The most interesting thing IMO is the verification of people’s beliefs of the militia line’s capabilities.
If Goths and Slavs end up being played successfully with heavy militia line, more than 50f and +1 melee armor could ever reasonably account for, that’s going to be difficult to reconcile with a lot of stated reasoning for why the militia line sucks.
On the other end if none of Japanese, Burmese, Viking, Teuton infantry end up being able to use militia line successfully that’s going to leave people like me with a difficult time reconciling stated reasons for why the militia line primarily needed changes to the dynamics of switching costs rather than some stat buff.
There’s other outcomes of course but it’s a good experiment all around.
those are literally made just because they wanted to nerf the eagles without touching them, so they went for the next best choice which is making the longsword switch more affordable
Neither is top 10% lower skills. Neither can “literally anything work” in a balanced matchup… and you would know this if you played more.
None of this matters… because we finally have almost everything we have been fighting for… militia line was probably the last thing (and unsurprisingly the game isn’t broken )
This is false. There is this wonderful thing called human error.
I could be playing a better civ against you and fail to win because I made bad decisions.
Like for example. You’re playing mongols and I think (but don’t scout that well) that you’re gonna open scouts so I go spears. Instead you open archers and absolutely wreck me.
Did I lose because of balance? No. Balance had zero impact on me losing the game.
I lost because bad decision making. Which is why I say that at lower skill levels BALANCE DOES NOT MATTER. people at lower levels make BAD DECISIONS all the time. They let their macro slip. Lose villagers they shouldn’t, don’t svout properly, and use bad strategies. Which is why I said that at lower skill levels you can win with anything.
I’ve seen tatar longswords win at 1200 elo. Pre buff.
Daut posted to YouTube that Malians vs. Slavs game I mentioned earlier in this topic:
To be more specific, it was a fast Archer transition from Scouts after Daut mixed Spears with his M@A, not an Archer opening like I said. This is only one game out of many we’ll need to see if these buffs are enough. But as for me, after seeing the fast Archer transition and Hearttt’s advancement to Castle Age before Daut’s advancement, I feel like Daut would’ve died hard if he tried this with any civ but Malians or Celts. I have a strong hunch that the next Militia line buffs are moving Arson and/or Squires to the Feudal Age with a lower cost so that M@A might do more damage before any Archer transition immediately shuts them down and/or so that M@A might defensively survive a little better vs. an Archer transition by not being so easy to chase down.
Although a plus, that I can see from this video, for Infantry civs in a world where infantry are a viable mid-game unit for every Infantry civ, is that Infantry civs using Infantry builds should have an easier time affording food intensive upgrades than Knight and Archer builds, because Infantry builds are more food intensive than Knights. But the lower gold economy for Infantry builds could mean a harder transition to a more expensive gold unit.
Dude, militia line still sucks hard on open maps because no matter what you do, they are worse than archers or kts. This buffs for longswords is there to be an indirect nerf to eagles
Yes it is. There’s no shame in admitting that even 1k6 players barely know what they are doing in the heat of playing
Come on now. At 1k2 there are so many bad plays that make no sense and still work because someone is not mechanically good to respond to them and we are still saying that we should consider low elo for balancing?
Which is absolutely normal. Archers counters infantry, the only reason you can do this with malians is because of the extra pierce armor
But just why? You are making a unit, your opponents makes the counter to your unit and he shouldn’t be rewarded? Archers transitions are supposed to kill infantry, that’s why it has become common doing low pop archers build against man at arms opening (which, btw, has been one of the strongest opening around for years at this point)
Don’t assume of me. It’s not the counter unit that’s the real killer. Rather the killer part is the timing of being able to click up to the Castle Age while still being able to make the counter unit, even after tech switching like in the video (and by a non-Archer civ, too!), thereby also having earlier access to Knights or Mangonels to flatten a Skirmisher switch against the Archers. The Infantry player should be on the back foot if the other player makes the counter play, but not so much like it is now. Therefore the last step to making long-term Infantry plays a good strategy for every Infantry civ are defensive buffs to M@A’s vs. Archers, like +1 base pierce armor, or moving Squires to the Feudal Age with a lower cost, so that the Infantry player might have a better chance of living long enough to reach the Castle Age and get his own siege units to counter the counter.
