Improve Teutonic knight speed

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
21

Literally everything about this is incorrect.

Firstly, TK’s aren’t good at defending siege. In fact, they’re probably one of the worst options for defending siege. If someone comes after your siege with BBCs, having TK’s there just means that now you lose even MORE gold than before. You’re far better off having Halbs or Champions there, because the potential losses are lower and they’re either just as effective, or moreso, and they can actually kill things that are sent to kill the siege, rather than strutting around waving their capes impotently.

Secondly, the entire reason TK’s are hard to balance has nothing to do with their stats, it has to do with their function. What do they do? Basically the exact same thing champs or halbs do, just slower. But if you can have Champs or Halbs instead, why would you ever bother? Especially with the new armor upgrade. So you’re stuck trying to compensate for the absurd vulnerability of being slow, except that’s impossible, because as long as something can be easily kited, it’s never going to be as useful as a slightly less powerful unit that is much harder to kite. And that’s not even getting into their comparatively massive vulnerability to conversion.

And finally, I see absolutely no reason why allowing something other than villagers to build JUST walls and towers would be anything NEAR ‘insanity’. Not any more than allowing towers to build unique units, anyway(kreposts), or allowing food to be instantly dropped off from farms(khmer).

Much the opposite; it would actually give TK’s a reason to exist for the first time in their life.

22

Some thoughts about this have come to mind:

I don’t think improving the TK speed would be nice because that would take away it’s identity: Slow, but dangerous.

Consider this:

TK now costs 10 more gold(50), but regular TK now has + 1 pierce armor and Elite TK gains also + 1 pierce armor.(total of +2 pierce armor)
That way they can have a role in the game: To generate threat.

You know that they are slow and can be kited easily, just not that easily. Now if you don’t pay more attention to them and let them get close, they can wreak havoc even if you have a lot of CA or arbalest.

I like the idea of having this slow army of TK around the map drawing attention from the player because of the immense threat they pose if you’re not careful.

Maybe also even give them bonus damage vs siege weapons, because, if by some miracle they manage to get close to Onagers or Trebs, they should one-shot them.

That would also make them great for protecting your castles against enemy rams.

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23

That’s an interesting theory, but it’s kind of a problem when a unit that costs 120 total resources has basically the same role as a building that costs 5 total resources.

The TK’s current identity is: “Unit that nobody makes outside of noob games”, so I’d be happy for it to lose that identity. The thing is, speed is king to such an extent (especially for melee units) that below a certain point, it almost doesn’t matter what a unit’s other stats are. “Slow but dangerous” works for elephants because they have 3-6 times the HP of the ETK. I’ve compared the ETK to the AoE1 Centurion before (which IIRC it was partially inspired by), and the Greeks have a bonus that makes it 30% faster, but nobody was saying that was OP (oddly enough, a lot of players consider it weak, which I find strange). By contrast, the elite eagle is a unit that has comparatively crappy stats, basically that of a castle age longsword but with good pierce armor, and it’s used far more than the TK because of its high speed.

Oh, I like that idea too, but what happens in reality is they get their blood sucked out from afar by ranged telekinetic vampires.

tl;dr TKs should get a 10-15% speed buff. Hell, Supplies should make them 10 food cheaper as well.

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24

I get what you’re saying but then again 10-15% speed just won’t cut it they’ll still be kited, you’ll need more than that.

If you increase their speed too much you’ll have to lower attack to compensate, and then you’re just dilluting the unit.

Making the unit more useful while maintaining it’s speed would be best, but definitely not easy since, yes, speed is too important.

Lower the cost also then.

EDIT: Another thought, just didn’t want to make another post.
I think there isn’t much point in theorizing, the best thing would be for the devs to actively try to balance them until they reach “something”. Change stats, cost, give bonus vs X or even increase speed but do it and test, if it becomes bad just change it again until a sweet point is reached.

TLDR: Just do it, less theorizing more experimenting.

