I think getting at least the Elephant Archers in Feudal Age will not be super broken.
Why do I want Elephant in feudal age?
Because Elephants in war are being used since a long time ago. And feudal age army not seeing the use of elephant is not justified.
Same goes for camels. Extending the Gurjara Camel Scout for more civs isn’t a bad idea either IMO.
No one would spend that much food (and gold) in feudal
So it won’t be unbalanced if it is introduced.
No, but it would be an absolutely useless bonus
It will be broken
The problem is that this would be unbalanced. If you give EAs in feudal, you also need to give cav archers to everybody else. EAs aren’t super broken, but cav archers are.
Why not steppe lancers in feudal? It would be the same reasonimg…
I support the idea of give feudal age more “Castle age” tools. The castle age powerspike is to high for its price imo.
Early CA, KT, Elephants, even siege wisely balanced would be a nice game change I think.
Yes you’re 100% right. It won’t be broken because it will be completely useless. No one can afford to waste resources on those units in feudal age.
Very great, come up with some custom campaign scenario concept or something like that which reflects it but the game itself isn’t a history teaching toolkit. Its a strategy game which needs game balance and this addition would just be something random and unusual.
This itself is a terrible option. The only usefulness is delaying early scout aggression from opponent civs with the starting Camel scout and the ability to add Camel scouts while on the way to castle age which then become Camels. Again, its situational but Elephant archers in their current state will be an unused option. Maybe someday if the stats of that unit are properly adjusted, this might be useful to start adding them early as soon as clicking castle age in some situations.
Ok so everyone agrees that this won’t break balance in any manner. So devs please go ahead and implement this. This just gives more choices for players.
Elephants in Feudal are a bad idea because all feudal units share the trait of being low HP, hence being easy to kill. This is becaause idling eco in Feudal is a huge deal and since the defining trait of Elephants is disproportionately high HP, it would be incredibly easy for them to idle eco.
Furthermore, being a Cav Archer armor class, Feudal Skirmishers wouldn’t get the intended bonus damage vs them, which would pose the question of how much HP and damage would EA need to do in Feudal so that Skirms stay a counter. Feudal Skirms do (iirc) 5 damage to Cav Archers before armor is factored in (they so 2 base +3 vs the “Archer” armor class and do nothing to Cav Archer armor class which needs the E.Skirm upgrade), so possibly a Feudal Elephant Archer should have something like 100 HP max.
At the same time, such Elephants shouldn’t idle eco too hard, so they cannot have 4-5-6 damage, else you just sit 3 Elephant Archers around the opponent’s farms and prevent him from going Castle Age… ever. A 100 HP EA in Feudal possibly should have 2, max 3 damage, which also poses the question of why would you train such a unit for 80f 70g (remember that prices cannot change across ages - Gurjaras Camel Scout being an example of this).
tl;dr: Elephant Archer is both not needed and not balanceable in Feudal. Units like Knights, EA, Siege are also big part of the reason why one would want to advance to Castle Age, remove the age requirement from those and the game becomes a very watered down version of AoE4 where ages don’t bring meaningful power spikes or new units but minor, token stats increases.
You’re on a roll mate
So somehow giving feudal camels to gurjaras watered them down and removed the power spike, giving only token stats
Same applies for hand cannons it seems
Their ability to hit through walls is the main issue. They would have to be very weak with an increased n3gative mod(censorship at its best). Also SL are significantly better the more you can mass, so even if we consider purely the ability to mass pre castle age and then tech into their true version it becomes too strong.
Something similar happens with gurj camels. And even boh HC.
