Because you are still in the drivers seat? I mean you act like the state of the units would be almost even atm, but the truth it we have basically only gold unit openers. And for good reason.
It is always a risk to go for counters as they are so terrible in raids. If the opponent manages to kill just a few vills, you have a problem then cause you are significantly behind in eco.
Currently this balance is shifted so heavily into the favor of the gold units that I often encounter no counter units at all in feudal. Literally no. Only gold units and walls.
Donāt tell me that a small buff into the counters would make gold units from one day to another bad. That wonāt happen. All I want is a fair chance for counter openers to be viable.
You actually try to switch the reality that counters are currently in a really, really bad state. But everybody knows we have gold unit meta. counters are only cheap, expendable addition in most army comps.
Because openers are about OFFENSE.
and counter units are NOT because they cost zero gold and rely on bonus damage.
You buff counter units and there is less reason to go offense as a good defense is still the best way to go even now.
And yet I still see them all the bloody time. Which tells me they are fine.
Good thing itās hard to kill stuff in feudal huh?
At what level? Because when I watch pro games, where balance has rhe biggest impact, I see counter units all the bloody time.
And to do that youād have to give them legit damage potential. Which means more then a small buff. Despite whatever you claim otherwise. Currently archers deal 2.5 dps assuming you have fletching. Meanwhile skirms deal less then 1. To villagers an archer will do 3 damage (assuming loom) every two seconds. Or 12 in 6 seconds. In that same time a skirm with fletching will do 3. Youāre talking substantial buffs there if you want them to compete. Yeah. A damage increase of 1 doubles that damage output and doesnāt seem like much until you think about how rhey do against everything in general.
I donāt want to buff the counters to be better in raiding. I think counters are designed to get the military control. I think thatās the intended balace that is currently out of order. Because the gold units are so good in raiding the alternative should stay bad in raiding but improve as possible military counterplay.
And btw if this happens I would be fine with a wall cost increase actually. Caus then civs with no early agression potential would have a viable alternative to walling: Counter play.
i think counter units are cheap and disposable for a reason. they arenāt supposed to be an army themselves. they are cheap and disposable and allow you to cost effectively beat your opponents army, which really helps if you fall behind against them. because otherwise if you fall behind in numbers of gold units, youāre just dead.
So why do we have trash then in the game? Just to have some pawns you can throw at your opponents as some kind of bait?
I think currently the game is too dominated by the gold units, thatās why we have this stale knight/archer meta. Time to mix things up a bit and open for some new strats.
i thought it was obvious. iām falling behind with my expensive gold units, and i donāt want my opponent to run away with the game. so i mix in some spears or skirms as appropiate to help even the odds.
counter units are clearly not supposed to make up the core of an army. so why should the meta revolve around them? which is what would happen with your change. and then weād have a stale boring meta of counter units.
like what? make the game revolve around slow attacking boring low dps counter units? boring.
how would your changes make the meta any less boring? archers get shut down so hard with your changes iād never go archers again.
spears are so fast cavalry would not have much time to do damage, especially with some decent walling.
youād turn the game into a slow grindy boring slog.
We donāt have a āstaleā archer/knights meta. Just because we see these 2 units most of the time does not mean the game is stale. Even when archers/knights are made the most it is never the ONLY unit one should make, youāll always add a mix of mangonels/monks/camels/spears/skirms/eagles/CAs depending on the matchup, while having to handle your eco behind, having a balanced circle of 2-3 units is enough to make the game interesting and thatās what matters, not the raw number of units that are viableā¦ What do you want to see more, longswords? Wait until people realize how stupid and boring this unit is and soon youāll regret the archer meta.
Also FYI counter units are already very good and made all the time in pro gamesā¦
What? ^^
Man, this is bs. If you fall behind counters canāt save you. if you fall behind in military you need to add eco. If you fall behind in eco you need to get agressive. Counter choices are completely independent on that, itās a totally different mechanic.
Never stated that. But yes I would like to see also some pure trash comps from time to time, just to not having archer/knight every game.
With 2 small buffs to units with you currently describe as basically just rat fodder? xD
I just want to make this units a bit more viable, nothing else.
Itās actually you who tries to keep the game in this currently repetitive stale meta. For me itās boring to have knight/archer every single game. Come on, letās at least try to make some of the other units more viable.
But be honest please. Outside of pro we see a lot less of them. I think there are a lot of 1500 + players that never make a single counter unit. Because with good macro you can overcome the counter relations with your eco if you just manage to deal enough damage with your raids to the opponent.
The truth is that counters are played the most in pro play and even there it is vastly dominated by the gold units.
And btw pros use the counters correctly and in the right amount because if you make the decirion to go for the counters you need to make a lot of them to justify your initial investment. Counters arenāt designed for small addtiions to your army but to give you a long term miliatary advantage. And if you donāt get the numbers right, well the lanchester laws can easily work against you. If you throw 20 halbs vs 20 paladin, the 20 paladin get a cost efficient trade for them. So itās crucial for counter play to know exactly how many you need to make to get the benefitial trades you wanna get.
And most mid elo players know basically nothing about this stuff. Like mathcauthon. I mean literally, using counters to have comeback is the dumbest idea ever. If this works it is pure luck that you might have fallen back in miltary but still had the better economy. But it has nothing to do with counter mechanics, they are designed for military outplay. Thatās at least two magnitudes smaller than military numbers and eco advantages. (and wlso why no player with elo < 1200 needs to even care about counters at any point, as the counter mechanics are so much lower than just getting the basics right. Just ask the pros, they will tell you the same. First get your buildorders, use your scout, balance your eco, learn about army standoffs when they are advantageous and when not, get the timings and macro rightā¦ Only after this you should start looking into counter mechanics, as they are indeed way less impactful than all that basic stuff. Why is paldin so strong in low elo? Right, because in low elo there is no counter for paladin. Even if they would know āmake halbsā they would never make enough numbers to get favourable trades. And the Paladin Player will just win because of lanchesters law.)
