Persians:
→ TC/Dock bonuses same
→ Starting resources bonus same
→ Archer line costs 70 wood instead of 25 wood 45 gold
UTs (either UT can be in either age) - Mahouts, Sassanian Ancestrory - Knight line regenerates 15 hit points per minute
Indian civilizations: Knights added
Malay:
→ Have access to Champion
→ Karambit Warrior - costs 40F instead of 25F 15G, attack reduced by 1, maybe also remove attack bonuses
→ Imperial Age UT - foot soldiers regenerate 10 hit points per minute (may or may not include monks)
New unique technology:
→ Light Cavalry units ignore anti-cavalry attacks (either by giving +1000 cavalry armor, or setting bonus damage resistance to 1) for a civilization with Viking level light cavalry
Not a fan of rework without reason on stuff without apparent problem, but here are my thoughts:
Persians:
Sounds really strong if not behind a castle age UT, as you do not need to balance your economy, contrary to every other civ. In 1v1 it also saves you over 1000 gold (from your starting mines) when opening archers. It would feel better for me if it were from castle age onward only.
Why do you want to remove their “main weakness” without any compensation ?
What is the problem with trash two handed swordmen ? It is supposed to act as a slow moving light cavalry replacement, as missing bloodlines and 3 PA makes light cav akward to use. So I would rather have them instead of champions in 1v1. And in team games people won’t use a generic champion.
What would be nice for the civ is to make sure that people rather train karambit warriors than trash 2HS when they still have gold (and the opponent fields elephant counters).
This sounds way too strong for the slavs, as the archery range is supposed to be their weakness. They have top tier infantry, ver good cavalry and great siege. A Heavy cavalry archer has 50% accuracy. So late game in 1v1 without gold slavs will have argubly the best cavalry archer in the game, as they have good PA, speed, HP, the same damage as arbalesters (contrary to trash xbows having -2 damage) and can easily field twice the number of units to get the same damage output.
This sounds like a UT way too powerful to be given to any civ who does not lack at least 2 or 3 techs on their light cavalry line and 3 or 4 techs on the heavy cavalry line (including the paladin upgrade).
Funnily enough, this could be fine on Malays as a replacement of the trash 2HS. But I would not give it to them unless there is somethig wrong with trash 2HS…
For Hindustanis and Gurjaras, the Knights are basically filler units, to have only american civs miss them. It atleast helps them counter eagles. Ghulams and Chakrams need Castle, which comes in slightly later.
For Bengalis, it is kind of a mess. They do not have much options. We could give them Cavalier as well.
For Dravidians, it is based on Hera’s review, which I agree with. They need an anti-skirmisher and anti-siege unit in Castle Age (they are getting BBC in Imp). Something is better than nothing. Dravidians could also get Cavalier.
Numbers can be adjusted. It was inspired by Maghrabi Camels, which also uses 15 HP/min.
Karambit Warriors are weak raiding units. Them costing gold and a UT specifically making a proper gold unit trash was weak design for me. A weak trash Karambit Warrior seems great to me. It is fast enough to perform anti-foot-archer and possibly anti-siege role as well.
I wanted to add this to Viking tech tree somehow since their late game options are pretty limited and they don’t have anything anti-siege. Hence it is left here without any civ, just as an idea.
Wood is more important than gold in feudal age, so it can be a tradeoff. The real savings are wood on mining camp and resources on gold mining. Also, as a Paladin, Camel, Elephant and Gunpowder civ, it’s no bad that it saves some gold.
That’s exactly why I made Karambits trash.
In team games people will prefer generic champion over trash generic 2HS. It’s a buff actually. I felt that even if Malay had resources, they didn’t have a tanky unit to spend it on. Malay Elephants are opposite of tanky.
Their CA are meh. They miss critical upgrades like Thumb Ring and Bracer (while Trashbows miss Bracer and attack upgrade from Arbalester upgrade) and a slightly less useful Parthian Tactics. I would say they miss equivalent upgrades. You could switch HCA by TR, but I won’t advise it since it makes their Crossbowmen better.
Thanks for reminding that I miss critical details. As I pointed out above, I would prefer it for Vikings, who miss Bloodlines, PBA, Hussar and Husbandry. Malay miss Chain Barding but have Husbandry. the thing is 3 pierce armor unit won’t achieve anything. I still prefer the Viking tech tree since missing Husbandry limits this unit slightly, making it much closer to an eagle warrior (1.43 speed with squires vs 1.5 speed without husbandry).
Pretty unusual that you don’t want historical accuracy for your neighbor. Personally I don’t care about historical accuracy either. But Bengalis with knight+cavalier will be a boring civ to play.
They don’t really. Super mediocre (as in as bad as Britons, which are a pure archers civ) before a huge paywall. That’s not top tier. And even more so when you consider the impact it has, as in +3/3 armour behind a huge paywall, would mean a lot more than splash damage.
