I already said buff them vs. Hussar. Making the upgrades faster and cheaper is still a decent buff, it would help you hit the age up timings. How is that not wanting to see infantry? They’re already good at breaking through palisades and destroying production buildings. And TCs if you have Arson with +2 armour. And they hard counter eagles.
3 Likes
Infantry usually get hard countered by archer in early and mid game, they can’t start a fight, and can’t run from any other units, but they can be defended by quick wall.
Infantry cost too much food, food is the most important resources till late imp. With the same food cost, infantry is weaker than any other units till imp.
Cost 35 food instead of 45.
2 Likes
Which is funny because in Imperial age there’s even more counters to infantry. Arbalests & CA counter them even harder due to being able to kill them from greater range with upgrades. Hand Cannons enter the scene as well. Paladins creates a huge power gap that isn’t covered by the Champions upgrade. Onager and SO increasing the potential to kill large amounts with splash damage. It almost feels like militia line exists to give your opponent a dopamine hit by having a mass of easy to counter units to slaughter.
2 Likes
Arbalest can’t counter champion
lol.
twenty characters.
8 Likes
Not happy at all.
Militia line needs their own “thing” if you ask me.
Archers attack wood linea and behind walls and can be microed.
Knight are strong and fast to raid and choose fights.
Militia have nothing, yeah “kill trash” but pikemen already kill scouts, scouts skirmis and skirms pikemen.
So you can counter trash with trash and spend gold on other stuff.
What its that “thing” militia needs? Dont know tbh.
But i would start be making militia as fast as archers.
May be resist onager shoots that are strong and bonus vs siege to add some counter to onagers?
Build walls/outpost?
Now can repair?
Or whatever that give militia a place tbh.
2 Likes
I saw people keep mentioning militia line needs to do their own unique thing and I do agree.
I have been suggesting this feature for militia line for a long time. Let them build Ram/ Capped ram/ Siege ram (maybe siege tower also) right on the field without siege workshop (this is a feature in aoe 4). And the Ram built by militia is 25% slower to build than siege workshops to balance. I would also buff the dmg bonus it gets from garrison infantry and movement speed a little bit more.
3 Likes
Would solve the issue of rams not seeing play too.
Though I wonder would this apply to champions and uus?
If champions only then the UUs will see way less play. If UUs too, some will be broken but I guess stats can be rebalanced accordingly.
1 Like
I agree they need a “thing”. I would love to see some kind of slow effect on enemies they hit or get close to. Maybe a 10% slow effect? Would make them great for protecting siege from cavalry mixed in with pikes, and would let them win against archers if the archer player has poor micro. If the archer player micros well, uses terrain advantage, and villagers to construct good walls or stays near castles etc. they can still easily kill champs. As it stands, it’s kind of silly how great archers are with no support anyway.
Anyway this slow effect suggestion might be horrible. You can disagree with it that’s okay. I am just glad most of us can agree militia need something. We’re spit balling ideas, some might be bad or good.
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Buffing them against hussars is the bare minimum. We aren’t going to see them a lot even after that.
And don’t even give me that “destroy production buildings” bs. By imperial age, cavalry can do that just fine, and you always have BBCs and trebs which will make quick work of them.
If you want to generally see them, the idea to buff them enough to be generally usable. That means either buff their stats and increase their cost, or add a tech like logistica from aoe1 which reduces their pop cost and reduce their cost.
1 Like
My two cents:
- Militia needs to have better survivability. This can be achieved by significantly increasing their HP, MA, or PA. If necessary, their melee attack can be reduced slightly.
- Furthermore, Supplies, Arson (may not be needed), and Gambeson (remove, give longsword the extra pierce by default) tech may need to be reworked/removed accordingly to reduce the number of techs to make Militias viable. If militia needs a price reduction from 60F 20G (which should be the cost in all ages), it must be consistent in all ages, not reduced by Supplies. (Castle UT may be fine, but needs to be reviewed.)
- Civ bonus and UT (and the stats of UU) should be adjusted accordingly only once we can see some viable militia play in Castle and Imperial.
The “thing” of melee infantry is that they should be the damage tank. This fulfills the historical idea of heavy infantry being the toughest section of the main battle line (think Varangian, Galloglass, Crusader Foot Sergeants, etc.). This means that swordsman can actually push under through castle/TC/tower/archer fire. (Arguably, they should tank arrow damage better than knights, but that may actually break the balance of the game.) Only then can their bonus vs buildings actually be applicable.
Furthermore, they need to win slowly but convincingly (but not as good as pikeman) against knights in a grinding melee engagement. This is because losing knights can flee, but losing swordsman just dies.
To differentiate between pikeman and swordsman, pikeman are cheap can can kill cav very fast, making them good for guarding siege. Swordsman can only win after a far longer engagement, so they are not as good as a guard, but their better survivability allows them to operate more independently (raid, screen, destroy a building).
