you could say that, but as long as thats the case they will probably never be a viable option in competetive play
I used to think that Sword rush was the best rush.
Iâd go FC into 2 barrack longsword production. I didnât think there was a unit better at destroying TCs in Castle age, and I didnât understand why anyone would do a rush that doesnât completely end the game 
this was back on HD.
Anyway, itâs been said several times over now, but ultimately I donât think there is a need to buff the longsword even though it is only situationally viable in castle age, because the swordsman line is very good in Dark age, Feudal age, and then again in post-imp.
Not every unit in the game needs to be universaly viable at every stage of the game.
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I see it from time to time. Against eagles it does very well. I have no problem with it remaining niche. Reduce the cost of the LS upgrade and rhe supplies upgrade. That plus maybe a minor speed increase is all id give it.
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nerf xbow
that will automatically buff longsword
xbow is better against TC spammers. xbow is better against wallers. xbow is better against knights.
heavy infantry unit performing worse than the anti-infantry archer unit against other melee units, buildings, and greedy eco play. seeing xbow in 100% of games and longswords in 0% of games. clearly the sign of perfect balance
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Bruh unless you remove range from xbows they will be better against âwallers and greedy playâ since you know, they can shoot over the walls.
Otherwise Iâm all ready to know how nerfing xbows will change the fact pikemen and camels are better against knights than xbows. Or that siege weapon are better against buildings.
reduced LS and supplies cost + minor speed increase is very reasonable
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I agree but itâs not going to do much for the unit viability. It makes it a little bit better and easier to tech into
i think it will go a long way. its like you said the unit was never meant to compete with knights and crossbows, but in the situations at the margins its gonna make a big difference.
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yeah but if you check threads around these forums there are people who seem to want that, as if that wouldnât make balance much harder to achieve.
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They act as if knights and crossbows compete with militia-line because, well, they do. You have a resource-flow that needs to be turned into military units and the question is: which military units do you turn them into? This requires that the units be comparable. Slightly more formally, youâre constructing a function with your unit choice that produces strategic options. Ideally the game state makes one of those strategic options good for you. However the more niche the unit, the more likely it is that the enemy can switch the game state to something where your army is left unable to execute good options.
Itâs actually an interesting question if balance is harder if, for whatever reason, a large class of units (in this case militia-type units) is significantly more niche than others. Intuitively it would require infantry civs to get extremely strong civ bonuses and that seems to play out in practice. E.g. the goths have the largest cost discount on units and the vikings have one of the largest eco bonuses in the game. Celts and Japanese have really strong bonuses as well. Whether this makes balance easier or harder is tough to say.
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No. Because the militia line isnât supposed to fill the same role as Knights and crossbows.
Knights and crossbows, along with cav archers eagles and elephants (and some unique units) are your generalist units. They are the core of an army. The camel, pike and skirmisher, among some others are counter units. They arent designed to be good against most units and fill a role of countering specific unit types. And then the militia is a unit that is very good against eagles, buildings and of course every trash unit in the game.
Tell me. If the militia line is supposed to compete with knights and archers why does it train so much faster then either of those?
Why does the militia line not have a trash counter like the knight and archer do?
Furthermore depending on play Knights can beat archers or lose to them, depending on numbers, micro, and where an engagement is taken.
So how is the militia line supposed to compete with them when the militia line is almost never a good option against archers?
Literally all the evidence says that they arenât supposed to compete with knights and archers. Even the bloody tech tree says they arenât.
At the end of the day when it comes to balance in aoe2 infantry is almost always a SUPPORT UNIT for your army and not the true power.
Why you are so bound to that opinion. I think there is nothing speaking againsr a possible core heavy infantry unit.
But Militia line is different, it has a specific role and is almost fine, only a little bit of fine tuning like extra building dmg could be helpful.
Youâre right they shouldnât compete with knights and archers, but There could definetely be a heavy inf core unit, it would make the game much more interesting.
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I dont know what any of that has to do with what I wrote.
I commented on how the unit competes for resources and along strategic options, how that reflects in whether the unit is ânicheâ or not, and whether nicheness is actually an issue with balancing.
Why youâre bringing up the combat effectiveness of those units against each other makes no sense to me.
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iâm talking about as is, not as you want. if they were to introduce a core heavy infantry unit, it would probably be as a unique unit, and not as a unit everyone has access too, as that would require heavy rebalancing of the game.
doesnât matter if it competes for resources or not, the fact is that i was speaking from a balance/gameplay perspective. balance wise the militia line isnât designed to compete with the knight and the crossbowman. of course they all compete for resources, that goes without saying.
