Here’s my other suggestion:
Militia in Castle Age 60 HP
Man-At-Arms at Castle Age 75 HP
Long Sword in Castle Age will be 90 HP whereas Knights will be 100 HP
Two Handed Swordsman will be 110 HP whereas Cavaliers are 120 HP
Champions will be 130 HP whereas Paladins will be 140 HP
Only real difference is -10 HP and -1 attack.
No new techs or upgrades. If possible remove Supplies. I mean it feels more of a headache at late stage. Also over age ups since Castle Age. Upgrade time and cost for Man-At-Arms should get reduced.
If so then militia line has to cost far more than 60 food and 20 gold.
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Still worth it if it doesn’t die. Basically you avoid paying extra gold for mobility and some attack.
Gambeson should change a bit. Aside giving armor buffs, it should give anti-cav armor and some mobility even.
I’ll take the middle ground and make them worthy to have a 60f/20g stat. Obviously there will be no supplies.
Micro feature - slowly recharging Javelines
I wasn’t sure about how to target different approaches for microing concepts. Given that so far there aren’t a lot out i know out I decided to cover every single independently. Because they might differ in the way the line will fare.
So the basic idea of this one is to add an additional mode to the militia line in which it can throw javelines, very similar to the Skirmisher ones. They only have Bonus Damage against Archer type units and the Range is increased via the Militia line upgrades. The mode can be either inherent of the line or to be researched via a tech (possibly in 2 steps). So in the Javeline mode the militia can throw a low amount of Javelines (2-3 to start) which then need quite a long time to recharge. You have to manually switch between the modes to get access to the javelines or the melee attack.
The feature would allow some amount of countermicro against Archers. Quite limited, but hopefully enough so the opponent has to wait for a seizable mass of archers to engage with your militia. Making it a bit more tricky to find a low investment counter at the early and midgame. With the involved micro the line would have a bit higher skill requirement to make effective use of. The javelines ofc can also be used to herass villagers from afar.
The only issue with that concept is that at higher elo it will be quite common to see the archers dodging the few javelines the militias can throw at them, losing a lot of the originally intended closing of the “skill requirement gap” between the two lines. Which makes the concept not ideal.
In the current state of the line it would probably not add too much to the line, probably B-tier. But together with other changes it can ofc bring it up to A-Tier. Generally it should synergize quite well with any changes that increase the durability of the line, like HP.
Strategic feature - MAA + can build Siege (Siege Towers / Rams)
A different type of approaching the line is to give it a strategic touch. So instead of trying to solve the skill requirement gap issue with something fancy to the line itself, the line can build something, Here we talk about Siege Workshop units. The two which make the most sense as they help against the biggest structural Enemy of the Militia Line: Stone Walls. Rams or Siege Towers.
I personally would prefer Siege Towers for various reasons, not at least because they don’t see much play currently and with their speed they could even act as some kind of micro feature for the line. Important would be that these Siege additions would take a bit of time to construct cause otherwise some civs with really strong feudal timings could get into other civs woodlines etc. with basically no counterplay.
Indirectly this would make one Siege option available in Feudal which normally would only be in Castle Age, which could add an interesting new touch to the feudal play.
As utlizing this effectively will require skill and strategical understanding (investing in Siege at this stage is expensive and hurts your castle age timing) this concept could be implemented very easily just right now without causing the line to become OP on lower elos.The Impact itself wouldn’t be as big, so probably B-C Tier, but it can be a part of an A-Tier concept, especially when the line would be tweaked to be more powerful in late feudal situations.
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Chronicles seem to try new mechanic for infantry in name of shield wall on new unit Hoplite: give +1/+1 when next to same units.
Would it be ok if implement on MAA? Maybe need tech to get this effect? Or add in as part of unit upgrade in Castle or Imperial age?
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Maybe there needs to be more done with testing in that respect.
The reality that the militia line is often not as good when concentrated can theoretically attempted to be counteracted with aura effects. But this comes from my observation more from the damage they take from high damage stuff such as siege (scorpions/onagers).
A little bit more Armor wouldn’t help there much. What they would need is an HP boost. Which feels weird.
And it would be crucial to figure out in what kind the aura bonusses are applied. how many units have to be in what radius and how oftne it can stack.
One idea I had some time Ago trying to solve that issue was not an aura “buff” but rather a “shared taken damage”. So if one unit is damaged the damage will be shared with (nearby) other miltia. This way they would become individually more durable when massed - but still would maintain the same total health pool, making the snowball not as hard as with direct stat boosts. Instead potentially enabling and rewarding to keep the units alive and heal them up after each skirmish.
The aura effects as they are currently are problematic as they are way too snowbally. So i am a bit hesitant to evalueate them in here because I might be unjustful just because the true potential hasn’t been discovered yet.
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Health regeneration
This is also falling more into the department of giving the line a special feature. The health regen comes mostly into play if you manage to keep individual units alive. With the current design of the line this is very hard to achieve. So at status quo it would be a feature as we see with Berserks: Nice to have, but nobody really plays around it.
