Bonus to Teutons: Deus Vult

Thanks. I agree 100% on what you said. Teutons are classified as a infantry civ, but the meta is playing paladins… Ratter odd, since they neither get Husbandry not Lcav. That’s why I think their TK need a buff aswell. In reinforce the idea of playing infantry. I don’t think they’ll become overpowered with an speed boost. Rather, they’ll become useful

Welp, looks like everyone want more speed. Maybe I’m being a bit paranoid on the subject, but how do we test it? I mean you can’t just put TK vs archers in the scenario editor and test different speeds and say “this one is good/bad/meh” because speed shows its full strenght in actual matches…
On the bright side, the debate on the conversion resistance is finished and for a good reason: Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition — Hotfix 35209

There is the genie editor where you can see their speed values and hidden bonus as well, you are being completely paranoid on a subject you probably don’t know enough.

ETk is really slow, if you use them to protect siege, the enemy can snipe the siege with cavalry, because the UU is terrible to defend, unlike normal halbs, personally i have only used them vs goths and when i have a huge eco lead.

In hand to hand combat they lose to samurai, they lose to aztk and burmese champion, with supplies they lose even harder cost effectively, they lose like flies vs archs,CA,HC and ranged unique units siege and monks, they only win battles vs normal infantry and cavalry but the lack of mobility is really easy to abuse.

A small boost in their speed would make them somewhat better without breaking the game, since it is easy to counter.

If you see Teutons they don’t have many options, they are bad on water, they are bad with ranged units, their cavalry is slow and missing LC hurts a lot, their farm bonus was impressive in Age of Kings, but now with huns, malians, khmer, slavs their farm bonus ain’t something special anymore, if you use them on 1v1 your army composition in a decent level is always going to be halbs+HC and siege, in team games their slow paladins are easy to catch with camels and outrun with ranged mounted units(not mameluke), even on raids their speed is bad to dodge halbs, so the civ is only great to make the snowball effect with their expensive units, but as other guy mentioned that only happens in low levels games with tons of resources.

I even liked the idea to make their paladins like tanks with+1 pierce armor, but that could be OP, it would take 180 arrows from plums to take a paladin down, but certainly the civ needs few buffs, even persians got some love despite they had superior trash and more options.

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The thing is there’s no real reason to pick teutons. If you want a paladin civ, you would go for franks, or magiars or lithuanias. A siege civ, celts or slavs. An infantry civ, malians, burmeses, bulgarians, vikings. Gunpowder civ, spanish or turks. Defensive civ, Byzantines. There’s not reason to pick them, since the do some thing okey, but not anything really good

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honestly I like the concept of slow strong units TKs have. Issue in my opinion is that they are too weak against pierce armor, I would give it a minor buff. +1p armor once elite, what do you think?
maybe even go back a bit on the speed buff, like 0.68 move speed if there are no issues with that.

They have 6 pierce armor, problem is they can’t reach any unit, hit and run vs etk is something satisfying because anyone can do it. this is DE and path finding has reduced melee units efficiency so their chances to be used in any serious match is almost impossible.

Well, the comparison isn’t always helpful when you’re looking at units across civs, since there’s always another civ that does some things better in some situations. Given that you’re playing Celts or Franks, making your UU may well be viable, as they perform their respective roles very well for those civs. Teutons, I agree, not so much, unless you’re fighting Goths, but just about every civ counters Goths at this point.
Woad Raider, by the way, is an excellent unit, since it is basically a fast longsword/champion that’s a little more expensive. Sure, eagles do better than archers, but Woadies wreck Eagles, have higher DPS, and are better generalist units than eagles. And throwing axemen are pretty good, as they cover the knights’ main weaknesses without being as exposed as the swordsmen line. It is clear that the Supplies tech is an indirect nerf to most infantry UUs, and I do think that should be addressed for most civs (maybe by lowering UU cost by 10 food).
I would exempt Throwing Axemen, Gbetos, and Kamayuks from any further buffs since they all have a niche that is different enough from champion, and both belong to high-tier civs that don’t need any more buffs (mayyyybe Malians do, but I’m far from convinced).

But yeah, I don’t think people always realize how much speed is king in this and most other games. A unit can have a gazillion attack, but it only matters if it can make it to melee range before being picked off. Even then, there are melee units which cost and pop effectively wreck TKs (Jag, Samurai, I think Leitis, but I’d have to double check cost-effectiveness for it). I heard somewhere that the Teutonic Knight in AoK was originally intended as basically the AoE2 version of AoE1’s Hoplite line. With the AoE1 Greeks, they had a 30% speed boost, and were very strong, although I’m not keyed into the current AoE1 meta to know whether or not they’re considered OP.

So the TK for sure needs a speed buff. The “slow but tanky” principle works well for some units, like battle elephants, since they only have two hard counters (spears/monks), but works less well for the TK because of it’s lower hp and longer list of counters. I’ve recommended this in other threads, but I think Ironclad should keep its current effect, while also adding +15% speed to Teutonic knights (mayyyyybe 20%, but I absolutely wouldn’t go beyond that. They should still be slower than champs), and it should be renamed either to Crusade or Furor Teutonicus, both of which are would be more relevant and Bad@$$ than Ironclad. This principle of slow units needing speed buffs is acknowledged by the War Elephant UT, as well as the later-added Turtle Ship speed boost UT. If a unit is below a certain speed, the number of situations in which it can be useful are very few.

