Why would inf need a trash counter? Is not like they are slow and easy target for ranged units, even with an extra PA that wouldnt chance, si there is no need of another counter.
Also if archers needs more time to kill infantry, they could use spearmen or pikemen as a cheap meatshield and support them. Right now archers are too dominant in feudal and early castle.
A tinny buff won’t make inf OP or chance the Game too mucho, but ir may help to give new options and make the Game more interesting
depends on how much you buff them. buffs like yours? an extra 20 health for champions? absolutely going to change the dynamic. giving them 2 extra pierce armor? that means they go form 5 PA to 7 PA and arbs take an extra 10 shots to bring them down (from 14 to 24). that is a 71% increase in firepower needed to bring one down.
eh right now i’m seeing more man at arms and scout openers then archer openers in feudal.
a tiny buff wouldn’t be a problem. 20 extra health for champs? or +2/1 armor total? that’s fairly significant, especially for a unit that already excels at what it is supposed to do.
if you buff the militia line to the point where they can start actually competing with archers and knights cost effectively, they absolutely would need something to offset that power.
You can read i have another comment where i said i keep the extra hp and remove the extra pa.
That would mean going from 14 to 18 hits from an arbalester to kill a champ
Same 18 hits that a xbow would need to kill a longsword un castle or 17 hits from and archer to a man at arm
That extra hp is just 20% extra ressistance in the best scenario. That is similar to +1PA but with a lot less impact in fuedal
And the extra melee armor and hp would make the paladin to need 7 hits instead of only 5, and 8 hits from 6 for knights vs longswords. They still will die, and trade poorly in larger numbers, but it would be a big buff.
28.5%
before your change, 2 champs would not kill a single paladin, but would leave it dangerously low.
after your change 2 champs, 1 dies, the other has taken 26 damage.
the champ player invested 90 food and 40 gold into the fight.
the paladin player invested 60 food and 75 gold into the fight.
so your new champs are very tanky and dangerous to anything melee. not to mention what would happen to unique units.
(numbers run with fully upgraded generic champs vs generic paladins)
and you somehow think that’s fair and balanced? pure champ spam starts to look very good in the long run against melee oriented civilizations, as their champs would trade cost effectively with just about anything and everything. can you imagine how hard japanese infantry would slant that? then go look at what 90 hp, 14 attack, 5 melee armor, 8 pierce armor malian champs would do to enemy armies.
In my opinion, the only thing the Swordsman line is missing is a reason to continue making them throughout the Feudal Age after the opening drush/M@A without Goths being in the matchup. I’d be okay with Long Swordsman being squishy against Knights and Crossbows if I had the Swordsman’s strength in numbers while advancing to the Castle Age, but I don’t unless I’m Goths.
What’s missing would have to be an early game buff to the unit’s base stats, but I don’t know what. Because every common buff suggestion I’ve seen so far is already in the game as civ bonuses, i.e. extra attack, extra armor, extra speed, cheaper Supplies, faster upgrades, etc. And yet even for those civs, the Swordsman being a part of a standard mid-game composition is rarely seen outside of the Goths.
Then go check the malian m@a and see it for yourself. Imagine if those bad boys had 2 extra PA in feudal 11
So, a paladin can still face champs 2v1 kill one and have time to retreat without dying. I’m pretty ok with that
I’m only proposing hp buff, so archers and CA would be very viable, also a good oportunity for HC and gunpowder to shine.
Onagers could soft them down before a melee, with a lot less risk of being sniped than facing crossbows.
I’m not saying it is perfect, all changes need a tuned process, but it is far from game breaking
still? no. right now 2 champs face 1 paladin and the paladin wins.
post your change - 1 paladin vs 2 champs and the champs win.
you also mentioned an armor buff, and that helps significantly against melee units.
i don’t know, malian, japanese, goths (due to sheer speed of pumping them out), would all scare the crap of me.
Also to change anything about generic units will inevitably affect ALL civilisations (minus cavalry for meso civs and eagles for everyone else), and can create a landslide affect to civ balance and meta. Fine tuning this would easily create a domino effect that is incredibly difficult to control. Imo even 5HP change is enough to impact certain civs, let alone altering armour and such.
I’m not saying those units stats are carved on the stone and cannot be changed easily like constitution, but just to say balance team needs to be very careful making those changes, especially when they can and will fulfil their purpose reasonably well.
Well i’m buffing champs, they are going to perform better, thats the point. But with a pala you can face 2 champs kill one and retreat.
