Extra pierce armour for Swordsman+?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Is there a reason we can’t get at least +1 PA for swordsmen and up? I’ve been using Mali a lot, and even their lovely guys get hurt a lot thanks to awesome pathfinding(switching targets, reclumping, pausing etc)

i know archers are meant to counter infantry, but at this rate they seem to counter them better than say pikes vs knights(slow speed so can just avoid them, nevermind actually beat them)… or skirms vs archers (especially since the archers can micro the skirms)

or does this offset the anti building dynamic too much?

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It will make them much stronger against Towers, TCs and Castles too.

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Arbs still need to micro to beat champs in equal numbers mind you, flanking is also a possibility. Arbs need meatshield to comfortably counter champs in large nos

archers can’t beat skirms with micro unless the skirms are lacking attack upgrades

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I’d rather give them extra attack instead of extra pierce armor

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I would rather fix the pathing. After the fix we can have a look to this kind of balance changes.

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Or maybe they need to have a slighty faster movement speed than archers, so that they can actually catch up with them?

If you make them tankier to arrows, they might become a “kill-all” type of unit. They’d counter archers, skirms, pikemen, light cav… and still do “ok” vs heavy cav. Plus they’d tank town centers and castles too, as noted before.

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this could potentially break malian swordsman busted.

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That can be acordingly balanced. Dont worry so much about special cases.
The bigger picture is what matters.

And the bigger picture is simply that the Millitia line is absolutely unviable in Castle Age and in Early Imperial Age, and is never used, especially the Longswordsman, which is why they need buffs of some kind for sure.

In my opinion, we should make sworsmen different from the tankier cavalry rather than similar to give them true viability as a niche.
This is but one suggestion, I would have them increase the attack of all Swordsman and Swordsmen UUs, apart from a food cost drop for those UUs.

My suggestion
Millitia : 4 attack
Man-at-arms: 7 attack(+1)
LS: 12 attack(+3)
2HS : 13 attack(+1)
Champion : 14 attack(+1)
Condottiero : 12 attack(+4), unbalanced unit
Shotel Warrior/Elite : 19/22 attack (+3/+4), 20% attack raise to preserve it’s niche, and also stop being underpowered

This way, the millitia line remains just as frail as before, and easily counterable, but now the opposing player actually has to be careful about the possibility of Longswords in Castle Age too, and also keep in mind that their units, including Light Cavalry line are to be kept away from these Swordsmen

It also gives LS, 2HS atleast a fighting chance against the Knight domination in Castle and Early Imperial. Infantry civs can now atleast consider the Millitia line as a cheap option for meatshield/filler army.

Japanese/Malians might even be able to go Pure LS, which would make the meta more open in terms of strategies.

It also ensures Champion isn’t OP bacause its only +1 attack for them
AND is an indirect buff to the hardly-viable-in-post-imp underpowered HC and recently nerfed Slingers.

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yeah sorry, i don’t trust your opinions when it comes to balance, as you’ve literally given us zero reason to do so.

first of all, 12 attack before upgrades on the long swords? get real.
and the 2h swordsman going to 13 attack is a +1 buff, it got +1 attack in the forgotten expansion.

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No not necessarily. I know lot of people want the Long Swordsman to be more viable, but think this. Not every unit has to be viable at every point of time in the game. The Milita line already dominates in Dark Age (only unit 11), Early Feudal (especially Slavic, Malian and Celtic) and Mid Imperial Age onwards. It drops a bit in Castle Age and Early Imperial Age because wood = food = gold in these situations. Even in these two phases, the long swordsman excels at killing eagles and destroying towns due to +4 (another +2 after Arson). Considering forging and arson for units and armor of common buildings (4 armor for TC, 2 for houses, barracks etc, 8 for castles, all without masonry) and 11% faster attack of Knights, the dps for Knights vs LS are:
vs TC: 3.88 vs 6
vs House, Barracks etc: 5 vs 7
vs Castle: 1.66 vs 4

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what!? no ways i never knew that… O.o wow…

read my whole post next time

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archers would still kill them just as easily… so higher attack wouldnt help, it would just make the mbetter against the things they already counter.

i dono about that one bro… seen way too many games where archers easily wipe champs nevermind long swords (which is what i was originally referring) especially if you plop them on a hill, or even give them a couple buildings the swords have to path through…

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Besides your sarcasm, I actually did answer your last question.
It would make them too strong against defenses.

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absolutely broken for many civs now that we have supplies.

personally id just make LS upgrade cheaper and make eagles cost +10F -5G.

The only issue with swordsmen atm is that it’s expensive to both tech into supplies and LS to counter eagles. Eagles are too spammable since gold is not an issue until mid-late imperial age.

