Yep, that’s the way to go. Infantry should be much better at taking down TCs than knights, since the latter already have the role of hunting down vills.
One could limit it so that infantry is still not particularly good vs stone walls, (guard) tower, and castles, so that it doesn’t fully replace siege. But vs all of the wood buildings, it should be pretty effective.
Infantries should do a ton more damage against buildings and they should be faster to train, imo. Also, champion should do bonus damage against the 3 trash unit lines. And probably cheaper to upgrade.
Most of you have probably seen this video by now but I think it sums up the current situation quit well.
I feel like when people are talking about Infantry being weak they mean Long Swordsman.
The Long Swordsman does not have a clear counter unit so I don’t think they can be made much stronger.
What about these combo of changes
With this
Another “wild” idea is giving militia-line the ability to take buildings (aka convert buildings) and remove this ability from monks, which always seemed an nonsense feature to me.
It is historically correct, and gives militia-line a solid role assaulting and taking enemy buildings.
How this could work? A raw idea is simply copy and paste the monks mechanic, just lowering the convertion rates a lot for balance reasons.
Of course, some buildings cannot be taked (converted), like TCs, Monasteries, Castles, walls and wonders.
Redemption still gives monks the ability to convert siege, maybe its cost could be reduced a little to compensate.
Tbh infatry upgrades are pretty cheap compared to cavalry upgrades, Squires and scale mail armor are 100f while Husbandry and Scale Barding Armor are 150f. Other armor upgrades are also cheaper for infantry. Upgrade cost isn’t main problem, main problem is that Longsword is too slow in my opinion. 0.95 speed and 10 attack for Longsword will be enough, even can be OP in some situations.
I had actually different idea that Longsword/THS/Champion will have stats of dismounted Kinght: 80/90/100 hp 10/12/14 attack 2/2 armor, 0.95 speed, 60f 30g cost in return they will get a trash counter, Light Cavalry with +12 bonus attack.
This isn’t a issue, Champion take castles and TCs much better than Knight-line. Problem of heavy infantry is that they can’t fight effectively against gold units: archer, cavalry, siege and Monk.
One idea to make Infantry more useful is to make the Eagle Warrior Armour Type more common and rename it to something like “Shock Trooper”
Scout line gets +2/+3/+4 Eagle Warrior Armour, they they get a little Bonus damage from the Milita Line but no other Infantry and also none in Feudal Age.
Long Swordsman have +6 against Eagles while MAA only have +2.
Maybe units like the Huskarl or Ghulam could also get this armour type (made up by getting a little better stats in return).
And add more new units with the Eagle Warrior Armour Class that move a little faster then normal infantry.
Generic Shock Infantry that has attack bonus against Archers and Siege.
Generic Shock Infantry that has attack bonus against Cavalry.
(Both of those units would share the same slot in the Barracks as the Eagle Warrior line so every civilisation can only build one of those.)
Real Eagle Warriors would still be better then those units in most situations.
But getting back to the cost argument.
Infantry costs very little resource but it’s not population efficient.
Maybe Barracks units (besides Eagle Warriors) should cost half population, or maybe just the Spearman Line.
In return they would have some of their extreme attack bonuses reduced like the ones against Elephants.
Elephants would there for be changed to cost 2 population. Still very population efficient but not as extremely.
Allow defense garrison for swordsmen in barracks so that thry can come out all together to ambush enemies. Or give siege towers more use and more garrison slot only for swordsmen.
I think a wolf like running ability can solve some issues. If you research supplies or long swordsman then your infantry recieves a running attack like wolf. It wont make too much of difference with Knights but can be very strong vs Archers and raiding ecos.
To make Infantry more viable, dev should implement some generic bonuses, and other relating to some specific civilizations (those labelled as “Infantry”))
Bonuses dedicated to civilizations designated to fight with infantry: Goth, Malians, Vikings, Celts, Dravidians, Aztecs.