Regarding cav, the Teuton stable is fine. Their knight line is still strong, and while slightly less maneuverable than other cav, they still serve the basic purpose of heavy cav. Teutons are not a cavalry/trash civ, so gratuitous buffs to those categories would just lead to needless power creep, without really addressing why the Teutons are so lackluster right now.

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Greeks lack the last attack upgrade, and don’t have access to chariotry (ie.no good trash unit), no swordsmen besides the first of the line and only get basic archers and nothing else in their archery ranges. According to their AoEheaven page (Age of Empires Heaven » Greece) people much prefer the Macedonian bonus of +2 pierce armor on their hoplites, but dunno how a TK with more pierce armor would fare (ie.useless or OP?)

Right, well the weaknesses of Greeks then are somewhat comparable to Teutons - both have bad trash and bad archers, the difference being that Teutons have good swordsmen (although the Greeks weren’t missing that much by not getting good barracks units - Centurions absolutely annihilate Legions). Even so, from what I remember about playing AoE1 years ago, Greek hoplites are still very strong and versatile, and in most cases I’d prefer the extra speed over pierce armor. IIRC, the damage output of the hoplite line in AoE was crazy high compared to every other non-siege unit, so even missing the last attack upgrade is comparatively minor for such a high DPS unit.

So I think the solution is in speed, not pierce armor. Any more pierce armor, and the TK will start to step on the Huskarl’s toes, yet still be easy to kill with micro. Even a TK that is 20% faster will still be hard countered by archers, slingers, hand cannons, the 3 UUs I mentioned, but would be a little better at choosing their battles.

Edit: I read the editorialized civ description for Greeks, and am a little surprised by the disregard for the speed bonus, which I consider quite powerful, although it may be that the AoE1 meta nowadays is dominated by archers as much or more than in Age2.

Completely agree. Elephants are a different issue, since they’re gonna make it to the front line. The only unit that can prevent that are monks, and they are quite easy to snipe, and plus, nowadays every civ that’s get battle is elephants gets at least faith. Persians Elephants are a different history, since at a certain point THEY CAN’T BE STOPPED. So, you have to deal with them early.

Tk on the other hand, die before doing anything,and can be countered with anything that have a ranged attack, from archers to siege. They’re not that tanky to be that slow

This is a great idea since most strong players do not use teuto-knights cause they are slow as ■■■■. But I am not sure if 20 percent is balanced. Maybe 15 or 10 ? It is a good idea though
+1 from me…

OR the other option would be to give them husbandry so they get faster cav. ?

Maybe a bonus to the siege Rams would help… double capacity and a little faster siege Rams would make the Teutons a little more viable.

So what do you think about the Teutonic buffs.

Farm bonus is nice. Armour bonus… well, if I read it correctly it is not an increase in pierce armour, isn’t it? So it does not solve the problem against archers :slight_smile:

It’s for barracks units anyway, so it wasn’t made for the TK

This buff sadly goes into the completly wrong direction. Teut halbs need now 5 hits to die vs a generic fully upgraded pala instead of 4 hits, so they can also deal 1 more hit vs a generic pala. This means that teut halbs are now as efficient vs palas as japanese halbs and therefore teut get better in postimp/mid imp situation (eg a halb SO combo on a closed map), a situation where they are already decent. Its wrong to adress this. Teut needs something for mid/early game that helps them dealing vs (mobile) ranged units, since they have the slower kts and in general bad ranged units. An extra pierce armor for kt line would be way more helpful than infantry with more melee armor. TKs would also require a speed inrcease and eventually a cost decrease, but thats something less urgent.

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Every garrisoned relic:
Decreases food and gold cost of Teutonic Knight.
Increases movement speed of Teutonic Knight.
And maybe increases number of arrows fired by infantry garrisoned in buildings with Crenellations. But I’d rather have garrisoned relics buff Teutonic Knights if I had to choose.

So, after 27th February update, I still think Teutons need some buff, so this is my idea, which is still similar to the first toppic of the post:

Take away crenellation, give castles +1range in caste age and +2 in imperial as a civ bonus, and ad a new imperial tech civ:

Deus Vult (600f 400g): infantry (included Teutonic knight) gains 5% speed for each relic (max 2 relics for barracks unit, max 4 relics for TK).

That would define Teutons as an infantry powerhouse and would make sense according to history

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I think nope, this would just make the civ weaker. If you want to buff the civ, there is not much you can do without gutting tech tree. Teutons have their place in the game already, sadly TK is not part of their actual strength except for rare occasions. Changing the unit into something useful in post-imperial stage could be an option. Just make it faster and lower HP, give bonus to other infrantry and cavalry? or perhaps just some of cavalry units. Thus it being still weak to archer fire, but being more useful than champion? or perhaps to be used in combination with champions in the rare case they’re needed.

I’m curious, why do you think this would make the civ weaker? I never saw extra range in castle as something really useful, except for protect the shore… And again, you’re not choosing teutons for water maps

Extra range on castles make it impossible to take down Teuton castles with BBC, it’s really useful upgrade. Way more useful than TK bonus speed, which might easily become broken even.