Talk:Sipahi/@comment-116.49.133.250-20180721141512/@comment-65.28.183.104-20190616071847

There are several reasons for choosing the Heavy Cavalry Archer over the Elite Janissary due to having Sipahi:

1:     The Turks have Thumb Ring which makes their Archers hit with 100% accuracy, while the Janissary only has 50% accuracy.

2:     The Turks have full upgrades for their Heavy Cavalry Archers yielding 80 HP, 11 Attack (17 to Spearman Line units), 5 Hack Armor, 6 Pierce Armor and 7 Range prior to factoring in Sipahi. With Sipahi, the HP becomes 100. This is in contrast to the Elite Janissary which has 50 HP (40 prior to the Turkish Gunpowder Bonus), 22 Attack, 5 Hack Armor, 4 Pierce Armor and 8 Range. Although the Heavy Cavalry Archer only deals half the damage as the Elite Janissary, it's twice as accurate, canceling that drawback out.

3:     The Heavy Cavalry Archer has a Rate of Fire of 2.03 or 1.82 following the researching of Thumb Ring. This is in contrast to the Elite Janissary having a Rate of Fire of 3.49. Thus the Heavy Cavalry Archer has nearly twice the Rate of Fire as the Elite Janissary. Combined with accuracy and damage, this puts the Heavy Cavalry Archer far ahead of the Elite Janissary in damage output.

4:     Although Elite Skirmishers and both normal and Elite Genitours deal 2 bonus damage to Cavalry Archers (Normal Skirmishers deal no bonus damage and Imperial Skirmishers deal 3 bonus damage), the bonus 2 Pierce Armor from Parthian Tactics negates this, causing them to take the same damage from Skirmishers as Janissaries.

5:     The extra 20 Hit Points from Sipahi give the Turks the strongest Cavalry Archers in the game. It is an increase in health of 25% over civilizations who have Bloodlines and a 67% increase over those without access to Bloodlines or other bonuses such as the Franks and Vietnamese have.

5 A:     The Mongols have Cavalry Archers who fire 25% faster, however they lack Ring Archer Armor meaning that they have 2 less Pierce Armor than their Turkish counterparts. This allows Turkish Cavalry Archers to out perform their Mongolian counterparts, though this applies only to Cavalry Archers as Mangudai fire faster and deal 1 additional point of Damage.

5 B:     Magyar Cavalry Archers deal an additional 1 point of damage (for 12 vs 11) and have 1 extra range (for 8 vs 7), however even assuming that the extra range allows them to get the first shot in, it would take them 17 hits to kill a Turkish Cavalry Archer with all upgrades (100/6) while it would take the Turkish Cavalry Archer 16 hits to kill their Magyar counterpart (80/5), resulting in both slaying each other with their final shot. In both cases the damage was reduced by 6 given full Archer Armor upgrades and Parthian Tactics. If the Magyar Cavalry Archer does not get the first shot in, it will be defeated by its Turkish counterpart.

6:    Speed. The Heavy Cavalry Archer has a speed of 1.4, or 1.54 with Husbandry. The Elite Janissary however only has a speed of 0.96.

7:    No fear of Condottieri. Since the Turks have so many Gunpowder unit bonuses, if your opponent is Italian or allied with Italians, they will certainly train and deploy Condottieri. Condottieri have 12 resistance to gunpowder units, which, combined with Plate Mail Armor, reduces the damage of an Elite Janissary from 22 to 6. In addition, Condottieri deal 10 bonus damage to gunpowder units. However, Condottieri do no bonus damage to Cavalry Archers, nor do they have any resistance against them aside from their blacksmith upgrades. This allows Heavy Cavalry Archers to deal 7 damage per hit, 9 if the Condottieri lack Plate Mail Armor.

8:     Durability. With 100 HP, a Heavy Cavalry Archer can withstand a direct hit from a Siege Onager, while the same damage would one-shot an Elite Janissary.

There are only a few benefits which the Elite Janissary have over the Heavy Cavalry Archer. The first is that it has a Frame Delay of 0, while the Heavy Cavalry Archer has a Frame Delay of 10. The second is that it's crushing attack of 22 is enough to damage even Inca Elite Eagle Warriors, Elite Huskarls and Elite Rattan Archers with 12 points, while the Heavy Cavalry Archer would only do 1 point.