not a bad idea I would say. Pretty solid actually.
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This would be interesting for sure, as it will make 2HS cost efficient against knights. But it bring the question of balance, especially for civs with good milicia line and castle age siege.
Maybe we would then need to add a new weakness to 2HS. Currently we have to bypass the LS to knights pseudo-weakness by adding pikes, which make the comp weaker against any non-cavalry unit.
Not sure about that. LS+pikes lose to xbows or scorpions, light cav+knights lose to pikes or camels. Xbows is much more mainstream/meta than pikes/camels.
Not if you include the Maa and LS upgrades.
This is unfair as LS have half of the hp and less PA than a knight. When the knight player loses a knight, the LS player loses at least 2 LS (+ they cannot easily escape either)
Yes they have 12 attack. Yes they would be fine, at least for one specific civ.
If Champions become weak to hussars, they need to become good against something else, like knights.
Buffing against the scout line and decreasing the upgrades cost/duration are 2 thing that I am fine with.
Yeah, this is the main hassle with the LS line: if you exclude the niche intetaction with eagles, they are “designed” to be weak, and that is compensated by huge buffs to infantry units.
So we cannot buff the champion line too much without nerfing every bonus of “infantry” civs.
As satisfying as it is to flood with champions once in a while, I would much rather keep things as they are now than having champions becoming the most standard play for the 25 to 30 civs having FU champions or equivalent.
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That wouldn’t change anything imo. As you said xbows and Knights live by their respective powerspikes. Knights need almost no upgrades. For xbows you usually have a bunch of archers lefover from feudal.
Both units are excellent in dealing economy damage , especially raiding.
A 2HS upgrade in castle age alone would require you to first have enough LS leftover to upgrade, otherwise you lose the timing. And then you would be lef with a bunch of 2HS which can’t even raid as they are slow and frail, die to any TC fire super easily.
What would be necessary to make the militia line play a generally bigger role would be to bring all ubrgades except the champion down one age. The MAA could be either a bit weker in Dark Age (and automatically improved once reaching feudal) or be a bit more expensive when they turn out to be a bit too strong there,
The other upgrades of LS and 2HS could potentially be made a bit cheaper to fitt the economies of the respective ages.
Here is an example of one of my own civ designs I tried to built up around that bonus:
I gave them access to all militia upgrades except champions one age earlier. I gave their skirms extra damage against archers so they actually can somewhat deal with the archer line of one age above. I gave the militia line a passive ressoruce trickle equivalent to about 1/5 vill, so there’s an encouragement of making the line early and upgrade them later. That’s imo better than something like a cost reduction to the upgrade, as it encourages to mass them earlier, not just on the way up. They also get the pikeman and halb upgrade one age earlier for the same reason as their skirms have extra damage output. Lastly they even get a tech that gives their foot units extra armor.
And even with all that I still question wether this will be enough. Or if we maybe just will see an 5 Maa rush in Dark age and then standard play with archers until the very lategame where their Champs can become very Powerful again.
LS actually already beat Knights in a “fair” fight. Issue ofc as the Knights can chose when to fight they will take it when it’s in their advantage.
The current meta is to use your military powerspikes to damage the opponent eco and then add eco behind that. And I just don’t see the current LS or 2HS really fitting in their, as they aren’t made to deal a lot of eco damage with few investment. Imo the high food cost isn’t even the problem anymore as in the current meta we usually get out of feudal with a really high farm count. meaning in early castle age we most of the time actually have enough food that could be used to make LS. Even on the way up. The issue is just that the unit doesn’t offers the thing we want at this stage, which is A) a military powerspike that’s very hard to deal with feudal units and B) just pure Raiding potential. And with very low investment as we want to transiotion to boom asap, to get the economic advantage.
As it is desctribed it will basically never be used, at least on any level above like 1k2 elo. It just doesn’t provide what you’re looking for in a unit at that stage.
That’s generally one big reason why I ask for adding a differen infantry unit instead. Champions are already associated with certain playstyles. Also the whole militia line (except for the MAA) doesn’t has any “iconic” thing with it that qualifies them to be seen more than once in a while. It would become very boring and then hated if the militia line would become one of the power units in the midgame. People would become angry just because they don’t want to see that line there.
