General infantry ideas (need more love)

Hello i feel this game should give even more love to infantry. I know they got +1 Pierce armor but still its close to the same it was. Still for a civilization to go outside knight /crossbow meta must have absurd amounts of bonuses to infantry to be viable.
(Just ideas as most battles were fought on foot.)

I would split main infantry line (militia) into two categories:

  1. militia - maa - longsword - new light infantry (new shielded unit upgrade in imperial age.) this line should be little bit more resistant to archers (still can be kaited), stay cheap and be better at soaking damage in imperial age and killing trash units. The new unit and longswords should have base 2 pierce armor. (they are still countered by archers as should be but can last longer under fire)
    And if i can get rly picky i would rename units to militia - early light infantry - light infantry - elite light infantry but no matter.

  2. two-handed swordsman should be a separate unit line that starts in imperial and goes to champion as is now. I would add some health to generic champions and reduce some absurd bonuses to some infantry civilizations. But for the most part can stay the same. (so its easier to tech into late game.)

And also not all civs need access to Two handed swordsman line, as the new light infantry would cover the late game anti trash also, though not so heavily.

I know its a lot to rebalance, but what do you think?

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Won’t happen. Even though a few people have had various suggestions of similar ideas.

They don’t need to overhaul militia line. So it’s a waste of resources. They just need tweaking

Cost adjustments, stats changes would be enough.

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Generally speaking the 1 extra bonus damage the archer-line gets against infantry should be changed to spear-line. Foot archers get +1 or +2 vs infantry should become an imperial age tech available in the archery range (like parthian tactics).

Other than this squires should become cheaper and militia line should get a speed upgrade by default in castle age to match the speed of crossbows.

Adding a whole new line of infantry seems interesting too. That can help with balance a lot depending on the stats and upgrades on the unit.

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As far as i know archers were countered mostly by archers and shielded infantry. Cavalry was a high risk/high reward situation when charging archer positions. As each was really good againts the other. Bows kill horses as moslty unprotected big targets, but horses can close the gap fast.

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Are we playing the same game? :thinking: Xbows only get +3 v spears(which should get reduced), only plumes get an anti infantry bonus

Would be good to see. It’s a buff to eagles(cheaper squires)and Americas in general (infantry over cav) but at least a net buff to LS with that speed buff.

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Oh for some reason I thought this was +2 vs spears and +1 vs infantry…my bad. If infantry are that weaker even without any bonus damage from ranged units against them, they probably need some cost reduction. Like 50f for militia line by default, Supplies reduces it to 40 food. Probably good if Supplies were changed as infantry cost -20% food and the base food cost of eagles and halbs increased to 25 food, 45 food respectively.
This will also buff the infantry unique unit civs.

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What about macemen or axemen? Seems better to differentiate than 2 different lines of swordsmen. In any case, I support this because the barracks is getting comically small compared to the stable.

Although my preferred solution would be adding +1/+0 to the champion line starting with longswords. If you’re going to have a unit that is both low-mobility and also unable to attack at range, it should at least be fearsome once it actually connects. This primarily helps infantry vs Hussar line and halbs, the area where they are supposed to shine anyway. By comparison, this would do nothing to help infantry vs archers, building fire, scorpions or HC ect. So their weaknesses would be relatively unaffected.

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I agree with this. I always thought of locking the speed increase behind the Longswordsmen-upgrade, but changing it with reaching Castle Age would work as well (just like Scouts change their speed from Dark Age to Feudal Age).

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I’ve considered making a thread on this, but there is an overriding factor that limits infantry:

All unit types other than Infantry will do a percentage of harm to their counters. Knights, while innefficient in gold cost, will do harm to pikes. Infantry however generally will not do any harm to archers while taking heavy damage from them.

This is added to by the number of other serious counters out there of course: hand cannons, Freaking Slavic pikemen, etc.

If we are talking historical stuff then Infantry eventually wore enough quality armor that arrows were greatly reduced in effect. “Countering” as it’s done in video games, is second to moral anyways through pretty much all history.

Edit: As I see it, a somewhat increased PA combined with much cheaper upgrade costs, or maybe even a speed boost, would work. Just something to let the swords line trade slightly better, or at all, vs archers.

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If food cost is reduced by 10 by default, instead of having another food reduction, a speed buff only for militia line will be better. But I don’t see their food cost is reduced to 50f. Pre-mill Drush and M@rush are already the most common openings in high level. I don’t see devs buffing that opening even more.

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well this is kinda well represented. As armor improved in quality so did the poundage of bows to counteract it. So archers needed to be more dedicated than before to still be effective. and last armor upgrade increases pierce armor greatly so arrows are not so effective anymore unless in mass. (crossbows and archer line should also be separated as are totally different things, but that strays too far from topic.)

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