Sure, I agree with this idea. My point is more so that you need to pop capped by imperial if you want to win.
That’s not it. Paladins have 3 base pierce armour compared to champion’s 1. That’s on top of the extra speed. If your civ has gambersons, that’s 2 for champions. In either case, that 1 difference is huge. Not to mention that paladins have double the HP, meaning, double the shots if the armour was the same.
With perfect micro with cav archers, you will kill 0 cav archers. In practice, you will run behind them till they disappear/get into a castle range.
The game is all about this, though. Elephants are just buffer and tankier. Teutonic knights are just buffer and tankier. In principle, you could make them good against trash by giving bonus damage, but all trash is countered by other trash, making this kind of pointless. I’ll edit the post to explain this.
If you have gold, and opponent is making trash, why would you ever make champions? make bombard cannons, archers, hand cannoneers, anything else. All trash is countered by other trash.
And Champions aren’t even the best units against trash. They are the best generic unit against some of the trash. The actual trash buster is teutonic knights. Berserks, Obuch and Searjants are pretty good as well. Champions are at the bottom of the list.
No. Counter units don’t have exceptions. Skirms are good against ALL archers. Halbs are good against ALL cavalry.
Besides, winged hussars are regional units.
I dont like how Supplies and Gambeson rn. It just applies only to Swordsman line. If you tell me, I want those techs to have small effect on Pikes and UU as well. Just giving +2 armor against Cav makes a huge difference against Hussar and Camels. Indian Camel civs can get out of hands pretty fast since civ like Hindustani and Gurjaras flips the counter and suddenly you see very few options to deal with but having +2/+3 against Cav provides new option.
Well… Rattan archers could be a kind of exception for Skirms. And cataphracts surely is the exception that confirm the rule for Halbs
Beyond that, I agree with the idea to make champion more exclusive and game changer upgrade, but I’m boring of read people relegatingmilitia-line just a mere anti-counter role, which is false, because nobody train champions to deal with pikes, Skirms are better. To deal with skirms, light cav are better. To deal with light cav, pikes are better. A trash unit is better to deal with other trash unit in every scenario.
Trash counter role is perfectly fine for 99% of players, it only becomes less practical for the top 1% who can effectively micro trash against trash. And even then, the champions with special bonuses still come out on top.
If Champions need anything, it’s not bonus stats, because that’ll make them completely OP at lower skill levels where they are already quite decent. What they need is something for high-level players to play with. A big part of why high-level players are so effective with cavalry and archers isn’t their damage or hp stats, it’s their ability to be applied very quickly around the map. Both archers and cavalry can get where they’re needed faster, which means they can take advantage of momentary gaps in defenses, capitalize on mistakes, and seal the game, while infantry need to win in a slower and more methodical way.
In shooter terms, it’s the difference between a sniper rifle and an assault rifle. Snipers are almost ALWAYS more powerful because they allow you to do damage when and where it’s needed, even if their overall stats are lower, which is why sniper rifles almost always dominate at a high level of play.
The best way to counteract this is to give infantry their own high skill/high reward gameplay that can be maximized. For example, maybe something to do with formations. Perhaps infantry might move faster when in the long-distance travel version of the line formation, making them more agile but no more effective in close combat. Perhaps they might be able to block arrowfire to units behind them, making them a useful way to protect weaker units via the square formation. Heck, maybe give all infantry the ability to build some things, like outposts and palisades; that alone would give them incredible versatility.
That’s not it. Paladins have 3 base pierce armour compared to champion’s 1. That’s on top of the extra speed. If your civ has gambersons, that’s 2 for champions. In either case, that 1 difference is huge. Not to mention that paladins have double the HP, meaning, double the shots if the armour was the same.
The number threshold depends on both the factors relative speed and tankyness.
With perfect micro with cav archers, you will kill 0 cav archers.
This shows how the relative speed matters. Champions could have 100 pierce armor, they could not touch the CA because they have a relative speed disadvanatge against microed CA. The tankyness starts to matter when the meele units have an speed advantage.
The game is all about this, though. Elephants are just buffer and tankier. Teutonic knights are just buffer and tankier.
Being more is also a form of group tankyness. As a group Goth or Malay Militia-line can be more tanky than fully upgraded Champions because of the numbers.
If you have gold, and opponent is making trash, why would you ever make champions? make bombard cannons, archers, hand cannoneers, anything else. All trash is countered by other trash.
