We really have tried time and time again to “fix” the Swordsman line and to this day it fails hard. I think there is one way we didn’t think of yet that is to remove Long Swordsman upgrade entirely. What’ll happen is if you researched Man-At-Arms at Feudal Age then upon hitting Castle Age, it’ll auto upgraded to Long Swordsman. Therefore you can think of massing Long Swordsman more while aging up.
Also if possible, add a bloodlines equivalent tech for Swordsman line(+UU Swordsman) only but won’t effect Halbs. It’ll help them to survive few hits more. OR add more armor against Cavalry if Gambeson is researched. Not only +1/+1 armor.
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Agreed. Considering that Armenians aren’t overpowered with Castle Age champions, it might be interesting to allow all civilizations to have access to champions in the Castle Age. This would create a clearer distinction between the playstyles of the swordsman line and the knight line.
Swordsman line:
- Cheaper per unit
- Players can spam Long Swordsmen without needing upgrades but will struggle in cost-effectiveness against knights
- Players can invest heavily in upgrades to reach Champion, making them more cost-efficient against knights, though they remain vulnerable to archers due to the lack of the final +2 armor upgrade in the Castle Age. Additionally, they are weak to knights before the Champion upgrade
- Players could mass Long Swordsmen and opt not to advance to the Imperial Age, instead benefiting from a power spike by upgrading to Champions in the Castle Age
Knight line:
- More expensive per unit but stronger individually
- Requires fewer units for strong early Castle Age pushes, thanks to higher mobility and damage output
- Naturally counters swordsman line without heavy upgrades, especially in open maps where mobility is key
- Upgrading to Cavalier in the Castle Age could create a power spike similar to the swordsman line’s Champion upgrade, giving players an incentive to prioritize the knight line over advancing to the Imperial Age
- Still weak to pikemen and monks, forcing players to diversify their army composition for better support
Honestly I would just give them some HP than anything else. Like:
- 90 HP Long Sword vs 100 HP Knight
- 110 HP Two Handed Swordsman vs 120 HP Cavalier
- 130 HP Champion vs 140 HP Paladins
Remember most civs already have bloodlines. In AOM your infantry starts nearly 100 HP right at the 2nd Age. Meanwhile its laughable at AOE2.
While we are at it, remove Supplies even. Because if it already works what you pay for then you dont need to make it cheap further. It can be imbalanced at that situation. Technically you are making Knights to pay for mobility, HP and armor with 75 gold while Swordsman lacks that with mere 20 gold. So a fair trade all around.
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It’s +0/+1 armor.
I’d suggest make Gambeson free instead of LS.
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If it were an automatic effect instead of a tech this would throw off balance for strong infantry civs specifically denied the tech
I started a collection of Concepts for the line some time ago
here
This is equivalent to the conceptional approach of “reducing upgrade cost”. Which I think definitely can do a lot for the line.
BTW Bulgarians get this already, even free MAA. Still Bulgarians almost never make LS in the midgame what shows in what bad spot the line is there in comparison to the other available power units.
I think just in general this kind of tech would make way more sense than the current “Supplies” which needs to be researched preemptively - making it very awkward to transition into the line and can’t be utilized for an initial small MAA rush.
Devs only gave absurd bonusses to Infantry civs because the line otherwise wouldn’t see much use from them. Considering that even Goth usually play any other power unit over the LS in the midgame is a very strong incivator of in what bad shape the line is at that stage
And ofc a necessary consequence of adjusting the line would be to adjust the civs with these kind of massive bonusses to it.
I find it a bit hypocritical to use the absurd bonusses some civs got to make the line viable for them as an argument to not generally buff the line, so most civs can use it.
I don’t like positional statements that try to use the necessarily broken bonusses given to “infantry civs” just to make the line usable for them to argue against in general buffing the line. IMO the line should be viable for most civs, not only for a few selected ones. Also referring to the practical reality that currently the best “counter” against good infantry often is your own militia line (best example is vs goths). This in it’s current state leads to often very “oppressive” Infantry plays only very few civs can pull off given the right Situation. Empowered by their absurd bonusses to the Infantry play they get.
Yeah, I have that in my mind. It was 1.15 am here and I was going to bed.
I strongly believe “Supplies” is a failed tech. So remove Supplies and make Gambeson free. The 350 resource saving within Castle Age is worthy for the 15 food penalty imo. You need to create 23 units to be break even. Even if we consider food price is 25% higher than gold, that is still worth of 21 units to be break even.
Then we need to revisit civs and check who should get THS/Champion. For example, Malay may need to lose THS, and Malians may need to lose Champion. Also THS and Champion needs revisiting. If my proposal of removing supplies and free gambeson is considered, I’ll also advocate to change THS and Champion. THS +10 HP but -1 attack, Champion +10 HP.
