I think it’s more about the training time, the food gain is just a side-kick, it’ll never replace a stable-automated source of food like farm. The big thing about this one is the fact you dont need to build farms in order to gain food at the early game. (Pre-Castle Age atleast)
Plus if you’re pop capped, you can always make one or two Yaks.
Viability of food is so important in AOE II. (which is the rarest res in “nature”/map)
Exactly, how many monks would one sacrifice for this mission? Sounds too gimmicky and unreliable. Castle one shoot Monks, like petards, It’s kinda hard.
I realize that you want to utilize the very known term “Dalai Lama”, but it feels like something that belongs to a campaign. An actual figure.
That’s a whole different subject to discuss about. Hidden negative bonus are much less intuitive and therefore should be less seen in the game, however I am aware that sometimes that’s the only way to balance out an unit.
Now, there’s never “too strong” in a strategy game, unless it gives you an instant victory of course, ALMOST everything is balancable.
If you want to make an Unit that is resistant to both Ranged attacks and Anti-Cav attacks you’d have to pay in other way, like making them much slower, or having much less damage output, or rather an absurd cost.
Hauberk fails in this regard, there is no drawback, no force that balances it out, and that’s why Sicilians have turned into the most boring civ in AOE, they’re being picking in 1v1 tournaments just so they can afk boom into an uncounterable win condition.
Besides this theoretical arguement about strategy, another flaw about having both Pierce and Anti-Cav armor is the fact you further make you Depon a Huskarl. Huskarl is a mobile-ish unit that’s resistant to Anti-Cav damage (obviously yeah). I’d differentiate between them by giving Depon a different feature.
What if I lowered the pierce armor of the Depon to be less than a Huskarl, but still significantly more than a Tarkan? It might make it less of a one-trick pony and clone of the Huskarl.
Currently there is no mounted-Huskarl kind of a concept, this unit has full legitimacy when it comes to diversity and uniqueness, quite strechy but doable.
I’d just give a different feature instead of the Anti-Cav resistance, no matter how minor it is, it’s too symbolic in a very non-unique manner.
Hmmm, okay. Maybe I’ll just take it out and not have anything to replace it, because I’m not sure what feature to use that isn’t totally gimmicky. I could give it an attack bonus vs archers, but that’s basically identical to the Huskarl and Ghulam. On the other hand, since I’m clearly trying to do a cavalry Huskarl, I might as well go all the way.
If what you want is a cavalry huskarl, you should go for no more then 5 pa base (if civ gets final armor upgrade), probably 10 attack with some bonus against archers and 120 hp before bloodlines. Cost it around 60 food and 50 gold. (In imp).
How have you not even considered the fact that being able to convert castles is possibly the single most unfair and broken thing ever. Even if the castle can easily kill monks, they should never be able to convert it, it’s literally a game ending conversion in the unlikely even that it somehow succeeds.
Hybrid of Goths and Franks bonus. Hmmm I’m not convinced, it’s unique enough to be implemented, though I’d wish for a bonus that’s not related to Cavalry, now that the Depon is much nicer, and the fact their Steppe Lancer is just great, they dont need any more bonuses.
I’d further improve their Castle Age Unique Tech, perhaps +4 for Knights, and +8 for Steppe Lancers? (+8 for both is too high imo, Knights can snowball too nicely in Castle Age)
I remind you Knights are much more viable than Steppe Lancer naturally.
(Now that Plate Barding Armor is out of the picture, you can buff Steppe Lancers even more, no need to moderate Steppe’s powerspike in Imperial, free Elite is not that broken, lacking Plate Armor can be nice if you manage to buff these boys in a different way)
Overall the idea of high cost- fast training time is wonderful. Shotel-like concept, which is a great design despite how underrtaed Shotels are.
Now Depon loses to Cavalier and Camels, which makes it so nicely balanced. (it also loses to Halbs/Pikes, but due to mobility differences we cant really declare them as hardcounters)
That’s overall a solid concept.
This unit has 2 traits:
A pure anti-Archer Heavy Cavalry, unlike Tarkan which is half way there.
Shotel mechanism of high cost high massing potential. Very unique considering no other Heavy Cav has something like that.
These two makes this unit so convinient and viable, even in the current meta we havem between short creation time and the huge Archer resistant- Castle Rush is a reasonable thing to do. Forcing an Archer civ away of its comfort zone.
What if I just affected the swordsman line? It’s different from Perfusion, as it only affects swordsmen.
Good idea. Steppe Lancers are quite underpowered, and almost entirely cancelling out the Camel’s bonus damage makes them much better against those units.
I’ve actually thought about it, and +8 might be too strong, especially for a Castle Age tech. It would mean that Camel Riders would only deal an additional 1 damage, and considering Steppe Lancers’ speed, they need a fast counter against them. I can definitely go with +6.
Yes, I’m aware it’s different than both Franks and Goths, since it doesnt affect Barracks+Stables, but certain units in it. I’m still considering it a meh tech. I wish for something different, the civ is already very unique having Steppe+Monks+BBC, no other civ has this kind of composition currently, on top of that a highly viable UU (not a mind blowing concept, however very useful!) and imo an awesome sophisticated eco bonus.
If you really want to give this civ a Swordsman buff, I’d make it something completely different, and I wouldn’t make it apply to Knights, usually UT’s that affect Knights fit nicely in Castle Age, this civ lacks Plate Armor Barding which hurt Knights more than Steppe, This civ has 2 awesome Cav options, Knight is not one of them, I’d ignore Knights when it comes to the Imperial UT, they’re already mentioned in the Castle Age UT.
Swordsmen can get 200% creation time AND ______ . Perhaps. (Since you lack the Champion upgrade, it becomes more playful design wise, you can also go further and take supplies away if you want an even more meaningful UT)
I love Longswords bonuses for civs that lack a FU Hussar. It’s always refreshing to see the Militia line in the late game (where it actually fits greatly) rather than another Hussar spam.
I dont find it too strong to be honest, I remind you how bad Steppe Lancers are. Such a high food-per-value ratio, it’s almost always better to just create a Knight. Plus we’re talking about late-Castle Age, since it’s an UT. So it’s an UT that will affect their Imperial play mostly.
Heavy Camel would still eat them easily. Dealing 17 damage per hit after reductions.
Steppe Lancers would still lose to any Camel civ early Castle Age, it’d take so much farming eco and a Castle Age to fully utilize this bonus, which by then would be useless at early Imp.
(This bonus however is quite nice for Knights, who’re naturally tankier than Steppe and give a nice fight to Camels, this shows how huge the gap between Knights and Steppe is, Steppe is just at an awful state sadly)
I GOT IT! How about infantry generate 10 food after each kill? It represents how the Tibetan army did not supply grain at all and lived entirely on plunder.
as a completely different suggestion for tibetans, how about some kind of fortified monastry. im not sure how to implement this, but am thinking of some kind of donjon-monastry hybrid.
it would be quite unique in the game, uncertain how to balance it, but it’s something quite cool about tibet (albeit not historically unique)
Nah, that would be if you could harvest food from killed units. The implication here is that they are stealing the food their killed opponents had on hand.
Yeah I get it, I think it’s nice.
I think buffing Longswords is always a challenge in AOE, the unit is impossible to really micro and therefore would always remain the worst option in the game unless we Eaglize it (pierce armor / movement speed), or unless you’re really out of gold fighting mass Halbs.
