Sheriff card (United States)

Howdy y'all! Here to talk to you about some testing I did today involving the "sheriff" card United States has

As most United States players know, this card is shit... 50% boost in your explorer and access to the car-buying attack in age 2 instead of 4 sounds amazing on paper... But anyone who's actually sent it knows it's terrible, since the carbine attack does a whopping 105 damage and age 2, meaning you can't even one shot a musketeer or a pikeman with it...

BUT I was scrolling across the wiki and I noticed something interesting reading the United States General page (which is wildly inaccurate by the way. More on that later)

The cooldown of the carbine attack is affected by refreshing beverages (if you don't know what this is, it's a tech at the saloon that reduces the cooldown of charge attacks. Costs 600 coin)

The wiki says the carbine attack has a 90-second cool down, and refreshing beverages lowers it by 30%. But I know for a fact that this is inaccurate, as in my testing all three outlaw units had their cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 10 seconds. This means that the upgrade either lowers it by a flat 20 seconds, or by 66%.

I also knew not to believe half the s*** the wiki says. It says dancehall reduces outlaw pop by 2, but it's actually a per-unit basis. It lowers gunslingers and owl hoots by 2, but cowboys by 3. It also says the inspiring flag has 70 range in age 5, which it doesn't until you send the Land of Lincoln card. It also says the Bear flag is identical in all effects but appearance... Which of once again incorrect because it very obviously spawns 6 FUCKING GRIZZLY BEARS AT THE BOTTOM OF IT HOW DO YOU NOT NOTICE THAT

... Ahem, I digress

So I loaded up the game, pulled up a skirmish for testing, and did so

First thing I did was verify all my timings for the outlaws, and confirmed all of them to be 30 seconds like I said before. (In the process I discovered the owl hoot will not do is area of effect charge attack if there's only one unit to shoot at, so thank you age of empires that's actually amazing)

Then I tested the generals charge attack, and discovered the cooldown on it after the sheriff card is 45 seconds, WHICH IS A FAR CRY FROM THE 90 SECONDS STATED BY THE WIKI JESUS CHRIST THAT WEBSITE SUCKS ASS

Next I activated refreshing beverages and tested all of my outlawz again to once again confirm my findings. Once again, cooldowns all went to 10 seconds. I was ready to test the general. His carbine attack would either go to 25 seconds of cool down if it reduced by a flat 20, or 15 seconds of cool down if it reduced by 66%... ... It went to 15

Now, at 15 seconds the explorer with an attack speed of 3 gets 5 shots off. When out of every five of those shots does 105 damage, while the others deal 18. The general with the card has 875 HP in age 2.

His overall damage can be calculated like this 105 + (18x4) for a total 177 damage every 15 seconds. Compare this to a musketeer who's standing fire damage in the same time span is 125

But this is forgetting a couple things. First of all, very rarely will your explorer be doing extended standing shootouts like this. Second is that while his normal range is 12 and his sharpshooter attack range is 16, the carbine charged attack range is 20!! Meaning you can very easily sneak him in by the enemy army, take a potshot out of enemy range, and run away, and do this every 15 seconds!!! The low cooldown makes the attack quite good

Now use the thing that everybody here has been thinking about for a while: a 200-word investment for the saloon and 600 coin investment for the upgrade is an 800 resource investment to make a sub-par viable... And you are absolutely correct... Unless...

One of my favorite strats to do with United States is to go full mercenary, and playing extended H2 with lots of outlaws. In this regard, I generally have three saloons after sending the advanced saloons card, and usually get refreshing beverages anyways to boost all of the charge attacks on my units. This means that the investment from sheriff turns into zero if I'm already doing a mercenary strat. Furthermore, I usually have a free shipment that I don't have anything in particular to spend it on around the 5-7th shipment (depending on which variant of the strat I'm doing) which you get to really quickly with United States just because of how they work

So, if you're running an outlaw or mercenary based strat... Hit the sheriff card into your deck, you'll be pleasantly surprised

Lastly, if you made it this far, I'd like to shamelessly advertise my YouTube channel. I mean United States and I pride myself having really out there and unique strategies!

https://youtu.be/GXQ7T3HloBo