Difference between lancer and knight?

What is the difference between lancer and knight?

I can see both have lances and charges, both have same stats.
The name was given different to make them unique to civs?

Anyone from relic team can answer this?

Knight are for European civs due to cultural reason obviously. Lancer is just “knight” with different name due to the lacking of certain culture in history. Basic stat seems equal, with some unique tech or civ bonus that makes some are stronger, i suppose.

There’s no difference at all except the name. It’s illusory design. This franchise has never suffered anything like it before.

If one game piece is identical to a second, good design dictates that they shall have the same name. Here, history dictates that civs had different units. Knights are european and should not appear in other civs. But those other units thus need different stats. This is remedial, basic stuff that we have taken for granted in this franchise for decades.

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I really, really, hate that Lancers and Knights are the same thing. It feels super lazy, like an attempt to appear asymmetric while not putting in the effort to actually make unique civs.

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I legit don’t know if they don’t realize this is poor design or they know it is but don’t care. And I don’t know which is worse.

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The thing is, the fact they used the medieval era is basically asking for an artistic impression of asymmetry. It’s the age of asymmetry and culture. If they wanted to do more symmetry, you might as well have done a game in the modern era wheee tanks look the same, planes look the same etc.

But no, they intentionally chose the medieval era. And did so little with it.

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Even Rise of Nations was good with unique units with slight different stats from a normal unit for other civs

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Ironically most rts games dedicated to modern era have even greater asymmetry. Because people know the technical difference between the tanks and planes so well in great details, they can easily give them different traits.

This is to say making asymmetry greater than “lancer and knight but exactly the same” in any setting is not difficult. The only thing that matters is whether they want to do it.

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Although Lancers and Knights are the same now, I believe this will change after A series of balance adjustments, since the battle stats for AOE4 are still too small, I think the devs are being overly cautious.
Can only say just start, or expect the performance behind.
Come on, Relic !

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I think most people agree that knights and lancers shouldn’t be the same reason.

Maybe make knights more expensive but more heavily armoured.
Europe used more armour than other places in the world.
Right now some lancers outperform the knights of the HRE, which feels kinda stupid.

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I believe lancers should get +1 range, should be light cavalry and should only use spears and Knights should get +1 armor.

The knight is a European feudal lord, but not just a feudal lord, he is a member of the medieval military corporation, a kind of closed club of aristocrats among aristocrats.
And the lancer … It’s just a horseman with a spear, possibly in heavy armor. Not every horseman is a knight, and not every knight is necessarily a horseman.

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I don’t think they will change lancer stats, or at least they are not suppose to do. They should have done this from the first closed beta as they already did some balance adjustment since.

It’s atrocious in term of design indeed and give me the feeling they are trying to get us with fake asymetry. Why they don’t take inspiration from other AoE/M serie? we have plenty of different heavy cav, you don’t even need to be inspired, just copy past them.

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The saddest thing about this is it takes little to no effort to change stats for a unit.
Sure there are grander balance ramifications but honestly I really dislike the approach they’ve gone for with the balance.

Sure we have a few unique units and techs, but there doesn’t seem to be any notable deficiency in certain civs.

Why are all civs viable lategame?
Why are all archers identical? (except the english)

Without unique toolsets to play with, we lose fun problem solving aspects of asymmetric RTS games.

This exactly, we want to play these games in an older era because civs are so unique and we get to play these archetypal unique units.

It used to be that you had specific timings and strats to think about with civs.
If you were playing a civ that didn’t have a strong lategame you were inclined to be the aggressor vs the lategame boomer civ.

But i’ve heard in interviews that the balance team intends to have all Civs equally strong at all parts of the game.
The whole course of history is based on people working with inequality. And yet, the balance team somehow intends to make all civs equal.

My prediction is that after launch there will be a lot of balance feedback and only then will the balance team consider diversifying civ’s toolkits.

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They can’t. They don’t answer questions :slight_smile:

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Honestly, if they release unique Civs DLC pack for like $20 I would buy it lol

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Unfortunately they have little choice but to double down on this decision. The optics of changing out unit and building rosters midstream would be perilous. I’m counting on AoE4 not being their final game. This franchise can and will be so much more.

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Definitely not their final game.

But I think we are dismissing the possibility of big updates later after launch.

The same people were dismissing the possibility of big updates for Dawn of War 3,
but Relic was smarter than this. They didn’t listen to haters, and after continous stream of big updates and revamps we got Dawn of War 3 we (and the series) really deserved.

Kappa

Honestly, releasing games like this really hurts my expectations of the future. I’m glad you have such positivity.

But seeing how much the RTS fans let the devs get away with, it really makes me think that I don’t think it will motivate the devs to do better.

This is their flagship game. They were meant to go above and beyond to revive a dying genre. But instead they are happy with just RTS fans being happy with the game. They are happy if their game doesn’t go above and beyond. Even Adam Isgreen was making a comparison with Starcraft but in the. End he goes “but that’s Starcraft”. As if to say Starcraft is so big it can’t be compared. You’d think a major dev’s ambition would be to beat Starcraft. But nope.

I definitely don’t want to be dissapointed like this over and over.

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