Infantry Concepts that could work

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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As I don’t see any attempt from the devs to conceptionally rework the militia line. But it needs an overhaul. The current base design just doesn’t work out.

Halb/Siege Counter

It’s actually quite close to that already. All it would need is maybe a miniscule Speed Buff and taking reduced damage from Siege units. There are a lot of Civs notoriouls weak to heavy Siege like Britons or Armenians which would greatly benefit from that in the lategame, not falling off there from one simple and common move they currently have basically no answer against.

Timing Master

Basically the opposite of what it is today. It’s even thinkable of removing the line upgrades entirely and upgrade them automatically when reaching the next age like Serjeants do. One of the safest ways to get the line to a healthy state as in return the sheer power of the later upgrades can actually be reduced in return.

Synergetic Trash

Atm there is no Trach unit synergizing with the militia. It’s its own army comp. Which makes it notoriously difficult to balance. We could either add a specific trash unit that synergizes with it (an anti-archer unit that fires fast but with low damage) or rework the Skirmisher. Which would actually benefit the entire game at this stage, cause Skirms have the tendency to be either totally dominant or useless in a matchup because their “same type counter” design with the specification of basically “absorbing” the opponent power units “power”. With less armor and more dps against archers, possibly even reducing the damage output against (not fully upgraded) cavalry and infantry the unit would be in a way healthier spot.

Raid/Ressource Utility

An Infantry unit could generate ressources when attacking enemy structures - instead of having bonus damage. That’s what Siege is for. Walls and Buildings are supposed to keep armys without Siege Support out of the base - it’s a basic strategic component which allows for different strategic approaches which make the games generally more diverse and entertaining than mirror strats. General hitting walls with army can be seen as a bad play. With the ressource generation the Infantry would need to be dealt with - meaning the opponent would at some point have to make Army and show it’s hands. It could be seen as a semi-counter strat to a lot of FC strats,

Build/Repair Utility

There is a variety of different options here. It could reach from making towers / castles over siege units (siege towers/rams) even to “field fortifications” which can hold back enemy armies. This would add a strategic or even micro feature to the unit it currently lacks to be utilized to be leveraged to an advantage.

Meat Shield

Atm the unit is like a glass cannon. Hard hitting for it’s cost but quite low HP for a gold melee unit. Which is also one cause why it can feel oprressive in certain situations (goth spam) or completely useless in most cases when the opponent already has a healthy army count. With more health in exchange for lower Attack the unit would be in a way healthier spot and could be utilized more effectively as an addition to any ranged/siege army.

Survivor/Team Player

This is kinda similar to the meat shield but with a tweak. Atm the individual units go down too fast and are really hard to keep alive. Also they don’t give as much value when kept alive as fast or ranged units. The basic idea is here to “share” the damage taken across your army of militias so individual units just don’t go down as easily - and a small HP regen that then adds the value for keeping the units alive. Making it both easier and more revarding to care for the unit. Requiring a lot of skill and attention for a unit that atm is basically just patrolled in to get value out, but revarding that attention, similar or even more than the current power units. Witht his feature the “slow melee” status of the militias could be kept and the unit would still be in a healthy spot. Instead of the current blunt “speed creep” we witness all across the game.

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The ship has sailed a long time ago for me to drastically change the abilities of infantry units (especially the militia line).

Their main selling point in the mid-game is their lower gold cost, but the problem is that food becomes harder to collect while gold is more abundant. So, you’re essentially training a unit that is countered by cheaper archers.

Their low gold cost only became relevant when gold became scarce, and at that point, their low pop efficiency becomes a problem in some games.

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FIrst your Posts looks for me out of date completely already. You use narratives about the line and conceptional wrongings from previous ages of aoe2. Gold cost isn’t hindering a unit anymore, as most games end well before this becomes an issue.
We live in a time where food cost is the most important economical aspect of a unit.

This looks to me more like a resistance to change. You probably never play militia anyways. This paired with the blunt rejection using antique narratives actually only tells a story about you and not the game.

And with this in mind I need to tell you that devs have already decided to do something to push the militia line. And it WILL become an important part of the game. It’s NOT my decision, so your addressing the wrong person here. What I try to do is to give condepts which would be a “healthy” state for the game.
Cause I currently see this going in the completely wrong direction - making militia rushing one of the strongest and most abnoxious openers.