It would be more interesting to see the results in bigger fights in more normal conditions
Extra melee armor won,t affect CA or xbows damage, or HC.
Civs buffs or BS may be tuned, so the militia cost. The important thing more than the stats is giving them a usefull role for the whole game. I’m making them a cheap tanky unit, a decent meatshield.
Without a role what’s the point of infantry civs?
Extra melee armor will impact their interaction with trash, knights and LC, as well as some other similar melee units. Militia line is already a decent trash killer for a lot of civs with ok infantry. The issue with militia line being seen less often outside of early feudal or mid to late imp is because knights do everything militia line can do and better. But that’s not a bad thing. It just means knights are better in castle age and maybe early imperial.
Trash killer is not a good role, at least my opinión, You have many options to kill trash without the need of militias. The only thing they do better right now is fighting eagles, and thats great, but there are only 3 civ of 35 with eagles.
Knights are better and thats ok, they are more expensive, I agree with that, but it doesnt mean that militias should not be usefull.
How come the first unit You can recruit for the very first military building, that has 4 upgrades and cost gold should be kept in the dark because they have little to no use. Imagine the same situation but with xbows or knights being situational units instead, thats not a good design, but again thats just my opinión
by the time the first one is dead your paladin is almost dead as is. either way - if they are retreating that can be used to your advantage. flood the field and force them to engage or overwhelm their base.
also that was just generic vs generic. japanse, burmese infantry are going to kill faster.
but Malians will laugh at them, due to their insane pierce armor, and since you made their melee higher they get insane value all around.
they already have a role in the game, and see frequent use.
considering that the only bad melee civ in the game right now is bulgarians and they are, for all intents and purposes, getting massive buffs in the next patch, i think they are fine.
except its not just trash, they are a great opener option for applying pressure, and eagles may be only 3 civs, but those 3 civs see 15% of all play on the ladder, and even further - two of them at least, are some of the most popular civs in tournaments by far. so that is very important.
and they are, they are also insanely fast and cheap to train, so i am glad that you realize that if their numbers are adjusted they are going to need
further tuning - but this what i’ve been saying all along - and you don’t want to leave that up to chance
except they see common use as an opener that sees use in dark and feudal age, they see common use in imperial, and are commonly seen in castle age against eagle civs.
so the only time where i don’t see them that much is castle age, and even then they have their uses.
except again - those units have clear trash counters and cost far more and longer training times.
but elite skirmishers needs a buff not a nerf.
Now if you have a ethiopian in your city rushing you from feudal the cost of ES its really high and the normal Skirm wont do ■■■■
The champion line is fine imo, I don’t think that its sole purpose is to counter trash (which it manages to do pretty well, except maybe hussars) but its also great at demolishing buildings.
The only problem that I see currently are longswords, you’re hardly ever going to see trash units in Castle Age (it’s all about kts and xbows), so the militia line has no purpose in there. Perhaps we could indirectly buff its building demolition aspect by enhacing siege towers and battering rams.
For siege tower, I would reduce their building cost a bit (right now they’re pretty expensive) it could be lowered to 150w 100g.
The battering ram could gain a little extra speed when infantry units enter inside, that’s why I suggest raising its carry capacity to 5 (same as the capped/siege rams).
I don’t think infantry need a buff. Instead what I propose is modifying the actions of the stop command. This game has become quite ridiculous with people making only archers/xbows and run, stop, run stop, repeating all the way across the map.
Knights cant catch them and infantry certainly cant either, I think if that stop command is modified to actually stopping the units instead of reorganizing them so the injured go to the rear of the formation then we will have balance and people will be forced to mix the army with multiple units.
Nerfing stutter stepping would make people abandoning the entire archer line, or at least use it much less often. CA is considered bad because CA frame delay is too obvious. Archer introducing frame delay would be just bad.
eagles say hello, and the longsword wrecks them hard.
Darn that’s right, how are we not tired of khmer boom and saracen siege archers after 20 years?
AoE1 did it. Spoiler: it’s only ever used in lategame/deathmatch by Roman and Choson because they have bonused infantry. Also what about karambits?
You propose to add new techs to buff infantry, and you also want to reduce their food cost. You’re about to create supplies.
Anyway why are people that salty against archers? According to their description of their opponent’s micro they are fighting either Lierrey on steroids or a super AI 11
Yes that’s exactly my point, mix up the army. You still see cav archers used.