OK, here’s my first attempt. I know I made different proposals on other threads, but it’s not like there was ONE single solution or approach that can lead to a good result.
I read some of the ideas of other people in the Forum and used this as inspiration for that unit design.
In this attempt I try to make the interactions with the other melee units as easy to comprehend for the players. So the design is chose around that principle that a single “Guard”, as I chosen to name the unit is evenly matched with a Knight and a Longsword. Meaning from a cost efficiency perspective it will counter Knights but be countered by Longswords- And it’s easy to assess an outcome of a battle, by just looking at the amount of units involved. When there are more Knights than Guards, the Knights will win, if there are more Guards than LS, the Guards will win. Doesn’t mean nevesarily a “good trade”, but makes it easier to see immediately who will probably win the fight. Sinple interactions, that make it easier to get a feeling for the unit. I think that’s an important feature if we discuss about a new power unit, that it’s combat interactions are easily comprehendable for all players.
To achieve this, I gave the Guard the Eagle armor class and some bonus damage against Cavalry. Wasn’t too hard to then just tweak stats until I got the desired results. I also gave the Guard quite high Pierce armor (2 / 3) , so it takes a bit less ranged damage. Especially important was this for me with respect of Raiding utility. I think the unis should be a decent raiding unit to justify the high gold cost. The higher pierce armor doesn’t makes it an archer counter, especially as archer civs will add some LS as meatshield, which are a good counter.
For cost and Training Time I also oriented on the Knight. It has the same Gold Cost and Training time as a Knight. Meaning if you fight this with Knights in equal numbers you both will lose basically the same amount of Gold. This interaction gives heavy cav players the option to just try to get a bigger mass and trade then, saving a lot of Gold in the process. I don’t know if it’s really a sweet spot, but it’s easy to understand and comprehend: If you manage to outmass the Guards with your Knights, you can still get a favorable trade. It’s “just” numbers.
Ofc as there are huge difrerences between Cavalier and Paladin in the lategame I had to make the imperial Guard to slightly counter Cavalier in equal numbers and being countered by paladin in even numbers. This is ofset by an upgrade cost in between the two upgrades.
Lastly I gave the Guards a special ability. And this might be very controversial. If you disband a guard, you get all it’s Gold cost back, as a trickle over 150 s. But you get MORE food back. You get 150 F over 150 s. The idea behind this is that Guards can be used in castle age as protectors of the eco against possible Knight raids and later disbanded when they are countered by other units like HC. Ofc it’s only possible to disband them while they are still alive, so it will be kinda uncomment to get both military benefits and the ######### payback. But especially to give a micro feature. If you are fast, you can disband guards IN the battle shortly before they would die anyways. This way you can get both. But that’s easier said than done.
The economic payback is chosen in a way that from an economic perspective with booming in mind, you qould basically get an equal payback if you first make an guard and then immediately disband it as if you would sell the gold to make more villagers. So you can’t boost your eco with it. The main idea is, as these unist have many counters in the lategame (HC/Militia, Arbs with Meatshields), they will become useless very fast. The trickleback after disbanding would allow to make a transition to a better fit for the situation. Like the Militia line. But as transitions are costly you need an emphasis to do so, which I try to achieve by giving more food back than originally expended. But only more food, not gold.
Ofc if this trickleback turns out to be too good it can be tweaked down. I just want to make it attractive in the beginning to put an emphasis on trying it out and what you can then do with it.
So it is basically “intentionally put on the edge of being broken”, to see if it will be perceived as a “cool mechanic” by the community.
I chose to make the unit very depending on BS upgrades and also require the LS and be affected by Supplues (with supplies the Food cost goes down from 45 to 30). This way it’s even more costly to tech into it than into the Pikes, giving the Knights and XBows some time in early castle age. Especially in respect to the interactions with Knights this delay is imo quite important. I don’t want to take away the Knight powerspike, I think it’s quite important for Knights to have that in early castle age (though I would probably reduce it a bit, ### not by giving too easy access to a tool that could shut down it before it’s even there). The unit is designed to be more a “late Castle Age” power unit, leaving the other units their usual powerspikes at the beginning of each the ages.
So here is the design, finally:
| Name | Guard | Lord’s Guard |
|---|---|---|
| Armor Class | Infantry | Infantry |
| Armor Class | Eagle Warrior | Eagle Warrior |
| Produced at | Barracks | Barracks |
| Production Time | 30 s | 30 s |
| Production Cost | 75 G, 45 F | 75 G, 45 F |
| HP | 100 | 120 |
| Speed | 0.9 | 0.9 |
| ROF | 2 | 2 |
| Attack | 9 Melee | 11 Melee |
| Atk Bonus | 3 vs Standard Building | 4 vs Standard Building |
| Atk Bonus | 3 vs Cavalry | 5 vs Cavalry |
| Range | - | - |
| Accuracy | - | - |
| Melee Armor | 2 | 4 |
| Pierce Armor | 2 | 3 |
| Benefits from | Infantry Upgrades | + Supplies |
| Upgrade | 150 s, | 1000 F, 200 G |
| Special | When disbandend its gives a trickleback | of the required Training cost over 120 s |
| Special | Requires Long Swordsman Upgrade | to be trainable |