Perhaps you could make some technologies or units available in the previous age, as already happens with the Burgundians (Cavalier), with the Cumans (Ram) and with the Bohemies (Chemistry and HC).
For example, being able to have Supplies available from the Dark Age could allow you to set up a reduced-cost infantry rush from the beginning of the game.
Having Squires available since Feudal Age could allow infantry to survive better against the archers, reaching them if in small numbers, running away when in big numbers.
Other bonuses could be access to 2HS in the Castel Age, or even LS in Feudal Age.
Generic bonuses
As already said, cost could be decreased, perhaps also decreasing the training time in proportion. One of the problems faced by those who try to play infantry is having troops that are cheaper in general, but that are not cost-efficients: you can have an early edge in the early Castle age because you can train M@A during the uptime, but to keep up with knights you need double the production buildings.
Another option is to increase or change the armor bonus provided by Blacksmith’s technologies.
The current armor provide these bonuses:
Scale Mail Armor (+1/+1)
Chain Mail Armor (+1/+1)
Plate Mail Armor (+1/+2)
The most basic solution I would try would be to transfer the +2 of Pierce Armor from the Plate to the Scale Armor, in order to make the infantry more competitive in the Feudal Age, clearly after an investment in resources.
If this does not prove to be enough, we could raise even the bonus provided by subsequent technologies.
Make the longsword, 2HS and Champion return some of their value when killed, 20 gold
I do think this was a great improvement in AoE4, but I don’t know if it could even be implemented in AoE2. It would be a pretty big change.
I also kind of doubt it would even fix the problem with infantry here. MAA in AoE4 are already viable because they have a ton of armor and require heavy armor counters to reliably stop.
AoE2’s engine may not be able to achieve this design. A compromise might be to allow Militia to build non-stone military buildings, including the Siege Workshop. However, this might also be quite difficult to balance in terms of AoE2 gameplay.
Imo we have one general design flaw that was there from the beginning.
And this is that Cavalry has too much HP. And the other units also often way less than they should have.
Cavalry should have less HP but higher Attack.
The current design makes it really awkward to adjust the Infantry. Cause they just die way to easy to all amount of ranged attacks, not only to archers. Cause thay are not only slow, but also have a low health pool to tank something at least.
This design flaw somehow takes away the “damage soaker” ability of Infantry which would give it a nice usage when paired with ranged units. Cheaper Infantry doesn’t necesarily solve that issue, it makes it just less punishing to lose your infantry this way.
But this design flaw is in the game from the begiinning and imo one of the big reasons why Cavalry is so strong in the game. With that high HP the units can just survive a bit longer, giving you time to react and care for them. When you see it blinking with infantry or archers it’s often already to late to do anything about it.
Just think about Scorpions and how they annihilate Infantry masses. Doesn’t make any difference how many infantry you send into them. Once there are enough scorpsy you can send as much Infantry as you want, they’ll just die.
It’s also already so that with jsut a little bit of micro you can micro down basically any amount of infantry as long as you have enough archers, to one-shot them (and they aren’t speedy infatry like ghulam).
And it goes also relatively fast. If it at least would take some time, but that’s not the case currently.
In conclusioon, as I don’t expect these things to fundamentally change in the close future I don’t see a way to make Infantry “good” with simple stat or cost changes. They need some special love.
And cost decrease is imo even the worst of all choices cause it wouldn’t help them basically anything in the above listed issues.
If we’re talkingjust about making Infantry “viable” the only “easy” option that would potentially work without breaking the game i see is increasing the HP, especially for the slower Infantry. And especially on lower ages from darke age to castle age. The Champion Upgrade could actually be a pure Attack upgrade (Example: 50, 60, 80, 90 - 1 atk, 90). This would make them just a bit more durable and therefore not so super easy to lose against all kind of ranged fire.
