Other than hussars, skirmishers, and halberdiers, we already have the following bonus and unique trash units:
Anyone wishes for the below future trash units?
Which upgrades do you think they should sacrifice to trashify the above?
I guess maybe missing at least final upgrades. I don’t think galleys would be a good option, trash galleys might be too good, unless you missed a whole lot of techs. Trash Battle Elephants might be really interesting for Dravidians, if Medical Corps was replaced. They already have a terrible stable, and lack Elite upgrade, so it might be a good test.
Assuming the trash version would mean their elephants’ gold cost would be replaced with food it would make them even worse, unusable in castle age because of the food cost and unusable in Imperial because they would die to pikes horribly even worse than elite ones.
The high food cost is one of the reasons elephants aren’t worth it in the first place.
I think Polish knights are essentially trash knights, not literally, obviously, but they are really, really cheap on gold and miss paladin.
I guess they could try trash CA without Bloodlines, Bracer or Elite, anything less than missing those 3 would be too OP I think. Maybe I’m wrong, but from my experience even unupgraded CA are still decent in Imperial if paired with other units.
Edit: Maybe give them bracer but don’t give them the last archer armor.
You don’t have to do a full conversion. Probably need to up the food cost slightly though. Or it could be a -80% gold cost or something instead of full trash unit. I mean, Dravidian BEs are already trash, but still.
I think only Rams and Siege Towers have the potential to be trash siege weapons.
Definitely not to make existing ships trash.
Maybe make Canoe a new unit that only costs wood, as a regional unit for some civs or as an UU for a new civ.
An unit designed from scratch would be bealanced easier.
In my concept for the Khitans, they can have trash CA after researching the expensive Imperial UT “Ordo”.
But they won’t have the Heavy CA upgrade, and the trash CA will cost double the wood, or even more.
I’ve considered even making this civilization no Thumb Ring, Parthian Tactics and Bracer. Just give the elite of their UU, Crossbow Cavalry, extra armors and range to make up for it.
I have suggested it on the another thread, but for the Malays and not for the Dravidians.
Dravidians:
Malay:
My initial intention is for Dravidian BE to have a decent bonus without preconditions, however the trash BE must be a kind of effect provided by UTs otherwise it will be broken.
With the current condition that both the civs have no Bloodlines but Husbandry, I think cheap elite BE is more suitable for Dravidians than trash no-elite BE, though it could not be as cheap as the Malay one due to the 2nd armor (and even regeneration). The Dravidians have a more distinct elephant theme than the Malays, so they deserve better quality elephants. I give this UT to Malays not Dravidians in exchabge of the discount bonus. Anyway, the original Castle UT of the Malays is even rarer and more useless than Medical Corps, making it a free bonus is more helpful to recover the Malays’ naval identity.
i would love the simple change to make Imperial Skirmisher a regular skirmisher upgrade since it’s the only military unit without an imperial upgrade, and then give vietnamese a new bonus while making the “Opponent TC position known” their TB
this would help quite a lot in layer of complexity and trash fights, where skirms are arguably the worst unit, and help them counter arbalest better even if one upgrade is missing, since currently skirms without 1 blacksmith upgrade are simply not a good counter to arbalest
Everyone forgets about my boy the genitour
Mangonels with a UU to make them trash units but no Onager upgrade could be interesting. Probably they’d also need to lack Siege Engineers, and they’d probably still feel strong.
Scorpions are pretty much the same but more dangerous. Ironically I think trash scorpions could be stronger than trash mangonels.
Trash galley/fireship/demoship could work. But with island games already often being decided by wood running out, I’m not sure it’d actually be useful. Unless the gold cost is replaced by food cost maybe.
Trash knight sounds like a bad idea, because that’s just a convoluted hussar.
Trash camels could be really interesting though.
