Samurais moving faster wouldnt make them a bit too much like woads?
Iâd only bump the speed to about 1.1 tops. maybe, to help them against archer uu give them 1 more PA.
I mean, itâs not really Berserks but the UT that buffs all Infantry. Champions with Chieftains do well vs Cavalry too. ;p
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but the extra regen, the extra attack and armor, the extra speed, all help berserks against cav.
Here we go again (20 char)
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+1PA for elite will be good imo. They will take 34 shots from Arbalester instead of 25. With their speed and cost I think that will be balanced.
I donât think they are weak against Archers tbh.
They have same attack as Champion and +10 HP is better than +1 MA 95% of the situations. On top of that they can actually force engagement way better than Champion.
I think you should consider the upgrade cost side by side as well. Militia â Champion + Supplies vs only Elite. (Berserk exceptions with 2 UT and Kamayuk 1 UT. You can ignore Shotelâs UT). And then come up with a break even point where militia line is more cost efficient.
makes absolute sense since its my thread and is about infantry, so why bring it other unit tipes? we can go on like this like forever if you keep on stressing about unit that have nothing to do with the trhead so please stop
like no? it has the same PA and same HP than a knight. worse than a paladin? yeah, but i sayd knight infact
yeah it cost OVERALL less i sayd, but you negate the facts for some reason. it also cost 35 gold less, and infact has archer weakness while having a HUGE melee advantage. so it has trade-off, and is overall cheaper. while infantry has trade-off, and his more expensive. see the difference?
as i proved just above with boyar and leitis, the argument do not infact apply in the same vein with cavalry UU, and looking at all your posts, it honestly seems you who is biased about not getting anithing for infantry. i guess we can conclude that we are not on the same page and we never agree on this topic.
well on the case of woads, i much more often see halberds + siege over woads to be honest. and itâs not like there are only woads out there. samurai for example is worse. also, if a pro wins using woads in a game does not mean that unit is super good. heck pros could win with full longsword push in castle age before their last buff in november. does that mean longswords were super good? sometimes you have other consideration like you are already teching infantry and do not have the matchup or the resources or time to retech into knights, then accept the option you have (woads) not because its best, but because you have no choice
or maybe becasue they are not as silly punishing to tech into later as militia line and are ready to go from the castle age, but thatâs a fault in militia design more than anithing else
but again, iâm not here telling woads sucks, they do not suck. just telling that some infantry UU do cost 40% more than militia line and imho thatâs too much compared to their actual benefits. following woads, they are not cost effective against cavalry, they are not cost effective against champions (in equal resources), no more cost effective than champions against trash, nor against buildings, nor eagles. they are indeed much better against archers. is this worth paying 40% more? iâm really not sure about it
and there are others in worse situation than woads (since you talk so much about them i used them as an example), like samurai
it was merely to say militia is better against infantry in cost effectiveness and against cavalry as well. of course spears are better, but sometimes you do not have a choice but to fight since they are slower, and in those situations, militia fare better compared for their cost
the cheaper cost helps much more than that since you can actually have a 2 vs 1 ratio. test them if you want
infact woads is one of those i would just get 5 food cheaper, not a big buff. +1MA and 10 HP in melee is a bit of a wash since champions and woads trade about the same into eachother in melee, so while woads are much better against archers, they still cost 25 resources more and have lesser bonuses. so yeah, woads are a bit better, but imho not that better to justify that much higher cost. at least imho
thatâs why i think they are used more than militia sometimes, but that is more a fault in militia design that should be fixed with faster/cheaper transition, rather than a strenght of those unit. if militia wasnât that punishing to tech into later in the game, the situation would be different, but that is a problem in the militia, at least for me
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I think that would be largely useless and the unit isnât supposed to be anti archer, so i see no real reason for it to have the same PA baseline as a Paladin, slow speed or not.
they are strong if they can get on top of them. i agree they arenât that weak, but i wouldnât call them that strong too.
yahtzee.
because my point is - if you are only breaching the issue about infantry uu but ignoring all the other units that suffer the same problem, it looks like youâre unfairly biased towards infantry, while ignoring cavalry uu issues.
well which is it? Because your argument flip flops. half the time youâre comparing castle age and half the time youâre comparing imperial age.
