But they will do better vs archers or Forcing engagement
Fair point, and Woads do better at chasing down villagers and Eagles. They just lose to generic Longswords. Almost makes them sound like a Celt eagle warrior.
Teutons dont go longswords because they have bloodline and extra armour knights which scale into late game.
Celts might actually go longswords because the Celt imperial age composition is most often infantry. Either woads and halbs or champs and halbs.
Yes they are reasons to pick one over the other. But if you’re massively buffing the longsword line and not even touching the woad line when longswords already have more attack in castle age AND dont need castles, then you’re tipping the scales too much to one side
Speed doesn’t mean much when there’s someone forcing you to fight at your base with other melee or maybe a fast imp arb push. And are you really gona invest in a fast castle to make woads to raid in castle age? With 65 hp and 8 attack? When you could just go knights and possibly now with the new buffs, longswords?
Teutons rarely go longswords even when it makes sense to go longswords.
Except again woads have the best advantage of all. Mobility.
If you’re fighting at your base against fast arbs you’re better off not going infantry period. Make some skirms or mangonels instead. Or cavalry.
Whose talking fast castle builds?
Fact is the reason people use knights instead of infantry is mobility.
Woads are already top 4 used unique units for infantry in the game. They don’t need buffs.
Yes because knight performs better than longswords and teutons have fully upgraded Paladin with extra armour. Celts dont have that. So it’s less incentive for them to go knights rather than infantry
You’re missing the point. It’s not about imperial woads getting a buff. They’re the same. Only castle age woads get a buff to keep them on par with the longswords. But in imperial age woads are the same that they are now.
Right now with the new patch coming up buffing supplies, longsword upgrade and armour it pushes people to use that instead of underwhelming castle age woads. And it’s easier to mass longswords, seige in castle and go up imp for the infantry seige combo why would I trouble myself with woads?
Infantry and rams/scorps deal with arbs. Why would you think it’s a good idea to choose suboptimal skirms needing tons of other upgrades to deal with that?
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Not against eagles they don’t. Not against pikes they don’t.
Woads are already better then even post buff longswords.
Have to disagree on that. I’d rather have teutonic (horse) knights rather than longswords when dealing with Meso civs and post buff longswords are absolutely better than castle age woads. Key word, castle age
Speed kills. It’s why knights see use and longswords don’t. It’s why you rarely see longswords period. I see woads used more in castle age then I do longswords. And woads belong to 1 civ while longswords belong to all of them.
Honestly, no infantry UU has that much practical use in castle age other than Huskarl and Obuch. So increasing their attack by 1 or even 2 won’t make that big difference imo.
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Well axeman is good if you consider them as infantry UU… I really want to deploy kamayuk from Inca tho, they are pretty strong but quite difficult to get to as Incas.
said no1 when buying their blacksmith upgrades 
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I added Obuch. And yes THX are infantry UU and do have pretty good usage as they can counter what knights can’t. But I think we all are discussing Infantry UU except them and Gbeto. They are pretty different from others for their range.
If anything, Incas with their cheaper castle, it is easier for them to go for UU than most of the other infantry UU civ. Kamayuk is not that strong in castle and even in imperial, they need to be a big mass to outperform other infantry options Incas have. In castle age, Pikeman usually does the job of countering cavalry pretty well and extra cost of Kamayuk is not worth it.
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Regarding Woads (seems to be commonly discussed): Just because woads fills a niche better than longswords doesn’t mean there isn’t an even better unit for that niche. Narrowly restricting the comparison to one other infantry units is kind of arbitrary. We care about the tactical roles it can fill. For all intents and purposes the castle age woad raider is a slower, more expensive light cav unit with no cavalry armor tag or a noticeably more expensive but crappier eagle warrior. With the elite upgrade it’s much more than this but in castle age this is about all it can do.
Except castle age woads are preferable to Celt light cavalry in relatively few situations. Being worse than Celt light cav in a ton of situations is impressively difficult to do, yet the unit has managed to do it for 2 decade because of it’s high cost. More importantly it’s worse than almost every bloodlines light cav at the job it does.
I mean in which situations is the castle age woad raider actually better than Celt light cav? Conditional on it being a good idea in an absolute sense, I can come up with:
- Killing pikes + x (except buffed pikes can still be a problem with like 15% higher investment)
- Killing eagles (barely a good idea)
- Killing camels (barely a good idea)
- Destroying house walls/palisades (a single siege unit can help this)
- Getting upgraded in Imperial
The unit doesn’t win cost effectively in combat vs many things due to it’s high cost. E.g. it barely beats camels of all things. Off the top of my head I don’t know of a single unit that I can say it safely beats cost-effectively other than pikes and unguarded siege. It barely beats eagles in the sense that small fluctuations can still lead to extremely pyrrhic victories.
Yeah it has advantages over the militia line in castle age. But if you want those advantages the mediocre Celt light cavalry line does many things better due to its lower cost, lower setup time, higher speed, and higher pierce armor. Unique units should probably be able to justify the investment of a castle in their relevant niche and woads definitely don’t do that in castle age.
The buff doesn’t need to be anything huge, it just needs to actually make the unit worth 90 resources. More attack is the natural choice but a cost reduction probably wouldn’t make the elite woad oppressing either.
When there is a free castle (on certain maps).
In AOE2 logic, high gold units should be weak in feudal and castle age and they should get huge power spike in Imperial Age. Food units must be vice versa. Light cavs, skirmishers, arbalest and Paladins suit this rule but infantries is counter to this argument.
Infantries need heavily on food but they are pretty weak in castle age and they get huge buff in Imperial Age.
Unique infantries should gain +5 hp and +1 damage immediately in Castle Age (70 hp 9 damage Woad Raider, 68 hp 10 damage Berserk for instance). They are fine in Imperial Age. Longsword should mirror their shields and heavy armors. They should gain 2/2 armor starting in Castle Age. Supplies tech also effect all infantries like -10 food on militia line and -5 on other infantries.
Devs must do this years ago. I don’t know why they are waiting.