I would not like swordsmen to have a same role as xbows or knights in castle age. It is supposed to be a slow and clunky unit, and due to economy in aoe2 works, it’s only natural that a high food cost unit is fairly weak in castle age, but is stronger when you have more than enough food income to sustain villager production. The only way to “fix” this would be giving swordsmen some weird cost mechanic that makes it more affordable in castle age but more expensive as the game goes on.
This does not really fit aoe2 IMO.

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aka “buff the unit that has no counter when it’s rushed” You could argue that men at arms are borderline the best unit among swordsmen.

This thing has the same firing rate as a samurai, requires no upgrade, runs and is produced super fast, so this change would definitely make you complain like you do for eagle warriors.

You’re not “preserving” its niche you’re making it waaaay better 11 One forward castle would allow to delete whole bases with shotel spam. Also, a FU elite shotel without upgrades would have 244% the base attack of a Mayan eagle, according to some quality logic I stumbled upon in these very forums.

I don’t have all the thresholds in mind but I know it would make Burmese champs able to 2 shot villagers like Aztec ones do. So +1 is definitely changes stuff (like negating the enemy’s last armour upgrade)

If you wonder why it was nerfed, it’s because it was somewhat cost effective against xbows, which is dumb for a counter infantry unit.

Not sure about that eagle tweak but otherwise it sounds good, especially as the LS upgrade is more expensive than the xbow upgrade for some reason (also, let’s remember to make bagains slightly cheaper before it becomes an “indirect Bulgarian nerf”)

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that’s fair, I’m not sure myself either. on second thought, in TGs it might make meso pocket a little more awkward, particularly incas.

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Clarification : the Japanese condo has the same firing rate as the Japanese samurai, so the base firing rate are the same as well.

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yeah that is an odd one, i wonder if it somehow couples to the m@a rush into LS

but just to be clear… everyone here saying sword line is fine, but if they were to fix the pathing/unit behaviour, you’re implying the sword line would need a nerf, since they would then be more effective then they currently are… if you think otherwise then yall need to start playing more to realise how bad it is…

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Also, another issue I have with Infantry in general is this tech, whose effect is too weak in my opinion.
And buffing Arson could be the way to make Castle Age Infantry viable as Siege-esque units that can fight back units.

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I disgaree with this.
First of all, the archer problem should be solved with pathfinding. And the swordsman line shouldn’t counter archers. With extra pierce armor there would be no doubt they are very strong against archers.

The extra attack would help in many things. They would be radically better versus knights, the competitor melee unit. While knights should counter archers, the swordsmanline could be used well against knights, with the current supply tech+better pathfinding, it is really possible to swarm the enemy. You could say that there is already a counter for cavalry, the spearman line, why would I use them instead of swordsmen, pikes are much cheaper, have the same speed and deal better damage (against cavalry). The answer is that while pikes are a defensive unit, the long-swordsmen are offensive ones. With decent amount of damage against buildings (factoring in the +1 attack), they could actually force fights that are advantageous for the infantry player, unlike with pikemen. Note that one long-swordsman costs 45 food and 20 gold with supplies while a knight costs 60 food 75 gold, and you can even mix in some pikes for help, since you must hvae enough barracks.

Currently both cavalry and archers counter infantry, and archers and cavalry are pretty even against each other. I think this is not fair for infantry. I see this being fixed mostly by pathfinding, since that would help infantry in both against cavalry and archers, while it will help cavalry against archers. With good pathfinding, archers will still be superior versus infantry, if the player can micro, while they will be inferior versus cavalry, and infantry and cavalry would be pretty even (with supplies, a very underrated tech). To achieve the rock paper scissors gamestate, infantry should counter cavalry. And I completely see this being achieved by giving more attack to infantry, so with an increased damage they can force fights, and will also put up a much better fight against cavalry (+1 attack can even increase damage output by 20%, assuming knights and infatry players both teched into armor)

Summing up I think the infantry problem should be mainly fixed with improved pathfinding, but I don’t see why +1 attack would be a bad buff, even after better pathfinding (and it is also a really good buff before pathfinding gets fixed)

My proposals:
Supplies cost -25 food
Long-swordsman +1 attack
Two-handed swordsman +1 attack
Champion research time -10 seconds, upgrade cost -100 food (FU champion stats won’t change)

I would be really thankful to the devs if they could implement this, infantrys’ weakness is a long time discussed problem, and many players are bored of seeing only knights and crossbowmen in teamgames (look at recent BoA2 tournament), it is also disappointing that civilizations that have infantry bonuses usually tech into other units (for example vikings, malay and japanese archers, slav knights are much more often seen than infantry)

EDIT: long-swordsman and two-handed swordsman bonus damage versus eagles probably should be reduced by 1, if this balance change happens