I donât know if i would say it costs less overall. again, youâre looking at total resources spent and not looking at the actual value of those resources. and false information, it costs 25 gold less, as for the archer weakness vs melee advantage - yeah they are great against melee units, which means its basically limited to 1v1 matchups with civs with bad archer units. team games its a horrible unit. against archer civs its a bad unit.
you ignore that the trade offs for melee infantry units make them BETTER (more pa, more speed, better attack, better defense) in more situations then the Militia line is, thus the higher cost. meanwhile cavalry UU are WORSE in more situations, thus the lower cost.
except you ignore that he infantry units changes make them BETTER then the militia line in more situations, whereas the cavalry make them worse in more situations.
and when they do go for gold infantry they prefer the woad over the militia.
and you notice samurai is one iâm okay with buffing.
not against another pro they couldnât. not without massively outplaying their opponent. meanwhile i see woads used a bit more then militia from celts post castles.
and clearly the pros disagree.
except again - pros and high level players do use them more then the militia line - again - just because on paper the militia line trades better doesnât mean anything, because they canât FORCE ENGAGEMENTS. meanwhile woads can. if your army isnât able to engage, how are they actually going to trade?
so again - iâll side with the pros and high level players on this one.
except youâre ignoring the cost of upgrading the unit, which means your spending more resources on one side of the fight and not the other. add in the men at arms and longword upgrade and then throw some more knights on the cav players side and tell me who wins. youâre also ignoring that the militia line wonât actually be able toforce a fight. again, paper math is great, but in game we see the reality is different. if what you think is the reality of the game - why do we very rarely see this type of strategy play out?
if what you are saying is actually the reality of the game - prove it. real game situations. no napkin math.
Thereâs also a massive risk that these players are biased by years of the militia line being absolute garbage. There are non trivial costs associated with learning how to incorporate significant changes to the game. As T90 and Dave refer to with some frequency, high level players often exhibit behavior that indicates they donât do much studying or analysis and are simply just playing.
I mean Iâve seen 2k players straight up say âViking infantry will not counter hauberk cavalierâ when hauberk first came out. It was as if their entire buffed champion line didnât exist and never even crossed their mind.
When you go and test things like the elite jaguar warrior it becomes apparent how the unit is pretty underpowered. Itâs much more vulnerable than Aztec champs to a tech switch and much worse in a trash war. In terms of estimating an ROI itâs safe to assume that the chance the elite jaguar warrior comes out with a higher expected value than the champion in any given game is pretty small.
Both samurai versions are like the jaguar warrior: risky for marginally better performance. Thereâs a few special cases where itâs worth the trade-off but not many. The niche for both of these units is extremely small.
Teutonic knights are in a similar boat. They are a niche unit which are very vulnerable to a tech switch and are a difficult unit to protect siege with. Itâs usually much safer to do things like scorpion + knight or use the militia line than use the TK. Similar arguments apply to the ETK.
All 3 of the units above have the problem of low marginal returns for high marginal downside risk. Such decisions are usually not beneficial. Supplies definitely affected the calculus for the above 3 units.
Shotels have pretty awful performance in all roles except anti-siege, anti-eagle, and raiding. They are simply too expensive to do anything else. Now Ethiopians are a decent civ so it might be fine to relegate the Shotel to this position but at the same time, itâs far from obvious this should be the case. This becomes clear when we ask the opposite question: Should shotels cost more? IDK seems like a pretty hard question to me. This also applies to Woads, Serjeants, and Berserks.
Just because the OP was using not very solid logic doesnât mean his question didnât have merit. When most of these infantry UUs say âgood against infantryâ on the tech tree and yet they lose cost effectively against huge amounts of infantry it raises questions like the OP asked.
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the pros have literally seen a willingness to change as the meta evolves - 2 militia drush is much more common then 3 these days, as an example.
and thats one of the few units that i believe need a buff. but its also hard to buff them given how strong aztecs are as a civ.
yeah well TK has other problems. namely its slow speed.
uhh not really. all 3 of those units werent that good to begin with.
itâs almost like thatâs their job. they area glass cannon easy to mass unit, i wouldnât expect them to be good in a stand up fight.
so buff the other ones vs infantry then. they already perform very well in their other roles, and making units like woads and berserks better in their given role by making them cheaper is not a good idea.
the only 2, maybe 3 units i think need buffs when it comes to the ones he listed are
the jaguar warrior - but frankly aztecs are an absurdly good civ as is.
the samurai - which i would consider increasing the speed of (to 1.1) and maybe giving it 1 extra PA.
and the TK - which i have no idea how i would buff, but it sure as heck wouldnât be by giving it more pierce armor, because that leaves civs like franks without a good answer to the unit.
the op has a point on 3 units tops, but the rest of them? at best iâd give them some anti infantry bonus, because units like the woad and the berserk would be insane even with marginal buffs, and largely ignores just how good some of those bonuses they get are Like how good a woads speed actually is, as an example).
also just because they lose cost effectively does not mean they lose SUPPLY effectively, which is far more common consideration when using the units.
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Well, Franks get Hand Cannoneers, so I think Franks would be fine with more pierce armour.
Maybe Ethiopians, though ETKs are also kinda vulnerable to Siege?
Then again, I think itâs kinda fine if there are some late-game units or civ matchups that are one-sided, Goths and Mayans come to mind. ETKs (not TKs!) getting PA buffs might not be that bad? 
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Not terrible. I judt think it goes contrary to thd units role.
