Cost of upgrades for civs with vanguard / early units

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

Somebody mentioned this in a recent thread about the Mongols, and it got me thinking—what’s up with forcing civs to pay and wait for upgrades on early units? For example, the Mongols being the only civ forced to pay to upgrade horsemen to their “base” state in feudal, due to them having early horsemen, or the Rus being forced to pay to upgrade their early knights to normal knights when they hit castle, which most other civs don’t have to do.

It seems like a strange disadvantage in some ways (particularly for the mongols, as far as I can tell, since in my experience it is rare for people to build dark age horsemen, so they receive a cavalry downside without much upside). It also breaks with a precedent set in AOEIII, where the Dutch (who have early skirmishers) automatically get the upgrade to bring them in line with every other civilization’s skirmishers as soon as they advance to the third age.

Does that make more sense to everyone else?

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2

I disagree, free upgrades are too good of a bonus. Getting early units is already a nice bonus

3

No i like the idea!!! French shouldn’t just get the best knights in the game but they should also get free castle upgrades on top of the free bsm upgrades and cheap everyrhing they have

4

I hear the point you’re making—certainly I wouldn’t recommend a patch that gives these civs the free upgrades that every other civ gets automatically with no other changes. France and Mongols, for example, do not seem to be hurting and in need of improvements from my perspective. It would need to be paired with other adjustments to maintain reasonable power level.

5

Remove unit-upgrades from the game, just make everything auto research based on what income you’ve got per age.

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