Chieftains is a replacement of halb for Vikings.
If you want to give captains to all, you have to take -5 attack bonus off the halberdiers. So basically it is not too different from directly giving a +5 bonus attack only to the Swordsman line. At the time I proposed to give only +2 and then only against light cavalry as a softer approach.
I asked that long ago. But again, no âNew Techâ please. I asked this replacing the effect of Arson. Attack bonus vs building is very niche.
Also +5 is too huge for all infantries. Should be +2 or just for Militia line +5.
You can simply make +5 for Vikings by default while other civs doesnt get it at all.
I was thinking in post a topic for this idea, but maybe better share it here, to avoid disaggregate the discussion.
This is the idea: Make militia-line base stats weak and clean of any bonus (except vs eagles) but add more dedicated techs for it.
Dedicated techs should be in general, very cheap, fast to research and affect only militia-line in differents aspects, like flat stats buffs and add new features to the line.
The idea is balance the availability of these techs with the goal of make militia-line very different among the civs, beyond the specific civ bonuses.
Some examples:
- More HP
- More Speed
- Attack bonus vs buildings
- High Melee armor
- High Pierce armor
- Gold cost reduced of swapped
- Food cost reduced
- Capacity of build defenses
- Capacity of build siege
- Grouping bonuses (like monaspas) with defense or attack buffs
- Plundering ability.
- Pop space reduced
Some of these techs could be staggered throug ages but should be very impactful. (For example, gambesons should give +2PA instead of +1).
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I would just start by making Long Sword free and rework Supplies to Bloodlines equivalent tech. Also make it a soft-counter to Knight if possible either through tech or for free. Basically making Chieftains universal.
Isnât it better to directly skip the Two-Handed upgrade for those who have Champions?
If the LS upgrade were free, no one would use it.
The Age of Long Swordsman will never arrive I think
Edit.
For context this is the Bulgariansâ win rate on 1900+ Arabia.
Having the free man-at-arms allows them to exert good pressure at the start of the game, but not having the Crossbowmen puts them in enormous difficulty in the transition to Castle Age. Having the LS free upgrade is of no use.
And furthermore, this is why touching the infantry stastics is absolutely complicated.
That does show how perfectly letting their infantry repair siege would help them, though. Weakest in early castle age, right when siege is strongest. They could repair their siege easily with longswords, giving FAR more leeway against archers and enemy siege in turn.
Plus, it would make the food cost much more reasonable, as youâd be SAVING the 50 food needed for a villager to perform the same task. So instead of costing 65/20, it would effectively just cost 15/20.
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I just get new idea from your comment ;
new infantry unit: Field Engineer (or something like that) [Train from barrack]
- cost isnât high but not too low (have small cost of gold like 5-10).
- attack same as villager (dmg might slight higher and could get sapper tech, donât get blacksmith atk upgrade)
- can repair building, siege and ship (maybe at slower rate than villager)
- can build some field encampment
- palisade wall & gate
- Field barrack ; lower hp & armor and only able to train infantry units at slower rate but smaller and cheaper
- Field hospital ; cheap tent-like building (no pop increase) that could garrison infantry & archer for heal (no arrow)
- lookout ; inferior outpost but not cost stone (3 less sight radius)
- Only some civs can get this units (mainly infantry civs)
Also, infantry may need buff in hp regen from garrison and/or monk heal?
Would this units help in infantry play?
I am a bit bothered that monk heal is always more beneficial to knight. Healing horses should be far more difficult than healing soldiers.
I have suggested group heal. When a unit is getting heal, nearby swordsmen within 4 tiles also recover hp at rate of 75hp/min.
I think swordsmen can get +15hp more than its max HP after healing
Just make the militia line cheaper. itâll get used more.
it already is with Supplies and failed already. Issue is not making it cheaper and cheaper. Rather the valuable time wasted training it. You cant outrun xbox or cavalry, where both counters the unit.
Solution should be about where to throw this unit at. Currently militia line gets countered by everyone. In my opinion they should do AOM treatment where HP gap between Cavalry and Swordsman is low or making it a soft counter against Cavalry. What way to do it is a big debate.
My solution so far I thought of is,
- Rework Supplies to Bloodlines like tech. In Feudal Age itâll have very long research time but in Castle Age itâll be pretty fast to research. While we are at it, bring movement speed tech to Feudal even.
- Man At Arm upgrade stays as it is. However once reached Castle Age, itâll be researched very fast if not instantly. Long Swordsman can get a buff in research time and cost as well.