I said pros because it is factual evidence, something everyone can easily check.
But no even in ranked at around 1.5k Elo I saw them all the time, and I had a great success with pikes+mangonels so really no idea what youāre talking about. Iād say archers in particular are drastically overrated in ranked, my experience is that people canāt micro them properly against mangonels at most Elos. Itās only at the top level that they become good, but even Hoang wins with pikes+mangos strategy at 2k+ . Knight truly are a strong unit, but they get beat pretty hard by spears, in fact, if I see my opponent make knights Iāll immediatly queue some spears regardless of the civ, and have had good success with that, and I saw pros do the same, so again, I canāt see why you think they should be buffed.
So, there are only 3 units that donāt cost gold, and 10+ units that cost gold (knights/monks/archers/mangos/eagles/CAs/camels/longswordsā¦), so when you say ādominated by gold unitsā that is already not fair because almost all the units available cost gold, so it would be expected that we see more gold units. Yet, despite this, we still see these 3 units take a pretty good share. Scouts are a go-to unit in feudal. Spears and skirms very often play a role in castle. In Imperial trash is often the deciding factor, and halbs might be the best unit in the game (to the point that some civs make them even against meso).
So probably what you mean is that the game is 'dominated by knights/archers". That is not true imo, as if someone makes only archers/knights they should be beat by someone who makes a combination of units. Itās true that knights and archers as units have an occurence much higher than average but again, what matters is the strategy and depth, not the number of units made. If player 1 makes 50 archers against player 2 who makes 30 archers + 20 skirms, then the raw count of units in total is 80 archers / 20 skirmishers, but the skirms are going to make the difference and P2 will win thanks to better unit choice even though heās the one who made less archers.
If walls were stronger we might actually see siege towers being used. Currently its cheaper to just make rams and they get through walls very quickly (while also being useful for cavalry and allowing escape from inside).
NO, this unit is total waste. Just wall behind and the units are trapped.
Needs a total overhaul that unitā¦
Totally agree there. But at higher elos there are some players with really, really good archer micro actually.
Still you make knights, donāt you. You donāt go for the spears immediately. Because you know also how to counter pikes - and there are a lot of tools to your disposal: scorp, longsword, even skirms. Sometimes mangos aswell if the opponent has archers. And I like them to be buffed as I see more and more players playing cat and mouse with pikes currently. They are just too slow atm to keep up with the mobility of the knights. I had games where my opponent almost raided me to death with jsut knights cause my pikes were just too slow to catch them.
It is one thing that knights can raid so good when you let them, but another if they can raid while being permanently chased by their countersā¦ This is just a bit too much. I think we are at a level of micro/macro already where the mobility advantage of the knights is just so huge, that the countering effect is heavily nerfed. I think it would be benefitial if the originally intended counter mechanic would aplly again in this matchup.
Totally correct. Thatās what you need to do to have success with the spears. If you just wait a moment too long the knights may get a numbers advantage and render your ācounteringā attemp useless.
Donāt get me wrong, I donāt argue about pikes countering knights, I argue about that players have become so good in using mobility advantage, that you rarely get the advantagous engagements you actually should for your correct counter choice. And then we have often this weird phenomenon of knight groups being chased away by pikes all the time but basically no military engagements happening. I think it would be advantageous for the gameplay if the counter units would be stronger as they would force more ācounterplayā to get rid of the counters instead of permanent attempts of outmanouvering them that stale the game unitl somebody makes a mistake.
Better let the knight player be forced to add his own counters to the pikes and try to get an engagement finally than permanent cat and mouse plays all over the place.
The idea is by having stronger counters that pose a real danger to the power units to have more military interaction and less staling play where on side just doesnāt wants to engage and prefers to run in circles or whatever.
This is a strategy game. If your opponent made knights you shouldnāt automatically win because you had the IQ to push the ātrain spearmanā button. Thatās not strategy, thatās rock paper scissors.
The thing you describe is intended game design and one of the reasons why people play this game, vs. why nobody plays rock paper scissors.
Knights are fast, can kill vills, and deal good damage against non-spear units.
Spears SLAUGHTER knights in melee and make for a good meatshield, but suck against many units.
Dealing bonus damage to knights happens to be one of spearās characteristic, and itās true that the game description says ācounters knightā but the game would be pretty bland if it was just about learning which units counter what. In reality pikemen counter knights in some situations, and knights counter pikemen in some other, and in the end both are just 2 units with pros and cons, depending on the situation, you must make them, or not. Said differently, the game rewards players who know what unit make depending on a whole list of variables, not just depending on what type of unit the opponent is making. Arabia is an open map, itās expected that knights can play around spears and that you need to add siege with them to force the enemy to engage.
I assume you mean stone walls, since MAA can take down palisades pretty quickly. What are your thoughts on taking down Feudal stone walls with villagers? I found out recently that they have 6 bonus damage to stone defenses. This results in 3 villagers destroying a feudal stone wall in 100 seconds (3 MAA take more than double this time). 300 villager seconds sounds like a lot of eco impact, but it is approx the time required to build 27 pieces of wall, so if you can invalidate a larger walling effort then it could be worth doing. Thereās also the stone cost to consider. Obviously you would need some archers nearby to prevent walling behind or repairing, which may end up forcing the enemy into a defensive tower (IMO this is still a win given the cost of a tower and build time). Those villagers breaking through walls are very vulnerable to enemy archers, and potentially scouts unless they quick-wall a safe area.