hi! this is my first post so i hope i’m doying it right…
i have a question regarding trash units, and i had not find anything related to this on the forum so i hope this is not been discussed before.
of all the 3 “trash” units, scout and spearman both have an imperial age upgrade, and are very useful trough the whole game, while having a satisfying last upgrade for the very late game. so why the skirmisher is the sole unit to lack this final upgrade? (i know the imperial skirmisher exist but that is a unique unit only related to vietnamese)
is there a reason why skirmisher do not have a final upgrade? they are already a pretty bad unit, pretty much only useful against archers since despite their bonus against spears, the bonus is fairly minor (only +3) and the minimum range hurts them a lot, sinc eit’s not like they already dominate trash fights, in which hussars and halberdiers are much more important, to the point that lacking those units in the tech tree is considered a big weakness.
i personally would love to see a final upgrade to the skirmisher added to the game at some point, so that even if the unit is not obtimal, at least it can keep up with other options in trash fights. obviously, vietnamese should then be compensated with something else, maybe a different unique skirmisher, or a unique team buff to skirmishers
what are your opinions on this topic? thanks for the attention everyone 
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Not for everyone, but I would like if Imperial Skirm was a generic unit, yes
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Neither the Halberdier, nor the Hussar are actually original units, but rather both were added in the Conquerors Expansion Pack. Pikemen were not terribly effective against upgraded heavy cavalry, so the Halberdier was needed absolutely. Likewise upgrades like Bloodlines were added then, which changed the nature of cavalry balance entirely. Skirmishers never really needed an upgrade. They still do see regular play.
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Because elite skirms already beat imperial age archer units unless you really miss tons of blacksmith upgrades (and that’s relevant to only 3 civs).
Merely lacking hussar isn’t a big weakness, but many civs lack tons of upgrades for their light cav so that’s why you’re hearing this, and pikemen are as worse compared to halbs that normal skirms are to elite skirms. So you don’t hear often that having bad skirms is a weakness because only 4 civs in the entire game have skirms that can be seen has being as bad as no halbs/bad light cav.
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Idk vs civs without last cav armor imp skirm is like having arbalest vs light cav/hussar with last armor. And also imp skirm is really good vs pike line. So I fear in trash wars imp skirm on their kinda counters everything civs like vikings, ethiopians and others can do. Hence in these situations trash war might mean imp skirm war which would be pretty boring.
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Agree. Whilst I think that the skirm line is currently by far “the weakest” of the 3 trash lines, imp skirm would be too much. At least in it’s current design.
I think the Skirm line in general should probably be reviewed at some point. There are several interactions that tend to make games repetitive + predictable with how the line interacts. The line itself is kinda weak, but games tend to columinate towards skirm play nevertheless. But it’s hard to find an “easy” solution for that.
IMO one approach can be to reduce the armor but increase the bonus damage and/or rof. But if this “solves” the issue i can’t say with confidence. But at least it would make skirm play/micro more “positively revarding” which could encourage the archer player to look for other units as counters vs skirms than his own skirms.
(another option could be to give skirms a bit archer armor, so they would take ages to kill themselves, this would also lead to less columination)
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i hear your points, and those are correct, but my point is not to make “imperial skirmisher” the new halder, they are a very different unit, but i do think that skirmisher are the worst of all 3 trash units, and i do believe this is due to the fact that they have lots of weaknesses, and only 1 strenght, but are still gimmicky to use. also, they are arguably the only non-special unit without an imperial upgrade that i can think of (barring the siege tower which sucks anyway…) and the monk for obvious reasons, and i really do not see a reason why they should be the sole loser
an imperial upgrade could also not be totally related to archers. if they are already enough efficient against archers, their upgrade coul make them more easy to use against other targets, like reducing the minimum range, or increasing melee armor, or increase bonus against spears, or wathever
besides, it is pretty well established that archers are the strongest unit tipe, not by a lot, and of course they have situations depending on map etc etc, but a very strong unit type overrall. maybe this is due to the fact that their intended trash counter is not performing well because it is obsolete in imperial age.
