celts have faster working lumberjacks
dravidians receive wood in age up
malians’ buildings cost less wood
japanese drop sites are cheaper
burmese have free lumbercamp upgrades
armenians have cheaper mule cart
the exceptions are civs which get free techs:
slavs, supplies and gambesons;
bulgarians, militia-line upgrades;
vikings, hand cart and wheelbarrow;
then there’s goths which have two bonuses for infantry, so giving them another one for wood is too much.
I don’t think wood bonusses necessarily synergize well with infantry.
Usually wood bonusses are good for scout openings and later on CA play (also in combination). As also seen with vietnamese which aren’t Infantry focussed but still have a wood bonus.
The main reason for that (I think) is that wood bonusses can be converted into adding more farms faster and get better castle times from that, which is also synergizing with the scout opener meta. And it also makes you afford CA play more, as it is usually quite wood costly to get them going (as you need multiple ranges and CA also cost wood themselves).
As we can see especially well with burmese which have a really nice and strong wood bonus, but no good infantry opener (despite having a bonus). And overall are one of the worst civs also on arabia and aggressive maps.
But maybe it’s actually good many infantry civs get bonusses which don’t really synergize with infantry - as infantry play is still kinda bad in comparison to scout and archer openers. Especially wood bonusses which lead to scout openings more are probably the best way to address that, as both cav and infantry are melee focussed and that way we at least get cav openers from these civs which otherwise wouldn’t like playing cav at all.
Don’t think there is necessarily a connection between being an infantry civ and wood bonus.
There aren’t many possibilities for a suitable early game bonus. It’s either recieving extra resources or a discount on spending resources and or time. Almost all early game bonusses are either a wood, food or time bonus. I think its just the law of averages at work here. There are still lots of civs with wood bonusses that aren’t infantry civs, like Persians, Koreans, Portuguese, Cumans, Vietnamese, …
Early food and/or wood is universally useful enough, that it benefits pretty much every strategy and unit line.
In my opinion there is no necessity to give all infantry civs a particular type of bonus, as long the civ ends up being competitive its fine.
Also you’re missing out on some other (at least to some degree) infantry civs:
Teutons - get wood bonus
Malay - No wood bonus
Aztec - No wood bonus
Inka - No wood bonus
Also Romans who have a general eco bonus (though missing two-man saw means that their post-imp wood gather rate is below generic)
Eco bonuses can sometimes be translated into a different type of resource (ex: Malians wood savings could be turned into a few additional farms). And Teutons cheaper farms could be called a wood bonus, but provides more value if you’re producing lots of farms (which makes it a bit of a food bonus, since you have less villagers on wood to sustain farms but more on food)
Goths have instant loom (basically +1 vil) and their hunt bonus (a food bonus). And then they have all of their infantry bonuses (many of which replace an infantry tech with a free variant)
I just thought about what kind of eco bonus would naturally support infantry openers.
Probably something like “Forage bushes lasr 150 % longer” or something in the park of 120 % - 200 %. Below that number it would probably be more feasible with archer play and above that more with scout play.
As we already saw when Tatars got 2 sheep at the start of feudal, they had an amazing archer build (it was nerfed before the built could reach the big scene, but it was there). So below like 900 free food archer builds would benefit the most. And above a certain level of free food scout openers wouldn’t need to add a lot of farms to get to castle age or could continue spamming scouts easily which would very obviously be quite overpowered.
What the exact number would be is hard to tell, but somewhere about 150 % should fit infantry the best.
Besides that high number, that bonus would possibly not even considered a very strong eco bonus, possibly about the same as the current tatars bonus. Because Berries are gathered so slowly.
for the purposes of this thread, i define infantry civ as one whose military bonuses are focused on infantry exclusively. By this definition, having an infantry unique unit does not include the civ in the category of infantry civ.
also, wood bonuses do synergize with infantry openers, in my opinion, because they allow for double barracks. this is essential, because if you cant mass men-at-arms, you can’t do too much with them.
You don’t need 2 barracks for an infantry opener, you don’t need even for a full infantry attack, since having 2 barracks working won’t be sustainable in the early feudal.
Wood bonus sinergize well because:
if you use infantry as an opener (vast majority of the player) you have the wood for the archery range
if you go full infantry you have wood for the farms to sustain the barracks production
In case 2, you transalte the wood bonus into a way to get food, so having a direct food bonus could be even more useful.
