I know I won’t be welcomed for this one as my proposal will not be any different from turning Militia into Eagle. Also the community is mostly conservative and not open for big changes. Tbh, I also lean toward that group. There is hardly any new mechanics that I liked.
The list of bad stable civ is quite a lot. I’ll focus on mostly Bengalis, Dravidians and Malay here. You can add Burmese despite having a great stable because they are very weak to archer and still need a bonus/buff to solve that. Having an eagle like unit will help them a lot in that.
Note that, not all civ has to have all of them. For example Malay can have a different upgrade in Imperial Age replacing THS. But Dravidians will get a new one from Feudal Age replacing M@, LS, THS and Champion. Also I’m not good in history to come up with a good name for the units and techs. Feel free to suggest me to come up with more appropriate name.
Feudal Age
Supplies is replaced by Military wage.
Cost - 60f/80g.
Research Time - 40 seconds.
Effect - Change militia line cost from 60f/20g to 35f/35g.
Man-at-arms is replaced by Gadaa Warrior.
Upgrade Cost - 80f/50g.
Upgrade Time - 35 seconds.
HP - 50
Attack - 5, +2 vs standard building, +2 vs Eagle
Rate of Fire - 2.0
Armor - 0/1
Speed - 1.0
LOS - 4
Castle Age
Long Swordsman is replaced with Talwaar Swordsman
Upgrade Cost - 120f/80g.
Upgrade Time - 45 seconds.
HP - 60
Attack - 7, +4 vs standard building, +4 vs Eagle
Rate of Fire - 2.0
Armor - 0/2
Speed - 1.1
LOS - 4
Imperial Age
Two-Handed Swordsman is replaced with Heavy Talwaar Swordsman
Upgrade Cost - 250f/150g.
Upgrade Time - 60 seconds.
HP - 70
Attack - 9, +5 vs standard building, +5 vs Eagle
Rate of Fire - 2.0
Armor - 0/3
Speed - 1.2
LOS - 4
Champion is replaced by Elite Talwaar Swordsman (Not available for Malay)
Upgrade Cost - 600f/350g.
Upgrade Time - 75 seconds.
HP - 80
Attack - 11, +6 vs standard building, +6 vs Eagle
Rate of Fire - 2.0
Armor - 1/3
Speed - 1.2
LOS - 4
Civilization Balance Changes
Bengalis
New civilization bonus - Gadaa Warrior line +20% HP starting from Castle Age. (Remember they don’t have Plate Mail armor for their infantry)
Dravidians
Barracks techs 50% cheaper → Pikeman and Halberdier upgrade cost no gold.
New civilization bonus - Gadaa Warrior line +10% speed starting from Feudal Age.
Malay Forced Levy changes Gadaa Warrior line cost from 35f/35g to 70f.
Edit: This does not need to be done for my proposed 3 civs. Especially when Bengalis and Dravidians already have 3 RU, another one is unlikely. This can be done in any future DLC for any new civ. For example new African civ or American civ can have this unit line instead of same old Eagle. Also this mechanic can be applied for other unit line like knight line. Some people want a different upgrade than Paladin. Can be a Mounted Crusader or Fire Lancer or Heavy Cavalier.
So I think it’s a fair change, without becoming too similar to eagles until this point,. But might need some tweaking.
I think there’s still a fair amount of granularity between the gadaa line and the eagle for a number of reasons, up until talwaar get the 4PA
But primarily it’s taking a lot more damage from archer line and eagles also have a huge variety of attack bonuses (especially against siege and cavalry) and higher speed
The ghulam in comparison has the PA and the speed, almost matching the eagle all the way.
And I presume gadaa will still have the same counters ghulam will(cav and infantry) except gadaa will still be soft countered by archer line until you get the 4PA, possibly when it might become OP Vs some archer civs (wootz talwaar specifically)
So maybe it needs to be capped at 3 PA? Arbs might still struggle doing 3 damage, but still better than 2 damage and essentially being ultra champskarls (15 true damage, faster speed)
Could be honestly 3 pa and maybe the 2hand replacement and the champion replace name should be different but i like the idea
Edit: all of this doesnt include the +3 from arson so its a general buff to their sustainability vs archer and tc fire but honestly got a bit consernces when it comes to one dimensiona feature like building dmg only maybe they could be a bit slower but more hp so they can be a bit of frontline fighters aswell?
