vs arbalests, inspired archers vs longbows, bombards etc. Also how much better are warships with relics in docks. Thanks again for these videos.

So its a horseman with a small gold cost instead of extra food... that is great vs siege and buildings and beats everything except light cav hard counters and mangadai. To add to that they invalidate almost all other units in the game. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

I wish you had gone a bit more into the balance of the Chinese needing to get castle age twice to unlock them.

Having splash dmg, high mobility, and destroying buildings shouldn’t be 3 things 1 unit has all 3.

Hey Age of Noob is that you playing the guitar in the outro. Just curious

Great video man. You hit gold on this one.

This deserves a sub!

I think you should factor the cost of the yuan dynasty in to the fire lancer cost. It's 1800 resources + build time just to unlock them. That's a lot in the castle age. But yeah the AOE is a bit much.

Love the sheep at 1:07: "Helo iam strong unit as well, bäääää!!!"

dang man your production value is getting higher and higher

China has a passive feudal age not to mention the risk of running double landmarks fast castle to unlock the fire lancers.. I think you should consider the dynasty system before commenting it OP. After all, it comes with a trade.

I find that the fire lancers' AoE damage is only majorly a problem in the mid game, but towards the end-game heavily fall off. Knights (Especially French Royals) with upgrades in Imp age can easily trade and kill a Fire Lancer rush especially if the user isn't micro'ing them. Unfortunately though I have no clue how you are supposed to counter their siege damage and honestly the idea that they do Siege Engine level of damage as an extremely quick and cheap unit is insane to me. Personally I'd like to see their AoE radius tuned back, and their siege damage drastically dialled down. They are supposed to be a nuanced mico-managed unit good at wiping out melee forces, not base wiping cheap siege engines, nor god level army destroyers.

If you make the changes you suggested to Fire Lancers at the end of the video, what would be their purpose in army comp, and what reason would anyone have to invest 1,200 food and 600 gold in unlocking them?

this was a fantastic breakdown, thank you

Fire lancers, approach HRE: I fear no man. but that thing... it scares me

Hey, nice video. Btw, what's the name of the song that starts playing at 16:27?

Like the intro graphic!

i love dying in 30 seconds as Abbasid in team games to this.

Thanks, great video

Im gonna write this having argued against a lot of people complaining about fire lancers as a mainly china player, i have 450 hours on AOE4, most of that time was playing china, rus and Delhi (pre bugged delhi), in all these matches i can count with the fingers of ONE hand how many times ive lost to fire lancers and i have faced a LOT of them. The thing with fire lancers and grenadiers is that they ARE supposed to be strong due to them being expensive to unlock, YES, I KNOW you can get them at minute 12 or 13 if you dont get harassed, but thats not how the game works, its like "Oh let me let you get a huge eco and produce a shitton of firelancers while i do nothing to stop you but if you kill me then fire lancers are op :(" thats not how it goes. Ill name some tips on what to do against firelancers: 1 - Dont let china get to them, thats the "easiest", if you halt their economy and harass them, denying them space (remember china has a poor early game) and killing a few workers, if they dont build a real army you can easily end the game before they even get to castle/Firelancers. 2- Build walls, IT IS realistic to build walls in your game against china if you fail to halt their economy or just ignore them, firelancers do well in most their match ups but so do knights, french and rus will pump them as early as feudal, if you dont counter them you die, its not very hard. 3- KEEPS. AROUND. YOUR. LANDMARKS. this one is not well known and people go "bUt IlL HaVe To bUiLd 9 KeEpS", you could have tried attacking, but you didnt, so now you have to do something to stop them, what works about keeps is their oil damage, it shreds firelancers due to their low hp and tendency to stack around buildings, this does even better if you play HRE. 4- Scouting, firelancers are cheap, yes, but most china players (Me included) tend to build all the stables in a single spot so they can redirect them more easily or just to not spend time finding stables, you can easily get those stables destroyed as they occupy a pretty big space, also, scouting gives you the information if they are going firelancers or not, they need both T3 landmarks to produce them and if they get them very early they are costly (Even if their cost per unit is low, they need big numbers) 5- AOE, your mangonels are a very strong tool against firelancers due to, again, their tendency to stacking when they torch down buildings, this will do even better with keeps around that will pick low health firelancers. Also, you will most likely not win an attrition war due to firelancers price and production speed, so the way to go is to all in them, specially in team games (where they are most problematic) focusing down china is a great strat, i have been playing FFAs in custom games lately and if i get to focus china once i get my armies i will do it. Nonetheless i DO agree firelancers are too cheap, having their cost increased to 90 30 30 is what i personally would think its okay. It was a nice video overall but i didnt really enjoy the last part, it demonizes them as an "uncounterable" unit when they are not as hard to stop as people make them look, un fun to play against? I dont know, i find less fun having my workers charged by french knights that 2 shot them at feudal age, then they run, heal whatever damage they were dealt and do it again.

This experiment analysis is quite useful, but this is a lab test result. On live play, there are quite alot of decent players who can micro away and bait charges which just render it less effective, plus unit composition varies from players to players, since it would be foolish to only build one type of unit. Also the fact that players can just use stagger or wedge formation is enough to reduce the charge damage effectively. Maybe the line formation would work as well since the damage would be spread. I agree that they should remove the anti-building thing they have, it doesn't make sense that they took over the role of siege units and should have the same damage as the rest of the calvary units. Instead, maybe also allow fire lancers to do their charge attack on sieges for the bonus damage and after revert to torch damage after the charge. As for the resources cost, I can't say for sure increasing the unit cost would be good idea, especially when they would already spend vital resources to build the Landmarks to reach the Yuan dynasty, otherwise resources that could be used for techs or Imperial. It feels like the dev tried to offset the initial cost needed to unlock the unit by making it cheaper to produce. As a Chinese main myself, I felt that the dev could nerf the bonus discount from the Spirit Way, as I find myself easy to pump them out with low cost. Or they could reduce the HP of Fire Lancer to be more vulnerable to other unit since they already have low armor to begin with. That way they should be at least give other calvary unit a more favourable engagement.

