It’s an interesting idea. When the outposts still fire some weak arrows like TCs when garrisoned.
What happens when the garrison doesn’t fires arrows we see with khmer. It allows the pressure to stay there, continueing to idle the the vills.
Yeah, Tower rushes are still a “noob basher” strat. But If we only increase the garrison space of the towers but not the maximum amount of arrows that can be added, it doesn’t make Trushes any stronger. Cause you don’'t get any offensive benefit from garrisoning more vills.
I’m fine with any strat people try. On Arabia turtling to imp always was a kinda weak strat choice. I don’t think this idea will change that much. It has downsides (more expensive TCs) but also upsides (towers have more garrison space and the opponent has to pay more for his TCs in return).
Maybe it’s indeed now time for a new map to come up and replace Arabia. As it looks Arabia is so heavily pushed into full Knight meta. The only issue I have is that there is that narrative of Arabia being the “default” map choice and a lot of people just play it not refelcting wether their strategic choice is actually good on that map. And ofc the people which playstyles perfectly fit that map have no incentive to try another map unless there are no opponents who chose weakter stats anymore. In this circumstance it will be very hard for any new map to challenge this state. Unless we see in a big tournament another map way more attractive games with high strategic variety than in KOTD and people get their eyes opened.
And ofc such a map needs to be developed. In theory a map that features some kind of free ressources for expansions like with the aftemath trade workshops. This could give us the intended encouragement to expand at these spots. It’s only important that they aren’t too snowbally, especially in the early game but instead mostly give value for that expansion. This could be achieved with having extra ressources (especially food/gold) nearby and reducing the ressource generation, especially in the early stages of the game.
I do mind. I think the main power lines should perform very similar at the different skillevels. Otherwise we tend into a separated pro scene that play games completely different to what the majority of playerbase can practcally play competitively. Especially for the ########## of the gampeplay we currently see on most maps clear tendecies, especially on Arabia. And I already see the missing in encouragement for lower ranked players to even try using Archers there. Like when they see sotl’s video where he states that still Britons would be the best Archer civ to learn, but it actually already has a below 50 % winrate. Ofc we could argue that atm it looks like Ethiopians are better civ to get started with archers. But imo this is also misleading, as Ethiopians with their free pikeman upgrade naturally have an advantage over other archer civs in a heavy cavalry dominated meta. So Ethiopians perform better on this kind of maps, but not because of their archersbut instead the free ressources and that free upgrade. Usually Ethiopians fall a bit behind in Maps that are more Balanced or even dominated by Ranged units.
In conclusion I think it’s generally not good for the game when the demand of skill to get the first good experiences of main lines is too big, cause this leads for the “easier” to learn one having a much bigger fanbase and therefore also dominating the discussions. Making it increasingly awkward for the other lines to even get a foot back in the meta when they are creeped out of it with every little patch.
Ofc we just had a small buff to pikemen, but at the same time Infantry got Gambesons which is directly reducing the efficiency of Archers against the militia line
It’s ok if there are units that are “hard to master”. But imo these shouldn’t be the main “power unit” lines. These are so basic they should be viable from the beginning so people don’t get stuck on one of them as the skillgap would be way too high once they got used to it to learn the others. Imo the sheer fact that we already see the tendency of “knight vs XBows” in the Forums means that people have decided to love the one and despise the other.
And instead we should have people just preferring one as it just fits their playstyle better but actually can play the others to a degree they don’t feel “outskilled” by players which prefer them. And don’t feel uncomfortable with the other lines cause they don’t play them regulary.
Agree, that could have made more sense, when they EG increased the melee armor of the line, pushing them more into that “trash couter” speciality.
I think if the Gold ratio was higher this would indeed allow for way more flexibility in designing the line. Atm they are just too “cheap” on gold for becoming a “power unit” like archers or knights. Cause when they are competitive in the midgame they would be basically unbeatable later on as the other power units would burn through the gold so much faster.
Yeah, they have this “jack of all traits” design which means they don’t excel in any specific role. But that’s exactly what you would look for when searching for a suitable “support” unit. In Feudal they at least have their anti-building utiltiy which allows them to be paired with archers fairly well. But in Castle Age we have access to Mangonels which do that job just so much better.
IDK. We already have pikemen for that. I would actually like too see it the other way around: Make them good against Pik/Siege combos. I don’t even think we need that line to be good against Cavalry, actually. Cause skilled cavalry players wouldn’t engage in disfavorable fights anyways. A lot of civs struggle vs Pike/Siege currently and they could greately benefit when the Militias would solve that issue for them. I’m speaking here about “even” games, not griefing. And the melee character of the Miltia would mean that they will have issues stopping well executed pushes if the opponent is already heavily ahead (and therefore can easily just add an anti-infantry option like HCs). Addtionally the anti-building role could even be improved a bit, so the militia line wouldn’t need much siege support to pressure enemy bases that aren’t super well defended.
Not a fan of this. And we are currently kinda close to that TBH, as with that extra Pierce Armor rhey aren’t even dieing to archery type units anymore. They even take only 3 Damage from TCs in Imp, which is really pitiful, as that means that TCs at this stage don’t give much protection against that unit type anymore.
That’s your valid opinion. Adding new lines is ofc a heavy infraction to a game that didn’t see as a big change for 20 or so years. And even those who were added were usually regional. The last line that was added was the Steppe Lancer which only is available to 3 civs. And it is in it’s utilization very similar to Knights and Light Cav. It feels basically just like a Cavalry UU and no completely new type of unit that changes anything fundamental.
But I see the issue that the Archer line was used to fill 2 roles at once: Infantry counter AND Powe Unit (same for CA btw). And especially the combination with the Power Unit makes it super hard for Infantry to be ever something more than just a “support” unit (at least in the midgame). And I also think that every unit that is supposed to be contestant with the other power units should have a trash counter aswell. This kind of design has be proven to produce exciting games. And weirdly enough Gambesons has actually brought us a bit closer to this kind of solution, as I forsee that Archer civs will have Issues against good Infantry civs in the very lategame.
And imo the Militia line is just too cheap on the Gold side to become a power unit as described above.
But I think with some creativity there could be added some utiltiy to Infnatry that would make them more viable in the early and midgame.
As I mentioned earlier, ther would always be the option to give one Infantry line the ability to somehow collect or generate ressoruces. Or they could have special abilities that can be used in combat situations, like building some kind of bostacles for the opponent. There could be some kind of blockades which also absorb like 50 % of arrow damage similar to the hussite wagon effect, hindering the opponent moving and/or even giving melee fighting bonus.
I also made a specific thread for that, trying to collect and bring out as many creative ideas as posisble for that:
So there are a lot of ways to make Infantry more viable in a creative way and not stat-buffing them even further.
The only thing I haven’t found (yet) is some simple speciality like the archers range or the cavalry speed that can be used to gain an advantage and be revarded for becomming better with utilizationof that speciality.