And that’s probably the last that you want too. So maybe you should think acutally about supporting the concepts from me that make the most sense to you instead of rigorously fighting of ANY concepts. Cause the changes WILL come. The only aspect we might have influence is to speak about what the direction is, not IF.

The next thing is that some of the concepts don’t require a big rework. Actually smaller than the current concept of the devs. For a Halb/Siege Counter the line doesn’t need to be cheaper. Maybe the upgrade times have to be lowered and ofc it needs to take less damage from Siege units and a small Speed buff. but that’s way less and less impactful changes to other aspects of the game than what devs want to do.

So maybe next time before you blatantly shoot out a barrage of dated narratives you should actually try to read the stuff you’re commenting on. Otherwise it’s way too obvious that your rejection isn’t based on a reflection of the postings but rather a statement of your own rejection of change.
Which will come anyways. And I am not the one who you should speak to about that, cause I don’t make that decision.

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Why? (Granted the new changes)

Not opposed to all suggestions above but seems silly to assume that the new changes wont bring new identity (at least to specific infantry civ)

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Maybe you should look around and see how many threads related to that are in the forum.

The Analysis of that is very complicated and wouldn’t really help here either. Because it’s just a list of factors which are missing to be competitive with the “power units” especially in the midgame.

And that’s also the biggest point of critique that the intended changes don’t really halp there.

And whilst I don’t like the way you ask the question, esoecially as you as attorney know exactly that in this way it’s actually a trap. I will no go list a few things that are in the way - that show that with just that kind of small adjustment it’s not possible to get the line anywhere close to be viable at all stages without breaking the game.

Trash counter - Gives the potential to be oppresive in the lategame, therfore earlier versions have to be weaker too.

Glass Cannon - Basically only useful in combat when you heavily outmass the opponent forces - not designed for “fair” fights and also gives no opportunity to get incemental advantages by keeping individual units alive. Games become super volatile.

Low mobility melee unit - You can’t be cought off guard meaning you can never field a “moderate amount” of them strategically. Which means it’s basically useless in the early castle age cause you would need eco to field more.

High food cost - Which is the most consuming ressource in the midgame, You can’t have both a good amount of a food unit AND eco. Ofc there are other units that require food. But they usually come with a great benetif. They are usually are good raiders

Expensive/time consuming to tech in - Especially in the midgame. Even Goths prefer going Knights there. Which should tell everything in this regard.

Bad Raiding abilitx - Makes the unit one-dimensional. Which also adds up to the “power” issue. Because they have that theoretical ability to annihilate bases it can’t be overdone cause this would be seen as “oppressive”.

(Anti-Building) - Which also adds an important aspect to that above. It’s basically its own Siege unit built-in. Which makes it really snowbally WHEN it crushes the enemy forces. Therefore it can’t be too good in that as otherwise everybody will complain. With good right, cause this isn’t interactive or fun, it’s just patrolling in the enemy base and no macro and micro in the world can stop it then.

It’s a very long list of issues that may be solvable individually with certain tweaks. But the biggest issue is that they are ALL applying and can’t be fixed alltogether.

Therefore my approach: Just give the unit a healthy “role” in the game instead of attempting to make it generally “viable” with blunt buffs. There’s your “why” btw.

You could just list what you like. I made a lot of suggestions - I’m very aware that in the end there can only be one and it doesn’t even have to be one of them.

Ok then look at the changes and see how much they improve the listed stuff. Yea some points get a little better. But enough to make a difference?

As I gave a lengthy and inside answer to your “why”. Let me now return the favor and ask you back “what?”

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I would say it actually makes a difference (VERY civ dependent tho)

I have been experimenting MAA openings (dropped 300 elo thanks for that), and I am confident that arsons in feudal can help.

So to elaborate, at Feudal there are three metas right now - scout+skirm, scout+archer, archer+skirm

MAA actually trades very evenly against scout+skirm, but the issue was

  • it takes ages to break through wall
  • got kited by skirm - yes, skirm counters MAA!