After rethinking, I agreed. The 4 PA was for Dravidians only as Bengalis without last armor is same as having 2 PA, and Malay don’t even have the upgrade.
I gave Bengalis 20% HP to compensate and I think they will do okay with even 3 PA. (They will take 20 shots from Arbalester while Dravidians will take 27). Bengalis late game is not as bad as Dravidians either.
I changed it to 3 PA but traded with 1 MA. Hopefully that’s fine. Also increased the upgrade cost of last one by a big margin. 2nd Imperial Age upgrade is supposed to cost more than 2x than the 1st.
+2 from Arson. I kept total attack against building a bit lower until the last one where Elite Talwaar Swordsman has ame attack as Champion.
I can’t make them slower. The whole point of this change is to give those 3 civs a high speed unit. And I didn’t want to make their frontline fighting ability to the same level as Eagles until 2nd Imperial Age upgrade. Hence no bonus damage against cavalry.
In general I don’t like the idea of giving eagle-like units to tons of civs, especially when there are other solutions that I find both more elegant and more unique. This discussion has been had in other threads but briefly:
-Malay are fine even with a weak stable because of their elephants, usable CA scouts/Lcav, Age bonus → tech advantage, and the Karambit serving as a passable raiding unit.
-Bengalis just need to be able to get to the Ratha more easily.
-Dravidians are the best case you can make for needing an eagle-like unit, but if anything this could just be the Urumi. IMO helping their siege weakness with Husbandry + BBC would be a good start (as well as making eles better units overall) and might even be enough.
We’ve already had a proliferation of “Huskarl-like” infantry and/or units with 8+ pierce armor (including the Inca Eagle TBH), which used to be a rarity but is now quite common, and I don’t think Eagles need a similar treatment.
Keep in mind that when new American civs are eventually added, most of them will need some kind of raiding unit/cav substitute, which will either have to be an Eagle-adjacent unit, or a UU. So I would save units with this type of strength for them, since American civs have fewer tech options to work with to compensate for lacking stables. Beyond that, I think the ideas are okay-ish, I just don’t favor this type of solution for that reason, among others.
Furthermore, the devs actually doing this with any, much less all of the suggested civs would basically be to admit “Well, our effort to make Ele Archer/bad stable civs viable flopped, let’s just give them tweaked Eagles as a crutch to compensate for their otherwise terrible design.”
Just give them already existing Eagle. There are quite a few bonus left that can be given to their eagle - extra speed, cheaper cost, regeneration, 2nd Imperial Age upgrade.
Yeah that will never happen 11.
It is not that important what civ and what type of unit design I’m proposing here. The new design can be serjeant like, or Karambit like or whatever for Berbers or Chinese. The more important thing is “We should introduce more asymmetrical unit upgrades and technologies to bring variety as well as different approach to balance civilizations.”
Oh, I know there’s a lot that can be done even with eagles. I’ve made several American civ designs already, and will make several more. One of the issues though is that American civ design is already kind of a meme: Castle Age UT for Skirms and Imp that gives them Super Eagles™. So anything that strays from that beaten path is good IMO.
I fully agree. Apply this consideration to new American civs and you begin to see why I don’t necessarily think they should all just have eagles.
I won’t mind as long as my proposed 3 Naval civs with elephant gets the minimum 45% win rate in land maps. Like you, I don’t think this asymmetrical upgrade is the only solution either.
There are a surprising number of ways to do this without giving every civ it’s special snowflake status. Tech tree lacking a are great ways to create identity. For instance Malay are helped identified by their lack of Age 3 Horse armor and Burmese by the lack of Archer armor and Turks by missing Eskirm/pike.
So a little tech tree ingenuity can go far. A naval civ focused on Demo Ships? Sounds like a blast(not sorry)! You see where I’m going with this I hope. Having to learn 50 regional units is humongous new player gatekeeping!
I’m most definitely not asking for all. The overall game balance in pretty good state. New 4 DOI civs being a bit too imbalanced on both side. Some are two strong, others are too weak.