The reputation of this line is already settled and I don’t see how this could be brough back.
Lastly the low gold ratio of the militia line plus having no trash counter actually disqualifies them already to become a “power unit”. Power units need to have high gold ratios so they aren’t “expendable”, to give an emphasis in caring about them an trying to keep them alive. Also the (semi-) trash counter is an important factor for a lot of reason. One of them is that the opponent should still at least have a chance to win without gold access.
And the current milita line is exacatly designed around actually not having a trash counter. Meaning it’s one nice tool you have to your disposal when you have still access to gold but the opponent doesn’t.
With all this, the Militia line just isn’t eligible for being a “Power Unit” in my opinion.
Really ? I think 2 supply LS lose to 1 BL knight while costing roughly the same:
- 2 LS: 90f / 40g, each has 60 hp and deal 7 damage / 2s (kill in 18 hits)
- 1 knight: 60f / 75g, has 120hp and deal 9 damage / 1.8s (kill in 7 hits)
For comparison, 2 2HS kill in 12 hits. So LS should confortably lose and 2HS should confortably win.
Maybe, I cannot tell that easily, so I stay cautious witu buffs.
If 2 HS do not need pikes, then 2HS + skirms or scorpions pushs might become a problem for civs with good castle age infantry (goths, malians, japanese,…). I could see a tech switch from feudal scouts or archers, and then a tech switch to infantry on the way up to castle age (if your archers or opponents archers got cleaned up)
But if this is not a problem above 1200 elo and people wouldnt use 2HS, then by all mean we can move the 2HS upgrade to castle age.
I fully agree.
If the enemy opens Xbow, you don’t just blindly go LS + Pikes. You go LS and, for example, Siege instead. The point I’m trying to make with Xbow is that unless you have a mass prepared, it’s not an easy transition because they need ########## Bodkin, probably 2 Ranges… this is a lot of resources. Of course if the opponent is on Xbow as a main unit, I would advise against Pike + LS, just like I would advise against going full Knights if opponent is already on 3 Barracks Pikes.
with Arson LS smash they have more than 2x the dmg output of a Knight resource-wise.
in general, they wouldn’t be fine. Already civs like Vikings have a UU with brutal attack which would actually be quite viable in Castle age IF you could mass it. You are proposing to basically create the same minus the bottleneck (Castle requirement).
Right now, Champion beats Cavalier, and resource-wise, trades about evenly vs Paladin (or narrowly wins, I forget). Vs Hussar, Champions win narrowly.
The problem is that in late game, you would rather have 40 Paladins than 70 Champions, because assuming a 130 pop eco, the 40 Paladins are more pop-efficient and have a bigger steamroll potential than the Champions.
Vs Hussar, although you slightly win the 1v1 trade, again there is a consideration that the Hussars can just ignore you and go raid, and the Hussar player can just defend with Murder Holes Castles vs the Champion flood. Even in a pure fight, assuming no Halberdier or a small amount of Halberdier, if you are trading Champions vs Hussars, you are trading Gold units vs Trash units, as cheap as Champion might be, it’s not a fight you can keep up forever, while Hussar flood lasts forever.
Overall, Champions are better at killing buildings than Cavalier/Paladin and their cheapness in terms of gold makes them a viable choice in Imp. The main reason they aren’t seen is really their interaction vs Hussar, and if they had +3 vs Hussar, you would be forced to tech into HC or some form of Archers to counter Champions.
Oh yes, the 2HS + Champion upgrade combined soak too many resources (Champion upgrade especially) and take slightly too long. I think if we buff Champion upgrade with a -150f though, we could possibly start seeing Champions along with a +3 vs Scout-line (maybe in the beginning +1 or +2 would be enough to make baby steps).
Also in buffing Champions you need to remember that again, it’s not just Champion flood, but it will always be Champion + Halb flood. So you need to not create a meta where in Imp, Infantry civs suddenly start playing like Goths and spamming infantry vs your buildings. Burmese for example is already a potential issue here, they don’t have the discount of Goths but they also have 20 attack on Champions.
