A lot of people dislike the changes made to pre-HD content, some don’t even like changes made to pre-DE stuff, but you gotta be the only one who hates even changes made by the old devs lmao
Those techs have always been in the base game since the conquerors, they were never really “introduced”. Do you want to remove everything and turn the game into Age of Empires I?
I’m all for clowning on II.Selim, but The Conquerors isn’t the original release.
That said, I doubt he’d like the game to reintroduce the techs to unlock each individual gunpowder unit (or maybe he would, his beloved Turks got all of those researched for free).
Back to the Militia discussion, I seriously think they should either be resistant to arrows or fast. They seriously can’t be both slow and weak to arrows.
If I had wished removal of Bloodlines and Thumb Ring, I would have already told it explicitly.
I usually also support the concept of just adding a “bllodlines for Infantry” tech. So this maybe “baggage/supply train” called tech should ofc be different in the aspect that it shouldn’t help out all infantry in the same fashion. Mostly applying to the Militia line and only to a minor degree to UUs and Spearmen.
I also just saw that I posted in the wrong thread. But we ofc can continue the discussion that is actually fitting the thread title. But I will post then the second part of the analysis in the correct one.
Maybe change the effect of gambesons/add to it?
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Totally. Example:
Move Gambesons to feudal, make it slightly cheaper and change the effect to increased HP (10-15 for militia line, 5 for Spearmen + Inf UUs).
And in compensation overall the militia line could cost 55 ot veven 60 F again.
Make every militia upgrade give an extra pierce armour and remove gambesons entirely 
More seriously tho, the problem of Mulitia has almost entirely to do with archers hard countering them
Malians and Romansvwould need a rework, but we really sbould give militia an extra pierce armour
The issue with extra pierce armor, even with Gambesons already is that in imp it starts to become too much against the gold coslty archers. And on the other side Hand Cannoneers are almost unaffected.
Which then flips the interactions of the civs head almost as most archer civs don’t get Hand Cannons but Cav civs actually do.
So in that aspect I figuired out 1 Pierce Armor is actually optimal for the interactions with Arcjes, CA and Hand Cannons. I would rather give the line just accordingly more HP (and possibly lower attack) than increasing the armor.
But it’s a very deep discussion and analysis of mine, and ofc also because it’s only my personal observation in my own games and what I watch so I don’t claim to be an objective source or whatever.
Even Malians struggle to make their infantry work against archers, with two pierce armour, they still dont do well
And again, the problem is at range, dealing with cav its not an issue
An extra pierce armour wont be a huge deal, and HCs should be better against infantry than archers. You ask for a nerf in other parts to barely adress the issue of archers
Either you double down on infantry as a generalist by giving them extra pierce or you need to give them an specialization. Maybe kt could be an anti building unit, but Im not sure that would work
Malians is indeed a very curious case that shows us that it’s really not that easy to fix the line.
Especially in the Midgame the extra Pierce Armor might be nice, but can’t make the line usable.
I think we need more than just stat improvements. The line needs some form of “ability” comparable to cavalry speed and archers range.
Malians are to me just sigining that the weakness to archers is too large to NOT be adressed somehow
I dont really like giving generic units (or OG civs unique units), but even then the ones you are proposing seem fairly weak overall. Or make it a foot tarkhan or smth in terms of damage vs buildings
If the extra pne pierce armour doesnt change a thing I honestly would give the Light Cav shock armour (maybe tjey take only half as much as eagles) if that isnt enough then increase the base hp. Its not like the Armenians are that good rn
It had been the meta for a long time. Then everyone got good at defending themselves, and the era of the fastest scout rush began. So we ended up nerfing civilisations like the Franks even too much. After the recent buff, people have to relearn how to handle MaA again. We will see in two months.
Moreover, in the first to second year of the game, the pathing was even much worse than today, making it impossible to play kts vs. crossbows, and still today the trade is not as clean as it should be.
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