That’s a terrific change and I’d love that. It also makes them do 1 damage to maa even with fletching
No that’ll be an overnerf and will make feudal archers and xbows OP. Speed must strictly remain equal to xbows and foot ranged units.
Thanks. Sounds perfect, I love that change too
The first option should be a must, with just some stat tweaks so Longbows fit the 45 gold and 25 wood cost.
Having two unit lines of the same type with the same features feels pretty redundant. The difference between them isn’t very noticeable anyway. The total 11 range is already enough in most situations, and that extra +1 range doesn’t really change much except when they’re sniping bombard cannons.
If Billman is introduced as a new unique unit that is halberdier-like and costs gold, the feature would be designed around their hook-based weapons. For example, its attacks could affect enemy unit stats like the Obuch does, but reducing movement speed instead of armor. Additionally, since a bill is lighter than a halberd, it could have lower bonus attack than a halberdier but a faster attack speed, potentially making it even more effective against cavalry.
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perfect, that’s more like a modern civ design
If such changes are made, I don’t think there is a need to buff their feudal age. I would expect their castle age and imp age would be pretty good and not 1 dimensional.
Btw, I saw someone proposing billman as regional unit like fire lancers?
If there should be a regional unit added to north/central europe it should be the Shieldman.
Super cheap trash unit that could even take half a pop space with good hp for it’s cost, A bit of Pierce Armor and small Bonus against Archers, particularly strong against Skirmishers.
They are decent on arena.. but could still be better. 1v1 BF? They’re actually good.
I agree with all the other takes, though.
It’s the good bonus. Deer-pushing didn’t change it, the all-in 1 TC games did.
They totally do.. just that it’s hard to get to it. They do get FU champions and good skirms of their own with yeomen and faster working ranges. In the mid-game, you are pushed off with massed skirms.
Actually OP.
Right now, Britons fall really hard to the Savar, houfinice, hussite wagon, eagle warrior, ghulam, huskarl, Polish winged hussars, mongol SO and rams. Buffing their militia line helps with a lot of these. Granting them bloodlines helps their cavalry deal with siege more effectively
I would recommend a few buffs:
#1. A bonus like militia line and skirms +50% attack bonus (except vs. buildings). As in champions become an even harder counter to eagles. Skirms become even against archers and spearmen in general.
#2. Give them bloodlines. Long overdue. They literally have top tier hussars in age of empires 3.
#3. This one is optional: Give them hussar or bombard tower. Bombard Tower makes sense because they are a slow-push civilization and helps deal with things like Savar and Paladin more effectively. They even have Bombard Towers in some Joan of Arc campaigns.
#4. Restore the team bonus to its former glory and maybe give them a bonus like defensive and archer techs cost -10% (that means town watch, town patrol, hoardings, conscription, fletching, bodkin arrow, bracer, padded archer armor, leather archer armor, ring archer armor, masonry, architecture, ballistics, guard tower, keep, treadmill crane, heated shot, crossbowman, arbalest, elite skirmisher)
#5. Another option is giving Elite longbowmen +1 attack. Helps deal with eagle warriors, paladins and savars more effectively… or giving them attack bonus vs. siege. This way, you’re disincentivized from spamming rams.
A minimalistic buff would be
#1. Get bloodlines
#2. Modified civ bonus: Foot Archers (except skirmishers) get +1 range and attack bonus vs infantry and siege per age (starting castle age). Helps deal with most of their non-cavalry counters. Spamming siege, ghulams, eagle warriors and huskarls will be less viable now… an alternative is giving longbowmen (and elite) +1 attack.
#3. New civ bonus: defensive buildings get +1 attack per age from feudal age and the tower effect of yeomen is removed.
#4. elite longbowman upgrade cost changed from 850 food, 850 gold →750 food, 750 gold OR yeomen cost changed: 750 wood, 450 gold → 500 wood, 400 gold. Tower buff removed from yeomen.. as mentioned in point 3.
Some of these, yes, Others not so much. Polish winged hussars miss last armor upgrade, leaving them significantly more vulnerable to ranged attacks than generic hussars. Eagles, ghulams, and huskarls can all be countered by champions. Savars can be deal with by using halbs, but are still essentially a anti-archer focused paladin. Mongol SO are still outranged and can be sniped from afar by the archers they’re supposed to counter.
Adding extra attack to ranged units does not sound like a minimalistic buff to me - British archer masses are already difficult enough to deal with. But I personally think that either bloodlines or a new 10% faster archery range civ bonus (in addition to team bonus) would be enough of a buff for Britons.
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With whom? Italians? Don’t they need a second UU even more, something like Galleass, to better represent regions outside of Genoa? (The Condottiero doesn’t really feel like a second UU, even though it technically is.)
Just saying, after the Pavise was removed, the Genoese Crossbowman could be renamed to Pavisier, like in AoE3, so the name wouldn’t limit them specifically to Genoese.
Not Italians. It should be Celts. But I forgot who proposed this.
Lol. I guessed the Italians just because the Wikipedia page for Bill (weapon) has mentioned the Italians.
I remember that the potential regional unit often mentioned for the Britons and Celts should be the Hobelar, which upgrades from Scout Cavalry and replaces Light Cavalry.
Celts cavalry? For what purpose? Britons does not need stronger cavalry either.
I don’t know. It all depends on the designer’s intention.
Just a random idea, perhaps after upgrading to Hobelar, the unit cost will be reduced from 80f to about 65f and it will gain a bonus against skirmishers; however, the line won’t have an upgrade equivalent to Hussar, no such thing as Elite Hobelar. In this way, Hobelars have their own niche, especially in the Castle Age and in the trash battle, but most of the time they still cannot serve as a mainstay unit.
i think to achieve this the solution to this is to nerf more civs. if strong feudal age is the exception, it means all these power crept civs become viable again.
considering how buggy the game is, and the bullshit they’ve been adding, i wouldn’t be surprised if some of these people have never even played the game.
i think that’s too big of a change for a classic civ (arguably the most classic civ)
the sheep bonus doesn’t give a lot of resources compared to some other bonuses. Usually a sheep is eaten in about 40 seconds (.25 decay per second, eating a sheep with 6 vils gives ~90 food, so 10 food lost to decay). so for 8 sheep that saves about 320 seconds of villager time, that’s not even 150 wood. It’s not nothing, but lots of civs just have straight up stronger bonuses.
I commented on Ornlu’s State of the Civs 2026 video and wanted to comment here too:
Britons will always be weird if they keep being an archer civ with a unique unit that is just a slightly improved version of its own archer line.
For example:
Chinese Archer-line doesn’t fire multiple arrows as a Chu Ko Nu.
Vietnamese Skirmisher-line doesn’t have the attack damage and speed of Rattan Archers.
Mongol Cavalry Archer doesn’t have a bonus vs siege and isn’t as easy to micro as Mangudai.
British Archer-line, in contrast, have almost the same range of the Longbowman.
Either Longbowman must gain a new trait/feature or be reworked into a replacement to the Crossbowman and Arbalester. A new Castle unique unit would be needed in this case.
I think it’s more of a design issue (design creep?) than a power issue. Unless we want to give even more range to Longbowmen…
Do you think that Britons need only a simple buff to its numbers (or a nerf to other archer civs), or is it a design issue?
I like the idea of giving longbowmen faster moving projectiles so that they can’t be dodged as easily (maybe even making ballistics somewhat redundant for them)
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Just lower the range bonus to a flat 1 and make thr starting longbow range like 7 (9 elite) that big 7 range number WILL stand out and then you can give them thumb ring with the caveat it will not work on Longbows
How about making longbowmen available at the archery range?