Tweak scorpion into a trash unit that only cost wood and adjust the attack to be an infantry counter. Now get rid of the “Infantry can’t be strong because they don’t have a trash counter” argument.
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I have decided to cover all the different individual tweaks made I can remember. Unfortunately I can’t remember who did they and where if I knew I would make links to the correpsonding posts.
When I’m done with this I want to make an overview page linking to the individual page.
I plan 5 Categories:
A) Base-stat changes
B) Changes to technologies, cost, creation time…
C) Changes and/or implementation to other units
D) Addition or changes of utility
E) Addition of micro features
For a better overview I also plan to make something like a Tier list. One Tier for how viable I think the individual change is to POSITIVELY impact gameplay with and against the line. And a second one for the potential this change could have when it’s done together with some other changes.
The tiers would be
S - Can make the line comparable to the current “power units” (probably very, very rare)
A - Can pit the line in a “solid spot” - not usable in every game, but it will have a good place in the meta
B - Can make the line “situational” - not something we can expect to see played every odd game, But a strong play when the situation is right
C - Would have little to no impact
D - Could make the line “stronger” but at the same time only “worse” off as it has the potential to break it where it’s already strong (eg low elo)
F - Absolute abysmal idea that would lead to mass complaints and people leaving the game.
And lets start with the first (possibly even only) F-Tier idea so we get that out the way.
Just make them cheaper!
We already see what happens then with Goths. in the early game this is somehow atm just compensating the general decline of the line. But in certain maps like socotra we already see how influential this can be when the line sees way more play - as there isn’t a lot you can do against it if it’s the meta,
But the big thing is ofc the lategame. The famous “goth spam”. Which is just swarming the enemy base with super cheap units, making it an absolute nightmare to play against. Yes, the real Goth spam is also driven by Goths cheaper Halbs and Huskarls and the faster training. But guess what. If you reduce the cost of the line in general at least some civs will have Champs that can immitate the whole Goths spam composition with just only Champions.
This isn’t interactive, this is just pure terror.
It’s fine if there is one civ in the game that can do that stuff. A civ that has a terrible midgame you can use to work against this happening. It’s fine then because in most maps it’s like every hundred game there is even the potential it goes there. And it’s sometimes even refreshing to a stale meta then.
But it’s nothing for the general gameplay. If there are changes to be made to the line they have to lead into an INTERACTIVE gameplay. Not some one-sided horror you need to stop before it’s getting there.
Increase the base speed
Every unit performs better with a base speed buff. And ofc the low Speed holds the line back - especially on higher levels where you want to keep your units alive so that they can maintain their value.
But the line is designed around having very low Speed. Some lines need to have low speed. And because the speed is so low, a small base speed increase wouldn’t do much. The most impact and positive impact this would ofc have is actually on the basic militia. They would hit the enemy earlier, they would be better in chasing down fleeing villagers, they could run away from enemy ranged units without needing an upgrade.
But to make a big impact it would need an absurd amount of Speed, something like 1.05 base Speed or even higher.
Then we would come close to some cavalry units. And ofc the question has to come up what would be the difference then anymore, except from cav having a trash counter and militia line not.
So on it’s own this change would belong into C - D Tier. But there are some other interesting tweaks that could be made that would heavily synergize with a small base Speed increase.
Atm a small increase wouldn’t do much because the unit losses the ability to have any impact in low numbers very quickly. If this is changed that speed increase could be very neat.
So the idea has the potential together with other changes (i hope I remember then to mention it) to get to A Tier. But ONLY if it’s a small increase.
Before I make any suggestion I want to ask is the whole line bad or some specific version of militia line weak?
maybe you should read the opening post?
I would suggest Militia Line receive +1 extra bonus damage to buildings and +2 damage vs scout line and other light cavalries to be more effective in its intended role (starting from MAA).
Lot of people are talking about it’s too slow, if its necessary I would buff its speed from 0,90 to 0,95 still bit slower than archers, if you don’t have squires.
To make Man at Arms bit more sturdier I would increase its health from 45HP to 50HP. Then they should be able to beat all Feudal trash units in 1vs1, if they also receive this new bonus damage vs scout line.
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My conservative proposal is:
- +2 attack bonus against the new light cavalry class
- no change to regular attack, HP and cost
- without squire should be as fast as crossbows (0.96)
- make Champions a one-time upgrade for the civilisations that have them (if desired at least 3 civilisations can be put back, like Mongols, Chinese and Cumans), this avoids wasting time researching THS of course
PS. On the day when we finally get the regional skins, the Champions can be replaced with a more specific one-off upgrade.
