Anyone else agree unique units should not be commonly made units? Barracks, archery ranges, and stables is where most of your units should come from. Unique units from castles should only count as a bonus. Castles are fine being expensive, and therefore there are less unique units.
EDIT: I seen guys wanting castles to be very cheap, so UUs can be spammed more. I think 650 stone is okay for castle. I don’t want them more costly.
Plus making unique units far more common kind of takes away from the fact they are meant to be unique units in the first place.
You are meant to end the game early with a rush in 1v1. Not play a city builder game for an hour and make lots of nice castles everywhere, so you can mass unique units.
If you want lots of unique units just play a non ranked, 4v4 team game of black forest/michi/or some scenario with very rich resources, and you are trading. There unique units are far more common. You can spam War Elephants, Teutonic Knights and other cool units with ease in those games.
I also prefer the approach of UU as a situational tool or a complementary unit for your army. Or even its core in certain situations only.
Civs like mongols or burmese that rely so much in their uu that it’s the way to go in every game no matter what your oponnent is doing is so boring to play against.
Well, when I play 1v1 I usually play on open maps and quite aggressive. Therefore I don’t see much or even any unique units in those games…
In teamgames I love using UU as they usually fill a specific role that can be combined with a UU of a teammate to make a very strong combo that can’t be easily countered…
“Unique” means exclusive to the civ you are playing. It does not equal “rare”.
First, you can play whatever style you want to win. Second, fast castle into UU is a pretty common build order. UU is not something you only see after 1 hour.
If they more common. It makes them far less unique.
By your logic. How come I can’t War Elephant spam in a 1v1 game? Castles should be cheaprer. War Elephants should be much cheaper (not stat changes) so I can make so much more of my unique unit.
Skynet/pro player will just scout rush you on a very open map if you try fast castle. GG.
By my logic? You literally can’t spam WE because of their extremely expensive cost to make and upgrade. But you do get to see conqs, arambai, plumed archers, war wagons etc. in competitive play.
I’m telling you that it’s the unit’s stats that decide whether it’s viable. While you misinterpret me by saying “castles should be cheaper”… UU is already far less common because castles are expensive. And it’s fine.
FC into UU is definitely more common in closed maps. Now you are talking exclusively about open maps? You still can do drush FC. Or scouts/archers into UU. Naked FC is not the only way to make UU.
You didn’t even clearly express what you mean exactly. Do you mean the number of UU you can make in a game should be limited?
I seen guys wanting castles (and castles weaker) to be much cheaper in other threads so UUs can be made far more often. So basically, my thread is a semi-rant against those guys.
You didn’t even clearly express what you mean exactly. Do you mean the number of UU you can make in a game should be limited?
The lack of castles is limiting factor on many UUs can get on the field. Castles cost stone. Barracks, stables, archery ranges don’t. That alone limits their numbers.
To make this rant-thread somewhat more productive: I think UUs are one of the few designflaws AOE2 has.
As was pointed out correctly, UUs are kinda limited by the expensive castles they are produced from. On first glance, this is not a problem - you just build a few UUs to complement your army. However, this is often not an option for several reasons: (Ranged) units are bad in low numbers and most units need lots of investment into upgrades to make them viable - so making low numbers of units is not an option. As a result, we see UUs either in the lategame (when you have enough castles anyway and conscription researched) or for the few units that are not dependent on upgrades and numbers, most notably conqs.
I think AoM handles their “UUs” (mythic units) a bit better, as those units are created with a unique, limited ressource and require hardly any upgrades to be effective, so you an justify mixing in a few into your army (not saying myth units work in AoM, there are a bunch of problems still). But AoE2 has a very different approach and imho one that does not allow for UUs to fill this role of complementing any army. Without a complete overhaul of the game, UUs will have to stay in the place they are now - a late imp option.
I think they are fine. Castles being rare is a nice, and therefore UUs are rare. If someone wants more UUs play non ranked chill game of michi/black forest/ or some scenario. Gold limits their use as well.
No, I like the fact that some civs get to use their UUs as “common” units via UT (Atheism for Goths, Marauders for Huns), made more acessible by being cheap or even because it is a strong/viable unit made in the Castle itself (and the cost to mass them pays off). Also, I really like the fact that some civs are built to break some standard rules for their advantage, like Burgundians Cavalier in Castle age and eco upgrades one age before, faster imp for Malay, and others getting their UUs in the Barracks/AR/ST or as viable/cheap options in the Castle.
Imo it makes the game more diverse in strategy, matchups and options (and in tournaments we get to see something other than xbow/knights compositions once in a while).
In order for that to be the case. You will need to make castles 50% cheaper. So you could have far more castles to make your UUs. But that could lead to hard turtling by spamming castles, and making the game far slower and grindy when you are meant to end the game even before a castle is even made if possible.
The current state of most civs in relation to UUs is good. I disagree with the idea that every (or most) civs needs to use their UUs in the majority of their games.
Also, we can’t really speak in blanket terms regarding UUs since each civs UU serves a different purpose. Frank’s UU is a support to their Paladins. Mongols and Burmese UU should be their main unit. Magyar/Malay/Aztec UUs are highly situational. And that’s ok, it gives variety to games and how you should play different civs.
For some civs with strong but expensive units, yeah, kinda. But you can already do something with conqs in Castle Age, Mangudai in early imp and even huskarls in castle age (as shown by Mr Yo on Two Pools tournament, in which he basically 1v1’d his opponent with a castle drop, Atheism UT and huskarl spam in the barracks).
So we already have civs who’s UUs break the meta. That’s good, but we don’t want every civ to be able to break the meta with their UUs, because then the meta would just be UUs which is a far more boring game.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re arguing for?
I’m just disagreeing with the OP in which he states that UUs should not be made common, and I think they should for some cases to promote diversity (not in every case of course and considering their purposes as well, as you put it).
And if you check my initial comment again, I stated that i like the fact that SOME civs are like that. Wanting every game to be a UU battle would just swing the situation to the polar opposite and accomplishes nothing in strategy diversity.
You are asking to change a core element of the game that hasn’t been changed in 20 years. It like asking for villagers to not be made in town centers arguing they should be free as current villagers make offspring of something like that. That would never happen. Also they are called unique units not rare units. They are unique to a civ. It doesn’t mean they have to be rare.
You are misunderstanding me. I seen guys wanting castles to be very cheap, so UUs can be spammed more. In order for there to be far more UUs you would need to make castles far cheaper anyway. 650 stone is costly, and not spammable.
I agree with more availability of UU’s, but totally disagree with cheaper castles. I think the problem (because from my point of view is a problem) was linking UU to castles in the first place…
In order for there to be more UUs you will need cheaper castles. Which I don’t want. A castle would have to be 50% cheaper for there to more easy to mass.
sorry for my misunderstanding.