and that would only make them compete with archers. now archers have to deal with the militia line and knights. how fair of them. wait why do archers only have to deal with both but knights can still roflstomp infantry? that’s not fair.
we literally just proved 2 pierce armor is barely enough to make them have a chance against archers, but then that upsets the balance because now sure, militia might be able to fight archers, but they still stink vs knights. why is it fair that knights only have to worry about archers, but not infantry?
because if infantry trade decently with knights and archers, how do you beat them cost effectively?
actually that’s more like 4-5 buffs. pierce, melee, attack, and speed. and maybe health.
and no - if it had all those buffs and now fights cost effectively against knights and archers, how do you fight against infantry cost effectively?
if its not enough for them to fight cost effectively against knights and archers, they still won’t see the use you suggest you want.
you again prove the problem with your argument. you’ve just made the infantry line cost effective against one or the other gold units and see to think it shouldn’t have a trash counter despite the other two gold units having one?
well first of all - there are more civs then “Malians, Japanese, and Burmese” who are part of the discussion. if the goal is to have Infantry civs using militia to compete with knights and archers…
which unit do you want to counter which? should knights beat archers beat infantry beat knights? or the other way around? infantry beat archers beat knights beat infantry?
or do you want somewhere in the middle where they can all beat each other in the right situations?
Malians proves you need more then +2 PA for Militia to reliably counter archers in castle age.
Burmese and Teutons proves you need more then attack and armor to reliably counter knights in the castle age.
so if the goal is knights beat archers but lose to infantry, you’re looking at around 1 attack and 1 armor buff, at the very least, and that only gets you to the point where 2 long-swords beat 1 knight. which means you always need a numbers advantage, which is a problem.
also lets say hypothetically you do that and then give them a quick production time so you can always maintain 2 to 1 production. what does a civ like Spanish do in early castle age to win? they lack good archers, they can’t really just drop a castle, and knights already lose cost effectively. so how do you counter them?
if the goal is infantry beat archers but lose to knights, you’re looking at adding at least +2 pa and then some speed to help close the distance and probably some health to help with survival.
also now that infantry beat archers what does a civ with good archers but bad knights do to survive?
8 months? You just need to redesign completely LS, then change the rest of the unit line (that actually works) to make it coherent with LS. Than change about 10 civs that have major bonuses for LS and finally, icing on the cake, change goths that are gonna be Z- tier being all their units countered by militia line, giving them some new fancy laming stuff with hordes of noobs crying for being lamed 3 boars out of 2.
Just to make an example, after 1 year after the introduction of supplies, goths received the 6th civ change as a consequence for the introduction of supplies. 6 changes and 1 year for supplies.
And you think in 8 month you can fix the mess you create just for the sake to see LS viable in early castle age? Good luck.
don’t forget that now you have to somehow give civs a way to counter them depending on which way he wants the matchups designed.
if Infantry counter knights, what is a civ like Spanish going to do to beat them?
if infantry counter archers, what is a civ like Britons going to do to beat them?
if they are good against both and in a middle ground that middle ground is either too weak and they never see use, because they still lose to both, or too strong and they beat both and then have no real good counters.
more then just viable. he wants them to compete with knights and archers. he wants infantry civs to use militia like franks use knights.
and he also thinks they somehow shouldn’t need a trash counter.
so it should be capable of trading with both. which just proves why they need a trash counter.
if Infantry can beat knights and archers cost effectively, what do you do to counter them cost effectively if they get ahead of you? if the knights player pulls ahead you can push out spear line.
if the archer player gets ahead you can push out the skirmisher line.
if the infantry player gets ahead of you, with your design, you’re boned. and that is why they NEED A TRASH COUNTER.
well seeing as knights and crossbows are both viable in castle age and yet both have trash counters, i’d say your answer is bull because some civs don’t have access to both good knights and good archers. so if you make LS compete with knights and Archers, it absolutely makes sense for them to have a trash counter.
and before you say “use scorpions” - those have insane gold costs, and i guess if that’s the case we can get rid of skirms because we don’t need them countering archers because you have mangonels, and we can get rid of spears because don’t need them countering knights because you have monks.
you’re so biased against the current meta that while you think you can shove a third unit into the equation you don’t think they deserve the same weaknesses those units do.
again tougher tell me.
if post your changes the militia line can beat knights and archers cost effectively, and they already beat pretty much everything else cost effectively, how would you beat them post your change?
My man. You really need to take a step back and think about this properly. You are seemingly becoming obsessed with the idea of disagreeing and therefore needing to justify why you need to disagree. Nobody here has said this yet you keep acting like that’s what we’re all pushing for. Exaggerating non stop to justify denying any form of buff.