Iâm effectively claiming that pros havenât converged to the optimum strategy profile regarding mid and late game infantry because the changes are relatively recent plus relatively larger and they lack a large dataset/robust mental model because infantry was crap for a long time. Bringing up that pros havenât even converged to the optimum strategy profile regarding a part of the game that they undoubtedly have a great dataset/great mental model for is not a counter-example. Itâs exactly what Iâm talking about.
Units can have multiple problems at the same time. And the Jaguar warrior was not bad in itâs anti-militia role prior to suppliesâ introduction. Just because supplies added a new problem doesnât negate the existence of old problems.
Yet the tech tree says âstrong vs infantryâ. Itâs a little weird that youâre invoking the tech tree descriptions for certain roles but ignoring it for others. Certainly it seems completely appropriate that Shotels could counter Malian infantry, Huskarls, and Serjeants but they only do well vs Serjeants as is. Your anti-infantry bonus would do that and be appropriate but Iâm not sure why it took until now to mention.
I mean the OP was trying to get at the fact that either as an enemy or as an opportunity cost the militia line causes problems for certain UUs. In addition the very fact that champs got buffed but most elite UUs didnât is hard to reconcile with the relative lack of infantry UU use more broadly.
I donât fully understand why you seem so confident in your position that so many infantry UU are optimally balanced. There are a massive number of infantry counters in the game. Archers, hand cannons, scorpions, buffed knights, UU/Regional cav (Leitis, Cataphract, Boyar, Coustillier, Elephants, Steppe Lancers), and Cav archers will all pretty much crush infantry. Most of them are also very flexible and widely available especially when you consider how less than FU units do vs various UUs. And since most players are not used to using less than FU units for extended durations this is an area where weâd expect players to improve on over time if forced to. At minimum the heuristic confidence intervals are large once you take into account the fact that we have to predict response behavior which is relatively unused.
As it is now I donât think Iâve ever seen high level play where a composition incorporating the infantry UUs being considered here (e.g. not gbeto or huskarls) was, upon analysis, all that difficult to counter. Like youâll see the shotels and woads used in good supporting roles but generally, a 5 res decrease isnât going to change much except make their supporting role slightly cheaper to fill. This can be useful especially if that decrease in cost is on the gold side.
Asymmetric access to gold by outlasting the opponent is a concern but this equally applies to champs which have already become very strong spam units for a whole host civs. Whether you push someone off gold with Champs or an infantry UU doesnât matter much. You can force any fight you want after that by walling up and spamming.
6 Likes
Make Infantry UU return some of its cost when they die
By the way, the tech tree is not even close to being a solid argument (the Spanish translation of the tech tree is pure garbage, for example); Tech tree shows that infantry UU are weak to archers, I could buy that one; so why are they weak against cavalry? Where does it say that?
The argument that the militia line needs a trash counter; Do the Eagles have a trash counter?
Another option is to reduce the spearmanâs bonus against cavalry and give a small bonus to infantry in general
I would like to include the militia line in this rock-paper-scissor game; Militias are trained in this game only when there is no other option of military units
Infantry UU are mythological creatures in the game; itâs very strange to see them
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This wonât make them an anti-archer unit. Just a bit more survivability which is probably needed to justify the elite upgrade.
Fair enough.
Hand Canon. 1 extra PA wouldnât change anything. They will still die in 5 shots.
I thought it should have 0 or 1 PA with more speed back in 2010s. Not sure how it can be more useful in current Teutons meta.
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On the knights page where it says strong vs infantry, but weak to pike?
If you gave the Militia-line the power to fight both knights and archers thry would be stronger then eagles, thats when they would need a trash counter. and eagles are very gold heavy, where as Militia-line is not. You keep bringing this up but ignore the answer when its given.
Think about it.
Against archers they would need moee speed ro close the gap and pa to survive.
Against cavalry they will need speed to force engagements, and either armor, attack or bonus damage to trade effectively.
On top of this the unit is available in the dark age, has low training time. This makes it easily massable. Now that youve given it more survival and the ability to force fights what keeps it from being overpowered?
Some want eagles nerfed as is, and what youre talkinh about is the equivalent of an eagle with more all around stats, lower training time, and lower gold cost.
Speaking of issues it brings up - what happens to eagles after this buff? Whats their role? Seeing as now the Militia-line would have rhe speed fo force engagements those become ecen worse, as now not only does their counter actually be able to force engagements, its all around better too.
My point was that pros have shown willingness to adapt and change, and the game has pretty much always shown that supply efficiency is more important then cost efficient, so my guess is that the militia line isnt seeing as mych use due to a combination of its low staying power and speed.
That wasnt my point. Im just saying supplies didnt make those units bad.
Againsr the Militia-line who wins for thwm comes down to qho gets the first hit. Which coupled with their higher speed means they should win. Now im not saying they will be cost effective in the long run, but supply for supply they should win, which is definitely an upside, especially when they only cost 5 more of each resource ocer militia line.