I guess the Scout Line is supposed to represent cavalry using normal horses and not expensive combat horses like the knights do.
Or course it’s all more complex in real life and 2 cavalry units are not enough to represent all of the different types of cavalry that where used around the world but that’s AoE2.
Even in ancient times Chariots where often just used as battle taxis.
This is not a fantasy game where we can invent unit types that fit your needs.
This game is based on history so we should suggest units that where actually used in those places during the middle ages.
Adding Chariots to Bengalis is already a stretch but then adding another Chariot unit that is available to most or even all Elephant civilisations would be pretty wrong.
But whatever. No really need to argue. I’m pretty sure such a unit will never be added to AoE2DE.
They are very very careful about adding new units to old civilisations and very very rarely do that.
So yeah, it has like a 0.001% change of happening.
i don’t care about probablities.
I just wanted to post a concept that could work.
Cause I see currently totally mislead attempts to make the unit “work” as a standalone which are doomed to fail massively. There is a reason why all established power units have compositional partners.
And especially for a unit that’s basically a slow moving tank it will always be either useless or completely broken as the dynamics of these compositions allow for strategic outplays that wouldn’t be possible then anymore.
I don’t claim my idea would be perfect. But it would work in the context of the current state of the game.
But I don’t think my idea is completely mislead. I don’t think that there shouldn’t be trash chariots when there are trash scouts, cause i don’t see why scout horses couön’t be used as chariot horses aswell.
Ofc there is the little tweak to give them bonus against siege in melee mode, that’s the only real targeted adaption which is only coming from the intended composition with the elephants. All other aspects of the design are very much aligned with chariots how they could be implemented in the game even without having that composition in mind.
And they also could see use for non-elephant civs. Like i said, celts had chartiots. They can be a mobile herassment unit. Probably not the strongest for combat, but they can be given to various civs it would sense to give to and jsut add an additional tool to them.
The game is already very far from historic accuracy 11
Just to speak about the elephants. The Romans countered them with SKIRMISHERS. Yes, right. Not with their famous spear formation. In fact, Eles were often exactly used to break these…
If you want a historically accurate game, you wouldn’t play AOE2 in the first place. So please don’t make these awkward double standard demands on ideas when you ignore the many, many inaccuracies of the game already.
Possibly Eles would be way easier to balance when they would instead be countered by Skirms. Weird nobody indicated that historical inaccuracy and developed an alternative ele design that would fit the historic utisation…
We then may need to remove monks in aoe2 that can heal and convert while opponents units fighting. Historically, elephants were countered by flaming pigs(Romans) and flaming camels (Tatars). Elephants could deal friendly damage. We even have flaming bulls armed with blade at the horns in ancient China.
I brought this point up multiple times but just because this game is not a simulation doesn’t mean they can just add anything.
The game still has to feel historical.
People play AoE2 because they want to play a medieval game not a fantasy game.
People want civilisations that feel like those civilisations and not just a combination of bonuses and units that make things balanced.
Like they will never add Bombard Cannons to Aztecs even if that unit would perfectly fit into their techtree for balance.
People would hate that.
Not randomly adding a unit that wasn’t used in the Middle Ages to a relatively long list of civilisations just to make another unit more viable, that is pretty extreme.
I can tell you that this idea will never have many friends. Any change is hard to get people convinced because AoE2 people are conservative.
But a crazy idea like that will have no chance of being added.
it’ll be nice to have 1 more chariot unit in this game. either as trash unit or not, just having that extra skin would be awesome, same with another unique elephant maybe
for the chariot either one works just for scenario or for a new civ
prior to the port of AoeDE into AOE2DE Ive been asking them to support those graphics as base (and also access to the units in scenario editor at least) as this would drastically reduce mod sizes that make uses of AOE1 asset.
they refused and its partially protective content as they want people to pay for them, but they mentioned its an additional 3GB size and not everyone needs to download those graphical files.
Just only unlock the units if you have RoR installed. Ass far as I know you can’t access UUs from DLC that you didn’t buy either (you have the assets though).
Like you can’t play scenarios that require DLC, right?
You strangely can play custom campaigns using DLC civs though.
In the worst case it would just give people units with missing sprites if they don’t have RoR.
I actually support the creation of Chariot and Chariot Archer regional units, primarily so we can have Gupta and Sinhalese civs with accurate army compositions, as they had heavy cavalry, elephants, chariots, and light infantry in one army. We could give the units to the Bengalis and Dravidians too. It doesn’t appear that the Dravidians used chariots much, if at all, but they could still get the Chariot as a means to give them some form of heavy cavalry raiding unit.
Can’t find sources either. But Chariots could add the missing mobility element for the civ which would make it less reliant on snowballing the timing advantage.
For me Dravidians made very obvious that a civ with basically no usable mobile unit is just missing out way too much and not really enjoyable to play - cause you know you have to snowball when you don’t have such a comeback tool.
I thought a bit about the idea to make Skirms the counter units to Elephants insread of the spear line.
A basic concept idea could look like this:
A) Eles no longetr have the Cavalry Armor class. Units that deal bonus Damage against Cavalry and shall remain dealing bonus vs Eles just transfer their Bonus from the Cavalry Armor Class to the War Ele Armor class.
B) The speaman line losses ALL bonus against Eles
C) Skirmishers now deal +4 / +5 / +8(imp skirm) bonus damage against the War Elephant Armor class
D) Battle Eles get +20 % HP but only have 0/1 P base armor For the elite Battle eles I’m not 100 % sure if they should get then 0/2 P armor or stay wih 0/1. I tend ti leave them at 0/1, because it makes easier general power adjustment later on.
This is a required tweak that makes them more vulnerable to Archers and less to Cavalry as Archers natural composition partner is the spear line which is nerfed against Eles and Cavalry natural comp partner are Skirms which get buffed. So to keep the general interaction with the civs and don’t cause a disbalance Eles matchup with the power units has to compensate for that shift.
That’s basically it. And it doesn’t even need to be done in one big step. It’s absolutely thinkable to make this with several incremental changes.
The result would be that Battle eles would have a main composition partner: Light Cavalry. As Light Cav would counter Monks, Skirms and Siege - all the units Eles would be vulnerable to. Eles would also be an alternative to a skirmisher or archer addition to a knight opener when the opponent goes heavily into pikes. Ofc risky as both unit types are vulnerable to monks.
Because light cav are so fundamentally different in their utilisation to eles, this would make a well establishable composition in the game across all elos and allow for different strategic plays and interactions with the other main unit compositions.
((E) Battle Eles Gold/Food Ratio is adjusted to be more Gold Heavy, so they are easier to add in Castle age and the Composition of Ele + Light Cav has a comparable Gold Ratio to the other main Comps))
It would be the first full melee comp (except from the goth flood). But I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a full melee comp that’s viable
Speaking of that, Sotl just made a video about historical bonkers.
Though I don’t agree with all of it (Petards were used by the turks eg against venice or austria - but ofc they weren’t suicide missions), it shows off just a few of the inaccuracies already in the game :D.
Maybe he saw this discussion and thought, it might be funny to make that kind of video 11
