I had the idea to give him a charged ability to dig. And it only can dig a certain distance.
It’s then visible for the opponent, but ofc you can’t attack it whilst digging, but once it comes out it can be damaged until it has recharged and ordered to dig again.
This would be a suicidal thing similar to a petard as the sapper will come up inside the enemy base and will be surrounded by enemies.
The chronicles scenarios had a great sapper concept but its hard to make it to a unit.
I used this for my Syrians concept:
(Ignore infantry ignoring armor bc it’s too similar to Wootz Steel, change it into Spearmen only)
(Edit: on the other hand, Damascene steel was basically Wootz, so similarity might be thematically justified)
(Edit 2: changed the tech’s name to “Damascus Steel” and the effect to “Spearman line +0.5 range, Steppe Lancers ignore armor”. Now it doesn’t feel like Wootz Steel copypaste.)
(Edit 3: changed into “Damascus Steel: Infantry and Steppe Lancers +3 attack bonus against mounted units. Spearman line +0.5 range”, Steppe Lancers ignoring armor were a bad idea)
The Lifidi: A region replacement for Sahara cavalry. The Lifidi is comfortable cloth armor that might not be as heavy as plate but is knitted in a way that you will not boil to death in the Sahara summer dry heat under layers of full body field plate!
When killed the cloth armor is so torn and worthless than the soldier takes it off revealing a scout cavalry unit beneath it.
Hence your upgrades to scout line and this unit line (which could be the Castle Age or even lacking one of the Imperial stages) could be important. And possibly so you dont throw away a unit that could be easier to convert until first killed, they could share conversion resistance not sure about anti religion bonuses
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A foreign mercenary unit that is comparably cheap, but has an additional upkeep cost over time
As interesting as that is, that just sounds lilke a micro nightmare to bleed gold or food for
depends on how it’s implemented.
if it is just passive negative income then you could possibly just have lots of negative gold or whatever - you could still spend all other res to make whaterver with it.
ofc if the unit itself costs some gold you couldn’t replace losses then, but i think that would be a good way to balance it
(i think about the option of a cavalry UU that isn’t OP - so to give a reason to make it this would be an option to go for. Most current cav UUs are OP and need to be because otherwise there would be no reason to make them over knights)
A Konnik-style heavy cav that converts into light cav sounds interesting, but maybe a bit too “special” gameplay-wise to be a regional unit instead of a Castle UU… For a regional unit, how about a cav whose movement and attack speed increases the more HP it misses?
Could be interesting for a civ that has terrible monks but access to cheaper heresy.
It would give it a unique flair and the UU could also be utilized as a monk counter once heresy is researched. Cause with heresy it would turn into a light cav after a “successfull” conversion
If I recall, my recent Yoruba civ concept could qualify for this.
Blowgun unit, we have none right now. With poison darts, high presicion, no idea about the range such weapon would have.
Can’t recall if I walready posted about the Mounted Crossbowman but we definitly need one in the game too, no idea on the gimmick however.
Springald, a very specific siege unit that was famous in the middle age, a big dart thrower, designed to shoot down ennemies placed on walls…But yeah now that I said that, we don’t have units on walls …
Galleass, with fiiiiiiiiiiiire.
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IMHO slower speed and attack rate than Cav Archers, but higher attack.
Maybe a beefy Scorpion upgrade?
Maybe even armor ignoring.
Nah, it’s a very different type of siege engine, not based on torsion at all but on bending a big wood part to hit the big bolt to be thrown at ennemy then.
I discovered the existance of this thing very recently, like one week ago, never seen it in any movie at all nor in any game I’ve played.
However it could be a scorpio line replacement of some kind, for some civs, but it would require the dev to study springald and their use a lot so maybe someday but not soon.
The wiki does say it’s torsion though…
Ah, yeah then I misunderstood its functionality. I think there is many variation of Springald but anyway it cold be a cool new unit.
Danish Axeman using the famous Dan Axe two-handed single-edged weapon !
About the gimmick … What about abit of range on a non spear melee unit ? As the axe was famous for letting the striker move its hand over the shaft to vary the range of this attack.
Siege Engineer
- Garrison him in any garrison-able building - he enables the building to pour boiling oil out at close-range
- Task him to a siege engine unit - he increases siege rate of fire a tiny, weeny bit.
- He also repairs siege units
Who’s it for? Okay, not a unique unit for one civ - this is probably more of a regional unit
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Mace Rider: (or Morgenstern Rider)
Some heavy armoured european knights with colored Coat-of-Arms cloth decoration on the horse with Maces / Morgenstern to CRUSH armour.
For the mechanic, I’d suggest a Charge-Attack that got an obuch-like effect that strips armor, but only on the charge-attack.
For the regular attacks, a stinger type effect that reduce ennemy attack speed for a short duration.
That way it would simulate the violence of the impact of a cavalry charge paired with a blunt weapon type, without stealing the obuch unique damaging while adding that “stun” effect made with the stinger. Infact, just the stinger doing attack speed debuff would be enought, but I think that a charge-attack with a special graphic where the mace is swang upward instead of the regular attack where the mace is swang downward would be perfect.
Foot Knight w/ Polearm:
I saw a video of a fighting engagement between some landsknechts and an armoured knight wielding kind of an halberd / polearm and it was crazy. We don’t have enought highly armoured foot units in the game, especially one that would use such a deadly weapon. Here is the video if you’re interessed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VinzfRbdtbg
What struck me on this demonstration is the fear that the knight generated just by beeing there. They knew he was a thought target, they knew they’d have to act together to take him down. Made me think of the Tanks during WW1, just a bulk piece of metal with weapons that comes towards you.
So about the unit, I’d say a very slow moving unit, highly armoured, with area of effect charge-attack cool swings !
Viking Karve Ship
Kind of an hybrid between a galley and a transport ship, allowing units to be embarked in, eventually increasing the amount of projectiles shot by the ship.
It would be a regional unit for viking themed civs, replacing the demo-ship line.
There are good gimmicks and bad gimmicks.
Good ones turn a unit into something unique and fun with a simple tweak. Bad ones unnecessarily complicate units, imitate better gimmicks, and defy logic, resulting in units that are neither fun nor unique.
Arabian Knights. To better exemplify the Middle Eastern and maybe non African desert civs, the Arabian Knight line: Arabian Knight, Faris, Savar (an upgrade only available to Persians simply due to no other civ having Paladin type unit to this point). The Arabian knight loses a little power for both a little speed and both resistance and bonus damage vs camel units and specifically resistance to camel units. All camels even ones who don’t counter cavalry! Also a small bonus vs archers so the Savars bonuses don’t feel out of the blue. The Persian team bonus now affects all knight replacement lines so Arabian, Hue gong and Savars are now included alongside the basic knight line.
So the civs who have it: Saracens (Arabian Knight only), Turks, Persians, a rare possibly for Ethiopians, Tatars??
A few others yet represented like Egypt, Nubia, Yemen, Tajiks would be interesting to see as well.
They still take full brunt from spear line.
If anything this helps the Turkish matchup vs camel heavy civs like Gujaras which are commonly lopsided.
For Africans, Mandekelu and Lifidi tend to be the big force of cavalry but they are also desert based heavy cavalry who perhaps also resist camels but instead of countering them better just are more expensive and more bulky and swift. This is of course a little awkward to design but many Africans had heavy cavalry on par with Europe despite being in such desert heat that would boil field plate alive