Stick (arrows) and stones (melee) mostly. Which is why repelling volley is the only upgrade as you point out, that affects arrow units. Their range anticav is arrow based, their most powerful late game anti infantry is arrow based, and their mercenary unit shipments are all arrow based units (Manchu and Iron Troops).
And again… context:
China Iron Troops in late game take a long time to produce, you don’t get a strong infantry train time card, you can only produce them from a single building and if you wanna send the infinite shipment you have to pay 2k gold every time for 7 Iron troops (which is the unit in discussion) and well, wait for a shipment every time as well, which is far from instant/massable.
Their range IS important. Not only because of what I already explained regarding skirms kiting them and the goon problem, but because you are even more vulnerable to cav and artillery, that in imperial age one shots Iron Troops and is absolutely everywhere.
I’ll do you one better. You can get special units in the Saloon now from other civs in age IV. I’ve played with Imperial Iron Troops as Germany in Age V, with all the possible cards and upgrades. The problems I am describing come from that experience. I was surprised to see that they took forever to deal with skirm goon compositions. They only had durability to their favor, which is countered by artillery and that is okay, you don’t need a unit without weaknesses.
All I want is for the player to continue to have to option of playing the Iron Troop strategy into the late game. That is why I named this topic ‘‘exploring options’’. Today I am forced to switch to Old Han (which for me it is not as fun, just spamming a blop) and lose the value I invested into Iron Troops early on.
If you say that imperial iron troops cant deal with skirm goon, then I am sorry to say that there is nothing else in the game that can deal with them, they are already the top of the scale, again look at their stats.
I am saying you will at best get 1 of 3:
either
Repelling volley on iron troops
Imperial mercs - or maybe just imperial iron troops
infinite merc shipment
You will not get all of them, you will not even get 2 of them.
In a straight fight yes, but with kiting and general micro + canons I would not call them top of the scale, there are much better direct counters. Sure they wreck heavy infantry but they are not in the equation here.
Honestly I think it is unlikely that devs are following this whole conversation lol. If they were to implement some, they would probably go for the infinite shipments and imperial mercenaries, since they affect 3 civs as one and would achieve a unifying standard that is missing right now.
I realize that it was a mistake creating one topic for 8 proposals. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the other ideas.
the moment cannons are involved thats a different conversation. You expect infantry to counter cannons in a comp? If you want to me able to make nothing but iron troops and for that to be viable against whatever your opponent throws at you then you have just broken the entire game.
As for the other stuff
flame thrower just remove the infantry tag and they will be OP
White pagoda I just want it to scale by age after you build it - the combination of the monk just ######## out 10 in the middle of battle and the temple of heaven heal is funny enough
German consulate no, we area already having problems with the russian one you dont want it to be instantly accessible
I want the old french consulate back for GFA builds
Roundhouse kick should be a charged attack - the current ver makes targeting a pain - the secondary effect is the thing that makes it strong - effectively doubling the monks attack
No comment on the rest
edit: consulate grenadiers should be the grenade launcher ones
That’s a nice idea! I think that their aoe is not working as intended so they also should fix that.
That would be too much indeed. Just more range or speed is okay. At least as much as a regular musk and maybe you can improve it further with the Fire Dragon Manual in Age IV.
The impact they provide is not equivalent, the trickle is like 2 unupgraded villagers on food. Moreover, the original spirit of the card was to make those initial techs viable openings for China. They nerfed the trickle amount and now you cannot get it, I think this was an oversight because you cannot open with it right now. Here is developer @InterjectionAOE talking about it.
Note on Chinese mercenaries: They are not op units and the iron troop is an archer with a yumi animation with decent health and good ranged resistance good damage but limited by its range it is mainly a reinforcement troop that shields and could replace the lack of the fast mass of arquebusiers in 3 ages.
its speed is already 4.25, faster then normal infantry and its more important for it to be durable its a tank unit that the opponent has to target down or risk massive aoe, more like the skull knight.
if we dont change the tag then jack up the HP and reduce the range resist. its about 50 hp per pop atm, to be somewhat viable it needs to be 150 per pop.
Its still perfectly viable, just not for any kind of age 2 play. Even before the nerf they weren’t used for age 2 play since its better to delay for the age 2 wood trickle since you usually send the card in transition.
The food trickle is used in super greed FF where you also send it in transition but but since you are immediately trying to go to age 3, you get the trickle so you can get more vils onto coin