1 pierce isn’t anything, and I think this change will allow for the devs to custom build how protected a civ’s infantry is from ranged or melee remove gambeson, and make a second infantry armor in the blacksmith, for pierce protection, and remove the pierce prot from melee armor
Old armor | new armor
scale mail 1/1 scale mail 2/0 cloth armor 0/2
chain mail 1/1 chain mail 2/0 padded armor 0/2
plate mail 1/1 plate mail 2/0 gambeson armor 0/2
2 Likes
1 p.armor is quite a lot and it makes infantry a viable option for some civs like the new Malay, Slavs. Anyways yours is an Interesting suggestion too. I still feel scale mail and cloth armor should be 1/0 and 0/1. But conceptually splitting the armor into cheaper upgrades is a great change.
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If we want armour tech to be historically accurate, the rabbit hole is quite deep… cavalry should have infantry armour and gambesons, only heavy cav should have cav armour as light cavalry didn’t armour their horses (barding), chainmail and plate absolutely protects against arrows (to the point that with full plate armour you no longer need a shield, freeing your second hand for a weapon with a lot more striking power) and no one would wear metal armour without proper padding under it as it would be unbearable (and padding is relatively cheap anyway), on top of being designed for a specific type of metal armour, having strips to attach armour pieces.
3 Likes
you are suggesting that infantry would get 3/2 more armour than they currently get. That is better than the Teutons bonus and almost as good as the Mali bonus. Infantry would have no counterplay, forget about how champions would be effected and think about how Eagles and Halberdiers would be effected.
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i was thinking, now that gamberson is a think, some civs could lose plate armor and receive gamberson isntead. thats a -1 meele -1 pierce armor nerf.
and some civ that lack plate male, could get gamberson (goths?)
i like how it allows to fine tune civs more and differentiate them.
now if only a generic imperial tech for hand cannons could be ontroduced!
2 Likes
The reason why the Goths don’t have gambeson, is because gambeson is unlocked after supplies. Which the Goths don’t have, as they already have an infantry discount stronger than supplies (free, also reduces gold and also affects the spear line and the huscarl)
Plus, with the ability of producing huscarls in barracks they really don’t need their infantry to resist archers better…
5 Likes
that’s if the empire had full both trees, most empires don’t get that
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The way to buff infantry is to nerf crossbowmen.
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that isn’t going to stop the nations that do get both from being overpowered, also +6, +4 and +4, +6 will be crazy anyway
So basically on castle age, LS have as much PA as malians LS. Yeah no, some people start to forget that xbow are supposed to be effective against them.
4 Likes
The problem is that infantry is not viable as a “standalone” or "core"troop, like cavalry and archery does.
Gambesons maybe solved it for the castle age, but there is a problem: one of the advantages of infantry should be the fact that you could train them while aging up.
But in feudal infantry, with some rare exceptions (Malians and Celts, maybe now Malay), is melted my archers with #########. FU scout would beat them, but can be countered by spears so it’s ok.
The point is: if you want to make infantry viable in feudal age, but not OP in the late game, you should not add armor bonus, only redistribute trough the ages.
Switching the effect of Scale Mail Armor (+1/+1) with Plate Mail Armor (+1/+2) could be a solution, changing some UU stats to compensate (I think e.g. huskarl PA could go -1)
If this leads to an OP situation in Castle age, you could then move Gamsons to Imperial.
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I think first important would be: What is infantry role and is it doing that at the moment?
After that when we have answer we can start changing buffing it if its needed.
Archers are suppose to counter infantry.
Cavalry is suppose to counter archers and in 1vs1 they are better than infantry because they are more expensive units.
Infantry counters mostly trash, which counters gold units. Infantry has bonus vs buildings also infantry gives bonus for some siege units if being garrisoned. Maybe we could increase siege weapon garrison possibilities, by making magonels and scorpions also garrisonable by infantry to make them more effective like you can make rams deal more damage and give more speed.
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They’ve already had several nerfs. Crossbow and Arbalest upgrade cost, the attack move animation etc. Nerfing crossbow even more is just going to make the meta move back to knights.
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Technically, nerfing xbows will increase LS viability. But xbows are not the only reason.
Further nerfing xbows will also make cav archers more viables, as people dont play cavarcher due to easier accessibility of xbows, between feudal age training time and thumb ring. And cavarchers counter LS better than xbows.
Further nerfing xbows wont change the fact that knight are better than LS at everything except fighting pikes or eagles. And pikes are easy to counter.
I feel it would be easier to buff the milicia line in imperial age where you have good farming eco, and the xbow player cannot micro efficiently anymore. That is, for 1v1.
In team game, you cannot make the LS viable without nerfing multiple units or directly buffing/redesigning LS.
2 Likes
It is a great change, but I still fell that infantry needs more hp in castle and imperial… 5 to 10 hp.
2 Likes
This is a smart change
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Not really, because Cav Archer players still need crossbow as a transition unit until they have all their Cav Archer upgrades. CA is expensive to tech into because they need so many more extra upgrades to be effective. Not only do you need Bodkin, University + Ballistics, you also need a stable, Bloodlines and Husbandry. Thumb ring is also more important to get for CA much earlier than you would get it for crossbow play, because it gives +5.9% reload time, modifying the firing rate boost to +11.1% or -10% reload time, which goes towards addressing the main weakness of CA which is their animation delay. So that’s 2x extra buildings + 5x upgrades, meanwhile the knights player needs 0x extra buildings, so all his wood can go on new TCs, he already had 2 or 3 stables on his way up to feudal, then only needs to get Husbandry and +2 armour, since he will have already got Bloodlines in Feudal on the way up to Castle.
So if you go straight CA in castle without crossbow transition, you just die hard to knights who only need +2 and they’re already super strong. Also the only reason crossbow is a viable counter to knights is because you still have archers left over from feudal and continued to pump them out on the way up to castle. Obviously CA and knights are not available in feudal age, so you already have a numbers advantage with crossbow vs. knights when you hit the castle timing. Also some civs either don’t have access to CA or don’t have viable CA due to lack of upgrades like Thumb Ring and Husbandry (or in the long term they lack Heavy CA or Parthian Tactics for late game). If you wanted to make CA more viable, you would buff them. Nerfing their transition unit crossbow will actually make CA less viable, because they need crossbow to fill the gap while they get CA upgrades.
A nice CA buff would be the ability to make them immediately after clicking up to Castle during those few minutes while you age up. They’ll stick lack the Castle age upgrades but at least you’ll have a bit of time to build up numbers. Maybe too OP though. Could be a nice civ bonus for a new civ possibly though.
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