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25

Teutons get bombard cannons which are a great option to defend against enemy bombard cannons. I’m not sure how halbs are a great solution for dealing with bombard cannons. We weren’t talking about how to deal with your opponent’s siege though! I said that TK’s are good for defending your own siege, against melee units, which when used correctly they are.

The fact that you can kite them with ranged units doesn’t matter when we’re talking about using them for defending your siege. Yes, obviously arbs, CA, and other ranged units dominate when you micro vs TK’s alone, but your TK’s will be defending things like SO, bombard cannons, and scorps which wreck ranged units.

TK’s are a defensive unit- defend siege, defend your crenellations castles from rams, defend early trebs you have at the base of your castle in a treb war. If your game plan is to mass TK’s you’re going to be disappointed, but as a defensive unit they’re great. Their quick creation time plays into that as well.

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26

Yes but Elephants are very weak to conversion while TK are very resistant to it, which doesn’t help that much because they are still slow as fk.
What if(aside from other buffs) TK’s were immune to conversion?
That would even reinforce the teutons as the monk resitant civ identity.

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27

Halbs are better, because losing them doesn’t cost you nearly as much, and they’re pretty much just as effective against cavalry, which are the only potential melee threat you’ll be seeing against siege anyway.

If an errant BBC shot takes out a halb, no big deal. If it kills an ETK, that’s a relatively big loss. Not to mention you’re wasting a significant amount of gold just having it sit there not doing anything, when it could easily be in knights out attacking enemies and causing havok, and then be fast enough to return to your relatively tanky siege and defend it if necessary. That’s basically the whole point of Ironclad, after all.

Not to mention, if you have cavalry rather than TK’s, you don’t even need BBC’s of your own(nearly as much) because your cavalry can skip a step and kill the enemy siege themselves, rather than building one unit exclusively for defense and then ANOTHER unit exclusively for a different kind of defense.

My point is, the niche for TK’s is so small, you’re almost never going to be rewarded for researching the elite version. It’s a more limited and risky Champion, and Champs are already a risky and niche unit.

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28

Preach it brutha!

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29

The reality is, Teutonic knight is a meme unit right now. They need a speed bonus somehow, otherwise they would remain useless

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30

I’d try this first:

  • Cost reduced to 65f 35g
  • +2 pierce armor
  • +10 HP(ETK)
  • Bonus damage vs. siege
  • Immune to conversion.
  • Maybe +1 temporary attack bonus(3s) for every strike, to a maximum of +5

Since their lack of speed is really detrimental they should be heavily buffed in other areas to compensate.

If after all these buffs TK still fail to find some niche in the game, then I’d buff speed.

3 Likes
31

What if they have a damage buff? Hear me out, keep his speed the way it is, but give it 40 damage at ETK just for lolz so it can one shot a villager. Change rate of fire to 3.0 or something, but I think it would be fun
Would it still be underpowered?
The talk about paladins and stuff doesn’t matter, because paladins can kill like 50 vills before a TK can even get there… All civs can build scorpions and mangonels to counter TKs and most of them can make hand canonneer or arbalest

32

That wouldn’t fix anything, it would just make them overpowered where they’re currently powerful but reasonable.

Right now they’re in about the right spot when they’re actually fighting, it’s getting them to the fight in the first place, or to safety after, that’s the real issue. They need a way to protect themselves or strike offensively against things they can’t catch.

Conveniently, the Teutons already have a tech that allows them to do this! Crenelations allows TK’s to become archers at the drop of a hat, handily bypassing their greatest weakness!

Unfortunately, Teutons have no real way to get Villagers into a fight and keep them alive, since TK’s can’t exactly defend anything from archers.

But there’s a great solution! Just let TK’s build walls and towers! Suddenly the enemy is forced to engage them or face a tower in the middle of their town!

33

Dunno if it can be implemented in AoE2. Isn’t there some hard codin around villagers that would make such things harder? (just asking)

This one does make sense thematically and balance wise.