I quit the game already due to a small group of firelancers, horsemen, scouts, etc. being able to take out 3 LMs in under 5 seconds if your army is away, say defending an ally or something. There's not even enough time to put up stone walls on most maps if the build is done correctly. I hate it even when my allies do it because I know we didn't deserve the win, and it takes almost no skill at all to pull off. I should be able to have my army at an allies base not to far away to help defend for a bit without worrying about losing in 5 seconds to a cheap horse rush that circumvents my army.

If you halved the fire lancers HP they would retain most of their characteristics as explosive, high threat units. But they would also be countered better by the units they should be. The unit needs to feel like a baneling for it to work as a fast moving, high damage, anti-ground, anti-siege, anti-building unit. If it's not a kamikaze type unit, then you will have to remove its damage against either infantry, siege or buildings.

Thank you for the great content. I do have a question regarding the music, where can i find it? I do like the song at 13:33.

Chinese is not easy to survive till yuan dynasty tho,they are just too weak in early game.

Really liked how you explained the FL rush at the end and how stupid the backseating redditor suggestions to stopping it are like "just build more walls lol", not to mention I'm happy you mentioned the fun factor being lost when you play against it. Staggered AoE charge damage and a reduction to their torch damage sound pretty good to be honest, keeping them raiders and good against range and siege is important but as of now they're too lame to face against. Personally, from when I have done it once or twice on release, the FL rush requires no skill and as a landmark victory it just feels cheap and hollow.

Hey, do you think it would be worth it to build a web app that allows you to create/share/view build orders for aoe4 ? Would you personally use it ?

The examples are way too isolated. Having two armies attack each other straight on is not how you prove a point about game balance. Mangonels absolutely destroy firelancers in seconds but you wouldn't just have them attack the firelancers straight on. You would guard them with spears.

Good video! Wish you would test with some more realistic army mixes with spears mixed in, or even better, look at actual footage from other streamers

When ever I play agaisnt Chinese I never let them get to the late game so I never had this problem

The opportunity cost is massive, though. Given that you need the Yuan dynasty.

Excellent ;) ! Thanks :)

well you use attack command not attack move so i can't really tell if engage correctly what will happans but i can tell that FL charge is very broken thank for a great video!

I also noted that you didn't cover how they function in Imperial age since there a castle age unit.

It's hard to balance the dynastic UU because it's expensive to unlock them, they need to be good to justify it, but they can't be overwhelming either.

while not argueign the result: why didn't you have seige weapons fire at the fire lances?

thank for this job.

Half of the Chinese player I met just spamming fire lancers. It is sick as the Springald before nerfed.

When I heard the background music from The Last of Us 2 at 18:00, I strated having PTSD...

Can u update the stat after the nerf?

Basically don't even bother playing HRE and if you do play against them you have to mine all the stone on the entire map to make walls everywhere and then die to Chinese siege.

So since HRE's spears are bugged, massing Fire-lancers is a freewin?

Please do Palace Guards, I don't understand their purpose. They have less armor than men at arms. What's the point of building them?

High quality content!

The only thing you didn't mention is that with an imperial officer they train in 5s.

Have you done a video on the Chinese men at arms?

I main China and France. Id like to see them changed into a cycle charging, open field battle and raiding unit. Remove or nerf their damage against buildings. Nerf their charge a little cos its a bit strong. But I like the open field army battles where I cycle charge different waves of firelancers, its pretty fun gameplay. Also, nerf their cost pls. My favourite strat is to build a spirit way out in the middle of nowhere, spam stables near it and get them super cheap.

In noob games, FL does look OP. However, FL is pretty much the first unit of China that end the game, and it needs 2 of the third age landmarks before you can even make them. They perform extremely bad in maps that have narrow choke points, which are generally the maps you want to play China. Opponents can easily wall themselves in those maps and as a Chinese player, the only option will be clock tower bombards. In open maps, it is pretty hard to keep alive as China before you can even make FLs. The opponents can generally pressure you so much in early game so that when you get your third age FLs masses, they already have forth age armies with decent upgrade. As a main China player, I can tell you that in 1vs1 games, I have way lower winning rate in the games that I decided to mass FLs than to drag it a little more for bombards.

This is very misleading misinformation. You completely ignored the Yuan dynasty costs. You keep saying "with equal resources" but it's actually not even close to equal resources. The Fire Lancer player has 1800 resources less than his opponent. 1800 resources is A LOT of units!

You need to factor in the cost to being able to make fire lancers in the first place

insanely overpowered unit

I've seen the fire lancer sniping..... Gasp

Oh no people are catching on

12:38 ( Tower elephants: am i a joke to you)

With better spread micro you can take them on with horse archers.

Age of noob: explain about how broken FL is Me: think about how gun? at the tip of the spear work

it was crazy seeing posts about fire lancers and so many people dismissing it just saying liek you said "JuSt BuIlD sToNe WaLl" ect rofl

so the HRE just straight up have no counter to these beside stone walls?

Yes they are

Them decimating Horsemen @ equal costs, wrecking M@A i.e. a 'heavy' unit while being a 'light melee' unit themselves, and trading so well against another heavy unit i.e. Knights seems a bit problematic. The test against Landsnek was disgusting to watch.