But in general Infantry needs more than such a simple stat boost. You see on the Elephants that just having super stats doesn’t make a unit good. Neither makes it feel “good” ie “revarding” when playing with or against it. When you win you want to feel it’s because you made it work, not because you just chose the right unit with the greatest stats that just bruizes through everything the opponent throws at it. That’s not fun for either player.
I suggest following two new Castle Age Infantry units.
They will both share the same slot so every civilisations will only have one of them.
As you can see the stats are very similar. Cost, HP, base attack, armour class and speed are identical.
Only bonus damage and armour are different.
The total resources is the same as a Long Swordsman and 10 more then a Eagle Warrior or 5 more then a Ghulam.
The base stats are similar to a Long Swordsmen just the attack is 1 lower and the speed is 0.2 faster.
The anti archer version is basically a worse Ghulam, for 5 more resources you get 5 more HP but 1 less attack against archers and 1 less pierce armour, 0.05 less speed and on top of that worse Armour Classes.
But the 1 less attack doesn’t mater too much since both can kill Crossbows and Elite Skirmisher in 3 hits and both take 1 damage from Elite Skirmishers.
Also misses out on the extra tile of attack.
The anti Cavalry version is kinda a worse Kamayuk. 10 less HP, significantly less damage against War Elephants, but 1 more base damage, 1 more pierce armour and 0.1 more speed.
But the biggest disadvantages are the 1 less range and the Eagle Warrior armour class.
Both of the units have the shared trade that they are decent at raids since they are faster then most Infantry and Archers.
They are slower then Eagle Warriors though and also cost 10 more total resources.
That makes Long Swordsmen a good counter against them. Also most unique Infantry should be pretty good against them.
The issue with Crossbow + Knight is that Crossbows hard counter Pikeman and Knights hard counter Skirmishers.
But those two new units would each counter Crossbows or Knights without being hard countered by the other one.
But since they are mutually exclusive to each other (and to Eagle Warriors) they can’t be used in a potentially OP combination.
And they can’t become too OP since every civilisation in the game has access to Long Swordsmen and only one civilisation (Tatars) is leaking a Castle Age Infantry blacksmith upgrade.
To make it easier to counter this unit it could get the Spearman armour class. Maybe with some resistance to it like +2 so Archers and Skirmiehrs would only make +1 damage but Calvary Archer with Parthian Tactics would make +2 damage.
Also removing the Pierce armour would be an option.
But I don’t want the unit to be too weak against Crossbows or else it wouldn’t ever be better then a Pikeman.
If it had 1 less attack against Archers it would require 4 instead of 3 hits to kill a Crossbow or Skirmisher.
Maybe their weakness against Infantry is not strong enough. Giving them -1 or -2 Eagle Warrior Amour would give every Infantry Units more damage against them. (Some unique infantry would need to get 0 attack against Eagle Warriors for that).
Not sure if those units need Imperial Age upgrades. They are designed to counter the Crossbow+Knight power spike in Castle Age.
Those two Elite versions would give them +5 HP and +2 Attack with a little more bonus damage.
The Two Handed Swordsmen gets +3 attack and +2 Bonus attack against them while the Champion adds another +10 HP and +1 Attack.
Unless they get some civilisation bonus they are now falling behind Arbalester and Cavalier.
Unlike Eagle Warrior or Ghulam they also don’t get faster.
If they underperfrom in Imperial Age they maybe should get 1.2 speed for the Elite version.
Have the Eagle Warrior instead.
The 33% faster attack would make those units quit strong.
Considering that Japanese Win Rates are currently not that hight that might be a nice bonus for them. They struggle against both Crossbow and Knight civilisations so not sure which Shock Trooper would be more useful for them.
They have the Huskarl so they don’t need those units.
They would passively benefit from more civilisations using units that are countered by the Milita line.
Their Infantry gets +5 attack against Cavalry which removes the need of the Anti Cavalry Shock Trooper.
Giving them the Anti Archer Shock Trooper might make them too strong considering their massive early Castle Age economic bonus.
