So how do we actually balance Turks?

Since I love Malians and love giving archers the middle finger in Feudal/Castle, I saw that pierce armor buff to Turks and was eager to try them. Unfortunately, it's a very disappointing result because the unit is still waaaaaaay too expensive to comfortably feudal raid without risking nuking your castle time if your opponent has walled or otherwise fends off your Scouts.

I feel like the spotlight is now on the Turks for the first time in....well, ever, and it's really highlighting how terrible they are. They need more than +1 pierce armor, and it's very easy to highlight why.

Typically if you compare civs, you don't see clear advantages and disadvantages universally, but rather at best, you'll only find them situationally, such as Italians being good vs. Vikings on water maps but poor on land, or Malians being lackluster vs. Burmese but otherwise fine. With Turks though, the weaknesses they have to comparable civs are 100% universal at times.

Take these examples on how the Scout line stacks up:

Feudal: You want to utilize the Scouts in Feudal since they're one of the best Feudal units, countered only by spearmen and trading not cost-effectively vs. MaA? (though usually winning) Malians have MaA that share the exact same bonus as yours, except they're cheaper, you can organize their rush faster, they trade cost-effectively against you, and they lose the weakness to spearmen, instead being strong against them. If you want to give archers the middle finger in Feudal, why not go Malians? It seems 100% superior and the speed bonus of Scouts just isn't worth it.

Or let's say you LOVE Scouts and don't care what I just said, you think speed is everything. In that case, why not go Magyars? You get Scouts cheaper and you get your attack upgrade for free. If you as the Turks make 3 Scouts and get the attack upgrade, the Magyars can produce 5 Scouts for the same expense, and can even get a 6th while only spending slightly more than you on food. Is the lack of pierce armor really THAT pivotal when the Magyars can double your numbers and running from archers is always an option anyways...?

Castle: Again, you're paling to the resistance of Malians since they're still getting extra pierce armor, you aren't. Speaking from experience, Malians are probably the only civ that can viably rely on Longswordsman for Feudal. Yes they lose in straight-up fights to Knights, but you can amass them so cheaply and so quickly you can often just overwhelm the damned things, not to mention it's not hard to mix in some pikemen, who can be mixed in for a bare minimum cost. (1 upgrade) These same Longswordsman can get arson, and with about ~20 of them (EASILY massed; cannot understate how cheap and quickly produced these are), you can happily sit under TC fire and delete the damned thing, at which point your opponent probably needs to throw in the towel.

Turkish Light cav by comparison move faster, cost much more food, aren't as quickly massed (30 seconds train time vs. 21), and their lack of arson means you cannot terrorize walls and buildings as effectively, restricting you solely to raids. Yes, speed can absolutely matter moreso now, but give that this is a knight meta, you're SCREWED if you try and use Light cav vs. knights. The Malians can afford to because they'll win that fight by attrition even if they never make a spearmen, you will lose every single time. Likewise, the Malians can knock down a gate with reasonable speed (or hell, the siege tower is a very decent option for Malians), Turkish Scout Cav cannot.

You would rather switch to camels or your own knights, but given you have zero benefits to either unit, why play Turks? Why not Indians? Why not Berbers? Both have superior cav options and superior eco. (and the Berber eco bonus is very, VERY modest, being one of the worst in the game)

Or hell, the Magyars are now getting access to the Magyar Huszar, which will absolutely kill your Scout cav, get a nice bonus vs. Siege, and trade much better vs. enemy knights. Even if they lack access to it, again their Scout-line is cheaper.

Imperial: Again, the Magyars have the better Huszar, so they'll simply beat you in a straight-up fight. The Berbers even get them cheaper. Infact, any cav civ doesn't care about your Hussars because they have an identical unit and the pierce armor doesn't matter in these fights. Again speaking from the perspective of someone who loves the Malians, when you find yourself in a fight where your pierce armor advantage isn't doing enough, you try to mix in pierce damage (aka make archers) to force circumstances where it does matter and makes a difference. The Turks don't have good archer options though, and the moment they try to mix in Jannisaries, the opponent needs only to mix in archers to win, OR the opponent's cav archers benefit them more.

Hilariously, the Malians are not even a cav civ, and yet again they still provide a tempting alternative to Turks via Farimba Cav. They will beat Turkish cav and they don't need pierce armor for their cav when their infantry already suits that role. The Malians get the best of both worlds here. This is not a cav civ, and yet the Turks still lose out on this front.

And all of these civs have better options for countering cav and archers via pikemen and skirmishers respectively.

So maybe the answer isn't in the Scout-line despite the upgrade, right? For the other units it's the same thing. Look at Jannisary.

Feudal: Not an option. Any archers you make will be countered eventually by any civ that makes crossbowmen, making it a questionable investment at all. This same problem is why Turks are vulnerable in Feudal: yes they can defend, but any resources spent on archers or skirms is effectively "gone" once Castle hits. The only units that offer long-term investments are the Infantry and Scout lines.

