Really? I honestly never felt it was OP in any situation.
Personally I’d take Samurai’s base stat (70 HP, 1/1 armor, 10 attack, 1.00 speed) over LS base stat (60 HP, 1/2 armor, 9 attack, 0.90 speed) in Castle Age. However maybe in super late game against archer civs 70 HP, 1/2 armor, 0.90 spped is better than 80 HP, 1/1 armor, 1.00 speed. But I don’t think it is OP.
Yes. But knight have to at least take a longer route to circle around when LS in front of monks. Monks will have more time to convert. (Suppose LS will be seen first) It is actually quite impossible for LS to threaten knight without range or mobility.
I think you’re missing the actual part that I’m trying to point out about your suggestion in tangent with the situation you’re making. LS having damage reduction from knights won’t do anything in your given situation. Knights will still have to take the longer route, regardless if the LS have damage reduction, as the knights objective is to reach the monk, because in both situation, the monk is the actual threat and the LS damage reduction is having like no effect in the situation.
The point is just to make knight direct engagement to longswordsman more unworthy. When knight is facing pikes+xbow, knight can also bypass pikes and fight xbow despite pike huge bonus damage. But at least knight should avoid direct engagement if pikes outnumber them.
I understand that the Berserker is the most versatile infantry unit, but it’s not like we have to make all infantry units equal to it. Many solutions I have read are to practically make the Champions out of Berserkers.
- Bonus attack vs cavallary.
- HP regen.
- More movement speed.
And even Vikings play archers mostly in the midgame, so this idea that we would spam LS in the Castle Age will never come, rather the role of champions, at least of the full upgrade generic champions, is to kill trash. I would at least upgrade it in that direction:
- slightly faster (5%)
- slightly more effective against hussars (+2 damage).
- skip Two-Handed Swordsman if civ have Champions.
That is.
I think that goes to Obuch or Serjeant actually.
It’s time to check out what the devs implemented a few weeks ago. See what predictions would be concluded from my analysis in this Thread and if this analysis holds.
I begun this already in another Thread, lookin a bit in the statistics. If you are interested in this look here .
Generally I would actually basically just classify the Changes in 2 (+2) main (subordinate) categories.
A) Reduce upgrade cost/time:
Dark/Feudal
- Supplies removed.
- Militia-line cost reduced from 60 food 20 gold → 50 food 20 gold.
- Arson moved to Feudal Age, cost reduced from 150 food 50 gold → 75 food 25 gold.
Imp
Two-handed Swordsman
- Upgrade cost reduced from 300 food 100 gold → 200 food 100 gold.
- Upgrade research time reduced from 60 seconds → 45 seconds.
Champion
- Upgrade cost reduced from 750 food 350 gold → 650 food 350 gold.
- Upgrade research time reduced from 85 seconds → 70 seconds.
Prediction: Reduce upgrade cost (+time)
In my analysis I spoke of this as a good adjusting screw for the midgame weakness of the line. Interestingly devs decided to mostly change the early and lategame upgrades. But ofc 2/3 Supplies worked in the line is kind of still a midgame upgrade discount. Nevertheless for some reason the timing where the line would need the most help in this regard was kinda ignored. And with the standard early game rushes we can clearly see how much it improved the viabiltiy of the line. Lategame Champ switches are hard to observe, but I feel like we see more of them these days - and they seem quite strong in the situations when they make sense. For me personally I would prefer if they were more generally viable instead of being an almost oppressive tool in certain situations - which I also indirectly warned of in the Analysis. The changes are though not so massive that it becomes an Issue yet. Still I observed a few games where the oppressive Infantry switch in the lategame was very obvious. In my opintion the prediction as applyable to the changes (again: The changes don’t fit what I would have expected from this category of changes perfectly) seems to check out.
I spoke of that this kind of changes would probabyl mostly be feelable in win stats on high elo. We see currently that most Infantry civs gained percentage at all Elos (Dravidians is a special cause where they only gained on high elo). At least it seems it didn’t make the line super oppresive in low elos (though ofc a few specialised infantry civs might have too strong rushes rn).
Which is very good - devs seem to have found a good adjsuting screw here that at least doesn’t mae it any worse in the aspect of the general state of the game.
B) Increase the base speed:
- Man-at-Arms, Long Swordsman, Two-handed Swordsman and Champion base movement speed increased from 0.9 → 0.96 (Militia unchanged).
Prediction: Increase the base speed
In my prediction I warned that a big increase of Speed could make the unit oppressive. I also said that I think that there just should be some slow unit lines and would much rather prefer a different change. However the increase is minor and the prediction for that was that it would be almost barely noticeable in the results. For me this still holds. Even if the line is now clearly better managable, the minor increase didn’t really change a lot in the matchups. The biggest impact still comes from the work-in of Supplies, which makes sense in respect common stuff happening like skirms firing on maa that attack an building, where the speed increase has no impact at all. And the speed is anyhow still too low to eg dodge TC shots. In my analysis I forgot to speak about the influences on different elos. And here I would have said that it ofc should mostly help at higher elo. Though as the increase is so minor it’s hard to check this in the stats.
In other parts of the categorical analysis I said that this would synergize very well with a pasive health regen. This would be best observable on the new Wu civ.
In my opintion the analysy checks out again. It’s a small nice touch for making the unit feel more handleable, but it’s not really changing the interactions much.
Then we have 2 subordinate effects which are kind of integral parts of the other changes and only apply to certain timings now:
Dark/Feudal: Just make them Cheaper
Late Feudal: Increase damage output vs buildings
I will come to them later.