is there a good reason why genitours arent a common unit for most civs ?
why isnt there a balanced mounted version of the spear/ pikeman line as a common unit for most vis as well?
camels suck and should be buffed to justify their ridiculous 60 gold cost,
paladins and cav archers coming? feed em genitours and mounted pikemen,
this would also demand more militia / infantry units
mounted skirmishers weren’t really a thing for most civilizations and the genitours was actually something people on the Iberian Peninsula used to fight against the Berbers (which is ironic that the berbers get the unit)., and a mounted soldier would find it incredibly hard to carry a lance/pike long enough to be considered anti cavalry. furthermore if you made a trash mounted pikeman…whats the point of camels anymore?
camels don’t suck, they do exactly what they are supposed to do, counter cavalry population efficiently.
if your opponent can afford paladin + HCA i wonder what you spent all game doing.
so basically you wish to fundamentally change how the game works and add a ton more units.
In short, flavour.
This is one of the things that shows historical accuracy does matter to the designers.
Mounted skirmishers weren’t very common, and mounted spearmen were just Knights/lancers.
I would agree with giving mounted skirmishers to the civs that actually used them, and with redesigning camels.
if i read correctly in another post the spanish used them the Portuguese did aswel as the berber
basicly spain and portugal ripped the idea of berber
exactly. they already exist in game. just not as anti cavalry units, or goldless.
why? camels do what they are supposed to do, counter cavalry. if you want to redesign them, you’re going to need some justification for it.
I can understand what you mean, you are talking that the spears/pikes can’t deal that much against the speed and mobility of the mounted units like scouts/knights, so they can just avoid the spears and keep rushing in your base, so you are talking that you need a fast unit that can deal with the mobility of scouts/knights similar to genitours, a trash mounted unit.
I suggest to solve the problem of the spears/pikes to be more effective against the mobility of the scouts/knights two points:
-give the spear line +1 range.
-increase the speed of spear line units.
About genitours, the problem with this units is that it can’t be used until the castle age, i suggest for this unit to be able to use once you reach the feudal age like the skirms, why? Because if you wait to use this unit until the castle age, your enemy already will have many archers and once he hit the castle they all become xbows, you will not have enough time/resources to mass genitours, so ofcourse everyone will use skirms.
Actually i don’t even remember a one game with/against berber player that he used genitours, they will just use skirms to counter archers.
So basically you are asking to add a gold-free extremely mobile unit composition that effectively counters cavalry and archers (i.e. 90% of units we see until imp). Well, this will surely not break the entire game balance in an instant and won’t require 5 years of rebalancing afterwards.
There is. It’s because archers are slow, and if you add an effective counter to archers that moves much faster, you completely invalidate their existance. In AOE 2 all counter units to gold units move slower or at the same speed as units they counter. Halbs are slower than cav, skirmishers are slower than cavalry archers, same speed as crossbow, camels have the same speed as other cavalry (and thus require gold as a balancing measure), champions are slower than eagles.
There is, it’s called camel rider. It’s accessible to all civs that don’t have other good counters against cavalry.
That’s not the reason. People rarely mass skirmishers in feudal because if your opponent goes knights/eagles in castle, all your army is useless. Besides, skirmishers require 360 res for elite upgrade, which could have been spent on an extra archery range to make up for the initial lack of numbers. I believe, the actual reason is that genitours cost extra 25 food per unit, which you cannot afford as berbers because you always want to use cavalry (which costs a lot of food). So, genitours were specifically designed to be unusable until late castle age. If you can afford them, they are great on paper. Unfortunately, no one plays berbers, so we don’t know if that’s the case in practice.
In short, I find them un-fun, and their design hamstrings the design space for the camel civs (Indians, Berbers, Saracens, Malians).
Camels currently do ok-ish against the knightline, very very good against scouts, and pretty trash against everything else. A unit which has such narrow use-cases is un-fun. Not just to me, I can’t think of a single popular unit which has only 2 good use cases. Pikes are pretty versatile. Skirms can counter archers, pikes, hand cannons, CA, and harass villagers. Hussar are good for raiding but also against skirms, monks, siege, and just to overwhelm gold unit with numbers. Knights & Archers are incredibly versatile. Even Petards have 2 use cases (Castles & walls), and these units are niche by design.
You may complain I’m confusing popular as in “used a lot” vs “liked by players & viewers”, but I don’t think that’s the case.
Regardless is’t quite clear that units with many use-cases get used more than units with few use-cases.
And remember, FU++ camels are supposed to be a paladin replacement. It would be hard to argue that Malians, Berbers or Saracens have better economy bonuses than Franks or Teutons. When these civs get a unit which doesn’t see much use to replace Paladin, and also get a worse economy, it’s easy to see why they aren’t picked much.
(Yes I know Saracens have a strong eco bonus for FC xbows, I think that’s besides the point.)
Some civs also lack Halbs with the justification that “they have camels”, but with camels being not-good against elephants and also being unable to force reactions via raiding, that leaves these civs with bad matchups vs Elephant civs.
In all, I think a rework which makes Camels better against villagers, skirms, archers, eagles, and maybe elephants would be beneficial.