Their Infantry plus Siege handles both Cavalry and Archers quit well not sure if they need those units.
The +2/+3 Pierce Armour could make those units pretty strong and they already have strong cavalry and camels so they also don’t need them.
Their +2/+3 for Infantry would make those units too strong potentially and they also don’t really need a buff.
Carried by a good selection of units and good economic bonuses they don’t need +1/+2 armoured Shock Troopers.
Slavic Infantry becomes quit powerful in the late game and they have pretty good cavalry so they probably don’t need those Shock Troopers.
They struggle on land maps as a Water+Infantry civilisation.
They have good archers so also good Skirmishers so the Anti Cavalry Shock Trooper could probably help them more.
They could also benefit from the Forces Levy unique technology turning the cost into 60 Food 20 Gold for a more reliable late game unit.
This way they had something to raid in early Castle and a Cavalry standin in the Lategame.
War Wagons take a lot of damage from Skirmishers without them having any good cavalry to counter that threat.
The Anti Archer Shock Trooper would help them a lot against Skirmishers while giving them an early Castle Age raiding unit.
They are basically the Anti Archer Archer civilisation so the Anti Cavalry Shock Trooper would help them against their Cavalry weakness.
Their Elephant Archers and their unique unit the Ratha is weak against Skirmishers, even in melee mode.
They would also benefit from the Anti Archer Shock Trooper giving them a hard counter against Skirmishers.
Giving them the Anti Archer Shock Trooper would make up for their leak of good cavalry.
With the Wootz Steel Unique Technology they would become quit good late game raiders.
They have the weakest Infantry in the game so they could not really use either of those units effectively.
They need a Castle to get a good anti Cavalry option so they would benefit from the Anti Cavalry Shock Trooper. They could also benefit from the Anti Archer Shock Trooper if they want to use that in combination with their Unique Unit.
With the Condottiero they already have a fast Infantry unit so those tow units could combine well.
Most of the civilisations that could benefit from this unit happen to be in South/Southeast/East Asia. So maybe those units could become Asian regional units.
Giving this units to a bunch of civilisations would be a passive buff for Long Swordsmen because they now have a new role as anti Shock Trooper units and therefor it would be a passive buff to all Infantry civilisations in Team Games as well.
I know that this would be a big change but I’m still putting my ideas out here.
I would raise HP and lower attack of Cavalry instead. In irl it isn’t efficient to fight with swords in close proximity. You would use mobility of cavalry to boost up attack. Infantry having more attack than cavalry while HP is half of what cavalry offers.
Nobody used Swords from Cavalry Back. Swords are duelist weapons with low range, comüarablly to their Weight distribution.
Common Weapons from horseback were Axes, Picks/Hammers, Scythes, Spears and Lances. Sometimes even Lassos.
Only because the OG Devs chose a wrong weaponry doesn’t mean the unit has to have that of a design flaw.
Cavalry was never designed to fight stationary. It’s just stupid. Way too dangerous. It’s too high cost for such a waste. It was always designed to seek for opportunites and kill or wound vulnerable troops with singlle opportunistic blows. Therefore High Attack and low HP for the cost would be the more accurate representation. Maybe more Pierce Armor to compensate the lower HP against archery.
Cause they still have the other half of the mobility. And they have the HP mass per investment that should have been given to the Infantry.
One of the big reasons Why the Cavalry is so strong in the game. And ofc also one of the big reasons why Infantry just sucks, cause they can’t even take a punch.
You want to make Cavalry even more oppressive? Here we go.
aoe2 knights uses swords.
If you tell me I would do this instead. Toning Knight attack down to 7/8(maybe even less) in Castle Age and buffing up attack of infantry like 10/11 with the help of techs and such. To compensate Knight vs Archer meta, I would buff HP like 120/130 ish while Infantry(Long Sword) being around 70 ish. It’ll still make Knight stronger vs infantry but Knights can’t just get away without bad cost trade while doing fine vs Archers as they are doing.
