It costs more than a treb and kills fewer castles. Oh and TC training is BAD! Thats 4 villager training time LOST if you try and use one early and 5.5 villager costs of food lost. Id rather train 4 knights because those 4 knights can harass and cover more ground and come from a more spammed building
And therefore is a good idea? I get that all kinds of wacky ideas can potentially become âbalanced,â but this is the most obvious design-related red flag in this civ concept by a mile. Obviously thereâs a tradeoff with vill time, but being able to train a unit with a more broadly useful aura than a Centurion that also canât be converted, is, or should be, an obvious pairing to avoid. Forget having most of the Ethiopian bonus if its around archers, the unit itself could easily kill more than itâs cost/time worth of enemy villagers (and again, canât be converted).
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If only it had the army to abuse it. Most of this army⊠is other wise disappointing. Elephant s and Lancers are full tech sure odd but okay. Camels too. But no last archer armor and no arbalest means you arent really goijg to use it as a main stay army to pretend to be an Ethiopian player. Their infantry lacks the final unit lines. They lack ring armor, no Hussar or Paladin. These are big issues and its almost like you pay more than a bombard cannon to pretend to compensate for these issues
Over designed? Sure but this civ isnt as military powered as Ethiopia and lacks the diversity and unit merit of the likes of Chinese if you dont train this/cant afford it
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I hadnât read the post, just responded to the latest few comments 11
Their archers and pikes fall off lategame, but other than that, the military looks decent. Their regional unit looks to be the offspring of a Genitour and Genoese Xbow, but without the spearline weakness, and the first UU is a light cav and eagle destroyer that more than makes up for missing halb and champion as long as you have goldâŠthat also gains weapon toggle and the ability to troll your enemies by switching between infantry and archer armor classes. Castle Age stable has camels, knightsâŠand a UT that kind of looks busted as it gives +2 PA to knightline long before Sicilians can get it, on top of anti-archer bonus, and affects other units. Call me crazy, but knights that take 1 damage from Xbows while dealing extra damage to them, and that can be further buffed with attack speed and building damage if you get to their unconvertable hero unit seems more than a little extra.
Main weakness just looks to be lackluster eco on full land maps.
On the off chance this isnât busted, Iâm still mostly not a fan of the design trope of âthis thing looks OP, but in the context of the civ, itâs actually kind of bad.â It can work, but itâs weird and usually ends up as a Urumi/Dravidians type design at best. Something that spends most of the game being useless but is arguably OP once you can field it.
Wouldnât allowing mills to train sheeps be better? Youâll gather around 88 food from a sheep with 6 vills. The âperfectâ rate. That means that the sheep could cost somewhere from 70 to 80 wood in the mill for the bonus to be profitable, but still not enough to abuse it in case there is a gurjara in the team because of training time and walking time. And sheep are very slow and easy to steal (Iâm thinking about arabia team games here).
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Hahaha oh I miss playing Battle for Middle Earth, thatâs why. And oh the amazing AOE2 mod, Tales of Middle Earth. You are probably right, but the garad is locked behind a big investment - a huge price tag, a really long training time, and a force limit dependent on the amount of Castles you have. So the implications of this in Castle Age is either you give enough time for your opponent to build up an army to prepare against it, or invest on it early by sacrificing being behind in eco in hopes to do damage to your opponent to make it worth it. It is not unstoppable either, since it can be deterred by pikes or camels; even mass cav archers can possibly snipe it, if you do not invest in the Castle Age UT.
The bonuses it gives also is not impressive in head-to-head fights and are rather situational, so if you have a mass of knights with a garad and are facing a mass of Coustilliers, Teuton Knights, or Konniks, you will still lose since +15% attack rate isnât that strong, and getting that small bonus required you to invest heavily, while other civs donât even have to, and therefore would have a better army mass. To get full value out of the unit, your army has to be more diverse, and that usually happens later in Imp. So you might actually need that Army of the Dead ability in some cases 
Well the idea of the design is to give the civ an interesting playstyle revolving around this unit. To perfectly balance it, it definitely needs more testing. If we compare it to the Centurion, the Centurion you can actually mass, and is not punishing if you lose them to poor micro. The Garad also has lesser aura range, and the +15% attack rate is also weaker than the Centurionâs. If theoretically, we pit an army of legionaries and Centurions with two-handed swords and a Garad with equal resources, the Roman army might actually win.
They lack thumb ring and castle age archer armor, so this is their only redeeming factor for their xbows. +15% is actually less than Thumb Ring (which also gives accuracy), so they will be nothing like Ethiopian xbows, who also get Thumb Ring on top of the +18% firing rate.
You are right about their mediocre army, which is why they are reliant on the Garad which needs a big investment. That is why this civ shines in the later stages of the game. Although they donât get Elephants and Lancers because those are regional units.
Then you need to mentioned them as missing from the tech tree. Somalia is in an area where I know they traded for foreign animals and not too far from Nubia and Axum which DID at a point use elephants.
Also multiquoting will make your topic look way leas bloated
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Yup, but countered by skirms and weaker than cav archers when it comes to raiding and as a backline DPS vs. infantry with decent pierce armor.
Yeah this could probably be too strong but this is their only good answer vs. archer/cav archer civs since their skirms are weak; and it is with a bigger investment. So itâs quite situational, and useless vs. civs who will focus on cavalry/infantry.
Hmm but that would require you to invest wood, while the current bonus gives it for free. 70-80 wood is quite steep for 88 food when compared to farms, although you can have 6 vills working to make the food come in faster. Itâs hard to imagine how it could be better especially it is more macro-intensive, and farms will be better as you research more farm upgradesâŠ
Fundamentally, I just donât think that trainable heroes should be a thing in AoE2, which is why this feels like something out of another game. Even if theyâre balanced, thereâs just too much of a mismatch between them and standard unique units, which are usually defined by one attribute, rather than 5 like this dude. It reminds my of my first civ brainstorming post where some of the civs had 8-9 bonuses. Such a design could be balanced, but people felt it was overloaded and too asymmetrical relative to other civs. To me, the Garad is like the UU version of that. I donât really have a problem with any one thing the UU does (except probably being unconvertible), but it seems overloaded and unfocused. I think just having the aura and weapon toggle is more than enough to make it good and interesting. Donât think it also needs to be a stat monster, self-heal, and be immune to monks (although it could have some innate conversion resistance). Having a civ so focused around one unit is hard to balance anyway, which is why among other things Conqs got nerfed but Spanish got a general buff.
Probably, because Romans are optimized around making that particular comp work. Making a composition that plays towards the Somalis strengths would be something like Cavalier + HC, which would do pretty well vs. the Roman comp. Either way, I think a slightly smaller general aura (15% for all units on top of some specific class bonuses) is more useful and it doesnât pigeonhole you into trying make use of an otherwise niche unit line.
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Well they really cannot be converted since that will make them too easy to counter and become unplayable, considering they are such a huge investment. It also defeats the purpose of having a unique unit that functions like a hero. Possibly their stats could be toned down more, but then again, it would be pitiful if they lose a 3v1 fight against knights. Therefore, an investment a player makes on a single garad must be justified, and even slightly more since it is after all their main strength. They are not uncounterable either, since being a cavalry, they can easily fall to pikemen or camels.
You are right that it kinda feels like it is from another game, that is because it would be something new. Few years ago, we didnât have UUs with abilities like Coustilliers, or units with aura buffs like Centurions. Even AOE4 already designed a civ revolving around just one hero, so who knows, the game is continually evolving and introducing new mechanics. This is a concept I like to propose because personally I would like future AOE2 civs to have more interesting and novel playstyles that are historically grounded. 