- Make free Arson for every civ. Rework this bonus into Chieftains to make Swordsman-like units into soft counters. Some UUs gets it(Japanese, Celts) and some UUs(Goths, Malians) doesnât. Vikings gets a new alternative bonus for it as Chieftains is universal.
This way Feudal Age meta wonât be changed but in Castle Age, you wonât be feeling making a mistake teching into Militia-line.
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Iâm new here but Iâm curious. I see that health regeneration got a âpossibleâ solution listed above, but it doesnât seem to get any or much attention as a possible option though out most of this thread. I can see that it wonât be a âsingleâ change that magically solve all of the infantry line issue (thereby assuming they can still use additional changes), but it seems to help and even create a gameplay that infinity can use to: A) help them create an advantage over their enemy, B) create a playstyle that is different from other army type, & C) benefit the area that infinity suffer the most, like the Feudal age & Castle Age.
When I think about it, health regeneration for all infantry seems to be a good foundation to build around the unit type that currently exist without having to make so many overhauls. Additional changes will probably still be needed.
EDIT: fixed some typos
2 Likes
Replace supplies with a new tech that gives them +1 range. Then maybe make Gambeson a different tech that is not related to the new tech.
I am also wondering whether taking reduced damage from cavalry will be good to militia. Currently, Pikes deals huge amount of bonus damage but they still need to outnumber knight. As a result, knight actually âcounterâ pikes in early castle age.
Let say infantry civs receive a tech that longswordsman
take -3 damage from light cavalry and knight. Knights will need 10 hits instead of 7 hits to kill longswords. Longswords need 18 hits to kill knight. If this pair with faster healing and aoe-healing from monks, longswordsman have better chance to survive while getting higher HP knight.
For faster healing rate, longswordsman may get no reduction from 2nd monks onwards healing. [i.e. first monks= 150hp/min, 2 monks = (150+150)hp/ min instead of (150+75)hp/min] 3 or more monks will still heal at the rate as 1st monk healing that militia.
Aoe-healing does not stack.
Taking less damage from cavalry is a good solution. I would make it another bonus that comes with Gambeson. Regardless Supplies and Arson needs to go and Arson should get stack up across ages instead. Having too much techs for a unit line and needs time to research isnât a very good solution and one of the reason why infantries will never be strong. Time investment is an important part of the game. A good solution would be speeding up M@A upgrade research near instantly once hit Castle Age. So that Long Swordsman can be teched much easily. Almost on par with teching into Crossbowman.
3 Likes
I 2nd that.
20 characters
What about Gambesons? I also think this can go. It comes too late and is unfortunately too strong against Archer civs in the super lategame.
Wonât the knights just ignore the LS and go straight for the monk first? The monks are the threat in the situation. Even without your changes, the monk would still be the actual threat.
If the point of this entire thread is trying to find a change that will increase Infantry usage without making them overpowered/overbearing for their rush, especially in lower Elo, this seems like a good foundation to base those changes around. To me, buffs that only have direct-combat utility only makes Attack-Move-To-Victory a more oppressive tactic for lower elo, while having a far lesser effect for higher elo (which I believe most of you all are wanting the improvement to effect).
If I had controlled of making the changes, I would definitely be more focused on making the infantry have more utility so that when their rush fails to kill the opponent with like enough econ damage, they still have a fall-back plan that involves them, not a plan that is about transitioning away from infantry. Balanced would still be a concern, but it wouldnât be the top propriety. As in, I would rather see a change happen to make the infantry class acquire into a more healthy game-state and game-plan, and then balance around it, instead of avoiding making that change just because balance might be affected because of those change.
So if I was to make changes, these would be more âbalanceâ-changes I would make so that the more gameplay focused changes can kind of work:
- MAA gains movement speed, probably 0.96 to match the speed of archers & skirmishers.
- Obvious reason is so that can actually escape being killed by archers/skirmishers, but would still be countered by them. In addition, I would like to see them match-up in speed at minimum is because it would make moving them together less of a hassle, as the front line can actually keep up with the range unit. I would be willing to nerf the Celts early game for this buff.
- Militia-line gain bonus damage vs Calvary, not sure of exact numbers, but my gut thought would be around +0/+2/+4/+5/(+5 or +6?) for each stage of the militia-line.