Main reason it makes risky to buff infantry due to how strong Militia to Man-At-Arms transition is in Feudal Age. It can remove the diversity of AOE2 meta just buffing infantry. I think they can do scout cavalry approach for this to give shadow buffs in Castle Age.
Knights with 120 HP and 8 Attack would be even more oppressive than they are now. Sounds theoretically like a “fair” tradeoff but really isn’t. Cause it would be even easier to keep the Knights alive and do more havoc with them in the opponent eco.
Not to mention that against Archery having more durability is usually way more effective than higher attack as it gives you more time to close the distance.
And ofc against Siege it would mean you can more easily snipe them, as Siege usually has very low HP and the issues is usually to get close enough to kill it. Which ofc becomes way easier with more HP…
So no, totally wrong approach, would make things even worse. As I said, Cavalry having higher HP / Investment ratios than some Infantry is one of the big design Flaws in this game.
Ofc this leads to Cavalry being as good and therefore liked as they are today. But this still doesn’t change the fact that’s a fundamental design flaw in the game which makes it very hard to bring Infantry to a “usable” state. As Infantry just can’t take a punch.
In this approach cavalry loses majority of its HP just to infantry. 95% of HP lose just to long swords line at cheaper price while Knight is still being very expensive. It’s a fair fight even at 3:2 ratio of Infantry and Knight. Biggest issue of infantry is they die to every single thing unless trash units. Even food only units like Hussar counters them. Here it makes all non-gold units can’t do anything unless opponent brings their traditional counters like Archers as they should do. Only time you’ll make infantry to catch opponents off guard with spams and it is viable for very few civs. Also in RTS like AOE2, you need rock-paper-scissor counter. Cavalry by design made to raid. Ways to counter them is through making your units of your own and you can do with mixing Long Swords and Pikeman.
Eagles are very good raiders despite having low HP.
Soyou see, the high HP for cavalry is absolutely unnecessary to give them that “profession”.
If you look at the history of AOE2 it’s also very much appearant how this design flaw got into the game and changed up stuff.
Franks were the only ones with that 20 % higher HP which made their Cav so oppressive that they introduced the Bloodlines tech to bring the other Cav at the same level as Franks. And they needed to add the Halberdier upgrade against the super strong heavy cav in the lategame.
It’s one of these examples where this lttle bit of extra HP jsut made a unit excel in Fields it actually shouldn’t and nobody had the “guts” to fix that. Instead there were only attempts to somehow compensate the disbalance caused by this to be compensated by adjusting individual other units rather than the cause of that disbalance.
Cause yeah, ofc players liked it when they just could do Knights and win with basically only them. I remember when I played formerly with my Friends I always played Franks and my whole Army Comp was Paladin + some Monks to heal up. Occasionally I added some Siege. There was nothing else needed to win games.
Don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to express the things more sharply. Also won’t reply to anything anymore that isn’t well and clearly expressed. Some people started here to stay ambigouus, just waiting for others to react and then claim not to have said what they actually did.
Not entirely true. But I would it put the other directsion: One big issue for Infantry is also that there is NO trash counter. Which means necesarily that all civs basically need to have a strong Gold Unit answer against Infantry that can be super effecitve. And also the Militia line can’t just completely dominate Knights cause what will Knight civs do in the midgame then before they have access to Hand Cannons?
Also Partially because of that Bloodlines tech. But it’s not really “countering”. It depends heavily on the current Food prices on the market.
Theoretically yes. But too expensive. LS don’t add much there anyways, just a bit more durability against Skirms. But skirms aren’t out then and even if they were, they automatically prefer targeting the “weaker” pikemen.
This type of comp in the current state isn’t really working. Only in things like the Goth flood where one huskarl can tank like 70 arb shots once he is targeted and the units are spread out everywhere this works cause the units don’t change their targets once locked in. (This could btw be changed to make it easier to deal with that macro nightmare.)