I think out of all trash units, if any deserves a buff it would be Skirmishers. They are lacking compared to Halberdiers and especially Hussars.
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Speaking of countering early walling, there used to be a counter to early game camping before DE: Tower Rushing. The old strength of Feudal Age Towers ought to come back, now that some of the worst (as in, most annoying) Trush civs have been nerfed/redesigned (Koreans, Incas.) It should be easy to make similar adjustments to the remaining strong tower civs (Spanish, Teutons, i.e. moving the Teutons garrison space bonus to the Castle Age.) Without completely redesigning certain parts of the game, i.e. counter trash units, buffing Feudal Age towers is the best way to reduce the full walling meta, instead of more walling nerfs. Because clever players will adjust their builds to any number of walling nerfs, keeping the walling meta the way it is now in the end.
good points, especially the civ Sicilians is a joke to me.
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OP well worth a read! Good arguments 
My main issue is the cost and time to upgrade spears and skirms is too high. I think reducing those upgrade costs could help more counter play work better. For example, xbow is cheaper and quicker to research than elite skirmisher.
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In imp they are indeed worse but in the mid game they are by far the most effective between those. I mean they were nerfed some time ago as people felt they were a too easy to get into xbow counter while also being pretty good vs pikes. And in feudal you can even defend from maa with them.
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This is a really interesting point. Spears and Light Cav each have a Feudal, Castle, and Imperial unit. Skirmishers only have Feudal and Castle versions, and they start to fall behind in Imperial Age (especially post imperial trash wars). Maybe the Imperial Skirmisher upgrade should be more widely available (without a Vietnamese ally), to better compete with the Hussar and Halberdier.
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Skirmishers fall behind in Imp not mainly because they are lacking imperial age upgrade⊠Even lacking imperial age upgrade, they can perfectly counter archers.
The issue is more about Hussar. Most important trash unit is Hussar line in imp and it is most important unit in 1v1 as Hera stated, and Skirms are directly countered by Hussar⊠I donât think giving more Imperial Skirms resolve that issue, it just punishing archer civs heavily.
Isnât they are supposed to have a bit higher upgrade cost because unit cost itself is too cheap? But archer civ other than Mayans and Britons are on the weaker side (Koreans, Vietnamese, Italians, Ethiopians), and they donât deserve that kind of nerf. Archer line is shine in the power spike of castle age, but in long feudal game, Scout is dominating.
For OP: Why donât you mention some civsâ counter unit also getting buffed? Teutonsâ pikeman/Halbs get extra Armor which means they can survive more hit from Cavarly
Bohemian getting very strong halb against cavarly. Genitours are buffed a few times as I remember. If you also count Hussar line (they are littlebit different for sure), all Last Khan civs have their own bonus or UT regarding Hussar line
I donât think counter mechanism in game is generally nerfed. Just some cavarly civs such as Teutons, Bulgarians, Cumans or Sicilians were overbuffed that there are some unfair matchup against those civs. And Keshik, poles knight, coustillier (Tatars, Poles, Burgundians) are fine because they have some other weakness for those civs that there are not unfair matchup against them.
General Buffing on Trash unit line is bad idea. They are effective on very cheap cost and does not cost gold. Buffing trash unit line means Map control to take Gold become less important and it will buff very defensive playstyle to just boom and defend by only Trash unit line.
If we have to buff counter mechanism to make game interesting. I would propose Buff on Monks (vs Cavarly), and Seige (Mangonel, Scorpion vs Archer, infantry). They are also cost gold and expensive, so not buffing very defensive playstyle to throw out map control, and can increase the unit variability as well.
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Absoulutely true. But that wouldnât be an issue if skirms - at the same time- also only soft-counter halbs. (at least skirms counter halbs far less than halbs counter hussar and hussar skirms) So skirms lack in this department also. Plus skirms are also the weakest of them agains all the gold units that are played frequently in lategame situations: Infantry, (Elephants in certain situations) and Siege.
Skirms are also quite hard to micro as they need to target backline units, all kind of meatshield distracts them from their intended targets. At the same time this kind of micro is often even not worth it as macro > micro usually and also way less revarding than archer micro.
So in total skirms have currently the hardest spot in that triad of trash units. So some buff there would certainly help. Thatâs why I supposed to give them +2 melee armor, that would help mostly against the other trash - make skirms less countered by hussar and counter halbs better. In most other situations extra melee armor for skirm would have almost no influence.
Well the truth is, that in the mid game U usually prefer going for siege against archers anyways. If you go skirms the opponent can easily just add a few knights and your skirms are gone.
