I’m an old aok player.In old time players go archer rush then make knights without bloodline. At imp many players choose champions to fight. In order to nerf Frank +20%hp, there comes bloodline in AOC.
Although DE buff champions, we still can’t usually see them match. Knights+range units everywhere.
I think move bloodline to castle age maybe a good way?
2 Likes
Bloodlines is inarguably very strong. Champions are not great - they’ve been buffed again and again, in pretty much every expansion in some way (most recently via Supplies and free Tracking), without becoming strong.
Your suggestion however does nothing to make Champion more viable, it just makes it very slightly slower to get stronger knights.
2 Likes
i think its a good idea though! certainly reduces the power of late feudal scrushing, and definitely knee caps knight rushes…
a lot of people pretty much agree the knight is THE meta unit in the most cases(since pathfinding was fixed), which i dont think is healthy for a game to have 1 unit so great in so many situations, but at the same time its very hard to touch it since the game is almost balanced specifically around the viability of knights and xbows…
but its an age old argument… militia should be seen more, the generic response boils down to “i dont need to see them more so dont buff them”
3 Likes
well you got multiple things here. first of all the militia line ISN’T supposed to fight with knights and archers on equal terms. its literally created faster, cheaper, and doesn’t have a trash counter the way knights and archers do.
secondly, most games don’t see bloodlines until on the way up to castle age anyway so its not going to be much of a nerf.
because we need to further nerf offense over walling.
5 Likes
I’m fine with this. Militia has the purpose to drain your opponen out of gold, especially useful against extremely good defensive players (in a positive way, not silly). But I don’t understand why there is no heavy infantry supposed to fill that “tic-tac-toe” gap of the power units: Soft-Countering Cav and soft-countered by archers and Militia line.
1 Like
because this game isn’t based on a 3 way counter because it screws you in some matchups.
choose an infantry civ and go up against an archer civ? screwed.
choose a cav civ and go up against an infantry civ? screwed.
the game is balanced around the knight and the archer (with both countering each other based on play) and a unit that counters each (archers by skirms and knights by pikes) as a trash unit.
to add an infantry unit into that equation would mean you would need to
find a way for the infantry to fit into the equation to begin with (Do infantry counter archers or knights, and are they countered by archers or knights), and then further complicate that by adding a trash unit to counter infantry.
the idea you proposed in your other thread wouldn’t work at all.
how do you balance an infantry unit by making it counter knights, but still lose cost effectively to the militia line? to make it compete with knights but lose to the militia line you’d basically have to give it bonus damage vs cavalry units and a lower base attack. and at that point, why not just go for pikes?
furthermore how do you balance infantry civs who have bad archer counters?
2 Likes
I already made an example how to do this, with just a slight attack bonus against cavalry. It’s not that hard.
If the heavy inf comes in in late castle age (with an university tech p.e.) there wouldn’t be any further tweaking to do because the archer and knight powerspike would still be there.
With the many options to counter infantry in lategam (castles/siege/HC/Archers/CA) it wouldn’t be problematic at all. And if the much less gold intesive militia line softcounters it, there is no need for a pure trash counter.
2 Likes
but why make them over pikes? makes zero sense to do so when pikes and halbs clearly do better. furthermore now knights have to worry about your “power infantry” and archers and archers only have to worry about knights. TOTALLY FAIR AND BALANCED!
and yet you’d still have a late game unit that beats cavalry, so what would cavalry civs use against it?
except all those options are EXPENSIVE, timing consuming, and require EVEN MORE GOLD. furthermore you can easily mix in your own siege and castles go away, so the only real answer you’re giving thats realistic is archers and cav archers.
except that option requires a ton of time to tech into. good luck doing that on the fly. and what about the fact that you have some civs who have bonuses to their infantry that would make your power infantry even better. furthermore this also causes issues because some of those cav civs have inferior infantry to infantry civs. so even if they do swap into champs (assuming they have them), who says they are going to be cost effective?
imagine Japanese with this power infantry, all of a sudden standard Militia line doesn’t sound so good.
2 Likes
moving it to castle age doesn’t fix much
but both bloodline and xbows should be nerfed
2 Likes
Because they literally are knights without a horse.
1 Like
Maybe another way to deal it: create a imp tech make militia line untis take 1/2 pop? Learned it from ROR(aoe1)
1 Like
Bloodline is too huge powerspike. It gives almost +50% HP for scout (45HP → 65HP) and also +20% HP for Knight with just 150f 100g.
Civ without BL have huge disadvantage in the game and need good bonus to function. Notable example is Celts and Vikings that they have one of the strongest eco in the game. Otherwise, civ like Japanese don’t have that strong eco and FE give Japanese BL, but civ without BL like Koreans, Malays or Byzantines are still weaker side because lacking BL means their all cavarly option is too weak.
I think split BL to +10HP in Feudal and +10HP in Castle age is wise way to minimize the gap between civ with BL and civ without BL. Civ with BL then have to invest cost and research time to get +20HP both in Feudal and Castle age, and we can give “half bloodline” to the civ like Koreans and Byzantines to buff their cavarly options.