In case 1, wood bonus is better
BTW Malay have a direct infantry bonus (free armor), while Teutons, Aztec and Incas military bonuses, despite not being exclusive for infantry, can give some good benefit in infantry play, so I would consider them as potential infantry civs
But reality say that infantry sucks, so you rarely get to see it in action even with infantry civs
Aztecs +50 gold supports infantry openers rather well (since starting gold will allow loom + 5 militia or loom + 3 MAAs). Lithuanians back when they started with 150 food also had a good pre-mill drush. The big advantage of an infantry opener is that it can hit earlier than other openers, but that also means that economic bonuses have less time to kick in. So bonuses that increase initial resources will be strong. Sicilians are a bit unique in that +100 stone normally wouldn’t support infantry openers, except that they can train infantry from Donjons (which do cost stone)
They have 3 bonuses for the early game - free loom which is 1 extra vill from the time you click feudal age and extra food from hunt, cheaper spearmen. One more could become too much. If at all they need a buff, changing the % value of hunt lasting longer is the best way imo
Agree, a limited amount of gold supports infantry openers aswell, but it’s a minor bonus.
Agree too, bu this kind of bonus is already taken by Lith and it also supports all other standard rushes quite well.
What I wa looking more for was something that supports infantry play even after the initial drush/maa rush. And both aztecs and lith don’t really have something going for that.
not in the first five seconds after you reach feudal, no. but a player that goes for men-at-arms should definitely aim to have a double barracks. it’s just for the best; men-at-arms need to be massed a lot more than any other type of unit
a direct food bonus like the inca’s, you mean. well, one could argue that indeed that’s more useful if you want to create a unit that costs 60 food. However, the wood bonus gives you the choice to translate it to food or… get this, do double barracks.
ummm… in my experience, nobody opens with infantry. all i’ve been getting are scout rushes, some archer rushes, and a sicilian donjon drop.
I completely missed this change to the civ. but it feels tacked-on.
Cheaper is more important because you cant really afford long swords and full skirms early castle. Romans have a great longswoards push but expensive infantry so you cant afford longsword and scorps either.
What exactly is the purpose, or rather: I haven’t quite understood if you try to make a statement, or if you’re proposing a change, in that all infantry civs should get wood bonusses?
In any case I’d argue that infantry as well as non infantry civs get wood bonusses, while other infantry civs don’t get one.
Also I’d argue that a wood bonus doesn’t particularly benefit infantry play. Whatever you’re going for everything benefits from both food and wood. Also by reallocating villagers you can turn a wood bonus into a food bonus and vice versa.
funnily enough, the only civ that goes for this is dravidians (faster firing), and dravidians are commonly regarded as a horrible civ.
the purpose of this thread is analyzing how infantry civs are schemed and how that schemed has been consistent throught the years in order to help the creation of men-at-arms to overcome their limitations.
i never said that only infantry civs get wood bonuses, please don’t engage in strawman.
i’ve covered this in my original post: three civs don’t because they get free barrack techs or another infantry bonus. the only exception to all my analyzis is vikings. also inca, aztec, teutons, do NOT fall in this category. the thing with teutons is that since DE their infantry have more melee armor, but it feels tacked-on, just like malay free armor. it’s like in the devs minds this happens: damn we need to give this civ something for infantry but it has 15 years of existance already and can’t change anything else, what do we do? WHAM, armor.
What shall this even mean? Wouldn’t his just be setting the creation time to basically zero?
What you try to attempt constructing artificially design schemes but based on already (pseudo-)existing ones? Without even trying to analyze either why they had been designed like that or if this is actually a suiting design.
As I said before, wood bonusses DON’T benefit Infantry play, they benefit scout openers.
And deriving from that is the question wether we actually WANT Infantry civs to have eco bonusses playing into their early infantry opening or if we actually prefer infnatry civs to have eco bonusses that play into other openers so their initial infnatry (d)rushes are mainly driven by direct bonusses.
And if we decide towards the ladder I think the current wood bonusses are giving the most for them, as these wood bonusses benefit scouts the most - and infantry civs once they have teched into infantry don’t like switching to cavalry. So with initiating cav play BEFORE Infantry we can see the most diverse gameplay with infantry civs which tend to become quite “boring” in their unit selection in lategame (Infantry + Siege).