I had a game on Enclosed with Portuguese where I tried all this. Bombard cannons got killed by Hussars, HC got killed by Skirmishers, my Light Cav got killed by Halbs, Champions won the game for me. I could kill TCs with the Champions and eventually to opponent had no gold for HC anymore. That he had HC earlier was the reason I tried all the other things in the first place.
The actual trash buster is teutonic knights.
Yeah but unfortunetely not all civs get teutonic knights.
No. Counter units don’t have exceptions. Skirms are good against ALL archers. Halbs are good against ALL cavalry.
Champions are not explicit trash counters. It is more of a multi-purpose unit, that happens to be good against one-sided (counter- units.
But I would also question if Skirmishers are good against Arambai, and whether Halberdiers are good against Mameluke and Cataphract.
I completely agree with this buff. Champions suck!
Short story time:
Played a match, Koreans vs Vikings. I was koreans. After almost 1 hour (in-game time) in Yucatan and trying everything to win, nothing worked. The other dude went full on trash halbs and skirms, i thought well, Champions are supposedly trash killers, so let’s make champs. Should have gone siege onager, i was koreans for God’s sake!! but well i didn’t think of that, i was hungry. Anyway, his halbs and skirms killed all my champions, maybe more than 100. No gold left and dinner was cold, so i just resigned and put the plate in the microwave.
Champions suck unless they have some civ bonus going for them. it’s time for a buff!! They were not worth the investment AT ALL, not even vs halbs and skirms! Was i stupid to go champs? Most definitely yes lmao
How many were you massing? Even as Koreans, if you’re making an equal number of champions to their halbs and skirms, you should be winning unless you’re doing something incorrectly.
Something people often do incorrectly is throw small numbers of champions into a fight, expecting them to do as well as knights in that situation, not remembering they only cost about as much as a halb or skirmisher.
The game is 3 months old, when Enclosed was in the map rotation. Unfortunatly the recording doesn’t work anymore. On the current patch I play Romans with Infantry, but the game do not often go to Imperial age.
i had i think 16 barracks and was massing quite a bit, i wouldn’t send them 1 by 1 forward. also did a sneak with petards and some champions through the side, but the guy responded by making arbs and garrisoning his vills in the tc, so that didn’t work as well as i hoped. I even built barracks inside his base and made champions from there xD and it still didn’t work!
This all happened after i made halbs, skirms, HC, scorpions, war wagons and i think i did knights in castle age. The guy went full on trash. Even light cav, as Vikings! According to the stats and score i was winning, but my patience ran out half an hour before I resigned
My problem is, most of what you said sounds like a problem with micro. On top of that, portugese are a unique case because of feitoria. They might be only civ which can actually make this work, because they have unlimited gold.
Let’s say you have frontline halbs, backline HCs, and bombards. Add in organ guns as necessary. With great micro, you should basically never let the hussars snipe the BBCs. With portugese, you can easily replenish them as well. It should’ve never gone to champions to begin with.
Yes, yes, and yes. Ofc, halbs need to get close to mamelukes. Against catas, halbs are slightly cost efficient when 100 gold=100 food, and decent when the rates fall.
My problem is, most of what you said sounds like a problem with micro.
Yeah, something like babysitting Bombard Cannons with Halberdiers for example is not my prefered playstyle or what I am good in. I like to let units just fight and fix the eco in the meantime.
On top of that, portugese are a unique case because of feitoria. They might be only civ which can actually make this work, because they have unlimited gold.
Yes, but Malay can do it too because of the unique tech, for Goth a mix of Huskarls and Halberdier work against trash (any most things), Vikings have OP champions, Malians too, Romans too. But I also mixed in Infantry with Huns in the past. If the enemy has Halbs or Camels Infantry seems to be a good option with Huns, who don’t have boni for Infantry. Even if Infantry versus Hussar is a close fight for a civ, Infantry can not be countered as hard in the very late game. But I don’t say Infantry works for every civ necessarily.
OK that’s true. But I’m not sure how this works out in real scenario, when you almost always have all types of trash, instead of pure hussar vs champs. Mixing champs with your trash army makes a big difference.
Champions are not a good option in trash wars… they are too expensive even if they cost 20G
You have to think that you have to spend around 800G or 900G, 500G in the barrack upgrades for the militia line, 200G in the blacksmith armor upgrades, and around 150G extra to get supplies, gamesons and arson (those are not 100% accurate numbers, but I cannot be more than 50G off)
If you want militia to be a trash counter they need a maasive gold reduction from barracks upgrades, and based on the video above, +1 extra MA for 2HS and champions