It really depends on the stats. They would likely have to have some negative modifiers. But yes their stupidly high food cost per effectiveness inherently holds them back. If anything the EA is the one that would be too strong in feudal. As opposed to BE, because BE is a worse unit in general with much harder counters for a worse cost
It’s all do-able. If someone said(I’m sure they have) give camels or HC an age earlier you would’ve received the same reaction as seen here
“It’s new/different so it’s wrong”
And on second thought I don’t think you realise how aoe4 works or how impactful the ages are. Specifically how difficult it is or how creative you need to be when facing earlier versions of said units
A couple civs really struggle vs the early MAA of the other 2 civs. When those MAA get to castle age it gets even worse with UTs. There’s most definitely a power spike.
While one civ is currently really struggling because it can’t reach that counter power spike.
And if we consider early knights, there’s most definitely an advantage, french literally wouldn’t win a match if they didn’t have them.
The idea they’re watered down due to being an age earlier is completely off.
Just because the powerspike isn’t as stupidly overboard as knighs in aoe2, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
It would be wasted bonus, cause eles are just too slow both in speed but also in damage output. You can’t raid with them, especially not with the low numbers you can afford at that stage.
BUT I think Cav Archers in Feudal could be a really interesting bonus for a future civ. Or maybe even to one already existing CA civ that could use some new flavour… (ofc they need to be adjusted to feudal age like the camel scout is adjusted)
Like… Persians?
Hand cannons in Castle age are (according to TheViper), very pushed and too strong of a unit to have in Castle age. Do they have counters? Yes. But they beat: Knights, small amounts of Xbow, Siege. Ooh, they die to FU Skirms. Great, Celtic Paladin probably dies to Castle Age Pikeman too, doesn’t mean Celts should get Paladin 1 age earlier.
Regardless I’m curious how you’d balance EA in Feudal. Keep in mind that the general balancing of units is:
I’m curious how you can justify a ~200 HP EA in Feudal, where Skirms don’t have bonus vs CA and where the EA would have to cost some 90-100f to make the amount of HP you get, fair to play against. It would always oscillate between “autowin” (idle eco) or useless (too high food price), with almost no territory inbetween where the unit would feel fair & fun to play vs.
LOL. Dude, something doesn’t break the balance doesn’t mean it should be added to the game.
All military units existed in-game Dark Age (476 AD - 800) in real history, archer, slinger (it is used together with bows in Medieval armies. It is useful and common weapon), heavy cavalry, Siege units (scorpion and Mangonel. Ram is only used in Roman times against weak fortifications. Ram is useless against Medievel solid stone fortifications) everything.
Only plate armor [1] and gunpowder units doesn’t exist in 476-800.
[1] Plate armor reinvented by Europeans after ancient Greeks in late 13th century, invention of arquebus in 1460s diminished its effectivenes but it is used until 18th century by European armies.
[2] it was invented in 9th century but they started to be used effectively in 15th century.
Some designers can introduce “AoE2 Historical” but game would be different game if all historical inaccuracies was changed.
Like others have said, EA in feudal would be useless since it costs too much and it still dies to skirms which are already common in feudal age.
I agree with camel scouts for camel civs. It would make camel civs slightly more interesting without affecting the balance much. Saracens should definitely get camel scout since their camel bonus is the weakest of the camel civs (not counting the UT).
This is why in terms of theme I prefer AoE1. It is true, the fall of the Western Roman empire did not reduce worldwide civilization to just villagers, weak swordsmen and a single horse rider from which this ancient art could be reverse engineered.
For me that’s not a good reason to take one random late game power unit and shove it in feudal age. That’s like starting an AoE2 match with all technologies from part 1 already researched, because clearly those things had been invented already.
If you want stuff one age earlier, there’s a game mode you can try called Empire Wars, which wanted to get to the action faster, that’s the main point, to remove dark age slowness.
But what it didn’t do, was shift game balance around.
It didn’t magically give knights in Feudal age or anything like that.
You either would receive a unit that’s so abysmal in stats like the camel scout, that it’s not even worth creating once you reach Feudal Age because it costs so much and doesn’t even have any useful bonuses for it’s cost.
Or would get such a powerful unit that spears and skirms would need to receive twice the bonus damage they currently have vs that unit.