I think it would be appropriate to give civs belonging to Late Antiquity (the Goths, Huns, and Romans) the Palintonon, the Trebuchet equivalent from Chronicles.
These civs predated the introduction of Trebuchets to Europe, so it is historically inappropriate for them to have access to that unit. This proposal may seem contradictory with my dislike for the Traction Trebuchet, but there is one significant difference: Palintonons have identical stats to the Trebuchet.
The main reason I don’t like the Traction Trebuchet is because it has a gameplay difference. Every civ needs a proper Treb for balance, and the 3K civs, besides being inappropriate additions in general, suffer because the Traction Trebuchet is far inferior in almost every way.
The Palintonon does not have this problem, which means that giving it to the three civs I mentioned would be purely aesthetic. There are no downsides to doing this whatsoever aside from people maybe feeling like the original game is being touched too much, which is a can of worms that’s already been opened for years.
I don’t know if the Palintonon was necessarily in use during the Late Antiquity period, but there’s a 100% chance that it was used more than the Trebuchet.
Anyway, that’s enough about that. I need to learn to make my posts concise…
Not sure about the Goths, as they also have access to cannons. But it would make sense for Huns and Romans, as they don’t cover the time when counterweight trebuchets were introduced.
In any way, I’d be grateful if the Palintonon and also the Priestess were available as separate units in the Scenario Editor, or hero versions of them. It’s not possible to get them 100% right for non-Chronicles civs with Modify Attribute triggers alone.
Which itself is anachronistic as their kingdoms didn’t survive the early 700s. And other germanic peoples they often are used as placeholder for (Saxons Lombards…) didn’t last much longer
Balance issue? I still think they should simply be bombards for old era civs. You still need something far distance but mobile like bombards.
sprite wise they look very different but in some way agree. But still hate to see Gunpowder units in the time “Chronicles era” actually take place. When it can be resolved with sprite change.
Before the Spanish were introduced in The Conquerors, the Goths were also meant to somewhat represent the Iberian civs, as they are pretty much direct descendants of the Visigoths, which explains them getting HC
Strange, I’d rather have picked the Franks for them (who also have gunpowder) as the spanish kingdoms were kickstarted by West Francia. While Goths were used for eastern european realms like Poland and Russia in the campaigns.
It could also be for balance reasons. If the Goths didn’t have Hand Cannoneers, they’d have basically no cost-efficient response to enemy infantry trained to counter their Huskarls.
Likely yes, though facing Goths with infantry would be a daring move as they already have a cheaper militia line that is expected to overwhelm you.
Their flat +10 max pop at imperial is weird though, it doesn’t scale with the max pop. Maybe it should be replaced with their infantry taking less than 1 pop space (say 0.9 or 0.8).
Their poor defence (no stone walls) also doesn’t match the Spanish at all. Castile is litterally named after castles due to how fortified it was. And they needed that to keep control over the north of the peninsula.
Flat +10 at 25 means +40%, that’s massive. It would make them the strongest civ in that setting, and booming to say 20 villagers instead of 15 would be achieved in DA anyway so the enemy wouldn’t counter that. Leaving you with both a significantly stronger eco and larger army.
If we go with that logic why not use the full set of unit skins from chronicles for civs like romans huns goths celts?why should those civis only get an ancient skin for one unit and not all if they are ancient peoples.
Not Celts. The Celts are distinctly medieval aside from the Woad Raider.
The Chronicles skins are quite clearly too ancient for the Late Antiquity period. By that time, technology was closer to medieval levels. Ergo, the default AoE2 skins are fine. The Palintonon is the only unit appropriate for the time period that isn’t too dated.