Also I will admit LS in Castle Age is a bit of a weak unit, mainly cuz of the farm argument above, and since you don’t start massing LS in Castle age, massing Champions in Imp is a taller order when most other civs come to Imp with their main unit already massed.
Just as a data point I made a fixed cost estimator that calculates the fixed cost required to produce a unit when utilizing a given number of villagers. @Temudschinn this is relevant to your earlier calculation.
It has some idiosyncracies like fractional production buildings but the point is that its highly correlated with actual costs, even if it has issues. Its far from perfect so make a copy and mess around.
Using the settings I plugged in, full armour knights are actually not much harder to get going than bodkin xbow if the xbow player researches gold mining. Which means the bottom line is knight production can start very fast. And this is with 0 eco bonuses. You take a civ like Franks or Teutons and these numbers can drop a lot (assuming you start to incorporate other things like eco upgrades). Unsurprisingly camels are about the same as knights depending on what upgrades you get.
Monks are of course dirt cheap to tech into you just need to have the timing down and not be afraid to build 2 or more monasteries for the timing.
But you’ll notice that longswords cant keep up at all. Even vs full armour knights, the longswords cant afford any blacksmith upgrades or a non-barracks production building because its death by 1000 cuts with all the little upgrades they have to buy. Sure m@a, longsword, squires, and supplies arent expensive on their own but it adds up to 600 extra resources. It takes a lot of assumptions to reduce that to something manageable. Not to mention you need walls when using slow units like longswords if your opponent has cavalry.
Its a similar story for pikes but for slightly different reasons. Theres really only one way to use pikes: reactively. Using pikes proactively is just a recipe for the enemy to boom or tech switch or castle drop or basically do anything but mindlessly spam knights. This means that realistically you need more production than you expect, and youre likely going to be out-upgraded in the short term (needs empirical verification), either killing slower or dying faster. So rather than the 1.5 : 1 ratio that even upgrades produce you need closer to 2 : 1. Which further amplifies the production problem.
I honestly cant understand why the timing and/or fixed cost structure on pikes is even like this. The unit performs fine as a defensive unit to protect siege, archers, and infantry. But these units and compositions are not hard to counter, especially if you fix longswords at the same time. Pike + archer → scorpions or pure archers, pike + siege → redemption monks + infantry/archers or just onager + longsword, pike + knight → longsword + monk/pike maybe mass archers, pike + longsword → scorpions or archers or UUs etc.
If someone can give a principled reason for why these fixed costs should remain as they are I’d be very pleased. Because as it is, I cant make heads or tails out of why pikes (and longswords) have these barriers to entry. Its as if scorpions, xbow, cavalry archers, hand cannons, buffed infantry, anti-infantry UUs, etc. All dont exist and if the barrier is lifted the meta will be infantry spam.
Whilst I agreee that the additional investment into the Militia line is an addtitional point which holds the line back.
But the main issue is that it lacks any raiding ability.
I would rather prefer an addition of a new infantry unit type that can be used in the midgame.
And this new type can be countered by the current militia line, cause it could just get the “eagle” armor class. Possibly the current attack bonus vs Eagles could even be increased as we see that even against the current eagle warriors it seems militia line is rarely the first choice.
I don’t think outside of specific civ bonusses the milita line is suited to become a midgame powerhouse. I’m sorry, but there are just way too many things holding it back. We would need a total redesign of that unit. And then we also just could a new infatry unit instead in my opinion.
Especially as the current militia line design already has utility. Maybe it’s not the greatest in the game, but it has it’s destinct function I don’t want to miss. And one of these utilities is being a “trash countet” which doesn’t pair at all with “power unit”.
Don’t Pike just slice up knights?
There is a meme going around, “knights counter pikemen” (if you want to know where it came from, click here )
On the surface, you’re right: 40 pikes patrolling into 20 kts just slaughter them, and they dont even cost gold.
But if we look at actual gameplay, this is not what usually happens. Instead, the 20kts split up in 4 groups and go raid; the pikes chase, have to split up too - now the kts can just group up again and slaughter the pikes 10 at a time. Pikes only work as a counter to kts if you can FORCE them to fight you - eg on very closed maps, or if you have siege attacking their TCs.
