This was some time ago.
These times you have basically to move out once you have enough to kill villagers. Otherwise you lose too much time and the opponent will punish you.
One of the reasons why we see these super fast feudal archer builds more and more these days.
It’s not necesarily a bad thing as this means the archer/xbow balls aren’t as big as they used to be. Therefore there is less chance for super decisive mangonel hits.
I generally think the reduction of mass of the big archer balls is actually tendencially a good thing. It was always highly volatile and this is a bit reduced now.
But we have to see that the design was for higher masses of archers and only a few other units added.
These days we often have lower numbers of archers or xbows but often a lot of spears or pikes accompagning them. Often even additions of Knights and/or mangonels to deal with the Skirms or mangonels of the opponent.
This complexity makes it really hard to deal with the Cavalry powerspikes. Also you have very limited variety as you need to be prepared for the cav to jump on you at all time. You need enough pikes to fear away them. And the Pike upgrade is expensive and takes long.
Cavalry civs on the other hand often just can use towers to buy time. Which I am not against, but as archer civs with your archers forward you don’t really have that kind of tool against the Knights. Especially not one you can make in Feudal already.
What could be some kind of solution would be an addtion of a new infantry unit that soft-counters Knights but doesn’t need as many upgrades as the current ones. So when you are behind (not too much with any civ, not only archers) in your Castle age timing and you already have to expect the Knight rush you could make that unit to fear away the Knights. Isn’t a replacement of Pikeman as it should cost Gold and should have way less bonus damage, but it could function as a way to somehow “bridge” between the Spearman and Pike powerspike. At the expense of when you pivot to pikes your other infantry addition wouldn’t scale.
In the continueation you have to make the decision whether you want to pivot to pikes or stay with that alternative that is in it’s effecitveness somewhere in between spears and pikes against the Knights.
This type of unit could come as a new Power Infantry Unit
In the current state of the game it’s probably the best situation to introduce such a new Infantry unit. The meta is very stale and established. Infantry only plays active roles in the very early and lategame really. Cavalry is dominating on various map types (even on Arena, though there it’s mostly light cavalry).
It’s the optimal setting to add a new Infantry unit that somewhat restricts that Cavalry dominance in the midgame. But it needs to be an Infantry which is strong enough on it’s own and doesn’t function as a Knight counter only. Just a soft-counter that’s enough to fear away the Knights when you have a big enough mass of them. Also it needs at least one counter unit that is less gold intensive. Potentially even more. (Eg the militia line, a slinger-like archery unit. And it could also be softcountered by xbow, CA and Scorpions. As long as it provides enough utility on other ends (like raiding and pressuring) and is iconic enough for a power unit.)
Agree, this kind of engagement rarely ever happens these days anymore.
Thing is, why should the Knigth player even take that kind of engagement? (This is the simple version, but it’s ofc more complicated in reality)
Yeah, that’s the thing. As Knight player you just wait until you have the mass that just gets the better trade. As xbow player you try to deal as much eco damage before this can happen. That’s why you add stuff like pikes, Knights or Mangonels to your mass. To make the opponent need more than just a few Knights or Skirms to jump on you.
The times were you sit back and try to mass your xbows until you have that “critical mass” are basically over.
Nah, it’s really depending on micro. 28 is a considerable mass these days as it let’s you 2-shot knights. But it’s still a considerable mass as you won’t lose all of them against a mangonel. If you pay close attention you probably can even outmicro a single mangonel with very few losses.
The critical information i miss from you is that it’s not hard to get to like 20 Kts. And 20 Kts clean up 28 xbows so easily, it’s not even funny. I know it’s more investment. But its worth that investment, you get out of that fight with so good knight numbers you can deal a lot of damage to the opponent with.
That’s the difference between a mass of 50 xbows vs 20 knights when both players to an all-in or 28 xbows vs 20 Knights when only the Knight player is at 1 TC at this stage. Then the Knight player often has like 12-15 Knights left and the xbow player has nothing to defend. Ofc he would have added that 2nd TC earlier, but 12-15 Knights can do a lot of damage to a 2 TC eco.
And as I said the times of the huge archer balls are seemingly over. And I think that’s kinda a good thing cause it makes the games less volatile with the mangonel shots.
But that leaves the Knights with an advantage, as the Knight player is way more flexible in his macro approach. He can always opt for either adding more military or more eco and the xbow player needs to adapt to that.
What I also see here is that you only look at basic “Knights against Xbows” standoffs. But I don’t think this is a fair comparison. Most of the times the units don’t actually fight each other but instead try to deal damage to the opponent eco.
Also Knights need generally less attention than archers which makes the macro play easier. One of the big reasons why Knights are so heavily used rn is that you can so easily split them and just run into the opponent eco. It’s way more demanding to react to this in a proper way than to do that. So in general when playing with Knights you have an advantage in terms of “attention economics”. The macro is just easier for the Knights player in this matchup. At least if there are raiding opportunities.
And ofc this makes the whole discussion about “KTs vs XBow” so much more complicated. As it indeed isn’t as easy as a simple “who wins in a fight with equal ressources”. This plays a role, for sure. But most of the time they don’t fight each other and when they fight it’s usually the Knight player who determines the condiions of that fight. Ofc he can be wrong in his assessment, but as you analyzed:
In most actual fights that happen between Knights and Xbows the Knights actually win. Cause they only take that fight when they think they’ll win it.
I’m not sure I want to change that, actually. I just want to reduce the dominance of Knights in the current meta.
It could potentially even be a good thing if the Knights would win these standoffs more consistingly (pathing greets). But instead there would just be better ways to counter Knights (raids).
I don’t need 28 Xbows to kill 14 Knights. It’s not necesary. I add pikes to my xbows these days anyways.
The biggest problem I see currently in any matchup is the interaction of xbows and mangonels. The other interactions are fine for the most part. Ofc there’s always potential for little tweaks, but the only one that I consider “entirely broken” is that mango vs xbow playout.
I thik it’s ok that mangonels counter xbows, but I would like to see it play out less volatile. Xbows don’t get immediately flattened when hit directly, but mangos having more consistant damage ouput even when the bows try to dodge the mango shots.
But this doesn’t has to do with the topic of KTs.
The thing I criticize the most with the current Knights design is the amount of eco damage you can deal with only very few of them. This leads to Knights being absolutely broken on Open maps as you can make like 5-6 “Raiding parties” with 3 knights that can terrorize an entire eco.
This has little to do with the interaction with xbows actually. It’s really just about how Knight raids are so absurdly hard to deal with, especially when they occur at different locations all the time. It’s a macro nightmare.
I think that can be done. But indepently.
The big archer powerspikes on the age-ups ever made issues (like with the famous vikings 3 TC Fimp Arbalests). I think it would only be benefitial to the game if the line would have a smoother powercreep. And TR (can be cheaper or have increased effect) and Ballistics are surely techs suitable to adjust that in the midgame.
I personally would prefer making the pike upgrade cheaper or adding another tool to deal with the knight raids more effectively/increase the numbers needed to make a succesfull raiding party (atm it’s about 3 knights which is actually really cheap for the amount of damage they can deal).