This might be also nerf to CA is a little concern, but they got slight buff from last patch and give some other buff to compensate is also option.
3 Likes
It’s because internet connections were too bad to allow late-game army management, so throwing champs was better than risking losing your archers/cavaliers to trash. But if your civ had paladins they were a better option than champion spam.
1 Like
You’re right. If you make some big general changes to militia line, you have to completely change the balance of the game and work from the scratch. The only civ out of 37 that has been designed for infantry only (they have bloodlines though) is goths and they are probably most badly designed civ in the game (one can argue that it is Indians).
I don’t think it is necessary to make an infantry unit like that. Instead make an infantry designed to kill archer but still dies to militia line which is Huskarl. There are a lot of problems with Huskarls though 80% of them caused by goths civ design and not from the unit imo.
As for the topic, I think it will be a terrible idea. You do need to go for scout heavy in feudal in some situation.
2 Likes
I like this idea.
Or leave blood lines as is, but reduce knight by 10hp. And force a castle age tech for the remaining 10hp.
Or simply reduce knight by 5 hp with no compensation.
3 Likes
Well, BL isn’t usually researched for scouts rushes, you research it at the end of it (when maybe you transition into archers), when you don’t need to produce any more scouts, but you still have a good number of them. Or while advancing into castle, in order to prepare it for knights. Though, for this last reason, moving the tech into castle age it would be a big change in the meta.
4 Likes
In today’s meta, Crossbowmen and Knights dominate in Castle Age. However, in Imperial Age, Arbalesters, Paladins and even Champions and all of their Unique unit variations are viable. So for doing the game better, you need to nerf only the Castle Age versions, not the Imperial Age versions.
Crossbowmen: Archers are created in 34 seconds, while Crossbowmen are created in 27 seconds. It is easy to mass Crossbowmen while booming because they do not cost food. 2 range production, Briton 2 range production and even generic 3 range production are viable.
Nerf suggested: Crossbowmen are created in 34 seconds.
Explanation: The upgrades are graded. The Crossbowmen upgrade provides much more than the Arbalester upgrade at present. Transferring either range boost or creation speed boost is good for balance. But if I transfer range, they will be easily countered because they will still have 5 range.
Knights: Nerfing Bloodlines is actually tricky. Going fc into Cavalry UU could be boosted. Camels and Scouts could be nerfed (big Indians nerf). Usually for Cavalry Archer rush, Thumb Ring and Husbandry are priority after Blacksmith techs and Bloodlines comes in late so this can be ignored.
Nerf suggested: Bloodlines moved to Castle Age. Bloodlines provides +10 HP in Castle Age and another +10 in Imperial Age. So this is unaffected in Imperial Age.
Explanation: Transferring the full effect of bloodlines to Imperial Age can be dangerous though, especially for Knight civs without bonuses like Persians, Huns and Lithuanians. This can also be seen as a huge buff to Franks since they will basically have full effect on Knights in Castle Age.
Additional effects:
-
Kamandaran nerfed because Crossbowmen take longer to build. Persians are probably the only civ which makes Crossbowmen despite lacking both Arbalesters and Bracer.
-
Castle Age Cataphracts more viable now. They were always great in Imperial Age.
-
Knights can be seen from some other civs with great eco bonuses too like Vikings, Britons and Celts.
-
Huns will be more focusing on Cavalry Archers than Crossbowmen or Knights, which I think is good.
-
Korean Cavalry Archers more viable with the discount since lack of Bloodlines won’t be prominent in late Castle Age.
However, some Castle Age infantry UUs still need buffs like (no changes needed to Elite versions):
-
Woad Raiders: it will be good if they get +1 attack making them statistically superior to LS in most situations. The cost of the Castle will pay off.
-
Berserker: +1 melee armor. Basically they serve as slight anti-infantry and anti-cavalry so this just enhances their role.
-
Jaguar Warriors: +5 or +10 HP. At present, this unit has the least HP of all Castle Age infantry units. It is shameful they even have less HP than Pikemen (55) and Viking Spearmen (52).
1 Like
Speaking about the role of Long Swordsmen, they counter the counters of Knights and Crossbowmen, which are camels, elite Skirmishers, Pikemen, eagles. They also counter buildings great. So you can take out the production buildings.
1 Like
I think my idea buffs the Elite Skirmishers in their role as well.
Pike vs Knights is boring because of the vast cost difference and speed difference. So other counter units like camels and monks are used.
But Elite Skirmishers vs Crossbowmen is interesting. In Castle Age, wood, food and gold are approximately the same. The 2 units cost approximately same and move at the same rate. But in order to counter Crossbowmen, the Skirmishers also need a lot of upgrades.
Range upgrades to reach them. Elite Skirmishers upgrades is twice the cost of Crossbowmen. Archer armor to survive and their frame delay makes them difficult to micro. So this makes Elite Skirmishers slightly better at their job.
1 Like
Does anybody understand why blooblines increases cav archers HP by 40 % but knight HP only by 20 %?
1 Like