I don’t remember Mongols had used Camel in battle for many time.
As for Chinese, at least the Song Dynasty couldn’t have had many Camel units because they lost their desert territories.
That sounds fun.
However just like I’ve said earlier, the cheapness of Spearman make it can never counter Knight on an equal status, Spearman user must spend more pop to cosume Knight user’s resource.
Spearmen shouldn’t beat Knights in the front by same size of army, otherwise balance will be broken.
So, it is better to add a new advanced Spearman in the age4, but not only upgrade the old one, the old one is too cheap.
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I’m not sure about this, but Janissaries is more useful in this patch for there are always Knights everywhere.
Yeah,if old type too cheap ,we can move these two technology to the university.The “Pike Phalanx” can add a new pike unit,more expensive,more amor,more cost,and more damage,and meanwhile have speed tech to have more mobility.
Or technology “Pike Phalanx” give old type more cost&armor,I think its useful equal
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I believe new unit is better, because we might need to consider the protracted fight of late game but not only for a brief wave of attacks in the early Imperial.
Knights might out of game finally if this upgrade of spearmen do very effective.
I guess you can have a second unit, but if its just “Spearman+” it seems a bit redundant.
I’d agree that pop-restraints really undermine the trash units late game. If you both have 130 eco pop, then 70 fully upgraded knights will beat 70 spearmen. Yes you can re-make the spearmen, but this isn’t instantaneous, and won’t help if the knights are now running through your eco. Also if you can’t re-stack enough spears, they just get insta-deleted by the knights for almost no damage. Moreover, if your opponent makes 20 knights, how many spearmen are you meant to make? If you make 30 or so, you’ve now only got 35-40 pop to handle 50 of theirs.
In this patch we are seeing the same thing with elephants. On paper spearmen counter them - but you need lots of spearmen charging in as a block. If the elephants can just chew them up as they spawn while being healed, you don’t actually make any progress while they tear apart your base.
To a degree I think this is intentional. You are meant to fight over gold resources. If one side has way more economy, they should be able to build a more powerful army and win the game.
But this does seem like the philosophy of their newer university upgrades. Pay say 1500 resources to unlock “Pikemen”, who are 60 food/20 wood/40 gold or more. 50% more HP, 50% higher anti-cav damage. But then would you need to buff archers to efficiently take them out? Feels like you are into an endless cycle of upgrades.
I must say that was indeed a very profound understanding.
However, the key point isn’t whether we need sort of Spearman+ unit, but we need increase the cost of Anti-Knight forces to the similar level as Knight. Whatever this forces looks like or fights like, the high cost must be a fundamental requirement.
Battle can only be fair after the cost of both side become similar, otherwise Anti-Knight side must consume more pop as always.
Fight for gold is reasonable, but what’s next after you got more gold in the late game? In this patch, most of civs still tend to invest in Knight after they become richer. Spearmen are too cheap to embody your economic advantages to military forces.
So, what not add some new way to embody your resource to Anti-Knight forces? That will make more fun to the game.
What about imperial tech for springalds that make them deal bonus damage to cav?
Well, in Season 1, there are videos showing that the Springald was so broken in attack, that it was able to kill even cavalry, and had no counter.
In fact, that’s the reason why its attack was nerfed and it was given the anti-siege role. It’s something that existed and well it’s been removed now, I don’t think we’ll go back to those times.
Currently the trend is to "consider attack bonuses more" before base attack so that the unit doesn’t come out invincible against its supposed counters. It happened with the musofadi, and the springald, the horseman, the janissaries, and others.
That said, I support the motion for some Siege Weapons to give “Extra Damage” against Elephants… that unit needs an extra counter “now”. Siege could be a good option, historically cannons were used against them, ask Babur.
Right now it is only situational because Delhi is the only civ with Efelantes, but in the future if Chola, Vijayanagara, Rajputs, or South Asian civs like Burmese, Khmer, Vietnam come out, elephants will abound, and hopefully what happened in AoE 2 won’t happen again, where many civs with elephants were broken when they came out, and they humiliated previous cavalry civs like France quite a bit.
Well adding 10 bonus damage cav wont be broken i think.
The game does a fairly good job of modeling the strengths and weaknesses of heavy cavalry.
Spears DO beat mass knights - but its a win in costs means that you need to be able to replace you losses at a similar rate to enemy production. Later in the game, they fall into the same role as IRL pikemen did - a wall of stick to keep cavalry of the ranged damage.
