Yes that’s what I meant with the “more like karambits” thing 
As stated in another thread the militia line is surprisingly okay if you remove half the techs and make them train fast. Also having free supplies in Dark Age helps.
One thing that’s bugged me about the militia line is they differentiate themselves with bonus attack against buildings, in an attack classification which doesn’t get affected by masonry/architecture. Theoretically they should be good at breaking through the ‘wood-wall’ of houses, barracks, palisade, etc.
The main problems are:
- Building surface area
- Villager repair/build speed
- The upgrade costs time/resources
- Requires being on the offensive (relates to their speed)
- Once they get inside there is no ??? → profit.
I don’t really need to explain each of these because they’re self-explanatory in how they are detrimental toward the militia-line niche of being good at attacking buildings. Without wanting to fill that “well-balanced but able to break-in-quick” niche there’s no reason to build them except as an eagle counter.
The cost is especially ironic because without the upgrades villagers can easily repair/quick wall or they can bring in units. I.e. they can’t break in any faster for it to matter. However with all the upgrades they can, but then they’ve spent like 855 resources. So why wouldn’t you just choose knights?
IDK seems like supplies and arson need to be way cheaper to even let them do the role that separates them from knights.
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Knights are very weak to massed halbs. Which champions tear apart.
Tons of things tear up massed halbs though.
I was just making the point that prior to imperial age the militia line cannot reasonably be justified using against buildings, despite having explicit design decisions toward that end. If nothing else this make those design decisions questionable.
I think in a static analysis champions are good and have a well-defined imperial age roll. But in a dynamic analysis it’s clear that champions are also held back by their most of their middle upgrades not being justifiable until imperial age. This doesn’t make the champion bad per se but it does make you wonder what strategies are we not seeing because MAA and longswords are underpowered relative to alternatives.
E.g. Militia → champion + supplies + squires takes 80% of the resources as knight → paladin and almost the exact same time of ~4.5 minutes. At the margin this is a huge investment compared to upgrading already existing knights. Also compare this to simply just building the counter-trash (e.g. skirms against halbs) which you’ve probably already upgraded and saving gold for seige. So I have a feeling champions simply aren’t being used as often as they should be used because the game heavily penalized the dynamic of using MAA and LS mid-game. Fix the dynamic and champions see more play in their proper role.
Almost 20 years later, but probably that was the reason that in AoM, spears were the gold unit and sword the cheaper infantry counter.
In my opinion we need more regional units as eagles, and a bonus for militias to counter them
I think 2 good option would be a profesional pikemen (inspired in very late medieval era, great against cavs) and a shield warrior (inspired in early medieval shieldwalls with extra pierce armor).
But there is the problem that they should be better and more expensive that militias and as many content, they may be OP on release, and probably get overnerfed and be a useless adition
supplies didn’t really fix anything
it just made champions better in situations where they were already good (late-game vs trash) and kept swordsmen useless in stages where they were struggling
it also made a lot of infantry UU useless
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I was already asking myself, it not this could be a solution. Champs to explicitely counter Infantry, not just Eagles. And Supplies also affecting the infantry UUs (by a percentual food discount).
Becasue atm many infantry UUs really suck, only a few are situational viable.
But for me it would be fine if we gave the goth anti-building damage to all militia (upgrades), but removing arson from some certain infantry civs, which are strong already.
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It could be a solution, but I honestly don’ like the idea of champs with a general anti infantry bonus… They would most likely make infantry UU more useless and make anti infantry units even less viable.
But I think their only future is as a counter to something… and it would be cool to have a unit that counter X and also has a high attack with no bonus.
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Good point. Maybe just 1 argument is that celt LS isnt fast enough to be used in castle age. Maybe another 5-10% speed increase could work
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In answer to your last question, to have a less defunct unit. I’m not pushing to replace the meta units but to compliment them
As has been pointed out many many times. The giant tech wall that infantry face is definitely partly what makes them so much less appealing.
