Talk:Mameluke (Age of Empires II)/@comment-24.239.107.16-20160113073751/@comment-24.239.107.16-20160116042946

Yeah, I'm aware of that but that doesn't make it a weakness (and dodging the smitars seems like a very marginal value at best to me, not sure about that one. You'll want to use Mams in significant mass like cavalry archers anyways, grouped together in tight formation). Nonetheless, I can see where this can be very complicated after doing some thinking and testing with the map editor and why it can be tough to explain but I'll give it a try.

Neither unit is used much in Castle for good reason, so this is strictly an Imperial Age test. The Mam costs twice as many total resources, 140 vs EEW's 70, with EEW having the much higher gold drain. So normally you're looking at two eagle warriors for every one Mam not counting the gold drain. Upgrades play a significant role here, however, and the 2 to 1 ratio will need to be slightly adjusted.

Mamelukes have a slightly cheaper Elite Upgrade (a not widely known fact is that Elite Mams are significantly the cheapest castle unit elite upgrade in the game) while Zealotry is so rediculously expensive that it's not even worth factoring in here. The Mayan unique tech, El Dorado, meanwhile, is unquestionably a fantastic upgrade and is widely regarded as the best EEW upgrade which is why i'll be using them for the test. To clarify why I won't factor in Zealotry, it's because it's ROI isn't until 75 Mams, something I wrote about on the Zealotry page though in not so few words. In contrast, I decided to run El Dorado through the same test and I came up with a ROI at only 25 EEW's so it's definitely worth getting at "roughly" the 25 EEW threshold (it is still very much an approximation). So, it is my belief that El Dorado is a worthy upgrade while Zealotry is too espensive in most situations.

To account for El Dorado and the slightly higher upgrade cost of the Eagle Warrior's Elite upgrade, I had to factor in the extra 1300 additional resources it would take the Mayans to research those techs  (200 for elite and 1100 from El Dorado), and add it to the Mams used in the test, which adds about 9 extra Mams. So, as an example, instead of having 20 EEW's vs just 10 Mams, we're actually looking at 20 vs 19. Yup, those upgrades make a big difference and the 19 Zealotry-less Elite Mams slaughter the 20 El Dorado upgraded Eagle Warriors. What happens when we up the mass? Well, same thing. 29 mams  vs 40 EEW's and EEW get slaughtered. Want to up the mass even WAY more? I'd be amazed to see this in an actual game with how expensive these units are but it gets even worse. 49 mams  vs 100 EEW's and once again, EEW get slaughtered even more. Why is this happening? Even though that extra 9 mam's value is being diminished as the mass increases, so is the value of the mam being a ranged unit and that ranged units get much better with mass. In fact, the mam isn't even a great unit when it's not massed up, and partially why I think the developers chose to give it a cheaper Elite upgrade, though don't ask me what they were thinking with Zealotry. It's so rediculously overpriced. I should also mention that I kept the mams in tight formation the whole time, as that is what should be done with ranged units against melee units.

Hope this was informative, feel free to critique if you thought I made an error somewhere.