Knights in particular (not Cavalier/Paladin) are too strong and too easy to get to as well, not just crossbows if you ask me
They should be made just a bit harder to get to
These two units overshadow way too many other units and strategies.
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Basically what pros do.
Archers are supposed to counter these units
Skirmishers, Mangonels, and Knights in number advantage
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Enlighten me, where is he attacking him?
He’s just being critical of his post because at first the knights are bad, then they are too good all of a sudden
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what other units? the game is really built around 3-5 power units, outside of unique units, and 2 of those power units are civ specific stuff like elephants and eagles. the other units are counter units (Camels, Skirms, Spears), or units that serve other purposes (Scout line, Militia line). the other power unit is the Cav Archer, and many seem to agree they could at least use a Frame Delay buff.
so what are knights and archers overshadowing?
Elephants, longswordsmen, camels, CA, and most of the underused UUs (jaguar warriors, samurai, berserks, war elephants, elephant archers, Genoese crossbows…)
Talking pre-imp of course, and with a few civilalisations being excempted.
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elephants are used by 4 civs tops, and see common use in two of them
long swords are not a power unit, they are a counter unit.
camels are a counter unit, not a power unit.
cav archers i already said could use some love.
JW - belong to arguably the best civ in the game, do they really need more tools?
Samurai could admittedly use some more love.
Berserks see use, it just depends on the matchup, i see them used a lot vs Goths and vs Eagle Civs
short of reworking elephant unique units, i doubt they will ever see use in competitive 1v1 just due to the high cost.
GC is one a lot of people think need love as well.
but go ahead and keep leaning on units that aren’t, in fact, power units, and unique units that come in way too late.
most unique units don’t see use in the castle age due to most civs waiting until late castle age to drop a castle.
When you say ‘powerunit’ do you just mean a powerful unit?
You say things like “… is a power unit, that’s why it is/should be powerful” but that sounds like a tautology.
Equally to me a “counter unit” is a unit that wins in equal numbers against only 1 power unit, so to say
-implying that therefor it shouldn’t be powerful- this sounds to me like taking a descriptive statement and mistaking it for a prescriptive one.
The discussion we’re having now (slightly digressed from the OP) is whether there should be power units, and -if so- whether there should be more power units.
Actually looking at the game in its current state and the history I’m aware of, it seems like knights are more “power unit” then archers are (sorry OP 
). I didn’t really expect this going in, but
- there are UUs which are just better archers
-
- I don’t think any UUs can be described as plain better knights
- whenever a unit is just overall stronger than the knight-line, it leads to trouble.
-
- I’m thinking here of the old step-lancers, some history I heard about wrt Camels, and the trouble with Khmer & Malay Elephants
It might be easier to balance Camels, SL and Elephants in a satisfactory manner if knights were nerfed a litte, but then archers would need to be nerfed too, and then also the UUs… I can see it might spiral out of control.
Responding to your specific points:
True, Khmer and Malay both get good bonuses for their Elephants for free, buffing them to knight-level power. The only Elephants I actually feel bad for are Burmese.
But should they be? (See above)
You know I don’t believe in looking at all changes as civ-nerfs or civ-buffs. There are plenty of ways you (or the devs) could nerf Aztecs. It just seems incredible that when you have all the infantry upgrades for your eagles, and you have a castle, the best way to counter longswordsmen is with Xbows instead of your infantry anti-infantry UU. Something is very wrong here.
I agree they can’t be balanced properly for normal games as long as they take only 1 population space…
The only other overshadowed UU I’d mention are Organ Guns. Most UUs are now in a good spot imo 
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a power unit is a unit that isn’t specifically designed as a counter to other units (like skirms pikes camels or militia). they serve as the backbone of a normal army, like knights or archers or cav archers.
not without completely changing the design of the game, as neither of these units have been designed to be power units, and instead they focus more on serving an anti role. should they be more fleshed out? militia line i do think need a little more speed, and maybe add a bonus against all trash units, and camels, i think giving them a little extra pierce armor could help, but beyond that, no.
no, it just doesn’t fill the role of what i call power units. power units are generalists, not meant to counter anything on its own, the camel has lower base attack but lots of bonus damage against cavalry units. if it was more of a power unit those numbers should be reversed with higher base attack and lower bonus damage.
there will always be power units unless you radically change how units work alltogether.
