hand cannoneers should get a buff and here's why

HC weakness

They cost more gold than archers, only 35 HP, can only start producing them in imperial age after chemistry, have really low accuracy, slow movement, have slow rate of fire, no ballistics*, slow to mass, and countered by skirmishers. Basically by imperial age you will already have crossbows that you can upgrade to arbalests that will be much better as an army than hand cannoneers. They cost less gold, have very high or perfect accuracy, faster rate of fire, longer range while only doing 7 less damage. You can micro archers from long range with success unlike that of HC due to poor accuracy and no ballistics. Therefore you need to get close with HC thus making them very vulnerable.

​

Changes

I want to see gunpowder used more in AOE2 than just conquistadors. I want HC used more offensively instead of just a reactionary niche defensive unit used only against infantry.

1) Since HC are considered "archers", give them the same HP as imperial age archers: 40 HP. I guess the devs didn't want to create a gunpowder building so they lumped them in the archery range even though they aren't archers. 2) Get rid of the archer armor class so they aren't countered by skirmishers. 3) Make them cost 45 gold like archers. 4) remove HC from Franks because they are strong already and have throwing axemen for infantry.

​

I think +5HP, no skirmisher counter, and -5 gold is a realistic buff. The civs that have access to HC are mostly middle to lower tier civs from aoestats win rates (these are 1v1 win rates across all maps played on voobly). This might even help to better balance the civ win rates (or not).