If I could have only one buff for infantry

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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We all know that no infantry player is actually happy with infantry right now. People have been proposing all sorts of ideas, and I myself has proposed more than a few. After considering everything, though, there is one thing I think is absolutely necessary. It is a new barracks tech, imported straight from AoE1.

Logistics:
Cost: 750 Food, 750 Wood
Availability: Barracks, in Imperial Age
Research time: 60 seconds
Effect: Reduces population cost of all infantry units from 1 to 0.75

In both 1v1s and team games, the biggest limiting factor for infantry isn’t their cost, at least in the late game. It is their population efficiency. Population efficiency of Infantry is so bad, that one of the main bonuses for Goths is +10 population space. (Almost) All infantry units will lose 1v1 to any of the mainline cavalry units. They also have a hard time chasing down archers, and especially cavalry archers.

This is especially seen in team games where gold is unlimited. You cannot play infantry in closed map team games even if you have the best infantry like in the case of Teutons, Vikings, Dravidians or Japanese. If your opponent is playing well, they will be able to exploit the population efficiency problem and gain ground.

With this tech though, you can field 4 units at the pop cost of 3. You’ll still need 2-3 champions to defeat a paladin/battle elephant, but at least you might be able to do that. That means infantry will become more viable in late game, where they should have a space to shine.

There is a concern here about the skirm-halb balance, however. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many good solutions. The obvious one is not to include halbs in the tech. That can be done, but it will feel like a gimmick. Another solution would be to add another technology which will benefit skirms, but I don’t think anyone wants that.

That leaves 2 solutions imo. First, make the imperial skirmisher a generic unit. I don’t see a huge issue with doing this, except for having to adjust the Meso UTs somewhat. Second is to give +1 bonus damage with chemistry, and another +1 with bracer. Please let me know your opinion on these solutions, or if you can think of something better.

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Halbs beat Hussar in 1v1. If you’re just talking about the Militia line, then don’t say “all infantry”, because that includes Halbs and probably Eagles as well, if not also UUs.

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Maybe I wasn’t clear, but mainline means gold costing units. Hussars are trash units, which is the other category.

I do include infantry UUs in that. Most infantry UUs do lose to, say, paladins or Elite battle elephants 1 on 1.

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I like it, and I wonder if could lead to a mess if Logistics affects all foot units. Including infantry, and archery range units. It still keeps the pop efficiency ratio between arbs/skirms/HC vs spears/militia/eagles but make all of them a little better vs mounted units.

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I like the idea. What is the resaon for 0.75 pop speace instead of 0.5 like in AoE1? And what are the experiences we have with this tech in AoE1 actually? What is the state of infantry in AoE1?

But a question is which civs should get the tech? I can imaging that Goths could be too op with this tech. But Goths should get it, because their charactersitic should not be turned into the opposite. And I think the general problem with this tech overall is that the good infantry civs benefit the most. So the good infantry civs could become op with this, but you also don’t want to give it just to the bad infantry civs.

Maybe what infantry actually needs is rather a buff for the weak infantry civs. For example give +10% HP for all infantry, and nerf the Viking bonus to +15% (from +20%). Maybe reduce at the same time some other infantry boni slighly for other civs like +33% Attack speed for Japanese to +25%. If you compare these boni for infantry to usual cavalry and archer boni, the infantry boni are stronger, what results in bigger differences between good and bad infantry civs. For example Ethiopians have just +18% AS for Archers, while Japanese have +33% for Infantry. Franks have +20% HP for cavalry but no bloodlines, while Vikings have just +20%. Berbers have a 20% discount for cavalry in imp, while Goths have 35% for Infantry.

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We already have a uu using 0.5 as its gimmick

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Karambits could use 0.25 space instead of 0.375 or 0.5 like now. 100 villagers + 400 Katambits looks fine imo.

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Balance reasons. 0.5 pop means you can afford double the infantry. However, how do you counter like 120 infantry units with siege for support? You can’t. If it gets that extreme, you’ll also have to reduce the pop of archers, and that’ll create all sorts of complications.

I honestly don’t have a lot of experience with AoE1. I’ve played it casually, and some of the campaign missions. But since I don’t play ranked, I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you is that I’ve had a lot of fun with phalanxes and centurions.

I actually don’t think so. This tech will only kick in late imperial age. You can see that it has a huge food and wood cost, but it doesn’t cost gold. That means, you should get it after you’ve been pop capped for a while. However, almost all 1v1 games would be over before this ever happens. Even if that doesn’t happen, you will be running out of gold (or would be completely out).
If you are playing team games, you have power units to counter infantry. No champion, even with civ bonuses or UTs can take on a cavalier 1v1. Since extra strong paladins like those of Franks and Teutons aren’t a huge problem, this won’t be either.