I agree. But we also have 42+ UU anyway. All 42 civs having same symmetric unit is also not very beautiful.
no it isnt. not even remotely close. if anything this is just conservative elitism.
total war is more successful than aoe2, how many hundreds of different units are there? nevermind paradox games (again, more successful)
how many unit types are there in starcraft? as opposed to the clones across aoe2? at least in aoe2 you can generally work out what a unit does from what it looks like, once you have the basics of the game. starcraft? “OMFG what does that floaty glowy thing do?” yet somehow its still much more popular than aoe2.
you get the point. dont project
no. no they arent. they do well on very specific maps only
which will still get deleted by mass trash
this makes even less sense than you contesting the militia line change. so you want YET ANOTHER arrow resistant UU? seriously man, you shoot someone down, and then come with an even worse idea? do you not realise the hypocrisy?
total war has sold 36 million copies to aoes 25 million copies. this despite having over twice as many games.
i wouldn’t call that more successful. as for Paradox, each CK and Europa game has sold around a million copies. again, not sure i would call that more succesful.
In sc there is only 3 factions. even if in age you decided to only do regional units, that’s still going to be 2-3 times as many sprites easily. no thanks from me. I’m fine with villagers and monks, you want regional militiary skins? DLC/Client Side Only please. That’s literally a win win for everyone. those who want skins can get them. those who don’t? they don’t have to worry about it.
has more to do with the fast pace then anything, according to most sc players i’ve spoken with, who largely say the reason they don’t like aoe is because it’s slow.
the average aoe2 game is around half an hour long real time. the average sc2 game is 12-15 minutes with combat starting somewhere between 2 minutes at the earliest to 5 minutes at the latest.
I haven’t addressed this yet, but to the OP’s idea, the unit being suggested here is not at all similar to the Hussar vs Winged Hussar. The winged Hussar is an upgrade that improves upon the Hussar’s strengths. The Gadaa/Talwaar is a completely different unit than the militia line. Different cost, vastly different speed/armor/attack and HP. Not that this makes the concept invalid, but I think the comparison with Hussar/Winged is misleading. It’s more of a replacement, similar to how Eagle replaces knight line for American civs.
Relax homie, I’ve made it clear plenty of times in other threads what my first choice for buffing Dravidians is (Hint: It’s neither turning their UU nor their Swordsman line into a near-Eagle.)
Also, you seem to think having
is a terrible idea for some reason, but having “YET ANOTHER arrow resistant Regional Unit” somehow makes more sense (and for some civs that already have multiple regional units) regardless of whether or not those civs’ weaknesses should be addressed in ways other than giving them Eagle knockoffs. What I said made sense. If you must opt for this kind of solution, as opposed to giving Dravidians BBC and/or better stables, Urumi is a good candidate for this role since it’s widely understood to be a poorly designed unit. I see the bias in what you said, but not the logic to match. Explain yourself.
It’s also hilarious that you’re going after me for making effectively the same argument you yourself made in the other huge thread on this topic, but now you’ve somehow decided it’s a terrible idea:
Me too, its especially a good thing for newer players.
or do it in a way that those who want them can do it, and those who don’t want them, don’t have to deal with them. not every area needs regional units. aoe2 has always been elegant in its simplicity.
Also Total War can get away with it more because maybe it has 30 civs with 30 archer skins but once you learn the counter to one archer player that counter regardless of skin works on all archers. Maybe the unit is Suebi Axeman but it has the exact same function as Saxon axeman. There’s no “oh this civ has a special upgrade that completely flips the counter unit table on its head.
It’s also clear to me that the game is actually complex enough. Man even at the highest level the “simplest” things like scouting have still the highest impact and are difference makers.
I don’t think we need to add any “artificial” complexity to the game. And should more care about how to preserve the different strategies that are actually viable. Cause there are strats that are in the verge of dieing… like playig completely “open”. (But also the opposite: Walling up completely and going directly for FC.)
I guess developers don’t care. 10 new units for 3.5 new civs was surprisingly high. If new Armored ele line wasn’t introduced, no one would complain. They even overloaded Gurjaras with 3 UU and 2 RU. I guess we need to get better PC with more disk space at this rate.
I edited my post and made it clear that my proposed civs don’t necessarily need this. Just not limit this asymmetric unit upgrade mechanic for only 2 civs (Lithuanians and Poles).
100%. I think a big part of its success is also for this.
I just don’t think having more asymmetric unit upgrades for a handful civs will ruin the simplicity.
Fair point. I changed the title to asymmetric upgrade. Hopefully you will agree that Hussar and Winged Hussar are (similar but) not symmetric.
True. I’m not asking for that either.
I think Scout Rush is more dead than playing open. Both are related btw.