I just donât think its fair to denigrate people claiming knights/crossbow are better choices for where to spend their resources rather than long swordsman. People saying âKnights are better than longswordsâ (or similar) are only saying âI canât justify spending resources on long swords anywhere close to as often as I can justify spending resources on knights.â For some civs thatâs a serious dynamic balancing problem: Their knights (or crossbow or whatever) trail off in power quickly meaning you have to give them other options and account for switching costs.
Given the fact that infantry civilizations are a thing, I donât think itâs unreasonable to ask âDoes putting the long swordsman in a more core role make balancing infantry civs easier?â Thatâs what I was getting at in my response. Your initial statement of:
just hand-waves away a lot of balance considerations at the civilization level. Sure the unit is balanced, but whether keeping it in a supporting role makes balance easier is a strong claim.
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In honesty, I have been pondering the Longsword question since the start of this year of 2021, because while playing AoE2 for the last year has made me feel like infantry are underpowered (unless you are Goths or Malians)
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If you build walls/buildings far enough away from your main centers of resource gathering, then the Xbows cannot really get at the villagers. One reason why Mayans, with Obsidian Arrows and pre-nerfed Saracens were so good, was because their archers can wreak through ANY wall/building obstruction. But I digress⊠moving back to the Longsword discussion:
This pretty much sums up what I have been feeling. I do not want Longswords to be god-tier in Castle Age fights, but I just want to have them be nudged a bit better.
And I stress the words "a bit better".
The Militia-line costs the same amount of food as a Knight (though this has been changed with the introduction of the Supplies tech), but much less gold, making the Militia-line on a resource-cost standpoint, more cheap. One way to look at it is that the Militia-line is the âtrash unit of Gold unitsâ do to their 20 gold per cost.
ButâŠgoing back to the discussion of the Longswordsman, he lacks the speed, melee armor, and pierce armor that defines the Knight. And being a melee infantry also means that the Longswordsman is a completely different unit to the Crossbowman. So what DOES the Longswordsman do? WellâŠas many people have pointed out that it goes without saying that they are anti-Eagle Warrior and anti-Pikemen units. And yet, seldom do players really use the Longswordsman even for this role.
I meanâŠsometimes you see it in team games, Ranked games 1v1 etcâŠbut most players from my experience would rather just produce more Knights to overcome the Eagle Warriors/Pikemen who are a threat.
âDamn the torpedoes! Full speed aheadâ becomes âDamn the Eagles/Pikes! Full charge ahead [with more Knights]â No Longswordsmen are much used as a consequence. Therefore, why not add some more incentive to train Longswordsmen a bit more in AoE2 by buffing them in some small way that will not greatly alter the gameplay, but still benefit the heavy infantryman that Longswordsmen are intended to be?
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iâm not denigrating them. iâm merely stating that the game isnât balanced the way they want. that is a fact. even the tech tree makes it clear the militia line isnât supposed to compete with knights and archers.
except its not. every infantry civ either has good archers or good knights. except for Goths who have the flood.
does it? well hereâs the problem - knights vs crossbows are already well balanced. it all comes down to numbers, decision making, and control on who wins.
making longswords fight decently against knights wouldnât be too hard, but how would make the militia Line matchup against archer civs? then you have the problem of well what do archer civs with bad cavalry (see meso civs as an example) do against infantry civs if all a sudden the militia line is good enough to fight against archers?
furthermore - if the militia line is good enough to compete against knights and archers - shouldnât that justify giving them a weakness to a trash unit? because if the infantry player gets ahead the knight or archer player isnât going to suddenly catch up using only gold units, the LS player already has the advantage there. they would absolutely require a trash counter. which means further changes.
furthermore - since the LS would be changed to fight against archers and knights baseline, that means some civ bonuses would have to be rebalanced because of how strong they are! malian longswords competing against archers baseline means once the malian bonus is applied, they become an absolute monster against archer civs.
the japanese civ bonus? yeah 33% faster attack rate baseline? good luck justifying that somehow as balanced.
people already complain about goths despite the fact that they arenât that good at higher levels. can you imagine if LS were suddenly good enough to compete with knights and archers?
except it absolutely makes the game easier to balance. for the reasons i listed above.
COULD you theoretically achieve balance between all 3? absolutely, but it would require a lot of work and would require a lot of OTHER changes to the nature of the game as well due to current design. you would literally be throwing balance into chaos for probably around ayear.
i am all for buffing the militia line. within the confines of what they are supposed to be. i am not at all of completely changing the role of the unit because it would require wide sweeping changes to a game that is largely balanced as is, and only needs a few minor tweaks here and there.
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I think it has more to to with tech to the long swordsman. Why buy armor for him if you can just produce more knights to overcome trash
the problem is that the niche for the militia line doesnât happen to be needed a lot in castle age. which is why iâm all for streamlining the tech for them and making it cheaper.