Well, the difference is that you do have to build them.
Archers can already be pretty well massed by the time you hit castle age, and then it just takes a single extremely cheap tech to make them a unit that’s effective for the majority of the game.
Archers are a true power spike. Knights are more of a power…curve?
You have to build those archers in the feudal age which is more expensive to do than to build knights in the castle age. Again, this is how the game is built… archers grow quadratically in power, knights grow linearly. Archers are slow, but can devastate economies even behind walls… knights are mobile and tanky and can deal with tower and TC fire, but are restricted to melee attacks which makes it easier to defend against with walls.
You do realize that if crossbow upgrade is delayed it basically sentences a lot of archers to death to someone who just decides to wall hard and make a couple of knights, right?
And then what, you indirectly buffed cavalry civs over archer civs. The archer -> crossbow meta hasn’t changed since the game was released. Considering the dozens of millions of hours played by the community since 1999 and everything else that’s changed, it shows how balanced they got it pretty much. (Other aspects of archers such as training time and attack bonuses have changed though).
It just seems to me that the OP simply had a couple of bad games against archers that he’s simply airing his frustration by suggesting a pretty ground breaking balance change.
Balance is never in isolation. You nerf one thing, you buff another. The discussion on knights and other units is most definitely on point. If you consider power spikes in general to be “toxic” then you simply lack an understanding of how RTS games or really any game works. Power spikes are a trade off. A linearly expanding power dynamic is boring and gives no room for turn around play and variation of strategies.
Uh…yeah. That’s why people suggest it be changed. Because the game isn’t perfect, and can be improved.
The archer path is currently slightly too powerful compared to other similar options. By slightly increasing the overall cost, it allows this situation to be remedied and make them a more balanced option.
When you’re resorting to the old, ‘this is how the game is’ argument, it sounds an awful lot like you have no good points at all.
I’m resorting to dozens of millions of hours of gameplay has changed so many things BUT the cost of crossbow upgrade.
The Archer path is certainly not too powerful. It is much more difficult to close out a game with only archers than it is with say only infantry or only cavalry. It’s also a lot easier to lose your investment in archers because just as they grow quadratically, they also shrink quadratically.
Out of curiosity, what’s your Elo in the game? in HD? In Voobly? I’ve not seen anyone from the competitive community suggesting an archer nerf per se. The most major complaint has been melee unit simply refusing to fight sometimes which is more a fault of the game engine than it is of archers being unbalanced.
If you want to make these changes, get the genie editor, tweak a couple of values and here you have a mod you can play with your friends in the lobby. Don’t go about not knowing squat about the game complaining about something being OP when you simply have sub par experience with the game.
This is known as the ‘Appeal to Tradition’, and it’s one of the classic fallacies. It’s equally possible that it’s just something nobody’s ever noticed before. Or heck, the game has changed a LOT in that time. Maybe it’s just changed enough that tradition is no longer enough.
Meanwhile, attempting to discredit someone based on external factors rather than the strength of their argument is called Ad Hominemn, yet another fallacy. I don’t like to know anyone’s ELO, because the instant that happens, people’s brains turn off and they stop actually considering the problem.
Much as you’re attempting to do now. Good logic stands on its own.
For goodness sake, just actually consider the argument and stop trying to muddy the water.
After all, the entire topic is a question. IS it too powerful? Is it balanced? If so, why? State your evidence, provide your proof. Not one fallacy after another, followed by broad statements with absolutely no backing.
You hit the nail in the head. This is why, in the true spirit of the game, I like to question some especially unchallenged assumptions about ‘The Meta’ .
Meanwhile, attempting to discredit someone based on external factors rather than the strength of their argument is called Ad Hominemn, yet another fallacy. I don’t like to know anyone’s ELO, because the instant that happens, people’s brains turn off and they stop actually considering the problem.
It happens far too often, and is sad.
I would suggest Avihool to stay on topic and think without bias.
My opinion is that the Crossbowman+Bodkin power spike is by far the most abused by any expert player, and its magnitude has become rather large too. Because of its near-ubiquitous nature, i beleive, that it is harming the unit variety potential of this beautiful game, which has as many as 100+ usable units.