This is pretty much how it went in history too - a change in tactics is what beat antiquity armies as opposed a single weapon or unit. In game, knights are fairly helpless vs a spear/xbow (or hc) combo.
So no, I dont really think anything extra is needed to counter knights. Rather, the tactical aspect of using units in combinations is better than just throwing a unit against whatever it has bonus damage against.
I’m afraid these guys are truly don’t like springalds at all LOL, that’s why I perfer to change Handcannoner but not springalds.
Yeah, that’s truth, but doesn’t fit the situation of late game.
In the situation of team late games, which we could have rich resources to fill our population, Knight Spam do confuse me expcially after this patch.
It is looks like produce Knights as your opponent just doing is much better than produce Spearmen.
I believe we might need some new method to consume our resource to anti-Knight efficiently, even if this method is pretty poor on cost-effectiveness.
Otherwise I believe it is better to make the upgrade of cavalry in university act on price but not health. I’m not trying to kick Knight out of game, I’m just a bit confused about the Huge Cost Gap between Knight and Spearmen which always lead the latter one got passive performance in late game.
And…if we are talking about the imitating history. I’m afraid Knight shouldn’t consume 1 pop as those infantry, for heavy cavalry always caused greater logistical pressure.
These will bring new balance if we increase Knight pop to 2 whatever in the early game or late game, we can even buff Knight further in this case. So what do you say?
Otherwise we’d better give some efficient way to consume resource to Anti-Knight side to make the game balance after we reach the pop limit.
I only referecned spearmen in late game to highlight that existing ranged infantry is enough as a knight counter for late game.
Let me be a bit more explicit.
100 knights will beat 100 spearmen. 100 knights will beat 100 crossbows (mostly).
However, 40 spearmen and 60 xbows/hc will destroy 100 pop of knights, in any civ.
Knights are potentially the most pop effective unit, but mass knights isn’t the most pop effective unit comp. Thats what I mean by tactics winning. I feel the game does that well enough that a special anti knight late game units isnt needed.
The Key Point still rely on the Cost of Anti-Knight forces, I’m not persisting in adding new units, that isn’t the only solution.
Upgrading those old spears and crossbows is also considerable, but it is necessary to Increase their Cost and Efficiency about Anti-Knight at the Same Time.
A significant cost gap always break the balance in the late game.
By the way, 40 spearmen & 60 crossbows can never beat 100 knights, you must miss something, or misjudged the number of knights due to its larger model.
In the situation of late game, army include Spears & Crossbows can only use Space to Consume Knight player’s Resource but can never beat Knight until its economy reserves can’t sustain anymore.
They can never compete with Knights on an equal level until they could consume resources at a similar speed as Knight.
I think we need a unit or an ability that can proactively reduce the speed of cavalry
For example, a horse pit or lasso，
Enable spearmen and other units to approach, ambush, and surround knights
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Well, that i remember, historically there were many form to delay cavalry speed in middle and early modern age, specially for civs that didn´t use cavalry so much, here some examples:
Stakes:
- The Stakes of the Longobowmans (English) (Check)
- Japanese “Horse defense bambu fences”, like the used in the Battle of Nagashino by Ashigaru Arquebusiers (JAPANESE NEED THIS).
Wagons:
- Defensive wagons (Hussites / Bohemia, Hungarians), that stop cavalry charges
– Maybe can work as a early Ribauldoquin (III), but with bonus aggainst cavalry, and less attacks.
Renaissance Age Corps:
- Pikemans corps (Netherland, HRE, Spanish, French, Hungary, Polony, Italy, etc).
– Maybe for Imperial Age (IV). HRE could have early pikeman (III), Swiss a UU (II) with Netherland (II)
Anti-Cavalry Traps
- Anti-cavalry holes and pits (Incas, Aztecs, Mayans, Mapuches)
– Could work like a pallisade of holes, but invisible (Stealth), only work 1 time to snare cavalry.
Anti-cavalry slowdowns Range units
- Liwi Thrower / Boleadora Thrower (Inca, Mapuche)
Anti-cavalry slowdowns Melee units
- Lasso (Bulgarian) (Huns)
- Lang Xian (Chinese)
Anti-Elephant slowdowns Siege units
- Fireworks rockets (Indian civs, as Chola, Vijayanagara, Rajputs, Delhi, Mughals)
- Cannons (Mughals, but in essence, Every civ with cannons can use this counter)
Cannons Bonus aggainst Elephant, official in a future?
About the last part, the devs listen our prayers, and in the last message of them, they say that gonna make “something” to improve the damage of cannons aggainst elephants (YEAH!)