and that’s part of the problem, to do this would be a radical change to the design of the game, and the question you have to ask yourself is “would people be happy with such a radical change” and my answer to that is resoundingly no. based on the fact that aoe2 is one of the most popular RTS of all time as is, even with archers and knights being as strong as they are. why mess with a working formula?
not really, its been design since day 1 that archers are good against militia line. i think aztecs were given JW specifically with other Eagle Civs in mind, simply because they already are so strong against non eagle civs, and didn’t need a great all around unique unit.
and yet that is what makes them so good, is the population efficiency of the unit, which is offset by the large cost.
if they were 2 pop for the same cost and power they would be awful.
the only way i can see elephant UU being used in 1v1 short of rebalancing around lower stats and cost, is if they were so insanely strong that it didn’t matter that they cost as much as they do, and to do that would break game balance.
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Funny how smoothly you transition between the descriptive view and the prescriptive view.
I don’t really think it’s a matter of design, it is just how it turned out. See the description of the knight, longswordsman and xbowman, from the wiki:
| knight | |
|---|---|
| Strong vs. | Infantry, archers, Villagers, siege weapons, Cavalry Archers, Light Cavalry |
| Weak vs. | Boyars, Pikemen, Kamayuks, Berserks, Genoese Crossbowmen, Teutonic Knights, Mamelukes, Camel Riders, Monks, War Elephants |
| Long Swordsman | |
|---|---|
| Strong vs. | Skirmishers, Camel Riders, Eagle Warriors, buildings, Light Cavalry, Pikemen |
| Weak vs. | Archers, Scorpions, Cataphracts, Jaguar Warriors, Boyars, Conquistadors, Janissaries, Slingers, Teutonic Knights |
| Crossbowman | |
|---|---|
| Strong vs. | Infantry, Villagers |
| Weak vs. | Skirmishers, Scorpions, Mangonels, Battering Rams, cavalry, Huskarls, Eagle Warriors, Rattan Archers |
Based on these descriptions, the Crossbowman is the counter unit!
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I just realised this almost exactly describes the militia line. Almost no bonus damage. The things it counters it does so because of its raw stats (except eagle warriors, but those are a niche case).
It’s only a ‘counter’ unit because it doesn’t have enough raw stats.
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they aren’t a counter unit, they are just strong vs infantry, the same way knights are strong vs other units.
and despite this, it takes no bonus damage either, which is how it counters pretty much every trash unit in the game.
or because unlike the knight (spears) and archers (skirms) it just doesn’t take bonus damage from trash units.
How do you counter Light cav with Long swordsman? Does not make sense.
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light cav actually used to be countered by long sword but one change happened.
Blood lines was added to the game.
but Champs wreck Hussars. i do think the Militia line needs love, but they aren’t a power unit the way the knight or archer line is, and have never been designed that way from the get go.
And yet the Japanese, Burmese, Viking, Bulgarian and Teuton Longswords are deadly to Light Cavalry.
To be fair I was just thinking generic not like those
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that was the intent of the designers, originally.
As you note, the game does not work that way.
My point was precisely that AOE is a good game despite not working the way the game was intended to, and not changing stuff “Because it was intended to be this way” is misguided.
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And yet to do the type of upheaval that you were discussing earlier, do you think it would go over well with the majority of the playerbase?
Ok, now you’ve switched from Archer-line is OP to Knights and crossbows are too strong and overshadow many other units. Lets say devs listen to you and nerf crossbows’ reload time and knight’s base attack and speed. Now the nerfed crossbows will be very weak to scorps, mangonels and nerfed knights will easily get converted by monks or killed by Camels. Then a person like you is going to open a new thread saying Camels, scorps and mangonels are too OP and should be nerfed. And this will loop till you and all these people realize the current balance is good because these units cost a lot of gold and are designed to be powerful and aggressive. But those balance changes if done would ruin the game for everyone else until you’ve realized it.
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Like maybe it wasn’t intended this way but the current design works well without making any unit OP. This can be modified to make knights take a more passive role, steppe lancers or some other newly designed cavalry unit coming into the mix and archers being situationally mixed in with some new type of ranged unit or cav archers - but all these need to be done without it affecting the game balance. Not by just nerfing one unit or the other.
It’s just a matter of wording. In the archer section, they say “infantry” only instead of naming all units lines one by one, and they say scorpion+rams+mangonels instead of saying “siege”. Also this particular section says nothing about the fact archers can either counter cav or be countered by it according to the situation.
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