I felt that there was a problem specifically with HCs. HCs are pretty strong against all units, and they are decent even against their counters. It is only their low accuracy that maintains the balance.
Everything except HCs should be fine, at least on paper.

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I was thinking this exactly. These days I’m playing full-in infantry with vikings with really good success, but this doesn’t make infantry good per se. It is the mix of more HP and one of the best eco bonuses (free wheelbarrow and handcart) backuping behind.
I think ML could recieve a buff in HP and whitout break the balance.

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MM line should be 35f 25g by default, change supply to an IMP tech , replace 10g with 10f

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I had to really think about this for a bit.

The issue I have with this suggestion is that even in a balanced state, I don’t think you’ll ever expect to use infantry as the bulk of your army. They’re too niche, too vulnerable to certain enemies, and that’s not going to change even with an extra 33 on the field. In fact, if it DID change, that would probably not be a good thing, since it would mean they’re countering their counters. That really shouldn’t happen without a dedicated civ bonus, which will inevitably leave a weakness somewhere.

The trouble being, if you’re not using champions as the bulk of your army, then this bonus does very little. You’d get an extra 3-6 units. That’s not enough to make infantry worthwhile, not without the other bonuses that make Goths good.

Personally, I would prefer bonuses that encourage the use of infantry in their respective niches, rather than a bonus that only works with a massive, all-in infantry strategy.

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Why not? Of course, you can’t use infantry by itself, but infantry siege is usually pretty good. You use onagers to take on archers and HCs, and the infantry will handle melee attack.
This is not even mentioning that civs like Vikings, Japanese, Dravidians and Celts can use more of their UU.

Again, we are talking about mid-imperial age. I see literally no reason you can’t use infantry as the main force of your army.

Except if you are using halbs/UU infantry units. But also, every civ needn’t use every tech. When was the last time you picked up arson as mongols? You use a tech in a situation that demands it.

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I think pop space is not actually a big factor except in really closed maps (Black forest alike).

For open maps, if you can get champion economic working, you can actually trade your champion/halb mixture fairly well (keep raiding, destroying lonely castles without support). The issue is that champion upgrades are not cheap and you need to amass the champions (as longswords sucks)

For really closed maps wont they die to siege onagers anyway?

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I think buffing infantry would be much easier if twe head Imperial skirmisher as a generic unit. It would be a great great improve for the game as a whole, and would make militia and infantry UU easier to counter without Gold archers with that 4 base Attack instead of 3.

That way one could more confortably buff infantry (meaning militia and some infantry UU) knowing there is a trash light counter available

Another quality of Life improvement would be create a new armor class, “heavy infantry” which would include militia line and also some infantry UU, but not halbs and eagles, so that things that affect infantry like gambeson could affect UU too removing the need to buff them every time militia receive something

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You need fewer vills to sustain an infantry army compared to a same size of cavs. So you can have a larger army of infantry on the field compared to cavs.

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Maybe just remove one of the upgrades so it’s faster and cheaper to get to champions.

E.g.
Dark Age: Militia
Feudal Age: Man at arms
Castle Age: 2 Handed Swords
Imperial Age: Champions

This would make Castle Age infantry more effective and also simplifies the militia line to give them one upgrade per age.

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And team games. This is a huge issue in team games.

Possibly. As I already admitted, the main intent of this tech isn’t 1v1 open maps. Most of those end by castle age anyway, so I don’t think infantry will ever have much of a role there.

That is why you go for siege+infantry. You need your own SO, or BBC. Luckily, most infantry civs do get pretty good siege.

That’s not necessarily true because of how quickly you need to replace them. But also, by that logic, you should be able to field way more cav archers because they don’t die if you can micro and you can keep them alive forever. Same for arbs.
You inherently need a few more, but the numbers don’t add up. You need way more. Again, you need 2-3 infantry for 1 cavalry. Can you field that?

Again, champions aren’t good enough. You need 2-3 champions for 1 paladin/elite battle elephant. Assume you got there, and you have infinite resources. Now what? They will kill you anyway.

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I think m@A can be automatically upgraded to longswordsman like stat improvement of scout cavalry in feudal age. I am not sure about castle age THS. At least champion upgrade can be cheaper.

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No offense, but I think you could just continue your on going thread of infantry instead of opening another one.

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Hmmm, i’m not a fan of straight up removing LS, in that case i would propose something slightly different: what if Champion were like Winged Hussar (i.e. an alternative upgrade)? So, Infantry specialized civs (and other civs that deserve it) can upgrade Long Swords directly into Champion, and other civs upgrade LS into 2HS.