The way i understand it and what i would personally like is for militia to be buffed until INFANTRY CIVS start using them more. They don’t need to counter the meta units and can still “need to be supported by pikes or skirms or mangos” . Just see more use by INFANTRY CIVS.
They can still be useless to other civs. But when non cav and non archer civs use knights and archers respectively while bleeding INFANTRY civs don’t even use their name sake there is definitely something off…
We could easily start with a 0.05 speed buff and reduction in LS tech and work from there if need be…
Oh? look here, that’s clearly what tougher wants. and hes hardly the only one who has brought up infantry being as useful as archers and knights.
he clearly wants infantry civs using LS as often as other civs go knights and Archers.
that’s because infantry has been since day one a support unit in this game. literally the tech tree tells you that. you just don’t like it. the tech tree literally says militia lose to knights and archers.
you don’t like that design, fine, but the game design has always been around cavalry and archers being the heavy lifters while infantry is support, and even then we still get some infantry that is just flat solid units. Berserks, Huskarls, Woads, and Eagles, Champions, all good units.
See, thats what i meant by you keep changing your statments: You at first state that the LS is a strong unit (by making a completly insane comparison; even VILLAGERS kill xbow if the get to melee until upgrades come in). Then you admit that there indeed are better options. Then you explain how the upgrade cost is so huge it will cripple your economy (it isn’t, but thats not the point), until admiting again that even without the need to upgrade they are still weak.
The problem is that the LS is a very situational counter to pike/siege(/monk) pushes and eagles. You cant pressure your opponent with LS. Its like going mass skirm: You just dont, unless your opponent is going archers. This is the reason you dont go straight LS in castle age - they are just not designed as an alround unit (not saying they shouldn’t be, but they just arn’t right now), so you can only use them as a counter. It has nothing to do with their upgrade cost, or rather: The upgrade cost is just not an issue when the unit is so weak in most situations i dont even want to create it.
Mat, again misrepresenting me? You need some help with the maths?
Franks go knights 90-100% of the time. Expressed as a probability, that is P>0.9
If Japanese go Longswords as often as knights, then let:
Q be the probability that Japanese go Longswords
R be the probability that they go knights
S be the probability that they go archers
T be the probability that they do something else
Now we have Q+R+S+T = 1
and Q=R
and Q, R, S and T are non-negative
It follows that Q < 0.5
Hence also Q < 0.5 < 0.9 < P
Ergo, in that situation infantry civs (Japanese) do not use LS as often as other civs (Franks) go for knights
Can you follow the proof, or do you need baby steps?
You still haven’t answered my question whether you are trolling, so I don’t know why I’m bothering to answer your question.
If you’ve read these 2 paragraphs
It should be clear (even to you) that if it is the case (as you say) that Longswords would be a dominant strategy if they could trade cost-effectively with knights and xbows on equal footing (I don’t know whether this would be true) then it would follow that the process of buffing LS would end before they can trade cost-effectively with knights and xbows on equal footing
In that case LS would primarily be useful to players who are putting more resources into their army than their opponent is, for example because they opted for an all-in.
I don’t know how much LS should be buffed.
All I know is that currently LS should get a small buff, and I estimate the chance they’d need another small buff after that to be about 80%.
80≠100.
Buffs should always be chosen such that LS remain counterable (ie, possible to beat cost-effectively by all civs), and at present there does not exist a minimal buff (+5 hp / +1 armour / etc) which would make LS uncounterable. At least I don’t think so, and I’m not aware of anyone who thinks differently. You also agree, as far as I’m aware.
Funnily enough recently I had a game where I made a lot of different units and only longswords worked.
I was Chinese against Celts, they had pulled of a successfull drush and had walls and skirms to negate my feudal archer play. In castle they made a forward siege workshop to attack me, made a bunch of knights and upgraded their skirms. I tried using camels first but there were too much skirms. I tried knights but he had pikes ready. My xbows all died to skirms because I didn’t order them to retreat far enough
When I stopped messing up everything and used my brain, I realised there was one unit that would deal with all those: longswords. So I used my sweet easy teching bonus to swiftly reach FU longswords, denied the second castle they tried dropping on me, and repelled their armies.
Since my opponent seemingly didn’t read complaint threads they didn’t underestimate my army and retreated theirs to their first castle. So while he was wasting time trying to make me housed I decided I might as well have some fun and made a counter attack with my longswords. As he reached imperial age my swordy bois Daut castle’d him in his own base and razed his TCs 11
Unfortunately I lost because I came up with this plan too late and mismanaged my eco big time. But I still loved playing this game because the underdog strat is like the only thing that I did appropriately 11
Well it’s really hard, even for skilled players, to have a perfect eco while getting siege pushed. But in my experience is even harder for your opponent to manage eco while pushing because he needs to focus on 2 completely different spots.
Probably getting better trades with military could have bought you some time to rebalance your eco and outmacro your opponent
