Pagoda de Hierro

thumb The Iron Pagoda is a heavy cavalry unit, just like the Knight line, which the Jurchens do not have. It is trained in 14 seconds, which is on the faster side for cavalry unique units. Considering the Knight line's training time of 30 seconds, it can be seen that one Castle Iron Pagoda production will produce more units than two Stable Knight production. The Jurchens do not have any heavy cavalry units at the Stable, so training Iron Pagodas to fulfill that role is of utmost importance. The Iron Pagodas cost compared to the Knight line, which is the same total resources, but much more heavily inclined towards food. This makes them tricky to sustain in the early Castle Age, while also considering the Castle requirement, but much easier to train in the later stages of the game. The non-Elite and Elite Iron Pagodas have a unique ability to block melee attacks every 40 and 30 seconds respectively. There are different ways to think of this ability. One of the ways is to imagine that the Iron Pagodas gets extra hit points which equals the damage dealt by the enemy unit. This makes them relatively stronger against high-damage units compared to low-damage units. Another way to think of the ability is that the Iron Pagodas performs one round of its attack sooner than the enemy unit. This way, this makes them relatively stronger against low-hit-point units. However, this ability takes relatively long to recharge, so it will not impact more than one blow in a battle. Iron Pagodas will win otherwise close melee engagements, but the hard-counter-units will remain hard counters. This ability does not work against projectile attacks. Their statistics in the Castle Age are much more comparable to the Cavalier, just like other heavy cavalry unique units, like the Centurion and Boyar. Even when comparing to the Cavalier, their statistics do no align, with some statistics being marginally better for either unit, and the most important differences being the +1 Line of Sight, -1/+1 armor, and +0.05 speed of the Iron Pagoda over the Cavalier and the former's unique ability to block out one melee attack. While this ability does not work against projectile attacks, the Iron Pagoda has one more pierce armor to make them better against archers anyway. However, neither of those work against ranged melee attacks, like those of the Mameluke (which hard counters the unit), and the Gbeto. In the Imperial Age, when comparing to the Paladin, most of the statistics align. Both units have the same Line of Sight, reload time, and armor. While the hit point difference in the previous stage was merely five, it has now grown to 20. The Elite Iron Pagoda has -1 melee attack compared to the Paladin. They remain faster, and their ability recharges 20% faster as well. However, the most important difference at this stage is that the Elite Iron Pagoda upgrade is slightly cheaper and much faster to research, akin to other cavalry unique units' Elite upgrades. Moreover, since the hard-counter units upgrades like the Heavy Camel Rider and the Halberdier bonus attack becomes much stronger, the Elite Iron Pagoda's ability negates more than the 20 hit points difference. To offset their common counters, Iron Pagodas can be paired with the Spearman or Fire Lancer (which also benefit from the 25% attack speed bonus) against Camel Riders and stronger cavalry units, while the Grenadier and Rocket Cart can handle the infantry and Skirmishers better. Since both units deal friendly fire, one of the Jurchen civilization bonuses helps reduce that by 50%. Even the player's own Skirmishers, which are fully upgradeable, can be used to handle Spearmen and tricky archers, such as the Genoese Crossbowman and Composite Bowman.