Trash HCA only have 6 range(even a TC can shoot em), and a lowee fire rate and terribad accuracy without TR. The accuracy is the huge thing, it significantly lowers their dps. Lacking PT is already a big deal on CA, now you’re lacking TR as well? They’re probably as close to the perfect HCA to be eligible for the trash label.
Slavs also don’t have an eco that really tends towards CA play either. As you can’t capitalise as much on farming if you have a wood heavy eco.
Not saying slavs should necessarily get it. But of all the cases it could probably do with some thought
Too cheap from feudal.
I like this. I hate mahouts though. If anything I think that’s the one that needs to go.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned, Malay BE are essentially supposed to be the champ line of Malay. Their 2hs is the hussar line.
And maybe karambit are meant to be the knight line.
Obviously with a twist to each definition of the unit. EBE are still tanky. Run the math. I’ll help you, they take 50 shots from arbs. 19 from paladins. That’s not frail. Go see how frail champs are in comparison.
Would need to be a specific civ lacking a lot of stuff. Even then I think this will create some annoying matchups. I don’t think it’s healthy for the game. Reducing bonus damage is one thing, ignoring is another, even more so on a generic unit
I had that thought, that’s why i said, maybe Cavalier. The civ can work with just Knights as an option in early castle, before elephants or rathas come into play.
I somehow missed that part. Sounds fine then. Hopefully requiring a castle would not be a big problem.
Yes, 2HS are significantly weaker than champions. I meant that it should not make a big difference because people generally do not use Champions in team games (except Goths or so) because they are easy to counter when you have lots of gold.
For me trashbows are way weaker due to being slow and only 8 attack. So they deal 2 damage to light cav and 1 to skirms.
10 cav archers or so without thumb ring probablyobe shot a villager or a trade card while easily going through defenses when not fully stine walled. That s the difference for me.
Fir Viking it would be nice, yeah. They are infamously lacking late game.
Most of these changes just seem very whimsical and neither grounded in any specific need, nor trying much to preserve unique identities of civs. Overall I would class these suggestions with those threads that call for all kinds of reworks to civs “to be more historical,” or something like that. Not that they don’t ever bring up some good points or viable concepts, but they ask for a lot of alterations that don’t seem to be well thought out or serve any coherent purpose.
How about viable light cavalry then, either via Husbandry or Bloodlines? Just giving them knights without either is ~on par with Malay knights, which are never seen (Drav knights would be sort of better vs. Xbows due to their armor, but missing speed makes them easier to kite and worse against monks). I don’t think the solution to unusable light cav and battle elephants is to throw hardly usable knights into the mix and hope that all their collective weaknesses will magically synergize into having a viable stable through the power of Teamwork.
I checked the tech tree, and I couldnt find any civ more suitable than Slavs for trash CA:
Celts - miss Bloodlines and Ring Archer Armor too - highly unusable even when trash
Cumans - CA bonuses and cheaper CA (Kipchak) already present - has faster moving, faster producing and Parthian Tactics also
Franks - same as Celts, but with +5/+6 hit points
Persians - only misses Bracer (highly usable when trash) - additional trash option already present
Teutons - misses Husbandry too
Malians - has Thumb Ring
The better civs are Cumans, Persians and Malians. While the former two are designed with cheaper options (gold light Kipchak and trash crossbow), trash HCA does not suit the identity of Malians.
The worse civs which often show up as the worst archer civs - Teutons, Celts and Franks. Do you think any of these should deserve trash CA? it wont be Teutons imo since they are not a ca civ. Celts and Franks could use options.
Or it could be saved for a new Asian or Caucasian civ. It seems like you’re just trying to insert this bonus anywhere where it wouldn’t be OP, without regard to whether it’s needed or whether it fits in with a civ’s identity. Kamandaran fits well with Persians because they have no particular strengths outside of cavalry (and the worst swordsman line). Slavs have top tier infantry in lategame, solid siege, and good cavalry. They also now have semi-trash (wood) Castles. They don’t also need trash CAs.
TBH I think Slavs are quite underrated at the moment. If they’re to be given anything, I think Hera’s suggestion of buffing their farm bonus would do, although I think 12 or 13% would be fine.
I was more inspired by AoE4 Rus because they are one of the four civs with mounted archers (three with cav archers) and thought that they deserve have a cav archer option
I get that there can be some historical justification for it, but civ design usually involves focusing on a couple areas, not trying to represent every aspect of the civ’s strengths (else civs like Chinese would be very OP). Trash cav archers just aren’t a good fit for the current Slavs because then they’d have some kind of gimmick/bonus/strength for every unit line, which is not needed. This would only make sense in the context of a Slav split and a significant rework like what happened with Hindustanis.
Yeah if anything I would give them better infantry to actually lean into the supposed (non existent) infantry identity. Even more so since supplies had its cost reduced.
The farming bonus would help, but just leans more into the Khmer type civ.(stable spam with a siege gimmic)