Archers have many things they are countered by, not only skirms: Siege, Mobility, Defences.
Skirms can work against them, but I actually rarely use them in the midgame. Because I think Siege is just better in countering archers. Also the ugrade is expensive and long, as archer play is so much about timings, that long of an upgrade in the midgame is just an unnecessary risk to take imo.
Of course this can and maybe should be adressed.
You forget we want to buff all the counters. Not only skirms. Also Halbs. It just happens that skirms are currently the most appearently worst of the counter units. So we discuss them the most. But this doesnât mean we donât want to buff the others also.
Was that with de with the teutons? Canât remember it. But ok, it is a small buff for that specific counter line of the civ. Bohemians are explicitely mentioned as an excellent example for buffing counter mechanics. I think they show that there is nothing wrong with buffing counter mechanics. Nobody complained about bohemians having too strong halbs, literally nobody.
Totally agree there, these mechanics could be further improved. But more in the direction of making it less rng and mostly for the units they are supposed to counter. Not a general buff. Monks and Siege already see a lot of play (at least in the maps that favours them), so they should only be buffed in the specifications they are used for also on the maps they arenât a first choice. I could also imagine to nerf them at the same time against the units they are not supposed to counter. Like making scouts even better against both and making mangonels not hardcounter the other siege anymore.
But still, I think the trash counters are currently in a quite bad spot, especially in the early and midgame. Ofc in the lategame the lack of goldincome makes it necessary to play them, but this expendability of these units should never be confused with actual power.
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Microing skirms is definitely an issue. This is what makes the common CA/Mangudai/Conq + Hussar combo so difficult to fight against. They destroy your front line with no micro, then tear apart your skirms, while you have to micro every shot to even hit their back line.
Iâm not sure what to say about Hussars, they do hard counter Skirms. Chasing them down in a way spears cannot do to cavalry, and easily winning 1v1 unlike Skirm countering spear (even a Turk spearman beats a Vietnamese Imperial Skirmisher).
Itâs fair to say that Imperial Skirmishers upgrade doesnât help any of this. Itâs also fair to say the Hussar upgrade isnât to blame, itâs a very weak stat increase and Light Cav counters Skirms just as well. I donât see any easy solution. Maybe units could be a little smarter with their auto-target selection (Skirms pick Archers within range instead of Hussars or Rams).
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Interesting point. Maybe just Elite Skrims +2 base Melee armor doesnât nerf archer civs much. They become less vulnerable to scout line and better against Halb. But, I think faster firing of skirms can punish archer civ hard and should not be implemented. Or we can think of increasing bonus damage vs Spearman line. But it should be carefully implemented because it can make some cav civs easy to counter halbs.
For Spearman line, I think they are in fine spot, especially in imp. If we necessary to buff them only in early-mid game (and not in imp), how about just increasing bonus damage (+3~4) against cavarly of Spearman/Pike (Not Halbs)? It may weaken the dominance of scout and knight in Feudal, castle age. If it is too much nerf for Cavarly civ, increasing Elite Skrimâs firing rate can be implemented alongside with that.
Yeah. but seige is also very expensive, slow and too weak against cavarly if unprotected. Seige is more prefered is not necessarily bad thing. Of course just small buff to skirms can be implemented like Melee armor as you suggested.
Monks and Seige are more effective in some map setting for sure, but I donât think buffing them make overpower in certain setting, especially if donât nerf some counter unit against them.
For monks, we can make coversion rate slightly faster with less variable range. But, we can make conversion rate of scout remain same or slightly slower, to make counter play against them but more effective in other situations.
For siege (Mangonel and scorpion), you proposed scout more hard counter against them? It make them less viable in open map. Mangonel/Scorpion line in open map is not viable late game because they are so easily countered by cheap unit like Hussar and halbs. In closed map, we can make some narrow passage and block melee unit to approach them but open map it isnât the case.
I would propose weaker version of Teutonâs Ironclad become general Tech in University only for Mangonel, Scorpion (+3MA for Mangonel/Scorpion line), Teutonâs Ironclad can be given +2 More MA on top of that (including Ram and BBC). It make siege less countered by low damage melee unit. But it still weak against heavy cavarly, BBC, redemption monk and arenât really broken (All civs except Mayans, Chinese, Vikings access to either of them or UU can counter seige). Most important siege unit in Arena is BBC anyway, which counter all other siege.
