People have already brought up axeman upgrades, but I think the slinger is the unit that really lacks a bronze (and perhaps iron age) age upgrade as a counter for chariot archers and composite bowmen. Usually the slinger is disregarded after the tool age due to their lack of range. Chariot archers can simply do the hit and run strategy so slingers basically have no use in the bronze age as an archery counter. Greek or choson for instance would really benefit from this upgrade as it can make up for their lack of archery range units.
(It probably will not happen, but I’m posting it anyway.)
I would like to see an upgrade for the slinger too, but they are not going to add any new units.
I doubt it’ll happen, but it could be an interesting counter - like skirmishers in AoE2.
A slinger upgrade would greatly balance the weaker civs in random map. For instance as greek you can make a strong army of upgraded slingers and hoplites. Now it already becomes a lot harder to challenge with just Chariot archers.
More and more it seems this is something that is possible to be introduced later. Now it’s just the remaster without much new stuff. I don’t think any official news mentioned DLC yet.
This game doesn’t really need new civs or completely new types of units. But overall balance would greatly benefit from something like this.
Yes slinger as counter against Horse Archers and more importantly Chariot Archers are very welcome.
I very much agree this is needed.
On a related note; what do people feel about suggestions like these in general? The idea of DE doing minor tech-tree changes in name of balance and unit diversity. For example, I would really like to see the shortswordman being avaliable in early Bronze without any need for a upgrade. I don’t get why the wastly superior Cavalry is avaliable the moment you hit Bronze while you have to upgrade to the shortswordman and then upgrade it again during the same age to make it reach it’s full Bronze potential.
@GepardenKalle said:
I very much agree this is needed.
On a related note; what do people feel about suggestions like these in general? The idea of DE doing minor tech-tree changes in name of balance and unit diversity. For example, I would really like to see the shortswordman being avaliable in early Bronze without any need for a upgrade. I don’t get why the wastly superior Cavalry is avaliable the moment you hit Bronze while you have to upgrade to the shortswordman and then upgrade it again during the same age to make it reach it’s full Bronze potential.
It has been confirmed that they are using the Upatch as a base. The short swordsman is directly available in the bronze age in the UPatch so I guess this is going to be the case in AOE:DE.
Siegecraft is slinger upgrade in iron age. Making it to give more than +1 attack and +1 range would be enough.
Bronze age upgrade would make slingers to strong. They shouldn’t stay top tier units at bronze age.
@pate623 said:
Siegecraft is slinger upgrade in iron age. Making it to give more than +1 attack and +1 range would be enough.
Bronze age upgrade would make slingers to strong. They shouldn’t stay top tier units at bronze age.
Slingers should be able to at least be able to compete with chariot archers and possibly with horse archers. After all, their entire purpose is to counter archers. As I said, civs like Greek, Choson would greatly benefit from this as they are currently quite unable to defend against chariot archers. It would make sense don’t you think? It would make attacking with hoplites or swordsmen actually a viable strategy as long as they are accompanied with slingers. Then the side using CA has to make cavalry to quickly take out the slingers and cannot rely solely on CA anymore.
At the moment I think slingers can have a maximum range of 6 (stone mining + siegecraft)? That is way too few to be able to get a chance against CA who have 8 range in the bronze up to 9 later on in bronze and 10 in the iron age. A bronze age upgrade could involve just giving them +2 range and nothing else so they can have a total of 7 range in bronze so it becomes much harder to just hit and run them with CA. Then finally in the iron age they can optionally get an upgrade that increases their HP/+1 range then together with siegecraft they can have up to 9 range to be able to last longer against Horse archers while still easily killed off by heavy cavalry/infantry/scythe chariots/siege. Do not forget that it is extremely easy to counter slingers in the iron age: Catapults will destroy a slinger army in the blink of an eye.
Slingers are somewhat powerful already.
Buffing them more than little would make them good units at all ages. Making tool age rush much less punishing.
Base stats:
25 health-points
2 attack
2 pierce armor
4 range
Tool age upgrades:
Stone mining; +1 attack, +1 range
Bronze age upgrades:
Bronze shield; +1 pierce armor
Iron age upgrades:
Iron shield: +1 pierce armor
Tower shield: +1 pierce armor
siegecraft: +1 attack, +1 range
With bronze shield slingers take only 1 damage from chariot archers. If you make good flank with slingers they destroy chariot archers.
Don’t try to make slinger good against current balance of chariot archers. Chariots needs to be nerfed so that you can counter them better with cavalry and not just with slingers.
The way I see it they can only have a max range of 6 which is too little. The problem with cavalry is mainly that it is expensive gold wise and if you are up vs mass CA or composite bowmen they won’t be able to put a dent in them even if CA are nerfed. You are pretty much powerless if your civ does not have decent archers itself, that is why I think it is good to have stronger slingers in bronze as a support unit for cavalry/hoplites. Upgraded slingers should also only be given to civs that have weak archery and no camels (greek, choson, roman).
@BlazingGaming13 said:
The way I see it they can only have a max range of 6 which is too little. The problem with cavalry is mainly that it is expensive gold wise and if you are up vs mass CA or composite bowmen they won’t be able to put a dent in them even if CA are nerfed. You are pretty much powerless if your civ does not have decent archers itself, that is why I think it is good to have stronger slingers in bronze as a support unit for cavalry/hoplites. Upgraded slingers should also only be given to civs that have weak archery and no camels (greek, choson, roman).
Hopefully the upgraded pathing and some balance changes can make melee units more viable. Particularly mid/late-game AoE1 has a extreme bias towards ranged units, which limits the pool of viable options. I, for example, hate how useless boradswords are despite looking so cool.
To counter composite bowman, elephant archer, or archer you need catapult or ballista.
To counter CA or horse archers you need camel riders (weak in current meta)
Giving slingers ability to hard counter all of them would make slingers to strong.
And if you are concerned civs without good ranges being too weak you could give those civs some unique bonuses rather that buffing units for all civs.
I like it in theory but think it will not work in practice. All the tool age units become redundant in Bronze as killers. If you make one line properly upgradeable then others will clamour for the others. If you are a gold based civ then you are just going to have to finish the game before the gold runs out, it’s part of the asymmetric balance.
In late games as Minoan, Yamato etc I actually found myself using phalanx/cents as the most cost effective gold unit versus scythes (some will argue HA). If you make trash like singers upgradeable you might unwittingly remove the weakness of some of the gold reliant civs.
Greeks and possibly Carthage need some love though, I don’t want to go down the unique tech routes but if anyone was going to get a bonus to slingers I would go Greek/Carthage, perhaps +1 attack or range but see how the game pans out first.
And if you are concerned civs without good ranges being too weak you could give those civs some unique >bonuses rather that buffing units for all civs.
Make an upg slingers for some civ can be an option. But i think is realy hard to speak about balance because atta mouv and new pathfinding can change lot of thinghs. I hope if the game is unbalence (and i think it will be), some patch can go out quickly.
Don’t think slingers need an upgrade. It seems that they were included in RoR like some pre-catapults for Tool Age (in group they are specially strong vs. buildings), so it doesn’t make sense to heavily upgrade them.
I think there are other most-likely upgradeable units, like explorer (always thought his vision range is too short in late-game), axeman (I always thought about a huge two-handed axeman like a barbarian boss-looking, but really don’t think there will be new units), or chariot archer (when you have mounted archers available, chariot archers are quite useless, and are too expensive as cheap/spameable units).