And siege ks more pop efficient than elephants, yet no one complains about siege being too pop efficient
What is done in other games doesnt matter, AoE2 is its own thing and messing up with the pop space usage of generic units would be weird
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There are some serious anti-elephant civilizations out there. Celts for example, their siege onagers just melt elephants. The Incas might be the strongest anti-elephant civ due to the Kamayuk.
Plus the Chinese DLC might have some serious anti-elephant implications. Regardless, elephants are mostly seen closed team maps. Almost never in open maps like Arabia.
Yeah, I’ve never much cared for the idea. Population efficiency is an element that has value, just like damage or armor does. It’s sorta like saying it’s unfair that some unit has so much armor, so they should have less hp so they take the same number of attacks to kill. It defeats the fundamental point.
Which isn’t to say you can’t PLAY with these things in unique sub-cases, but to play with them you must have consistency at the higher level of abstraction.
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Not necessarily. Skirmishers don’t really have much of a super hard counter the way the Spearman Line has. They are even more durable then Archers because of their armour.
Also Skirms are a ranged unit so more of them can attack at once.
Halbadiers are limited by path finding and how many can actually reach the enemy. Cavalry Archers can kite them forever if they want to.
And as I said the anti Spearman bonus damage can be adjusted. Giving Skirms and Arbs 1 more damage vs. Spearman would already limit them significantly.
Because siege is fragile and clumsy. Even if your enemy has 200 Onagers you can relatively easily beat them with a few Hussars.
Population efficiency still exists as a value even if not all units are 1 population. This is already the case with the very few lower population units that already exist.
If Elephants and Spearman have a different population then Paladins are still very population efficient compared to Hussars.
Giving units different population doesn’t erase population efficiency as a factor, in just makes this factor more interesting.
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Then what we need is a hard counter to eles, like cav is for siege
Also, siege can still kill cav, its just tricky
I strongly disagree. Pop efficiency becomes a less important factor once you open the door to rebalancing the late game bu changing pop usage
MONKS. It’s MONKS.
Seriously people use monks, they screw elephants so badly. Stop whining about a bad unit.
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Monks are a bit too fragile to ranged units tbh
- Be Bengalis.
- Ally with Teutons.
- Unleash super population-efficient, fast-attacking, bonus damage-resistant, and almost conversion-immune Elephant Archers and Battle Elephants.
- Profit.
It’s been a while since I played AoE4, but I recall the elephants being a pop-efficient unit despite costing 3 pop there. And the result is that an elephant mass can easily win games. So pop-efficiency is still a factor even if you have multi-pop units.
Even with the conversion resistance, monks are still a strong counter against elephants. Because monks are OP. And converting a single elephant justifies the full cost of a monk (or two).
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Elephants may be less pop eficient than paladins at 2 pop per unit
That absolutely does not make anything ‘more interesting’. It does the exact opposite, by reducing the number of factors involved, it makes the game less complicated and less interesting.
You think that elephants are too population efficient, so they should be less so. That directly reduces the impact of population efficiency. It’s the direct equivalent of reducing the armor of units and increasing their hp to compensate. You’re reducing the factor of armor. You don’t think, say, removing armor upgrades would make the game ‘more interesting’, do you? Of course not.
I would be okay with a conditional, limited way of changing population efficiency - like my idea to give elephants riders, which would sacrificially be converted instead of the elephant, allowing conversion resistance in exchange for taking up twice the population capacity. This is approximately equivalent to mixing in a few battering rams to soak up ranged attack damage.
But changing the population efficiency of units on a broader scale is just straight-up off the table. Never, ever going to happen, to the point it’s not even worth bothering to talk about. You might as well ask for resource collection to be removed.
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Elephants would need to be even stronger if they costed two pop. Like 300 more hp, and even more armor and attack. So War Elephants do like 30 damage instead of 20. And have like 920 HP.
Elite Battle Elephant would have to be like the old war elephant with 620 HP.
Halberdiers and onagers/siege onagers/scorpions do a lot of damage to elephants.
I have never suggested that all units should have their population costs adjusted according to their strengths.
Only Elephants and Spearman no other unit.
Comparing it to removing resource collection is ridiculous. Every AoE game has resources collection but all but AoE2 have different population costs for different units. AoE4 only has it for Elephants, Siege and Ships. Every Cavalry, Infantry and Archer have the same population (with the exception of the Order of the Dragon where all units have 2 population).
This does absolutely not remove population efficiency from the game at all.
So 95% of units would still be 1 population and therefore still have very different population efficiencies.
Also I like the idea of making conversion resistance according to population cost so Spearman would be converted faster than other units while Elephants are converted slower. So having higher pop costs has an advantage.
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Only the units where it actually matters, in other words. What’s next, getting rid of stone because you only use it for a few niche buildings?
You’re missing the core point; that these things are distinct for these units for a REASON. You COULD make castles be built with just wood, but that only reduces the complexity and depth of the game.
Similarly, you COULD remove population efficiency as a significant factor, by getting rid of it for all the units where it’s important, but that will only make the game worse.
Seriously, get over it. It’s never going to happen.
There was a single Elephant unit in AoK/AoC. So if the population of Elephants would be doubled and no other unit would be changed then there would be a single unit of a single civilisation that existed back then changed.
It would be very much still be AoE2. I’m not wanting to destroy a core feature of the game.
btw. AoE4 still has Stone.
I don’t understand this blind hatred of anything from other games in the series.
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That was before bruh… Or explain me how you counter 60 elephants full resist with monks. Maybe I miss something.
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Are we sure that camels dealing not even a single extra damage to the elephant armor class is not an oversight?
I’d like to know the answer too. It seems they trade not that bad but they are far to be a real counter.
They don’t FULLY resist monks. They partially resist them.
You counter them with a mix of monks and whichever unit they are weak against. Either skirmisher or spear. If either are not available, camels for Battle Elephants and Bombards for the ranged ones. If only the civ in question here got some sort of gunpowder bonuses…
Games are more than just two units slapping each other in a vacuum. If your opponent has the time to 60 of the most expensive units in the game, then you have had time to come up with a countermeasure.
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Easiest way is to keep them from getting 60 elephants (that isn’t cheap). I think the next best option would be enough siege onagers to one-shot them (not exactly cheap, but then, neither are 60 elephants). A large scorpion mass might also work (they do get bonus damage), especially if they have some kind of meat shield in front.
Truthfully, if your opponent can get 60 elephants and you don’t have a counter prepared, you deserve the loss. The cost of 60 elephants is so high that if someone gets there, they would have the ability to win the game even without the elephants.
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