Rather than going after Shoshone, people should do us all the courtesy of being honest with what their problem is
I think complaints about the Shosone can be broken down into two main categories:
Design has to do mostly with the ancient ruins issue, which has always been pretty controversial . I personally always have ancient ruins on, so I will mostly be talking about balance, as I think that is the bigger issue assuming you have ancient ruins on.
Balance
I think Shoshone is currently one of the weakest civs (on standard Diety), especially now that other civs like Indonesia have been reworked and Germany is being reworked. I remember Milae saying that the bottom 3 civs were Germany, Siam, and Shoshone, and that is pretty in line with my own experience. However, Germany and Siam both recently got buffed, while Shoshone does not seem to be getting any attention.
The biggest contributing factor imo is that
Comanche Riders don't fit into the kit and are just straight up very weak for a UU.
First, now that the Panzer is gone, Comanche Riders are tied for the latest UU with the other Cavalry replacements. In the Germany discussion, it has already been established how a late UU is worse generally than an early UU. But unlike the Panzer, Comanche Riders do not nearly have strong enough promotions to compensate.
Mounted ranged units excel at defending your own territory, as they can leverage your road network to concentrate a ton of firepower on a single space. Because of this, when using them defensively, you rarely ever need to put mounted ranged units in danger of being attacked by melee units, so the withdraw chance
rarely comes into play. Obviously, pillaging is useless when fighting in your own territory. The extra movement is useful, but much less so on defense because you have your own roads. If you look at the mobility promotions of other mounted ranged UU's, it also pales in comparison to the Hussar's Lightning Warfare and the Berber Calvary's ignore terrain. The Shoshone's kit is based around versatility and defending your own territory, and the
Comanche Riders are often no better than the base Calvary at defending.
Also, because of how late they come, Comanche Riders don't even do what they are supposed to offensively. On higher difficulties, AI civs all have a huge mass of units late in the game, and you cannot just send in a couple of lone troops to harass a civ, as the Comanche Rider's promotions suggest it excels at doing. To accomplish anything meaningful in a war late game, unless if you already are winning the war, you usually need to send in a full, balanced army. It's a terrible idea to use mounted ranged units as your front line, and even if you were to, you couldn't take much advantage of the withdraw from melee chance since your own units would get in the way. Note that because of this its true in general that
withdraw chance is worse when armies are larger, as is the case the later in the game you are. Also, even when used offensively, mounted ranged units generally take much less damage due to their mobility and their range, so being able to pillage to heal without using MP is much less useful than if it were on a mounted melee unit, for example.
These would be good promotions for a skirmisher UU, since early game, there are just less units everywhere and so the playstyle of running in, pillaging some tiles, harassing some units, etc. while dodging their melee units would be effective. The fact that the Comanche Riders come so late though just makes their bonuses relatively useless more often than not.
So, is the problem that the base unit, the Cavalry, is the actual problem, not the Comanche Rider? I don' t think so, because I find the other cavalry replacements, the Cossack and the Berber Cavalry, are in a good spot.
- Cossack - this just has a ton of damage stacking promotions so they end up extremely dangerous. Under favorable conditions, i.e. if your target cannot retreat and is wounded, withering fire + damaged enemy bonus outdamage Logistics on average, so they are real force multiplying promotions. Unlike withdraw chance, Withering Fire gets better the more crowded your opponent's army is, fitting for the late game in which it appears in.
- Berber Cavalry - Ignore terrain costs is probably the best movement promotion and is especially good on mounted ranged. It enables you to concentrate far more units onto a single space in most terrain, so it is a significant force multiplier. It is versatile on both offense and defense, while Homeland Guardian alone makes Berber Calvary a better defender than Comanche Riders. If this unit didn't exist, these promotions would fit in perfectly with the Shoshone's kit.
Also, as I stated before, Hussar's get lightning warfare, which alone is better than all of the promotions Comanche Riders have, and they come an era earlier. I know you can't just compare UUs from different civs in a vacuum, since they depend on their overall kit, but Comanche Riders are both weak and don't fit into the Shoshone's kit.
To summarize, the
Comanche Riders have awkward promotions that fit neither the unit type, nor the era in which it appears in, nor the civ it is a UU for.
I like Hinin's pathfinder suggestion, as it seems far more useful, and much more interesting than the Comanche Rider. I honestly don't think the Shoshone needs a mounted ranged UU, as it is extremely good a defending already. But if we were to keep it, it definitely needs much more oomph for how late it is. I tweaked the UU on my own to give it Logistics, and it felt about right. Something on that level of power is needed imo.
I could also go on about how Encampments are also in a weird spot, since they are still very often not worked in favor of villages mid-game, and their defensive utility is highly variable, but the bigger issue is the Comanche Riders.
Design
I won't touch too much on this, as it is already mostly covered, but the main complaint with design is that ancient ruins are not a good mechanic to base a UA off of, because 1) They are too random and 2) It is frequently toggled off.
I think the main problem is that the balance of the UA depends entirely on the balance of ancient ruins themselves, which are currently not in the best spot right now. I'm also inclined to agree that variability is a big issue, because something as simple as sending your pathfinder in the wrong direction in the first few turns of the game can make you lose half of your UA. Because of this, I do support changing the UA to not have to do with ancient ruins, but I don't feel that strongly on this.
Don't know much about the Shoshone, but I don't think think they were into eating people.
from adjacent Horses/Bison or something?