Castle: These are a mixed bag by design. Yeah, they do sick damage, but they're easily killed by archers or skirms. You HAVE to make Light cav to protect them, which just prolongs the existing problem with Turks: they're starved for food when their only reliable anti-archer unit needs 80 food. Moreover, this ties back to a not-too-long-ago discussion about how viable hand cannoneers even are. They're effectively archers on crystal meth in terms of damage, but on firing speed they fall behind. This is a problem, because what this means is often they overkill singular units, and then the enemy unit has more time than usual to close the gap. Between the DPS of archers and DPH of Jannisaries, you typically want the DPS. You don't want 10 Janissaries dealing 220 damage on a singular target when you could have 10 crossbowmen who deal 70 damage to two targets in the same frame of time.

Top it off, these are far more expensive and utilize a far more crucial resource the Turks are already struggling with: food. Making archers typically does not disturb your Boom, making food units does. Or on the flip side, your boom is hindering the size of your army, archers are not as hindered.

And if that wasn't enough, you need a castle and need to invest villagers into stone in order to make these, and then you cannot make these at the same rate as archers. Honestly, do I really want to be Turks if I'm facing Goth unit spam...? Yeah, I don't worry about Huskarls, but if I have archers, I have much better options of stuffing the Goths into a corner and preventing Huskarl spam before it even gets going. The Goth player can absolutely go archers vs. Turks and then switch back to infantry once he knows you lack numbers. Yes, you can make Light cav, but hell yes he's ready to make pikes, and at a cheaper cost than your light cav.

The unit, by design, has serious flaws. There are times when you want gunpowder units because that extra damage matters, but the problem with Turks is they force you into using a situational unit instead of offering it as an option. No, the other option is off the table, so half the time, you're hurting yourself by playing Turks. They really only seem like welcome additions vs. the infantry civs who simultaneously lack good archer options.

Imperial: Exactly the same problems as above. The power spike isn't as dramatic either, so the shine the unit had in castle starts to wear out in Imperial. Would not surprise me at all if Portuguese HC beat them, too. If the Portuguese are making you look bad, there's a problem.

Or Cav archer?

Feudal: Not an option, not wise to get blacksmith upgrades in advance of Castle, delaying how quickly you can get them out at full capacity, which is VERY BAD considering other cav archer civs, archer civs, or even just jack-of-all-trades civs that recognize the archer meta will have a nice group of crossbowmen ready to shut down your cav archer armor before it starts.

Castle: I'm no cav archer expert by any means, but this is just another case of "why Turks?" There are multiple competitors with better or about equal cav archers, such as the Huns or Mongols or again the Magyars. Notably, the Mongols and Berbers have them beat on all fronts since they have the superior units. These don't really help with your archer weakness either. They probably fair better than Janissaries since they synergize better with Light Cav, at least, not to mention they stop chomping on your food.

Imperial: Same question, why Turks? Tartars, Cumans, Mongols, Magyars, Berbers if I want cav archers. Why would I pick the civ that neither has the strongest bonus to this unit and also has the most weaknesses attached to them in other fields? As stated, Magyars and Berbers don't exactly rank high on eco bonuses (Magyars infact don't even rank at all), and yet somehow these feel like much more lucrative options.

The Turkish army is hands down the worst in the game. I don't even think giving them a sick eco would be a viable solution because you'd still be restricted to an army that lacks a comfortable answer to Halb-any archer unit ever. They are guarenteed to trade inefficiently and there's a reason 90% of Turkish wins involve a rush. IF they truly intend on keeping the Turkish unit arsenal as limited as it is, then these three units need some seriously sick bonuses to be viable at all. Hell, I dare say they could probably give the Scout-Line another +1 armor and pierce armor in every age and it still wouldn't be enough simply because of how halbs do special damage to scouts, (+32!) and the Turks still lack an answer to archers that isn't a Scout.

Overall, I think the fact that I can say "why not just play Malians, Magyars or Berbers instead" and there is not a single damned answer that justifies playing Turks highlights how horriawful they truly are. No other civ in the game suffers from this problem of another civ being an almost perfect upgrade compared to them, and the Turks don't just have one, but rather multiple civs that make their existence questionable.

Possible solutions

-Janissaries costing wood and gold as a start? Forcing the Turks to use light cav to counter archers starves them on food. Having two units eating decent amounts of food is just brutal.

-Give their MaA line +1 pierce armor as well? This makes these a very viable option to send against the pikemen, tanking some damage from enemy archers, but by no means making them a complete counter. It means Turks would still bleed resources on these guys, but at the very least gives Light cav the option to kill enemy crossbowmen, which is crucial for Turks to survive. Downside is this is basically a "Diet Malian" bonus and not the most creative solution. Should also be considered if they get it immediately or upon hitting castle, cause if it's Feudal it's 100% diet Malians with the same MaA but the crappier eco bonus.

-Cheaper infantry line or Supplies for free. "Diet Goths" now, but it at least expands their options, the problem being that Turks struggle vs. Archers and thus have little motivation to use Infantry. As such, a cheaper cost makes sense for them since they also have less demand for infantry altogether; the infantry itself is not bad though, it's just a solution to a different problem than what the Turks face.

-Stop restricting them to ~3-4 highly expensive units lololol

Thoughts?