If you want an example where Pikes did work as a counter, see TTL final g2: Viper had a big eco lead and was fully walled, so hera was forced to engage the pikes - and lost. But this is the exeption.
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one more case where pikes can sometimes work is if the knight player adds siege: if the knights run from the pikes, the pikes can kill the siege for free
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Surely I’m late at the party. Just want to point out that increasing pikeman attack bonus vs cavalry by 2 will allow to skip Forging+Iron Casting upgrade.
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Yeah this is one of the themes that occur a lot these days.
That’s why I said at some times here in the thread already that it would already help a lot if Knights should need a bit more “mass” to be efficient raiders. Arm3 knights is a perfeclty fine raiding party,. It would help a lot to get the pikes rolling if it was more like 5 Knights.
But you’ld still need to make the pikeman upgrade itself.
this is now how it works in practice at all, in practice if the players clicks the siege, the knights attack the running pikes, if the player clicks the pikes, the knights kite them as the siege shoots onto the pikes.
Overall this means that the trade is somewhat inefficient for the pikemen particularly if you are facing 2+ scorpions.
- i was more thinking of mangonels and rams
- it’s literally the advice Hera gave in one of his coaching sessions
- yes vs rams + mangonels it can work
- still it comes down to micro overall
Also as for openings, scout openings are often worse than Drush and MAA. If Feudal scout was stronger, either as an opening or long Feudal play (EW excluded), I would suggest to move BL to Castle Age for sure even if it means buffing Franks.
Yeah. Is that an issue? It is expensive upgrade and I asked to reduce it before. Here I’m pointing out another way. Maybe the upgrade time needs to be reduced but not cost if Pikes get +2 vs Cavalry.
doesn’t MAA have the worst winrate in high elo? It also intuitively seems the worst opening vs people worth their salt.
In high elo normally you see 2 militia drush, straight archers or scouts.
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Lowest win rate in 2000+ elo is postmill Drush into any (non-FC, non-ranged). Surprisingly scouts opening has the highest W/R. So I’m actually wrong about scout opening. Maybe we can move BL to Castle Age.
I’m not talking about troll strats, postmill drush isn’t rly a thing. It’s too slow these days and people even in mid elo have learned to fight militias with vills, also if 2 militias hit you at 9 min mark (pre mill), you can be scared, because possibly you have only 2 on berries and like 3 on the 2nd lumber camp, instead at 11-12 min mark (post mill), being hit by militia isn’t scary at all.
The “legit” strats are MAA, Scouts, pre-mill drush (2 or 3 man) and with some civs, straight archers. You can obviously also boom it up and do something like full Skirm defense and try to get the walls down fast, or, with Meso, open Eagles. There are also some civ-specific strats like Byzantines forward but I’m assuming here non-all in strats with a generic civ.
I think regardless of WR, if Scouts didn’t leave you the option to go full Scouts with BL, fewer people would make them. Bloodlines is the 1 answer Scouts have in response to single Barrack spear defense and greed it up to Castle age, if you are forced to make an archer switch vs few spears, there is no point in opening scouts imo.
MAA seems good mostly vs people who do micro mistakes (and below 2.4k elo or so, EVERYONE does once in a while). Also if your civ helps you put them out for cheaper while doing a fast archer switch (Goths, Dravidians, Japanese, Bulgarians), this is where MAA can really shine. But say you are Byzantines, opening MAA seems a terrible idea most of the time.
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I won’t say outdated strats as “troll”. Either way, both of us are wrong. MAA opening is not the worst at high level. All MAA opening has 49%-50% W/R. So pretty balanced. And scout opening is not behind any other opening as I thought.
Scout openings
- Scout any W/R 53.05%, P/R 29.89%
- Scout range W/R 51.99%, P/R 17.85%
- Scout no Feudal W/R 51.36%, P/R 20.42%
On average that is 52.27% W/R.
Range Openings
- Postmill Drush range 42.57% (Sample size is only 101 as no one goes for postmill Drush anymore)
- Direct Range W/R 48.44%, P/R 22.64%
- MAA range W/R 49.61%, P/R 22.53%
- Premill Drush range W/R 50.93%, P/R 11.91%
Ignoring Postmill Drush range, average W/R is 49.42%.
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