I think it is well recognized by pretty much every player that the warriors spawned at the community plaza are essentially meme material at this point. They spawn 1 at a time and have about a half hour drawback time before they fire. despite this, they have no statistical advantage over a single minuteman, making them worthless. One spawns, pulls back on his bow and gets focused down by gunfire before he even shoots. Its useless. And even if you get a decent batch of 4 or 5, the first one that spawned is already at 1 hp, making your little defensive timing pretty worthless, and really just feels so frustrating if you’re on the back foot when all the other civs have some sort of defensive timing available.
My idea, which I think would be a positive change, would be to have the warriors spawn as a batch of AT LEAST 3, preferably 5 or 6, all at the same time, but take slightly longer to spawn in. Then you can pop 6 warriors for a defensive hold, BUT you wont get another batch until they’ve died & you’ve “idled” your vills long enough to get the next batch.
You can also call town defense from your TC big button.
And with the community plaza you can call warriors as long as many times as you’re raided whereas those who can call minutemen can only do so once per TC without the card. So it seems balanced?
Natives have war huts that work as rax and outpost at the same time while europeans have to build outpost meaning that you should have better defenses. Also u can spawn warriors more than 1 time without spending resources (I know vills secs, but u dont need a specific res to gather).
Suuure 450F for 3 Jaguar, or 500F for 5 Tomahawk, or 1500F for 1 Tokala Soldier each 3 minutes in early age2 is balanced…
I like the idea of them spawned at the batch of 3. Main problem with the alarm dance has always been it low spawn rate as you need to be fully dedicating 25 villager to reach acceptable spawn speed, currently it spawn at 1.8s for 25 villager work times.
For those of you who don’t know, I love to use the 4 native civilizations, and I use the community plaza very often. And yes, it is true, the warriors that are spawned from the community square are not useful, unless you already have a mass of soldiers prepared in your base, and thus have a little more attack.
It has too many disadvantages, apart from the ones you already named, we must add the fact that there must be villagers in the square, and these are vulnerable to attack, it happens to me very often that I place 10 vills in the square to take out warriors and then switch to the attack ceremony, in all that process, of those 10 vills, only 3 are alive, because normally one when attacking the opposing base, focuses the villagers and then the buildings, so it makes no sense unless before the attack, the warriors are now available.
I propose that these warriors lose at least half of their HP, similar to US minutemen.
I completely agree that warriors need a bit of attention. I think your solution can work well.
This is the change I would propose:
The alarm dance takes just as long to train warriors, but instead of being spawned, they are garrisoned in the fire pit. While garrisoned, they do not lose HP. Warriors cannot re-garrison if expelled
Attack animation wind up is changed to take as long as Yumi archers.
Build limit for warriors is increased to maybe 8 or 10. Potentially add a TM like upgrade to take this up. -This will need some refinement
The main reason to increase the build limit is that you cannot convert the time spend on warriors to pivot to something else. For example, a European player can keep the resources in bank for militiamen, and then use those resources to age up if not attacked. This wouldn’t be an option for the Natives.
This would allow the Natives to do the defensive pop of a military shipment + military production pop + militiamen pop, which is core to defending in AOE3
I’ve never realized how much time Warrior needs to make their first shot. Just checked it - it really is ridiculously long (maybe even longer than Arrow Knights or similar). In my opinion giving them quick windup animation like Yumi Archer is enough to fix them.
Batch creation also sounds quite ok but only with big amount of villagers is the Community Plaza. If you have only a few of them - you will be waiting for your batch for too long.
warriors from the community plaza are actually quite strong. you just have to use them differently than mm. They can’t really be “popped” on top of units, but they are very strong behind walls or in choke points. They are also practically free, and they can be infinitely spawned, and they have quite good stats especially in age 2. nat civs also have incredible base defense opportunities with warriors + their TC big buttons, which deliver real units and not mm who degrade in hp. Warriors don’t need a buff, you just need to use them differently. plus, it’s rare that you should even be in a situation where you need them, since nat civs should play aggressively anyways. the only situation I can really think where they are commonly used is with aztecs doing an FI.
I would argue this is why Aztec are seen as bad/F-tier by pro players. They HAVE to put on early pressure since they do not have the ability to do the defensive pop (mm + shipment + production building). Realistically, they can do a rush, contain, or turtle. But their boom is hamstrung by not having that capability.
Aztec scouting party is a good counterpoint. But it takes 150 more resources (or 90 more food when converting gold vs to food vs), brings 37% of the DPS, locked to melee, and has 60% of the total HP.
Giving Aztec the defensive pop and making warriors useful would probably make Aztec less one dimensional. I would only be hesitant about this if it effected their age 2 rush, which this probably won’t.