Then they would take 50 hits from FU arbs (without HP boost). It does sound crazy strong. I guess it would definitely allow them to force more fights.

34

Still, even with these changes people say no one will actually use them(because speed) so I gave them +10 more HP.
I’d say just buff them heavily without changing speed and then see what happens. With good Pierce armor + immunity to conversion + reduced cost, people will start thinking twice…

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35

Welp, at least the 55 arrows needed to kill these TK would be almost enough to kill 4 champions… I guess it also fixes the “champion better” problem.

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36

Honestly, even that wouldn’t really cut it. Champions can catch up to archers about twice as fast, and cost half as much, so against archers you’re looking at about equal results in a good fight, and actually being able to run away from a bad fight, while the TK’s will just get pincushioned walking slowly away.

There just isn’t a good statistical way to balance a unit like the TK against archers. Leave them vulnerable and they get killed easily, make them take 2 or 1 damage and they still get whittled down, they just become OP against any sort of hard defense, since nothing but heavy siege equipment can even try to kill them. But in an open field, archers still kill them perfectly fine with no risk.

Remember, even War Elephants are hard countered by Halbs and Monks. If you make TK’s immune to monks and archers, they’re basically a War Elephant with no counters.

The biggest difference between the two units is that War Elephants are tanky enough that, even as slow as they are, they can just…walk away. Halbs can’t really keep up, monks certainly can’t keep up, and the units that CAN keep up, can’t kill them. This makes them a much less risky investment, letting you invest in them with a degree of confidence that they won’t just get wiped out because the wrong army composition came out of the fog of war.

By contrast, if you send in TK’s, you’re always taking a heavy risk that you’ll run into one of a dozen things that can not only kill them without any risk, they can follow them all the way back to your base, killing them all the way. Taking that sort of risk is absolutely stupid.

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All of this is why I think TK’s should be able to build walls and towers. After all, archers can’t shoot them inside a tower, and can’t follow them through a wall. And champions might be just as effective as them, but they won’t offer all the options a TK would.

37

why not at least just +1 pierce armour? and immune to conversion? they arent terribly useless (you can still stick em in a ram after all, and vs melee centric races they have their purposes)

they wont die as easily to archers but will still be doable… atm i think CA races are still the hard counter to teutons

@Crawsack saying teutons can just guard their siege with TK, what pray tell does a TK do vs mangudai that dance around the onager/bbc shots while rekking everything in sight? or a korean / ethiopian onager?

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38

I don’t deny your opinion, but you make me recall some abilities that military units could build military buildings in AOE3.
If it would be introduced in AOE2, it has better to be an expensive unique tech.

39

Even if TK could build towersand wall, they wouldn’t become more useful. You would just move your troops to other place. If it was effective, someone would already have done the meta of trush + TK

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40

Literally everything about the civ is focused on making it a viable strategy. They get larger tower garrison space. They get free Herbal Medicine. They get crenelations. They have infantry tanky enough and expensive enough to be worth healing, and they can even shoot arrows while they heal!

The Teutons are just incapable of defending against ranged units, so if someone wants to deny an aggressive tower, it’ll never work. But it’s much harder to kill teutonic knights, even with archers, their ostensible weakness, than a few villagers. So it would become a viable strategy to walk them into the middle of the enemy base, build a tower, heal your injured units while they shoot at things and shut down their economy, and then back them up with other things after.

And unlike a more standard castle age trush, you can’t quickly and instantly shut it down by sending in a few light cavalry. You need a specific counter which may or may not be there in time.

Once it’s built, you can use the tower to retreat to, while still defending around its base. If they send in siege, you have siege of your own, but with ironclad. If they send in archers, just garrison and retreat while their archers get peppered by newly-archer teutonic knights. Need to sally out? Well just bring out a monk or two; with their enhanced healing range, they can quickly retreat to the tower for protection.

Virtually everything about the civ is based around towers, yet they don’t use them at all. Is it so bad that I just want their bonuses to synergize for once in their life?

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