Not really, sieges are too slow, extremely expensive (your first mangonel is actually worth a TC) and one single mangonel cannot counter archers (people at 1.5k elo already split micro like crazy). Skirms are of same speed as archers, thats why they still counter archers.
For melee unit issue you can actually shift click the archer units so that they focus fire on arbalesters and it wonât take too much attention (only worth at late game)
At the mean time skirms are just crazy good at early fedual / castle age, so I donât suggest buffing them too much universally. I think a better imperial skirm is what they need.
DIsagree with that. Maybe there are two or three micro nerds there, but surely not the majority of the players. And also depends on the micro of the mango player a lot. With good mango micro you shouldnât have much problems against archers there.
I mean I also lost against players with insane archer micro. Thatâs just something that can happen. But I also won quite often against them, as they usually lack in macro and decision making. Often just a well placed defensive castle can stop their flow and if you counterraid them they often donât react in time. You also can often pick their reinforcements.
And btw skirms are also quite ineffective against players with good archer micro. You basically need balistics to deal any damage to a skilled archer player. Which is insanely expensive. With mangos I still have the chance to just guess how the opponent reacts and still get a hit. With skirms without ballistics I miss basically every time.
Still a lot of actions you need to do their. And exploitable by the opponent who just needs to walk away with his archers while his melee units can destroy your skirmsâŠ
I think even at that time, they are actually the least played of all the trash units. At least for me. I usually prefer all the other stuff available to counter archers. Only if I see the opponent going to heavily into archer&spear, I switch to skirms as skirms deal considerable well with both. (And btw thatâs a reason why you usually donât want to begin with skirms as the cavalry player, you want you opponent to commit to that comp so you can finally make use of the skirm at his full potential, against both the units it is designed to counter.
Still you need to be extremely careful with you skirms because as mentioned, they die way too easy to basically everything except these two units (and cav archers ofc).
And btw skirms are also quite ineffective against players with good archer micro. You basically need balistics to deal any damage to a skilled archer player. Which is insanely expensive. With mangos I still have the chance to just guess how the opponent reacts and still get a hit. With skirms without ballistics I miss basically every time.
I think generally for any archer war you need good micro beyond 1400elo (archer vs skrim, skrim vs skrim, archer vs archer). Skrims are insanely cheap and one range skrim can hold two range archers tho (with armor upgrade).
Thats also why people rush ballistic before first TC. As you mentioned, it just helps archer war too much (until you learn how to dodge ballisticâŠ)
Direct result of picked civ, imo. Youâre making balance decisions with a skewed pool of data and trying to impact play rates instead of the total game. The last patch was the first actual attempt to rebalance a huge swatch of civs since release and when the dark ages of civ picking began again.
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Hidden civ picking is a wonderful feature and a good boon to the playerbase. Gone are the days of ranked counter picking. Gone are the days of forced random civs. Gone are the days of being forced into being a jack of all trades instead of honing a single choice civ if wanted.
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Itâs so boring. Iâm so sick of seeing the same civs from opponents. Itâs a wide tech tree game, thereâs nothing to âhoneâ and youâd probably be a better player if you went random.
When someone goes into a civ that they donât play often they might assume one certain way is best, like with goth spam, for instance - yet if you play goths often enough you start to realize that hand canons is a good ploy alongside onagers and huskarls/bbcâs/trebs, etc or even skirmishers in some situations - one trick pony civs change based on how much you focus on them / Teutons vs Goths as an expample - one may assume that Teutons is an easy civ win vs Goths yet if the goth player is well versed in the civ theyâll know they can counter Teuton infantry easily with hand canons and utilize their strengths to bring it to a 50/50 showdown.
Itâs a similar situation with goths vs britons, one may assume itâs a civ win for goths yet if britons bring out champions themselves alongside their longbows and heal their units often they have the ability to outclass the goth playerâs spam even in the late-game.
Bull. Youâre making excuses for frankly lazy behavior. There are over 30 civs in the game and we hardly see them all.
And besides, this thread is about balance. Civ picking has made balance changes super ineffective. We havenât seen a huge change to the top civs since release. Thatâs what happens when you have crap data to go off of because 8% of all games are played with one civ.
Civ picking is good for balance since it allows players to bring their best to the civs they play which in turn helps to show a proper rating/win/% per civ.
Iâm more for removing Mirror - now thatâs lazy.
If youâre intending to improve the civ rating system then remove the data from when the civs fight against the same civ to improve accuracy in showing the number of games.
And if 8% are played by one civ? Great! It means more accurate data for that civ.
This is just another reason why civ picking is good for balance.