We strongly need to ask for a trash counter unit for infantry before continue with this loop of proposing buff for militia line…
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At least if we want to bring an Infantry line to the state it can compete with the other “Power Units”.
I see mainly three options for that:
A) Make Scorpions “trash”, but less generally powerful
B) A new trash Infantry line (Axeman eg) that counters other Infantry
C) A new Archer Line speciaised to counter Infantry EG the Lightbowman
And some Infantry units could get a small resistance to that anti-Infantry bonus damage of the trash counter unit. Not necessarily the Militia Line (Gambesons could give a small amount), but more expensive stuff like TK and Huskarls.
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perhaps Skirms doing the bonus damage more? Champion currently going down on 70 hits. Maybe tune down to 35 hits with some extra bonus damage? Light Cav is already there. Champions overall damage output is still the same except extra bonus HP
I second that.
I used to second that. Now I’m not sure.
Even before Gambeson, Champion was considered a trash counter.
In other thread, some already made the calculation. Hussar is not cost effective against Champion.
Malians would be fine if they lost the +1 in castle age. A +2 missile armor pike however is probably not befitting to define as infantry civ… it could even incentivize the return of Halb if being only +2 isnt too much
Gold is rarer than other resources. In real game situation, Hussar loses by small margin but at what cost? Champ is a gold unit while Hussar isn’t. If you balance out properly then its still a hussar win. Sure champ won by small margin but what do you do against when next batch of Hussar comes in?
On second thought. Swordsman should stay as generic power unit for everyone. If possible maybe increase Hand Cannoneer bonus damage a bit to adjust the balance. Swordsman line after all is the first military unit that you can create. A power unit status isn’t a bad idea. On top of that it already has many disadvantages already vs other units. In AOM Swordsman like Murmillo of Atlanteans already acts as a soft counter for cavalry and you even have specialized Spearman from Counter Barracks. Even other civs made it done right like Norse with Berserker/Hersir.
The game just strongly unfavors slow non-ranged units. Militia is non-ranged and slow by default. Even if they receive a stat buff like Teutonic Knight, they will be still underwhelming with no trash counter compared to knight and xbow.
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Maybe. But no civ have extra PA on Halb yet. Not even Lithuanians.
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Yeah. Hussar will always win the long run due to both cheaper cost and way faster speed. And I honestly don’t mind that. I think militia line having a trash counter in all ages will be a good thing to buff and balance militia line.
They are power unit to no one in Castle Age. But a power in unit for a handful of civs in Imperial Age. That is the hardest reason not to buff them imo.
Yep. Another good example is BE. And game designers motto to fix this problem is “Attack bonus vs Buildings”.
I think they are trying to give them some kinds of utility to fix it. But the utility should be combat-related imo. For example, Obuch armor reduction, Berserk chieftain and regen, huskarl killing archers.
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They still die hard to Xbows and Knights but more survival chances are higher. Teutonic Knights already proved that even with high HP and armor it’ll still trade bad at the end of the day. You could make an argument that they are trained from Castle and therefore harder to mass but still need proper test. Right now slowest unit is Serjeant not Teutonic Knights anymore. Now imagine how much worse they were back in the day.
Once again you are just making weaker Knights with more investment on techs but less involvement in gold for massing tons of them on field.
That’s what I was talking about. They (Militia line) is power unit for no one in Castle Age.
Not correct. TK is still slowest infantry with 0.80 speed. Serjeant have same speed as militia line 0.90. Serjeant is actually seen a lot in Castle Age thanks to Donjon and free upgrade. LS takes 425 food and 280 gold. And that’s one of the biggest problems to actually consider LS as power unit in Castle Age.
nvm. I was wrong. I am pretty sure Teutonic Knights got speed buff a year or two ago and Serjeant felt slow to play.
Creating a unit that synergize with swordsman can be another way to improve swordsman.
This idea comes from swordsman receiving -20 splash dmg from mangonel. Staff slingers throw heavy projectiles, not only heavy stone but also clay pot filled with incendiary, heated sands or hot water/oil etc. So I think staff slingers can be a light and faster unit (0.96 speed) to do splash dmg (7 pierce with blast radius of 1), which will be doing good vs xbow and cavalry archers. And it should shoot a bit slower than xbow (2.5 rof)
To prevent it from being exploited, maybe it deals friendly fire and only swordsman-line take no friendly dmg from it. Staff slingers have 1 min range so that it requires melee units for protection.
Besides, it should be unaffected by fletching-line as it will be too much to invest when teching into long swordsman. It is somewhat like camels against knight civs. (i.e. better alternative of skirm for swordsmen to fight xbow and cavalry archers) Staff slingers can replace siege towers in siege workshop for infantry civs. (Being restrictive at first)