Something like 5% (or .05) increase for each upgrade (spearman->pikeman->halberdier). Or give them .5 range and only .05 speed in general. I don’t want them to be fast as the horse units or even reach them but they can’t deal against a late hussar rush or an early scuot rush. And the raids are usually; the hussar rush and randomly kill villagers and then safely escape because the halbediers are useless against something that has (almost) .5 more speed than them. The scouts randomly roam and kill villagers because the pikeman will never ever reach them.
When the hussar or the scout stop to attack something, the spear man line should be fast enough to reach it (given short distance) but as for now, it can’t. The only thing it does is it scares the scouts for a while from that position. But the scout can simply run them and come back or raid another place.
I know they have a huge bonus against cavalry units but it is useless if they can’t reach them. The scout requires more resources to be made but even by equalling the resources, by making more spearman, it simply can’t defend. Also scouts costs a little bit more but their effectiveness is huge compared to pikemans. Even killing 2-3 villagers at early scout rush means you have gained back what you spent on them. Pikemans are lost resources.
Is something wrong with the catafracts? The post imp cataftacts literally melt fully upgraded halbediers. I know they are huge anti infatry units but shouldn’t even they lose in a frontal attack against a fully upgraded halberdier line with greater numbers?
edit: for balance purpose reduce their bonus damage against cav units -2/-3/-4
No because catas have good anti-infantry bonus, which gets further enhanced by logistica and which also adds the trample damage and also because cataphracts have “bonus armor” which works against attack bonuses towards the cataphract, like the pikemans, camels and genoese crossbow anti-cavalry attack bonus and samurai anti-unique unit attack bonus. Cataphracts are countered with heavy cavalry backed up by archers.
Pikes could have 1 Range for realism, true. But then again, they should not be able to upgrade to Halbs then.
Melee units deal a lot of damage in this game, and if you give them Range, you have teh Steppe Lancer stacking issue all over again.
Most Infantry civs have either Arbalest, Farimba Cavaliers, or Elite Battle Elephants, so they deal with Cataphracts just fine.
Only Goths is really screwed against Catas.
Only 4 of 11 civilizations have a complete arbalest line (including tech upgrade and thumb ring) (Japanese, Vikings, Incas and Malay)
And only 8 of 11 civilizations of the have complete heavy scorpion line (heavy scorpion + siege engineer)
True and this issue was solved in Age of Empire 3. All units there don’t upgrade to the ‘next unit’ but the veteran of themselves which makes more sense.
But spearman has a melee damage of 3, pike man of 4 and halberdier 6. Probably the lowest damage of a melee unit.
Not true, Kamayuks deal poorly against champions and they are a unit that require more gold and have 1 range and more melee Armor and attack than halberdier.
Results of the simulations
So I tried 150 halberdier (surrounding them) with these settings:
Burmese halberdier (+3 attack) against 50 cataphracts and the result is around 20 cataphracts survive
Japanese (33% faster attack) and around 13 cataphracts survive
Teutons (+1 melee Armor), around 24 cataphracts survive
Celts (move 15% faster) around 30 cataphracts survive
Kamayuks Incas against Incas champion (that surrounded them)
50 Kamayuk vs 75 champions (50*10 = 500 more gold, 500/20 = 25), around 49 champion survive
Kamayuks Incas against Incas champion (face to face)
50 kamayuks vs 75 champions, around 30 survive
Checked only for infantry civs
30 paladins/cavalier + 20 heavy scorpion
It works completely only for Bulgarians that have full upgrade for scorpion and paladins. If the scorpions are left untouched, it works for civilizations that have heavy scorpion but if i manually intervene to sneak 3/4 cataphracts behind and start to kill them, then it fails 100% for every civ.
30 paladins/cavalier + 20 arbalest/crossbow
Doesn’t work
Not true that only a few civs has guard and imperial. Most units have it and only few don’t have the upgrades (mostly because of history and they are substituted with artillery).
Thumb ring increases also attack speed so no, they aren’t still great.
I am not saying they MUST have range, just that they should have or .5 (<1) range and a little bonus speed or some medium bonus speed.
Which isn’t the point of the discussion because i am not saying to make halberdier a kamyuk.
That is not what I said at all. I said some units (Pikemen and Crossbows) only have Veteran upgrades.
Age of Empires 3 is not a good model to follow. If people can choose between a Trash Pikeman, or a Gold Halberdier, in AoE2 they would choose the Pikeman, and save the Gold for Cavalry, Siege and Archers.
They should have made Pikemen become Halberdiers in Fortress Age, and Crossbowmen become Skirmishers. AoE3’s balance is a mess.
“True and this issue was solved in Age of Empire 3. All units there don’t upgrade to the ‘next unit’ but the veteran of themselves which makes more sense.”
Edit: nice ninja edit to cover your tracks. You also changed the application of your statement as well.
I directly copied your statement from the post above. Not sure where you get that you didn’t edit it. Demiser (Edit: RoomOfTheEvil, lol) saw it as well.
What kind of a test is that. Yes gold is more valuable but you can’t completely ignore the other resource costs, especially when gold is making the smaller portion of the cost for both units.