Trash CA… the natural comparison is with genitours. They’d need to have better stats then genitours to compensate for lacking bonus damage, but if they cost only wood they could be really convenient. I’d vote for trash CA on a civ that lacks Chemistry. (as well as other upgrades)
Trash BE sound like a bad idea.
Trash EA however, with the gold cost replaced by wood cost… could be interesting.
I’d also like to mention trash eagles, with the gold cost replaced by wood cost. With the right combination of missing blacksmith & eagle upgrades, they could match FU Hussar fairly closely.
Do people even use siege towers?
I agree. Battering Ram cost 300 wood may actually be okay. Not sure whether they have Siege Engineers or not
Also agree. If there is one unit that is an interesting concept for the next trash unit via a UT it’s the ram.
I just want to mention that all trash units need to have at least 1 trash or semi-trash counter. Malay trashmen are already on the edge of unfairness cause they don’t have a real “counter” in the trash countering wheel. At least hussars kind of soft-counter them.
That’s why trash monks seemingly isn’t a problem as hussars counter them quite well.
I would be very interested in trash rams. I think this would eb a really cool idea for Cumans as a replacement for the stupid mercenaries tech. Cumans lategame isn’t the best either, so having access to trash rams wouldn’t make them immediately OP even if it turns out to be a very strong tech.
Something I also want to share here because I also want to give the thread a little tweak.
Imo we could think of adding some new general trash units to diversify the meta. I tried to make this in one own project but couldn’t find the time to make the mod I wanted. But feel free to be inspired by my
Hypothetical trash unit thread
Containing designs of several new trash units which could be fun to play with. The exact designs are hidden, you need to click on the arrow before the Unique Unit of each of the Civs I inclined them into.
I tried to give each of these trash units a natural Gold composition partner and also tried to make each of them countering one of the typical main compositions (like skirms counter archers/spearmen).
Shieldmen are for pure Inf comps, Jinetes for monk/HC/siege comps, lightbowmen for camels, chariots for elephants and flamethrowers for steppe lancers.
This conceptualization really clean my mind. Thank you so much.
In this sense Hand Cannoneer and current Elephant can never be trash unit (even elephant in Malay level is still too strong as a trash unit). For EA if that EA is like Genitour which throw spear maybe it is viable.
Mangonel is not possible and Scorpion maybe possible without Siege Engineers or even Chemistry. Petard also can be possible with a large creation time and no Siege Engineers.
sorry, how do you get from “trash units need trash counters” to this conclusion?
EA are countered by skirms and halbs, and mangonels are countered hard by Hussar. Scorpion is a problem because in large numbers it can counter cav too.
And then there’s the problem that the entire premise is flawed; Malay 2Hswordmen counter all trash units. Sure hussar can do ok against them, but they’re hardly a soft counter, and not all civs have hussar and that’s not a problem.
Another idea
Trash Camels (115 food) for Ethiopians with Castle Age UU tech. Ethiopians doesn’t have bloodlines and last armor upgrade. It will be balanced.
In return Halberdier tech will be removed from Ethiopians tech tree and Shotel Warrior creation time decreased from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
I’d rather have Halbs and subpar camels that still cost gold. This seems like unnecessarily harsh.
Ethiopians Camels are worse than subpar. 75% of civs have Halberdier and go Arbalest+Halberdier in Imperial Age. I am trying to give distinctive opiton to Ethiopians comparing to other civs (especially Britons). Otherwise, Ethiopians is okay civ.
I understand your plan but this bonus would fit better on a brand new civ especially to entice more African expansion.
but why would they go for camels? like seriously? they get free pike and halbs complement their army very well, n2m the potential for halb + siege pushes.
yeah, that seems like just a nerf across the board. this is just a terrible idea.
seems like more of a nerf then a buff to me to be honest.
so do that with a civ that actually could complement their camels with their arbs. not by forcing a civ with completely garbage camels to go for them. n2m it conflicts COMPLETELY with their free pike upgrade and of course, strong siege.
Yes, a harsh nerf.
20 chars