The new changes would help in

  • Breaking walls. Nowadays it takes 2 (and a drop more) vill to repair a house with 6MAAs. With arson it will probably need 4 or more
  • Not kited by skirm, getting map control

In fact, I think MAA+skirm (obviously archer still hard counters skirm btw) would be an optional opening when maps are super open, if either

  • scout sucks, e.g. Dravidians
  • Good enough inf and/or skirm, in particular Japanese
  • good siege. Hoang rush required knight before, but now you can stack MAA when you go up

I personally think the changes can be good enough for infantry to be a siege/force push identity (I destroyed some 1k8 using MAAs. Obviously my meta is much better but we dont have the inf changes currently either)

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You mean through stone walls? Yeah they are designed to kill all feudal aggresion. Are very expensive though, can’t stop the initial rush and then you should have the eco and timing advatage when you stop making army

Even at the highest level this only happens when you don’t field enough MAA. I know we have the current narrative that skirms counter MAA!!eleven
But good luck kiting away half as many maa with your skirms whilst 3-4 still attack your eco. It’s a numbers game.
You also won’t be able to kill 50 Arbs with 5 (unupgraded) huskarls. In a situation where you have a melee unit trying to counter a ranged unit it just needs a certain mass and upgrades to work. We even often see this with Knights when they try to clean skirm armies.
In the case of MAA in late feudal under pressure even it’s just not that easy to get these numbers out you would need to deal with trash armies. And it doesn’t help that the maa have so low HP that they can get picked off before you can retreat them to your TC.

Maybe the speed buff helps in this regard a little. But then we will get to another issue that will be appearant then very soon: Even when you can push pack trash armies (these are the only ones where the switch into MAA makes sense). You still lose the game. Even with the speed buff they can’t CLEAR the opponent army on the retreat to the base. And then at the base they will be awaited by just newly trained archers, as the ranges and upgrades are already there.
In this situation the small speed boost is only “helpful” in the regards that you can then retreat them better to your base again. But you trained a basically useless army with high cost and are still behind economically from the initial trash play of the opponent.

The result is then the same as now: Once people figured that out nobody will make late feudal MAA to deal with trash armies. Yes, it might be a bit easier to get enough out to give chase to the skirms and force the opponent to micro his heart out. But the idea that you could push back with your “correct” unit choice can’t be realized this way given the current circumstances.

Ofc there is the possibility that maa-all ins could become oppressive. But this is NOT a new feature. MAA trrushes are a thing for a long time already. The main factor for the potential of that is actually the anti-building damage of the unit which can only be used effectively when you actually have the pushing position. This is a very volatile mechanic which doesn’t add anything positive to the game experience as there is basically nothing to counter it when it’s rolling, but in most cases when the opponent has enough to defend can and needs to be stopped quite easily.

Yeah this is what made Japanese MAA so hard to stop, cause their damage output against buildings was also so high, that they could even snipe palisades. Now we will get this for all civs - and Japanese might become even more abnoxious. These are very volatile mechanics which lead to an oppressive gameplay. We don’t need that. It’s also nothing new, just figured out how to stop (you just need army in feudal).

Nah. Scouts are still massively better. Speed rules.

The devs did little to nothing for the line in the midgame. Where it’s actually the worst. This would be the theoretical situation where you would get supplies and it would pay off. But they removed that and built it partially in. So the line would at this perform basically perform the same. As bad as always.
The main counter to siege is either knights (which are way better stopped by monks or your own knights), Monks (which you would need light cav against) or their own siege (which again would be better stopped by monks or knights).
LS wouldn’t really fit in that scenario, as they will either be beaten up themselves or incapable of protecting the siege effectively. Especially with the low HP they would take a heavy beating from the enemy siege and possibly even TC fire.

Ofc you can say that I would be wrong with this assessment. Atm you could say that because we never see this stuff. Maybe with the new patch people will be eager to try this out. But I’m confident to say that in the end we will see that’s usually how it will work out then.

The changes aren’t enough to fix anything about the effective strategical playouts of the line. Yes, maybe they can overcome some current “abnoious” burdens, but the main conceptional issues stay.

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I am OK with the changes that make them more prevalent in feudal and late game again. More is needed for infantry civs long swordsman.

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Nah, its actually rather easy right now, I can kite 20 MAAs while repair my home no problem (skirm actually runs much faster so you have a huge buffer of micro, like you just need to micro for 1 seconds for each attack)

Too long otherwise, prefer point form:

  • Yes I think the changes does nothing to midgame and maybe can take a change. Actually adding supplies to castle age (on top of current discount) may make sense

  • For feudal, one of the most common meta is scout+skirm full aggression, and no archers alone cannot stop that (if facing stone wall, sell stone at market is a common response to get on-par uptime). MAA can replace the function of scout here since mobility is useless in this case.

  • Also forward skirmspear opening is a thing and MAA CAN counter it well if it gets the speed

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The renaming of ‘eagle warrior’ to ‘shock infantry’ means that there will be more units to be countered by long swordsmen. Not much but maybe we can wait and see.