If for example supplies, arson and squires (for militia) were unlocked automatically on reaching castle age and LS tech was cheaper.
How much more usage do you think we would see? Suddenly we remove the need of 10 LS to justify JUST the cost of supplies.
It wouldn’t be a huge spike. But would definitely make them more useful.
Now if that is situationally OP, we remove one of those free tech.
Not only are knights a really really good unit but they are really really good with minimal tech. Look at the non BL kts. Now much tech do you need for an LS and it doesn’t even come close…
But for the conservative bare minimum changes needed :
Reduce cost of supplies and LS tech.
Increase speed of LS and upwards to 0.95
Imi the LS tech is balanced around the kt WITHOUT bloodlines and 250f husbandry
I agree with you. The thing with free barracks upgrades though is, that they also affect the pike and eagle line which are already quite good.
I think supplies is just the weirdest tech in the whole game. Apart from being an absolute noob trap, it is way too expensive in early game and doesn’t really matter in Imp. Also why does it cost as much as bloodlines while only affecting ONE unit line whereas bloodlines is a permanent buff for up to five units in one tech tree. In my opinion supplies needs to be changed or the cost has to be shifted to mostly gold or just a bland big discount on food.
Also a speed increase to 0.95 is too fast, as Celt LS would be as fast as eagle scouts. LS is an expensive unit but has still quite good stats. Idk if that’s a bit too strong.
Ah good ol’ AoK times. 0 pierce armour for infantry and weaker longswords and two handed swords, who wouldn’t love that.
Supplies still some deal in imperial…a bit like byzantines trash discount. The cheaper the food cost, the more army u can have and the less the villagers u need
Champions are actually my favourite generic unit because of how incredibly useful they are in most cases and because they look cooler than everything else.
nah they are a niche unit, they aren’t a good all arounder. they are great against trash, huskarls, eagles, etc but bad against most other units.
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They are a good trash counter in the mid to lategame, but beware making them in trashwars. There your Gold is better invested in Siege.
Supplies made them actually viable in certain lategame situations with well protected bases and that’s exactly how we see them used right now, at least in pro games. But these states rarely occur in standard 1v1 because these games are often decided by mistakes of one player and lategame + siege push is only a thing if nobody made a huge mistake before. Finally they have a nice usage, but it’s still situational and I would never advertise making them for newer players if they don’t know why this works in that kind of situation and which are the parameters to decide going for that strat or trying something different.
As I said, I think champs are now fine in that role, besides I would consider just giving them a slight buff so they can execute it even more efficient.
But I would like to see a different lategame heavy infantry unit to actually complete the tic-tac-toe principle of the game. I don’t think Champs should be buffed to compete with arbs or heavy cav because they have their situational usage and I like how they play it atm.
I don’t like that it may trick unexperienced players into stupidly playing militia. That’s why I prefer to add a different line to the barracks to make clear the purpose of militia is to push and force the enemy to invest a lot of gold in fighting back that push. Archers and Heavy Cav are still the stronger lines and Champs can’t really compete with them, because they lack both range and mobility.
Is there actually any reason to make longswords? I mean MAA is still quite useful for an early push/rush, but longswords?
except no such principle exists except on water and the trash units. gold units don’t have a tic tac toe or rock paper scissors.
knights can beat archers but archers can also beat knights.
i’ve seen longsword pushes in early castle age with increasing frequency lately. especially against eagle civs on maps like hideout.
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They are also cost efficient against most cavalry.
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how often do you honestly see champs used against cavalry. be serious here. and i’m not talking against the ai.
yeah they are cost effective but they aren’t supply effective. i’d be better off investing into pikes/halbs which would be just as supply effective but cost much less.
Maybe in Bypass/Hideout and other closed maps, yeah. And of course vs eagles they still work as a counter.
I’m not sure about that, I think knights destroy them.