Which in return means that this Bonus wouldn’t do a lot on it’s own, at maimum B-Tier but probably more C-Tier. But it would synergize very well with any other bonus that can help keeping individual units alive such as increased Speed, Health Pool, a micro feature, synergetic composition partners, shared damage…
The feature also scales very well with higher skill levels as there people are more capable in keeping stuff alive. Ofc it’s always a question if that investment in attention pays off. So the line will need something more to make it worth using this feature. But if has A-Tier potential in combination with these other tweaks.
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Strategic feature: generate ressources from attacking buildings
This is destinct to getting res for killing Villagers or attacking military units. Depending on the type of Building attacked different ressources could be generated. So for example when Wood Buildings are attacked you get a trickle of wood and if Stone defences are attacked you get a trickle of stone.
What I see a lot of this line is that the value you get from investing in it heavily depends if you can bust through structures before the opponent can repair them. If you get through you can often get a lot of value but if the repairs come in time your investment is almost completely wayted (except a little bit of idle time).
The line already has a lot of anti-building damage. Best example are Japanese MAA which so often get through structures, even sometimes outdamage the construction Villagers. So there is also not much room for increasing the anti-building damage. On the other hand at later stages in the game Siege is just the better way to get in the enemy base. Siege is specialised for that, the militia line only features some extra damage so it’s better than most other units in that department. The biggest issue for the line is ofc that you can only fit as many as there is surface fo attack a specific structure, not necessarily the theoretical damage output itself.
So the conceptional idea is to just leave it at that, but give the ability to generate res when attacking the building. Forcing the opponent to deal with it with military at some point as it would otherwise be a snowball.
Crucial ofc is to find the right amount of res trickle. I can see something like 5-6 res per Minute or so.
As the unit is so squishy atm it would only come into play in very few games. But if there is something added to make the unit more resistant to defencive archer and skirmfire over the walls, it could add a new strategic option - forcing the opponent to invest into something that can kill your units there. Especially useful against “greedy” opponents who want to get away with no or very little military investment in feudal or early castle age.
On it’s own it’s probably C-Tier for the current stage of the line. But with some synergetic buffs it can bring up the line to be useful in certain situations. So a B-Tier potential. It’s very destinct and specific, but if the goal is to get the line a destinct strategic utility it is one of the potential options.
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Strategic feature: generate ressources from killing Vills or attacking units
A concept we already seen for Tatars and Vikings. There are 2 main issues for that concept:
!) It doesn’t help getting in the situations to pay off
2) The value that can be generated this way is very low in comparison to the value you get from winning fights.
Meaning also it only pays off, when you already get the value you want from investing into a unit. Ofc it’s nice to get a cherry on top. But if you don’t get the pie who cares about the cherrys?
Ofc this can be combined with other tweaks that make it easier for the line to get the value. But then this can pose a risk of making the unit then too snowbally.
I can only see this working with an entire resdesign of the line, pushing it to be utilized in one specifc way be it as a raiding unit or a sturdy frontline or whatever, something the opponent has strategical options to work around - either having options to stop that snowball or getting value somewhere else.
Currently it’s a C-TIer, won’t do much to the line. Has ofc B-Tier potential with an entire redesign of the line and the margin of error with this kind of feature is very slim considering the potential snowball effect.
(Suggestion) New feature: a tech that allows the militia line to build army tents that heals garrisoned units.
- It has a ridiculous amount of HP (like 30 HP) and no armour, so it has to be built out of combat.
- It heals garrisoned units at a high rate.
- Healing rate can be upgraded with Herbal Medicine.
- Low garrison space, maybe 5 units.
- Mounted units cannot garrison.
- Do not fire arrows.
- Cheap, costs only wood.
- Uses the smaller army tent graphics, because the bigger is only for leaders and heroes in campaigns and scenarios.
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Appreciating your efforts to come up with so many ideas.
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An idea I had was to give the militia line the ability to reduce/absorb some of the damage for unit behind them just like the hussite wagons. I think it could make the use of box formation more interesting.
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Atm it’s the militia line that would need Arrow protection
So whilst I would really like one unit and especially an infantry unit that has this feature I’m not sure if I would go this direction with the militia line.
What we talk about is a unit that funcitons as a tank, an arrow sponge. Something with high HP and potentially comparably high pierce armor. Low attack to compensate that.
So basically the opposite of the militia line in all aspects but the speed.
If you want I can still make an evalueation here ofc.
Actually… most of the ideas aren’t even mine. I just try to collect them here to make an overview page at a later stage.
3 Likes
Just turn Supplies into Bloodlines like tech. It’ll solve many issues. If problem then make +10 HP in Feudal, +20 in Castle and +30 in Imperial Age. We already have Castle Champions and Warrior Priests. Both proved even with high HP, they still are weak but survives further.
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Still a lot of work. And I appreciate that.
Basically same. But I think militia line have so many technologies to be effective that this HP buff can be given for free, at least half of the proposed one. And I’d rather prefer 100% of the HP buff that you proposed, becomes free for the line with the removal of “Supplies”.
Also M@A-line auto upgrades to Long Swordsman in Castle Age. Instead of separately teching Long Swordsman.
That’s a bit too much. Every game will be MAA opening into LS.
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You never mass M@A in Feudal. Feudal Wars are complex. It’s just that if you are an infantry civ then pain of transitioning would be lot less than now in Castle Age.