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IDK what Jian swordsmen and fire lancers are yet (we’ve seen the lancer but don’t really know much beyond the fact they might have some ranged attack) so maybe this is off base, but if eagles are a member of the “shock infantry” seems to me that ghulams too should be “shock infantry”.

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That’s interesting cause I saw it on some pro games where pros got completely overwhealmed when there were too many MAA to deal with. Also sounds like you didn’t play against a skilled opponent who would make it a macro nightmare to deal for you.

On the other side I also ONLY saw this on pro games when they were testig certain civs like romans, not on the ladder. So I wonder where you got that experience from. Especially as you said before it was actually YOU testing out militia line there.

Ofc it doesn’t make sense to follow 20 skirms with 20 maa and slowly get kited down, as you will be drawn away from the position you could do damage. But when you have like 10 + maa you can easily split away 3 (and if you have more even more separate groups) that just go to locations where they can deal damage. And once this happens what can the skirm player then do against it? It’s a macro nightmare.
The issue ofc is for the maa player to get there. If you built up your eco the way you can produce maa almost continously you die horribly to archers. And if you don’t you can’t get the numbers fast enough and the skirms will reign supreme. Also skirm player might add archers and/or towers in time when he sees your setup.

Ofc we’re now getting way much into tactical insights that most people don’t have the understanding of and don’t need it even, as moat games even in mid elo are decided by way simpler stuff. Mostly just pure execution and macro skills.
But the reality is that even in these tactically loaded high level plays the small movement increase is actually NOT that important. Ofc it helps there too, but the main factors remain different. We also saw these with elephants, where so many people claimed how much of a difference that speed increase would make - and ofc it made one, but not nearly as big as people claimed. And it will be the same with the militia line.

I actually don’t think Supplies is any good. I think some kind of “bloodlines” tech would make way more sense. Especially for the late feudal/castle age transition. And ofc this would require to do a small nerf to the imp upgrades, but it would help against that midgame downfall of the line. And btw also solve the issue against skirms, cause with this tech individual units would be way harder to pick off and could be brought home to heal up, giving more time to get to the mass you need to counter the trash - even helping against the addition of a few archers there.

Actually no. You want that mobility to be able to jump the opponent skirms. Also if you’re pushed back your skirms alone can defend your base and you want to have the option to go around and raid the opponent. Skirms just pair better with cav. And ofc I would be totally for a change to that. MAA would pair better with archers and already do with towers. But with Archers we usually face again the issue that you will have a hard time getting to the numbers.

If you smell it and build towards that counterplay from the beginning yes. Othwerwise the trash play snowballs on you before you get the numbers. They are usually also set up in the way that they can switch to archers quite easily.
The speed doesn’t change that much there, cause it’s again just a numbers game. But it makes the whole story way more volatile cause it makes it way harder for the trash player to retreat and setup a defence on his base.
You can do this currently already actually, it’s just nobody plays blind heavily into maa early feudal. I wish I had seen this strategic matchup from pros at least once, but even against byzantines the most I see is just a standard MAA rush. Probably cause they know if they try to go full MAA they would be outplayed by archers immediately. And this won’t change with the update anyways.

Yeah but this only applies to a small group of civs - against which some infantry civs then might have a huge advantage (basically civ win). That would only confutate the analysis and bring us more to a state where the civs had clear adantages or disadvantages against each other - I like that currently this isn’t as much the case. That means you can go “random” without needing to fear going into a disfavourable matchup.

On the other side it could be interesting if all Civs would get one “charge infantry” unit. Possibly even trash. I could see this being added to something like a “shieldman” which is specialised to counter skirms and be at least a meatshield against archers.

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Would be great if you have links to game.
As said, I made it work - not before dropping 300 elo!!!

I mean 35F longswords look really viable no?

Yea now you get the mobility bonus for MAAs

If you didnt detect it before it snowballs (read: 4+ skirms) then its actually gg on the spot imo.

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Actually was ladder games, so will be basically impossible to find these again.

The issue is that you need to research that tech before, you lose the crucial early castle age timing and when you’re behind from there because the opponent got knigths or crossbows it doesn’t matter how cheap the unit is.

Are you really trying to compare scout and new MAA speed? You should be careful to not look completely out of reality here. Yes ofc you try to play an associative game with not clearly defined categorics. But this is way, way too much.