The game is balanced for 99% of the playerbase by sheer virtue of rhe fact that literally anything can work for the mass majority of the playeebase because of how many errors rhey make.
Interesting point. Hypothetically, if this became the path forward, I think it would need to be the Skirmisher. That maintains the Infantry beats Cav, Cav beats Ranged, and Ranged beats Infantry balance. It would weaken the swordsman’s role as a trash killer.
It shouldn’t be a hard counter IMO, but something like 1 or 2 bonus damage to swordsman from Elite Skirm could potentially work (they have 3 bonus damage to spearmen for comparison). I don’t think they should have any bonus damage to the infantry armor class because that would create problems for meso civs attempting to counter mass skirms with eagles. And this is all conditional on swordsmen receiving more buffs to reach the same viability as knights/crossbows, in which case a trash counter may be needed.
I’m not sure any of this is needed, I’m fairly happy with the current swordsmen balance and small incremental changes. Just something interesting to discuss.
It’s just making the unit upgrades cheaper, because before they were prohibitively expensive, especailly when considering the value and prestation(?) of the unit
Why shouldn’t it be a hard counter? If militia compete with knights and archers why sjouldnt they have the same weakness?
Yeah at 1 to 2 bonus damage with their slow attack rate and minimum range skirms are going to get laughed at by the LS line.
I’d leave rhem alone at this point too as well. But if the “make militia competitive” crowd wants competitive with knights and archers rhey can’t have their cake and eat it too.
Don’t forget the increased armor too. That helps.
I’m fine with militia line as is. It has a role and it’s one of the most common openers. It doesn’t need to compete with knights and ls
Well knights are hard countered by pikes because its so hard to force the fight, with their increased mobility. Hits need to be devastating. IMO a Elite Skirm vs Arbalest or Halberdier is more of a medium counter. And things like knights vs crossbows or champions vs hussar are soft counters (no bonus damage, but can win cost effectively if they’re not severely outnumbered).
You may be right about +1 bonus damage being too low though. That only puts Skirms up to the same damage that we’d currently see from Aztecs, Mayans or Vietnamese, none of which counter champions. So maybe +2 or +3. 3 just sounds like a lot, since its the same they do to spearmen (although spearmen have one less pierce armor) and barely less than the +4 to archers.
Not only do they win cost effectively, they win on a per supply basis and time spent training too.
Elite skirms take 2 damage from arbs (18 hits to kill) and kill in 6 hits. Yeah they attack slower so those 6 hits take 15 seconds but that still isn’t going to make archers competitive.
Or maybe rhe skirm is a bad idea for a trash counter.
Just to add regarding why militia would need a trash counter if they got significantly stronger:
People underappreciate the gold efficiency of the militia line. Archers are like 66% gold and knights and siege are around 50% (roughly, this number depends on the civ’s eco techs and weighting of farm cost). Meanwhile the militia line is around 25% (again roughly). This means you can produce militia 2.66x longer than you could archers and 2x longer than knights.
Plus realistically the militia line is used in conjunction with other things like trash. The counter to militia + trash is going to be a composition which has a higher gold % expenditure than militia + trash. So if you buff the militia line the probability that certain infantry civs can just keep pace and win by outlasting the opponent becomes a real threat.
Without a trash counter, once the enemy runs out of gold it’s GG as champs with non-market gold sources kill trash. Where exactly that point is it’s hard to say because people don’t really push militia strategies to their limit. But I suspect it’s pretty close for some civs.
Players are so used to playing with gold units which consume gold 2x faster than the militia line I’d be surprised if they can properly estimate the intertemporal benefits.
big difference between “this is the exception not the rule” and "the counter to all infantry is something almost all infantry have bonus damage too, and all infantry have bonus damage against with arson.
furthermore, how does BUILDINGS countering Infantry help in actual engagements with military units out in the field
