Hello again everyone and Happy Friday!
I've been playing around with Kamayuks recently, so I thought I'd take time this week to look over what I think is an underused unit.
As always, the stats:
Cost: 60F, 30G
Base Attack: 7 (8 elite)
Base Armor: 0/0 (1/0 elite)
Training Time: 10 seconds (before Conscription!!)
Speed: 1
Elite Upgrade Cost: 900F, 500G
Attack bonuses: +8 vs cavalry (+12 elite), with an additional +20 vs elephants and +4 (+6 elite) vs. camels.
Looking at it, the stats are not overwhelming, especially with a relatively high cost when compared to their close kin, the halberdier.
But wait, there's more!
Range: 1
The addition of range makes the Kamayuk unique: it does not do ranged melee attack in the same way that the Throwing Axeman and the Gbeto does, since it does not have enough range to act as an archer-like support unit. According to the Forgotten Empires site, this serves to:
attack over the shoulders of units in front.
So, for those history buffs who have wished for the pike formations commonly used in late medieval Europe, in which multiple ranks use their long spears to create a wall of spears and which allows multiple ranks to attack simultaneously, that is what the Kamayuks do (despite any historical evidence that the Incas themselves used such a tactic).
As shown in multiple tests in SotL's Inca overview (link below), this ability acts as a deadly force-multiplier, allowing Kamayuks an incredible survival rate in melee fights which their mediocre stats belie.
Because they are best used in mass, their creation time is quite respectable, which along with cheaper castles for the Inca, allow a reasonable chance to mass them up in response to a cavalry-heavy enemy army.
To counter a mass of Kamayuks in melee fights, extremely tough units like the Teutonic Knight, or units with bonus damage against them, like Cataphracts and Samurai, are needed.
Because the Kamayuks bonus damage against cavalry is smaller than the halberdier's, Kamayuks do no bonus damage to Cataphracts, even if the Kamayuks are elite and the Cataphract is not.
The Kamayuk is affected by infantry blacksmith upgrades, which the Incas are not missing any of, as well as the Inca unique tech, Couriers. Couriers gives them +1 melee and +2 pierce armor, helping somewhat to cover the Kamayuks' glaring weakness to archers, although they still struggle against hand cannoneers.
Basically, the Kamayuk when massed is incredibly strong against cavalry, competitive against most infantry, and weak to gunpowder and Cataphracts.
One of the more amusing ways to use Kamayuks is to mass up a good number (40 or so), run around the map looking for high-HP units (battle elephants, paladins, etc.), moving the units to surround without attacking, then one-shotting said beefy unit. Horribly inefficient (a lot of free hits taken), but pretty fun nevertheless.
What do you think of the Kamayuk? Have you had interesting experiences using them/awful experiences against them? What maps are they strongest on? Weakest?
As always, I am always open to suggestions/volunteers for next week's discussion.
See you next Friday!
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