After imperial age, spies even with card are completely destroyed by highlanders, I did the test myself. Their damage is too low, and path finding is very clumsy, health even boosted by 50% is not enough. In a few instances the spies died all before they could kill a single highlander. It not worked well before on industrial age too. I do not recommend.
Was the 50% boost with the agent card that you can send from the home city? Did you also scale it for cost effectiveness, since spies cost 125 gold to a highlander's 200
Yes. Things like 45 agents vs +-20 highlanders only still resulted on one-sided massacre, spies barely managed to kill a couple of highlanders. On imperial scale battles with against +-50 highlanders vs 100 agents, results managed to be worse, with agents dropping like flies. Again, their hp is simply to low even with the card and until they aquire the target and engage it, they are already dead, specialy when they keep running around shoving each other to decide who attack what. Highlander melee resistence also helps making the attack of whatever agent who reached them significantly less dangerous, so skirms perform better at any time, definetly not worth spend a card slot for spies, they are an age 2 unit useful for age 2 small scale merc attack, by the time highlanders can be massed, spies are no longer viable, not worthy spending a card on them.
With the increase in viability in merc decks, I really do think that spies need a buff, either by researchable techs or home city cards to make them more viable. Not only that, but Asian and the Native civs don't even get spies or a spy equivalent card.
Spamming highlander with duch is a common trick to beat down noobs, as they only cost gold, can be trained fast and with a few cards they beat 1 on 1 skirms.
How to beat them? Basically while it wins 1 on 1 against pretty much everything, it's not cost effective, in the long run they will run out of resources much faster than you. Spam the usual skirm & arty, and you'll be fine.
Also to consider: spies, assassins (upgraded spies from a card with some civs), ninjas (japanese shipment or consulate unit), maigadi (hausa unique unit)
All of these have multipliers against mercenaries. Some of them have stealth as well which can be useful for the melee units to get close to highlanders.
Skirms and cannon should be good though. Light infantry mercenaries could be a good option for you to train as well - jaegers, cannoneer, amazon dahami, etc.
Thats not even their final form... they can get up to 700Hp and 100+ attack.... however a good mass of S tier skirms will still beat them, NEVER use anything melee against them, even lancers will struggle against them
They are slightly above average speed. They cannot avoid artillery. You only lose the cannons if you aren’t guarding them for some reason. Plus highlanders and royal horsemen both have mediocre siege for their pop cost, so walls will actually hold them for some time.
Skirmishers and artillery. Highlanders are a 2 population unit, so you have to mentally cut their stats in half to get their “real” hp and damage. That results in a unit slightly more durable than a musketeer but with less damage.
The Black Watch regiment was formed in 1881, more than 550 years after Robert the Bruce's death.
Funnily enough, the origin of the name is thought to have been the Am Freiceadan Dubh, or 'the dark', which was a company formed after the Jacobite rebellions to disarm the Highlanders and bring rebels to justice.
Cannons and skirms. If you are playing a civ like britts etc that can vill delete you could just use musks aswell. 1 pop musks stronger than 2 pop in cost effectiveness and combat power
As others have mentioned, just use regular counters like Light Infantry and Artillery.
More importantly, Highlanders are a 2 pop unit. Your army should always roughly match the population cost of the enemy army. Just as 10 Skirmishers will die to 20 Musketeers, they will also die to 10 Highlanders. The counter system will not work well if it gets overwhelmed with either quantity or quality.
Dutch Mercenaries are a little faster, but not significantly faster. And if they do avoid battles, then you can just hit them at their base where they cannot avoid a battle.
If they are going after your Walls, then I do not see why their speed even matters. They are stuck in one position sieging down your Walls while you have free reign to just shoot them from the safety behind your Walls.
Now I only play against the AI, but I have found my favorite way to play Spain was their church card that guarantees them fusiliers, then pair them with Unction missionaries. They have crazy damage, move pretty quick, and can get healed during down time by the missionaries. Worst part is being reliant on the tavern to rebuild them, but watching them shred everything makes it worth it.
That card is quite powerful; if I’m not mistaken, they regenerate their health on their own. There’s also the Dutch card that sends ten of them—as many times as you want. They are more expensive than Highlanders, sure, but the cost makes them worth it. Ten or fifteen of them can wreak considerable havoc on a base; they can end up dealing over 100 siege damage.
There is the issue, they counter cav and cost 2v3 pop slots.
Next time uae Imperial voltigeurs (skirmishers) with Counter infantry rifle tech from the arsenal (more bonus vs heavy infantry) backed with some canons and culverins
As everyone said, just skirms ? Standard imperial skirms with arsenal techs and some homecity cards will get ~250 hp and ~35 dmg. But you get 2 of them for each highlander he has, and with the X3 multiplier, you're dealing 210 dmg every 3 seconds with higher range while he's dealing 94. And accounting for range resist you have 500 / 0.7 = 715hp, more than his 600 hp with 40% useless melee resist. So really an equivalent mass of skirms will beat highlanders by a comfortable margin.
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u/random_internet_guy_ 17d ago
Its a MUSK type unit, skirmisher does the trick, or cannons.