- Yes, i think militia-line should better counter cavalry and should better trade with knights. Needing 2 LS to beat 1 knight is a terrible trade. Youâre still paying roughly the same amount of resources while taking up 2 pop space, but even then, the knight can always avoid that situation and just use their superior speed to find better engagements when they arenât outnumbered and/or do damage elsewhere. Also, Iâm not too concern about this âreplacingâ spearman. They are trash units. They can much easily slide into any army composition in comparison and will still have their usage.
- Skirmishers and maybe foot-archers gain a Imperial Age upgrade that grants them like +1 or +2 bonus damage against Infantry.
- This is to help counter infantry in the late game, make it so Skirmishers (a trash unit) can actually deal damage to the militia-line. Am aware that this will also affect anti-range infantry like the Huskarl. I want the infantry line as a whole to me more useful, so this is a trade-off i think would help possibly keep them in check in the late game.
Okay, and now for the more utility based changes for infantry:
- Improve the Ram-line and Siege tower.
- Maybe give the Cap Ram more HP, like increasing to 225 from 200, spreading the HP growth more evenly for the ram line, and therefore maybe justify reducing the siege ram research cost. And maybe increase the bonus damage vs building with each infantry unit in it? IDK. Meanwhile, reduce the cost of the Siege tower and maybe even their collision size to something like 0.25 from 0.4. They can be so useful for infantry to go through a more fortified position to reach the oppositionâs siege unit, like the bombard cannons or treb. Or you know, be less expensive to drop units over a wall. Maybe reducing Siege Towerâs HP to âoffsetâ a drop in price.
- Give Infantry the innate benefit of increasing Towers, TC, Castle arrow damage.
- Stealing this from the Teutons, and have no idea if this would cause issues for tower rush, but I really think this should be a thing. The benefit would match the value villagers provide to these structures. Infantry seems like a class that has some synergy with the garrison command, but then they provide nothing for these defensive structures. If villagers can grant extra arrow damage, then I think infantry should as well. As for the Teutonâs upgrade⊠let their upgrade stack with this?
- All infantry gain health regeneration, at least by early feudal age, and Iâm thinking around 20 HP per minute, 15 being the absolute lowest. I also mean all infantry, including spear-men, eagles, and unique infantry. I would also probably make this a cheap upgrade at the barracks, in feudal age, Like 25f & 10 seconds. Itâs only an upgrade to maybe prevent certain rush heavy infantry civs from getting it, if too strong.
- To me, this would be the biggest change for Feudal age play, where Infantry typically falls off. This innate sustain should essentially act as Infantryâs way to participate in the more skirmish focused-style battles that usually takes place at Feudal and maybe early Castle, while at the same time, in a way that archers, skirmishers, and scouts canât provide, âsustainabilityâ. Fail a rush? Retreat, look for a new spot to attack while healing most of your HP back, than attack again. Now with regen, the player might be even willing to tank a single tower to kill 1 villager, before retreating to heal up. Not sure if it would be completely viable, but it would be new option that infantry could perform. Maybe use them to âtankâ trades between skirmishers, and the longer these trades take, the more advantage the regen builds for the player. This is also why I kind of âneedâ the increased movement speed and bonus damage against Cav. Infantry needs to actually trade well with the few hits they might land, while probably taking in way more damage, and the ability to maneuver & retreat the battlefield decently so their healing doesnât have to be super massive to be useful.
- ?Enable Barracks to garrison infantry units, at least by Feudal Age? Probably done thru an upgrade, probably in the same upgrade that I would add health regen to infantry that I mentioned below.
- The healing rate would match that of a castle (12 HP per minute) or maybe even more? And for consistency sake, would also benefit foot archers and villagers. I want this for more healing for infantry and a backup option to heal faster in tougher situations that the innate healing isnât good enough. But this change is a big question mark for me. I assume the ability to garrison will affect how people construct their bases, so I can easily see this being used as a makeshift gate and I donât know if that is bad.
As the Goths, Bulgarians, & Armenians civs are generally showing that, making their rush better still doesnât really help their mid game for higher elo play, the part they struggle and why infantry donât get used that often. So for me, by trying to improve their sustainability & garrison utility, I hope this will let them find a role during Feudal & Castle age, but as these benefits start tampering off, the infantry general âcost-effectivnessâ and âspamabilityâ ideally becomes actually usable.
There are others buff I would love to see, like reduce cost of the Mail armor upgrades, etc, but those are changes that is more about balanced and easier to make at a later date if needed. But I also realize that what Iâm suggesting is a lot, thereby making it radical. So realistically, I donât really expect any of this to happen.
The idea of five militia-line take less damage from cavalry sounds interesting.