Again, you completely miss the context here. I was talking about preemptive buildups. I know how dangerous trash openers (especially with towers) can be. But the reaction can be done in time, you don’t need to know that before you click up to feudal. Just using the scout the usual way is usually enough when you know the right moves and setup to defend.
The thing is just when you’re not building up for a full MAA counterplay you won’t get the numbers you need, it’s better to stay with your initial opener decision and adapt from there. And the changes done to the line don’t change that. I mean it would be cool if it could, but that would need so massive changes that the line would play out even more different than the concepts i presented.

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Obviously wont work alone, I am thinking about infantry+(pike)+siege push, which seems really deadly

Also I think very cheap (25F maybe?) MAAs will justify as a mestshield in some circumstances in place of scout, e.g. CA+cav. Looks real crazy but I like the idea of very cheap infantry (after all, infantry should be very cheap no?)

I think all you need is 2MAAs.
Maybe do double barrack instead (similar to how you counter forward with eagles - double rax eagles)

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If you want militia become the completely dominant and oppressive meta on low elo this is ofc an option.
But if you don’t this can’t be the solution.

That’s the issue - ofc you can try to adjsut stuff in order to “fix” one specifc matchup, but it will then break on other ends if you use blunt stat changes.

Actually it doesn’t fit the game in it’s current design. Cause it would make them a throway unit, making them even more skill dependent in usability. It’s already a slow melee unit that doesn’t get a lot of value of skillful use. If anything it should actually be pushed the other direction, then the reward for caring about individual units would be higher and would have a way healthier skill dependency.

I also don’t think that we should have so shallow categories. There are countless examples of elite infantries who were not cheap. Ofc there were cheaper ones, but they can be represented by trash units. The Halb line is a good representation already tho I think there would be room for one more.

In general I am not opposed to reducing the food cost. But that should instead be transferred to gold. This way it enables way more design space and would also make it more usable in basically all situations we spoke of if this is paired with a small health increase for the higher unit value. Especially in the matchup with skirms this would actually be better than just making them cheaper.

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I mean…
Honestly? I dont really mind.

Imo army should mainly consists of infantry no?
Nowadays even Goths are not playing infantry, they are playing cavalry archers
And most infantry UUs are so niche anyway

I actually really dislike that an army consists of either a bunch of archers or a bunch of cavs

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And this is kinda similar to eagles

Anyway I think I can agree that mid-castle age infantries are still bad, BUT I think we should not underestimate infantries at Feudal with newest patch.

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I wouldn’t be against having more Infantry, but it should be a different type than the current militia line.

For a long time I am for adding the Shieldman which together with the spearman line could be the backbone of a healthy army composition.

And still it would be essential to add a gold component to that - different types of units could be utilized.especially to deal damage to the opponent eco. Because these trash Infantry would be very bad in that regard.

However I heavily disagree with:

People want to play with cav and archers, units that have interesting basic features that can be skillfully utilized to get an advantage. Do they need to be amassed as they are rn? Actually no, cause in higher numbers they become less practicable to use anyways.
With a healthy trash unit variety and setup there is the potential for having armies that are more diverse and allow to focus more on the smaller amount of the valueable gold units, whilst the trash units can stabilize and make it disvavourable to focus too much on one specific unit type.

However this isn’t done by a simple step but needs careful implementation and adjustment to the elements.

I don’t underestimate it. I think it’s bad idea to add Arson to feudal. The other changes would be sufficient already for the simple militia line rushes.

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Timing master doesn’t work beyond feudal age since other units can be produced. Serjeants work because they can start building Donjons when archer player is kiting.

Synergic trash by pairing with an anti-archer or reworked skirmisher is an interesting idea but again that unit will rather be used with knights or camels instead of longswords. But this idea is very interesting and has the potential to work.

Also a great idea that could work.

I’d keep it to just repairing and yes this is another solid idea to make them useful.

Don’t like this one. This can be a concept for some new unique unit in the future though.

Arson in feudal age will certainly help but +2 from 6 maa is just 1 extra vill repairing (first vill repairs 12.5 hp/s, each extra vill repairs at 6.25 hp/s or 12.5 hp/maa reload time) and the loss of resources due to idle time of another vill about (25/min) barely matches the investment into arson. Initially this might work since the number of repair vills needed can potentially be underestimate but eventually players especially at your level will defend against it more or less like they do today. Unless you have hill advantage or cracked terrain, the chances of breaking in will remain low after the first 2 or 3 months from the patch release.

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