overall, i think it’s fair to assume they are a fairly weak unit, that see play just because there is nothing better available, but with no real reason why they should be the only standard unit to lack a final upgrade. i mean, imperial skirmisher is already in the game, and it’s not like everyone is picking vietnamese to have those…
i think adding a new unit would make the tech tree feel more complete and complex, and would be a very good improvement for the game
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also, trash unit in the rock-paper-scissor triangle should counter each other, but skirms are not a great counter to halbs. Scouts hard counter skimrs, spear hard counter scout, but skirm? their bonus to spears is less that what they get for archers, and spears have better HP on average, so the bonus matter less, and is less useful because of the minimum range, which is why halberds are such a crucial unit in trash fights since their intended counter is flawed, since skirms sucks in stats and they they need their bonus to deal real damage
an imperial upgrade could be totally built around making it more efficient against spears, for an interest twist, instead of archers. maybe the imperial skirms could be capable to switch mode and fight in melee, with limited prowess but decent enough to give it a choice outside of running away against spears to avoid minimum range since you can’t hit and run with them.
making them more of a light infantry unit would be an interest tweast for them i think. overall i think there is a lot of room for improving this unit with a new upgrade, that could also spice up the meta a little
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I think you are not wrong with this assessment.
On the other hand I don’t see much reason why skirms have that much bonus damage vs the spear line before imp. So the imp upgrade for the skirms could possibly be only a minor change in the general stats but mostly increasing the bonus damage vs the spear line from lower than currently to more than currently.
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well i don’t think that +3 is a big damage bonus considering that the base damage is very weak, and the gimmicky of minimum range being directly countered by a melee unit like spears. it’s a very, very light counter that is also taxing to micro effectively. also the bonus is needed because skirms are so bad they need the bonus to deal something, they basically are incredibly trash with anithing outside of whom they have bonus against
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I think that a fully upgraded skirmisher in Imperial deals with a fully upgraded arbalest so efficiently that everyone getting Imp skirms would just make the archer line too weak.
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Well, the reason I proposed that is that skirms are often used to tank archer fire and kill the spears for the cavalry to engage. And that’s no wonder if they kill spears basically as fast as archers. Let’s don’t forget that the bonus damage vs. spears was mainly introduced for these lategame trash battles, not because of how skirms are currently used mid-game.
Currently the 3 bonus damage vs spears stays constant whilst the bonus damage vs archers and cav archers increases. And that’s just weird considering that the spear bonus damage was introduced for trash battle balance. And exactly this bonus damage vs spears makes the skirms so useful for knight vs archer matchups in the midgame. As then a single unit counters a whole composition.
I am not completely against this, I just think that the bonus damage vs spears might be a bit too high in this context.
That’s why I proposed that the imp upgrade should mainly increase the bonus damage vs the spear line to make skirms stronger in the lategame trash wars.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Or just have a passive increase in spearman bonus damage when you reach Imp, not requiring a tech up. As elite skirm is already relatively expensive compared to spear line upgrades.
There is a meme/running joke on twitch streams that the skirmisher/elite skirm is the strongest unit in the game. I think its generally accepted that they are a really quite a good unit already.
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well yes i explained myself bad sorry! i meant to say add the upgrade as a generic unit, and then assign it to civilizations accodingly to history/balance
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yeah ncresing their bonus against spears would do! that is what i intended to say, make skirmisher more interesting and useful with a new variant, without impacting the archers. regarding of the bonus, skirms would still have the minimum range making them very hard to use against spears anyway, so a bigger bonus makes sense so that if you out-play your opponent, you get rewarded more
maybe use the vietnamese unique unit as a base, and tweak it a little to be more efficiently designed for trash wars than archers, then replace vietnamese team bonus with a unique buff to skirmishers units (like 25% faster attack, reduced minimum range, +1 range, or whatever)
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That’s the irony. It actually is one of the worst units in the game, it just happens to be the perfect unit choice in a situation that occurs in almost 50% of the games.
That’s what makes it so weird.
That’s actually a very nice idea.
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i would prefere to have a new unit, just because i think it would be a very easy and nice thing to spice the meta a bit for some factions, and new units are always cool (at least, imho!) as there is so much more room with a new unit upgrade than a simple bonus damage buff.
but yeah, an hidden bonus damage increse would be an easy “fix”. would it be unprecedented? only example i can think of is the scout upgrade from dark age to feudal and upgrade to LOS later
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I already also thought about this “split the unit in 2” thing.
IMO it would have been better if the devs initially had given a genitour-like cavalry unit that deals low ranged melee damage with bonus against archers to all stables (also only benefitting from cav armor upgrades).
The skirm could then be mor fokussed on tanking ranged fire while having bonus damage vs the spear line (and less bonus damage vs archers).
The thing is imo especially with the mesos in the game it is too late for such a major change.
Yes I believe so, that was the only example I could think of also.
Yes, I really wish the genitour was available to many more civs. I think there is a big need for them in todays cav archer meta.
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