Fyi, Squires already increases their speed to actually be faster than crossbows, up to .99. The problem with Squires has more to do with the fact that, by the time you can get it, they can already have a death ball that can one shot your units. It would be more useful if you could get it earlier, even if that only meant getting it on the way up.
increase the speed via upgrades
Thx for the nice transition. So I aleady covered increasing the base Speed. And ofc doing the same with an upgrade seems to be similar. But is actually way worse. Because in most cases in the early game it’s not worth investing even 50 res into a small movement speed advantage. If your units are already outmatched by the opponent units they will go down pretty fast and easy anyways. It would only help the unit when you have a movement Speed advantage when you have a high enough mass to still be able to damage the opponent.
It’s very likely that you will lose that during the time needed to upgrade your unit. So it would be essential to have the necessary Speed for these matchups to help the unit.
Especially when we are talking about unupgraded Militias against Archers.
This is vastly different to units that are designed around their mobility, cause these units usually run into other mobile units and then ofc marginal speed differences can have a big impact. But the Militia line isn’t a mobile unit anyways.
So it’s a D tier idea and it also has maximum C tier potential. The line is already very expensive to upgrade in the midgame anyways. Additional upgrades only add to that.
Just increase the base speed when it’s really part of the complete concept makes much, much more sense.
That’s pretty much completely wrong, really. There’s a pretty massive difference between being slower than something vs being faster than something. For example, that’s why even spearmen can, in skilled hands, outmicro the militia line against generic civs, but not if that civ is Celts.
Honestly, reading through, I disagree on pretty much everything. Pretty much every single statement you’ve made in this entire thread, honestly.
I actually went through on a point by point basis, before realizing it’s a waste of time. Really, I think you have a complete misconception on the devs intent for infantry, and as such, I think your suggestions have pretty much a zero percent chance of ever being implemented.
That being the case, sorry, but I’m not gonna bother responding here anymore. It’s basically just a waste of time thinking about something that’s never going to happen.
Brainfart by me, should be fast as crossbows without squires
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That’s such a funny statement. For so many reasons.
First:
You don’t even know what “my suggestions” are. You try hit the fish with a lance but don’t even look in the water. If you want to play “psychological warfare” you need to not be so obviously fishing in the dark.
Second:
You imply with this that you would know what the “devs intent” for Infantry is. I have no idea. YOU have no idea. Damn probably the devs themselves have no idea. Is there any intent?
This thread isn’t intended to give one solution. It’s trying to list the issues and evalueate ideas in how they would improve the line in these categorized formulated issues. Nothing more.
Third: (and that’s the funniest)
With focussing only on the “chance of being implemented” you reveal YOUR own intent in all this posts you did here and in other threads. Your only goal is that your one idea will get implemented. And that’s what makes you do all these very toxic and (passive-) aggressive posts.
And you try to hit me with giving “my suggestions” a zero chance. I literally don’t care. And I find it a bit pretentious of you tbh to assume you could evalueate what the devs will see as an interestic suggestion.
Maybe you should get off your high horse buddy.
But I find it also a bit interesting that so many people claim to know what the intent or role or whatever for the militia line (or infantry) would be. There are some classifications the community gave to it because of how they effectively play. Like the “trash counter”.
I have never read officially that they were designed for that role. It just happened to work out this way.
And then it’s imo not worth or good sticking with any condeptional ideal for any unit. We just need units that work. And if one concept is in the way of making a unit work. Skit that idealistic concept and make the unit work. Sometimes in life you have to accept that stuff isn’t working as you wanted it to. Now you have the option to just act as if it worked or you can just accept it didn’t work and either leave it with that or try something different. It’s a character test, and people with a healthy character will usually chose the 2nd way.
Increased damage output against buildings
That was considered a speciality of the unit line. And in Feudal the MAA are actually quite solid in that job. We rarely see early feudal Palisades anymore, but when we did there was a lot of MAA play to break these. Also against many common buildings the Militia line can do a lot of damage. If you have enough of them.
But opposed to “real” Siege the line isn’t an anti-building specialist. And shouldn’t be as it is a line that is also decent in combat. We also see at later stages of the game that even though the line is decent against buildings if it’s played there is often the Siege component added (often Rams). Considering this there is also not a real requirement to increase the anti-building damage output. Funnily enough the anti-building damage of the later stages of the line is probably even holding it back. There is no space in the midgame for an easily accessable line that does both: fighting and raising buildings. Old Arambai got reworked because it was too good in both Adding Siege is a core path of the midgame and should be done more in low elo aswell instead of attempting to use a single line for all purposes.
There are only 2 anti-buildings things where the line could be better: A) The basic militia is really bad against buildings, especially Palisades, this could be improved. As it’s one of the main factors why drushed do so little rn. B) Against Stone Defences the line can struggle a lot, funnily even more than stuff like cavalry. It takes too long to break through because you can’t fit enough LS on a Stone Wall, so it’s easy to wall behind. And even if you bust in with petards because the line is so slow it’s usually quite easy to contain. And it takes a lot of Damage from Towers and Castles with quite low HP.