To address micro concerns, swordsman are still slower than knight and have no range. Thus, archer can play defensively and pick-off swordsman eventually, while knights are still better for raiding. To fight against a infantry civ, the key is to whittle their units down using archer and defensive buildings or raid aggressively with knights while denying grinding engagements. On the other hand, the infantry civ player should take smart fights by using their superior number to corner the enemy or to force engagement by aiming for their TC or other important buildings. This focuses more on macro than micro, but can be done in an entertaining manner.
Finally, to address trash counters. The scout line can be given a slight bonus to ensure that they can trade well against Champions, but not outright defeat them. Simply put, Hussars should almost break even against THS/Champions (longswords may not need a trash counter), but the engagement should be grinding. This allows for dynamic play, since if enemy swordsman disengages from your scouts, then your scouts can raid far better than swordsman can, but their swordsman may be close to destroying your buildings.
6 Likes
Isn’t people here discuss about Sicilians too weak against infantry spam while they still have Arbalester in other thread? And Infantry also need major significant buff?
I am not saying militia line is not need something. Give 2HS/Champion bonus damaga against scout. And buffing Ram/Onager/Scorpion also strengthen infantry play indirectly.
I’m happy with the militia line at the moment. While overall less efficient than archers or knights, it is viable in enough circumstances in all ages in the game: in early feudal, early castle, and late imp militia line works pretty well.
Granted, I don’t care about pro games since I prefer to play than to watch, and I’m at a level where people do make tons of mistakes (1300-1400).
So I wouldn’t mind them to gain another melee armor from castle onwards (to be a bit better vs knight/hussar), but that’s about it.
1 Like
The only other buff I would be ok with besides reducing upgrade cost and research time + anti hussar bonus would be to either 1) increase the speed boost of Squires from 10% to 15% or 2) Leave Squires at 10% but it’s free and unlocks automatically when you hit Castle Age. Obviously option 1 would be a nerf to Celts, so they would probably need some kind of compensation to account for the change.
Also remember infantry already hard counter eagles. So they are situationally useful for that purpose alone, given that eagles is a very common strategy frequently seen in ranked games. They are better than knights in that regard, because Longswords don’t have the same weakness to the typical pikemen/eagles composition in castle age. And due to their cheaper cost and higher numbers, losing a few to monk conversions is not as big a deal as losing knights in the same fashion.
‘What about crossbow’ you say? But there’s no way a meso player going full eagles/pike (+sometimes monk) comp can also afford all the upgrades, university and crossbow numbers to counter longswords, especially if the longsword player has a few mangonels.
So I accept there’s room for buffs, but I don’t want it getting too out of hand.
This is not an excuse. Just reduce the bonus damage, and you are fine. This isn’t hard to balance, because you are only affecting 2 units.
This is why I said you don’t want to see more infantry. Because this just isn’t enough. Not to mention that you can’t actually increase infantry speed because of the xbow balance issue.
My (noob) opinion is that the militia-line walk speed must be slightly faster. Either increase the base speed of the unit, starting with the LS upgrade, or increase the effect of squires. Until they receive that theyll remain unusable in castle age.
I wouldn’t give them bonus vs the light cav line. If long sowrds become more usable, we’ll see more of them, and then i believe it would make sense to atleast have some sort of “soft” trash counter for the militia line still.
Maybe other changes could be done too (e.g. making it easier to tech into), but imo walk speed is the next tweak the militia line should receive.
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You would actually make infantry less viable if you reduced their anti-eagles bonus. That’s one of their main uses.
Celts already have the infantry speed I was proposing and they’re not unbalanced vs. crossbow. And eagles are also still faster than the proposed +15% speed Longswords.
I believe he was saying that you can buff militia line and then adjust their effectiveness vs eagles so that it remains the same after the buffs they receive. I.e. if you gave longswords +3 damage you nerf their damage vs eagles by 3. That’s just an example.
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These! Agree 100%. I’m okay with Gambeson though I won’t mind either way.
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Militia already do have a ‘thing’; they do by far the most damage to buildings of any unit.
Militia also should not trade evenly or better than evenly(on their own) with knights. If that were the case, a militia civ could just keep pushing forever and win.
I also don’t agree that champions need a particular buff against Hussars; they already counter them, it’s just not as ridiculously hard of a counter as against halberdiers or skirms, but that has as much to do with their respective costs as anything. If you are going champions against hussars, you would be well advised to include a healing option, which will instantly take them from a short-term counter to a long-term hard counter.
Here’s the tricky part.
Any buffs cannot do any of the following:
- Make Infantry trade evenly or better than evenly with heavy cavalry.
- Make infantry too powerful in the dark and early feudal age(no global discounts).
- Make infantry lose their identity(No global speed bonuses).
- Make Infantry win against an archer enemy who is microing while the infantry player is not.(no excessive pierce armor)
This is why they’ve been having such a hard time/been so careful buffing them. I’d guess there was significant internal testing and debate before they even added Gambesons, which fortunately has overall been a well-balanced change.