Oh yeah it’s a fallacy to consider the experience of hundreds of thousands of players playing for dozens of millions of hours rather than the whims of an inexperienced player 
.
You want evidence?
Here: https://aoestats.io/
Top 5 civs are non-archer civs, bottom 5 all have fully upgraded archer line. Your anecdotal salt is no evidence whatsoever.
This topic has nothing to do with civilization winrates. This topic is specifically about the Crossbowman Upgrade. You cannot use civ winrate data to make any claims or arguments about the Crossbowman Upgrade.
I would once again suggest you to stay on topic and think without bias.
That only has two weeks of evidence to it. Not a very large amount.
But hey ignore the large amount of ranged unit use in tournaments.
I believe Xbox is fine, but please don’t use two weeks of data to justify your position
So we’re arguing high level play / tournaments now? This goes full circle as no one, literally no one from the highly competitive community complained about the crossbow upgrade or archer line being OP.
As for “2 weeks of data” - it’s not 2 weeks of data… it encompasses millions of hours of gameplay. Do you even understand how statistics work? Heck, it’s not even a sample but the actual population of matches. It actually means that AT THIS VERY MOMENT non-archer civs are stronger than archer civs.
No, I have never said that ALL power spikes are toxic to the game. It is you who thought of it that way.
Only those power spikes which are abused over and over again, and in effect, make gameplay boring, or murder the creativity of players(of using a variety of units and strategies) are toxic to the game, if you ask me. And Crossbow+bodkin spike comes number one in that list for me.
you always balance around high level play. you don’t balance around low level play because if you did you would end up with broken stuff.
2 weeks of play. literally that’s it. even the most used civ in that time frame (mongols) has only been played 350 times at the highest level. the average is closer to 50 games.
that isn’t a lot to determine if a civ is imbalanced considering the game literally has almost 1200 non mirror matchups.
by the way the top of the site says over 95k matches analyzed (and thats at all skill levels). assuming each map is 1 hour (which is high, because the average match length is never higher then 47 minutes), that means that its analyzed around 950k hours of gameplay. not MILLIONS as you put it.
So you think the entire population size of all the recent ranked matches does not actually reflect game balance, yet somehow the salty experience of a low Elo player does?
Also, as I said, no competitive player has complained about archers being OP. Heck, you can even see that in high level play (https://aoestats.io/RM_1v1/1650+) - the situation for archer civs gets even worse.
How do you get from 95k matches to 950 hour assuming 1 hour for each game?
Just some notes:
The site shows only Ranked RM 1v1 non mirror games. No No RM 1v1 mirror games, no RM teamgames, no DM, no unranked, no single player.
did i even say that? no. i said we don’t have enough information. we literally have not enough games played to determine anything.
and fyi, 5 of the civs in the top 10 rely heavily on archers in their attack plan, so i don’t know what your complaint is (aztecs, huns, indians, celts, and mayans). and to a lesser extent persians and magyars also use archers.
the only civs listed who don’t use archers are teutons, goths, and byzantines.
I have heard Hera said scouts are bad because of melee pathing. He loved to go for scouts, but now goes for archers. You also see pros go for archers much more at DE than previously on voobly.
I do think the general opinion of pros is archers are currently much stronger than cav.
Still i dont think archer line is somehow broken. It is more like melee path finding is broken. Let the devs just fix the melee pathing before making changes to the archer line.
god yes, fix melee pathing.
The bottom 5 are more stark. All civs can utilize archers to some extent. I don’t see how any of this is evidence that archers are OP or that crossbow upgrade is too cheap, seriously. What I’m trying to show is that the evidence we do have suggests otherwise:
I’d really like the OP to explain what other than his personal anecdotal and limited experience has led him to think archer upgrade is cheap and OP.
Also, if you think the entire population size of matches for 2 weeks (even though the site also takes into account previous patches and you can also similarly look up stats from before) is insufficient then please explain what makes it insufficient. Would 4 weeks suffice? 4 months? 20 years? Why yes, why not? Have you done any statistical analysis on the data to determine what the right sample size (mind you, this is not even a sample, but the entire data set for recent matches) should be?
We can go down this sophist rabbit hole. Truth of the matter is there’s no real indication of archers being OP and plenty suggesting the opposite.