How do you distinguish light infantry and heavy infantry at a galance?

Light infantry counter Heavy infantry, and Heanvy infantry counter Horses, right?
How does a veteran player distinguish them when they are mixed?

I have tested various combination of graphics options settings, but I still felt my eyeballs were bleeding :see_no_evil:.

Help


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There are no universal features on units that can immediately tell you whether they are shock infantry (previously labelled “light infantry”) or heavy infantry just by looking at them. You just have to know the various units well enough to be able to identify them by sight or you have to select the unit and hover the cursor over its portrait to see what it is tagged as.

If you are having trouble distinguishing between units visually, you can also consider disabling Temporal Antialiasing (TAA) with this mod or consider adding image sharpening with the Nvidia Control Panel or AMD Adrenalin programs, depending on what GPU you have. See this thread for instructions on how to add sharpening.

TAA makes the graphics blurry when the game is zoomed out. Disabling it or adding sharpening can drastically improve the game’s detail when zoomed out.

As an added note, not all shock infantry counter heavy infantry. The Coyote Runner and Eagle Runner Knight, for example, are both tagged as shock infantry, but the Coyote Runner counters artillery and skirmishers/archers, while the Eagle Runner Knight mostly counters cavalry.

EDIT: Shock infantry do not counter heavy infantry. Skirmishers/archers counter heavy infantry.

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Do you think it will be a good idea to add class labels above unts like CoH2 and Sudden Strike to help noobs like me ?

coh2
sust3

use spectator mode and read what they are, on the description when selecting a unit and then hovering the mouse over the photo will appear “heavy infatery” if it says heavy, then u dont have to read the rest.

if it doesnt say heavy, then is light.

granadiers are light i think. i dont remember but they are infantery

You have to know them by memory. Use spectator mode to know

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this is not heavy infantery because its not there “heavy infatery” thats all we have for now, the rest is to use memory.

I actually think it might, yes, though it will also make the screen more “busy”, if that makes sense. Personally, I think it would be a good idea for the devs to just begin by adding unambiguous tags that are clearly and immediately visible when you select a unit, instead of the current way where you have to select a unit, hover over its portrait and then try and decipher which class it is supposed to belong to between all the different tags. They could even add the relevant icons they currently use to indicate the damage multipliers to each unit’s portrait. They could also add something like that to the unit tiles at the buildings where you train them.

I wonder how hard it would be to make a mod that does this. If anybody reading this knows, please comment on the feasibility of making such a mod.

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From what I understood from a news post, if it runs up to you and whacks you in the face with a sword, club, whatever (i.e. coyotes) it’s shock infantry. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Granedier are heavy infantry

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This is actually a pretty decent description of shock infantry. Unfortunately, though, it’s not quite as simple as that, because there are units that do those things but are not shock infantry (e.g. Rodeleros, Club Warriors, melee Caroleans), and there is at least one (the Eagle Runner Knight) that doesn’t do those things and is still shock infantry.

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there should be a chart that shows all shock infantery in game inside game to learn it

By the discription from wiki I think these club/sword and runner units should be labeled as cavalry with additional bonus against cavalry.

And I think grenadier should be labeled as artillery but exceptionally weak against shock infantry. I know it feels weird but i think it is easier to understand for the noobs like me.

Archer/Skirmisher good vs Heavy infantry and Ranged cavalry
Heavy infantry good vs Ranged cavalry and Hand cavalry
Ranged cavalry good vs Hand cavalry and Artilley
Hand cavalry good vs Artillery and Archer/Skirmisher
Artillery good vs Archer/Skirmisher and Heavy infantry

Each type of units can counter two types of units and can be countered by the other two units in most situations. There are some exceptions I don’t know though.

Shock infantry like runner units can be seen as Cavalry with exceptional bonuses.
Grenadier can be seen as Artillery with exceptional bonuses.

These are my understanding so far.

the term light infantery doesnt exist

It’s not about heavy infantry, you meant to say musketeers.

Only musketeers blend in.

Other heavy infantry such as Pikeman are fine to see.

You have some of them right, yes, but others are wrong. I will explain them as best as I can:

  • Shock infantry good vs skirmishers/archers (i.e. units that attack with range, but are not tagged as heavy infantry or shock infantry) and artillery

  • Heavy infantry good vs all cavalry and shock infantry except ERKs

  • Ranged light cavalry good vs hand cavalry and artillery

  • Hand cavalry good vs artillery, skirmishers/archers and shock infantry

  • Artillery varies in what it is good against, but all can be countered with shock infantry or cavalry.

Some notes:

  • In the original AoE3 (before the expansions), skirmishers/archers were called light infantry. In The Warchiefs expansion, this was changed, so that only those units that are now called shock infantry in the Definitive Edition were tagged as light infantry. So in the complete collection of the regular edition of AoE3, Coyote Runners and Eagle Runner Knights were called light infantry.

  • There is heavy ranged cavalry (like Hakkapellita) and there is light ranged cavalry (like Dragoons and Cavalry Archers). Skirmishers and archers have multipliers against light ranged cavalry only.

  • At this stage, the symbol for hand cavalry and “general” cavalry is the same, which is very annoying, since some units have multipliers against hand cavalry only (the ERK, I think) while others have multipliers against general cavalry (like the Musketeer), but you can’t tell this just from looking at the symbol next to the multiplier.

  • Unit A does not necessarily need to have multipliers against Unit B to be considered good against Unit B. Shock infantry are a good example of this, like the Coyote Runner, which has no multipliers against skirmishers and archers or artillery, but still counters them because it has high speed, ranged resist and, importantly, the units it counters have no resists or multipliers against the Coyote Runner. Therefor it can counter them without having multipliers against them.

Typing these things out, I realise just how confusing this must be to understand for new players. I had to go play around in the scenario editor to get clarity on some of the counters, which is really so unnecessary.

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Ok, I mistake the term “shock infantry” for archer/skirmishers.
“Shock infantry” means those runner units which are the alternate of hand cavalry for the civs without horses. So basically they can be seen as hand cavalry.

I have edited my previous message, I hope I am basically right.

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it would be good taht when we click on a sign, a chart is open showing all units included on that type that are used on multiplayer

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chart on this iu too, that we could click and see what units are gonna be affected

Exactly! You’ve got it now. For the Aztecs, the ERK fills the role of Dragoon or Cavalry Archer. Except for them, all other shock infantry I can think of now fill the same role as hand cavalry.

It would definitely help to have such a chart somewhere, yes.