So in the end, the anti-building idea in general is probably more a C-D Tier one. I could get giving the line Bonus against Stone Defences aswell, but increasing the already existing Anti-Building damage across all could actually only make the line more problematic in low elo - cause in high elo people use the specialised Siege units for that job.
Bonus against Cavalry
First we need to talk about the idea of adding a “light (cavalry)” armor class. IDK where this comes from. It feels kinda sus tbh. It looks like it’s artificially constructed to avoid making militia better against Knights. Ok, it would also influence CA and Elephants, but both of them are so good against the Miltiia line it would hardly change anything in these matchups. So what remains is Knights.
And Knights are one of the main effectuve midgame counters to the Militia line. One main reason they suck there. I don’t even know how would win when “even ressources” of Knights and Militia would run into each other currently. But it doesn’t matter. Because it would never happen. Knights work with way less upgrades and eco than LS. So you can easily get more res of Knights out. And thanks to the mobility the Knights can just be retreated when close to dying. And healed up by Monks. They can even pick up reinforcements or do counterraids or whatever thanks to that mobility advantage.
So IF there should be a new bonus damage considering the bad state of the line in the midgame, it should be against the current “Cavalry” class. It makes no sense to artificially create a new “light Cavalry” class here, it would actually be counterproductive, as it would only buff the line in stages where it is already strong. In the early and lategame.
A general bonus against Cavalry (increasing with the ages) could be of use for the line for sure. It’s a bit weird cause we get an anti-cavalry specialist from the same building using the same upgrades then the militia line which could be added in very easily. But the idea could definitely help the line out, especially in the midgame IF it’s working against Knights.
When paired with a better utilization of timings (reduced upgrade cost/time) this could potentially even put the line in a decent spot, as it could theoretically pose a counterstrat for the “Scout into Knight” metaplay.
I would put the idea itself in B-C Tier and the Potential in A-B Tier. It’s nothing too fancy, it overlaps with the speciailisation of the Spearman line, but it could work for the Militia line itself. And that’s what the Thread is about.
Increase base HP
This ofc on it’s own would just break the game in it’s current state. So it would be D tier.
But together with other changes like the mentioned takeaway of Supplies this would bring the line to a much healthier state. Atm it’s a glass cannon and as this in this game either oppressive or (way more often) falls apart very quickly. Having a higher health pool could make the unit way more “balanced” and allow to care more about the individual units, get rewarded for taking care of them. Especially in conjecture with something like a Speed increase this could indeed be part of a healthy rework of the line even with just basic stat changes.
So together with other ideas it definitely has an A-Tier potenital. And we see with civs like Vikings and Armenians that the current state of the game allows oing that direction - though ofc especially the Armenians also show the limits and the need for a compensation somewhere else.
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I suppose militia need to be better in mid game? So allow THS upgrade in castle age should be fine.
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Goth’s LS are already cost-effective against KTS, clearly. (26 LS vs 10 KTS)
Vikings’ LS are already cost-effective against KTS. (21 LS vs 10 KTS)
Teuton’ LS are already cost-effective against KTS. (21 LS vs 10 KTS)
Generic’s LS are already marginally better than Generic’s KTS. (21 LS vs 10 KTS)
Yes, 2 LS already defeat 1 KTS.
Do you really want to encourage the LS spam for civilisations that have any bonus on them?
Also, to produce how many KTS with 2 stables you only need 3 barraks. It’s also not much of an investment in wood.
The only reason why this strategy tends not to work is because any player above sufficiency knows that he already has to build two archery ranges as soon as he realises it.
Besides the fact that he probably already has an archery made in the feudal age discouraging any such play.
No one will ever make that upgrade. The only civilisation that could do it is if you merged the bonus of the Armenians and Dravidians into one civilisation, with the same model as the Burgundians.
Mass knight can do. Also War Wagon.
What can I say. I thought about this change for a while. Probably for a year or so.
Atm we basically never see LS openers in the Midgame. At least not at high level or pro. Unfortunately idk very well about that state in low elo. But speaking of high elo and pro level theres nothing really in the way of attempting to make that viable.
Atm we don’t even see Goths LS (except when already on 100 + pop), so…
But I have to admit that I didn’t took low elo into account here. Which are notorious for just patrolling in their Knights and will probably lose a lot of these fights against good militia lines already.
So practically the change would need to have some compensation for low elo.
I think this really depends. We see a lot of greedy Fast Castles these days in which there isn’t enough time to get to a good archer mass to counter the militia line effectively. And it’s usually not needed as Knights will do the job. Which is what I was reffering to.
Ofc this change alone won’t do a lot. But together with some other adjustments this can definitely help the line out in the weak midgame. As Armenians show: Situational this is already the case with a good eco bonus.
But that’s not really good for the game, is it? War Wagons btw is really tough. I know there are buildorders for that, but it’s really hard to execute these days in practical 1v1s.
Afaik this never happens in real game situations. You need to put LS in a way that they surround the Knights in an easy way.
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