Special ability to compensate lack of range and mobility; partial reduction of taking damage from mangonel-line and scorpion-line. Chance of fixing pathing is slim in near future. Range and mobility can compensate this but militia have none.
As long as I see faster movement speed for militia line, I’m happy.
Move longswordsman upgrade available in feudal with +0.1 base speed. Skirm kites militia should have been stopped in some way since 2025
No one can afford that tech anyway.
I stopped this on my proposal.
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Remove Squires, add 10% speed to all infantry, and balance the Celts accordingly.
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Make Militia instantly and automatically upgrade to Man-at-Arms upon reaching the Feudal Age.
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Make Supplies also grant 5% speed to the Militia line, but increase its food cost to 125.
Now that new plan to buff MAA is out, Would it enough to make MAA good?
The changes are:
- cost -10f before supply, +5f after supply (now 75f 75g)
- movement speed increased from 0.9 to 0.96 (same as archers & skirms)
- arson moved to Feudal and cost halfed (now 150f 50g)
The MAA of the average civ should still not become good, but the MAA of some specific civs such as Celts, Goths, Malians, Romans (and Armenians LS) may become good.
I dunno, the key thing here is that MAA now move as fast as archers and skirms. That means MAA can evade or attack them. That makes a biiiiiig difference.
Plus Arson, you could completely neutralize an archer civ by just running away and attacking from different directions repeatedly.
Maybe I underestimate the change, but I dont think you can neutralize an archer civ. Many reasons:
- The cost of 50f 20g outweights the cost of archers 25w 45g, it shouldn’t be possible to outmass archers in Feudal age.
- The archer player has way more damage potential than the maa player, because the archer player can repair buildings and make mini walls, whereas the archer player can easily kill villagers behind walls or harass a woodline.
- The hit to kill ratio is only 15 hits vs. 5 hits in favor of maa. I don’t think a slip up from the archer player (not looking at maa attacking) is worse than a slip up from the maa player (not looking at archers attacking the maa).
It’s not that they can kill the archers, but now there’s actually play and counterplay there.
Before, an archer civ could repel any infantry attack with just a tiny number of archers. You attack from one side, and the archers can chase down any infantry to kill them. Now, the infantry can actually get away. That means you need to have enough archers to deal meaningful damage in one shot, which means the archer civ needs to hold back a MUCH larger number of their army.
That, in turn, dramatically reduces their ability to attack. Just by having a small handful of infantry running around near the enemy base, you significantly inhibit their offensive potential.
It’ll take a while to see how it plays out of course…but imagine you send all your archers forward only for three men at arms with arson to start hammering on a house by your woodline. BEST case, you have to pull off like 3-4 villagers from your woodline for the ~60 seconds it takes to get your archers back there to fight them off.
And then the MAA just run away anyway! You’ve just lost what, several hundred wood in repairs and lost collection time? For nothing.
The change makes the first 3-4 maa stronger and capable of getting more value. Better chance of breaking houses, you can add an extra maa for nearly the same cost, easier to block or chase down vills. But once range is built, archer player can stay close to their tc, kite and make solo maa play ineffective. Remember that its mentioned in patch notes that forests will move closer to tc in Arabia. So solo maa might still not be a good idea but 4-5 maa + skirms might fetch more value especially with civs that have a bonus for maa or skirm play.
But why would you need to send all your archers to kill those maa. You don’t have to panic, rush and try to kill all the maa right away. Despite the speed increase and reduced cost, maa player will still have to fetch value from them and the defending player can put two groups of 2-3 archers on defensive patrol. Without skirms, solo maa still won’t have much impact after ranged units are produced.
If 3 maa without arson attack a house and 1 vill is repairing it, the defender will lose 60 hp/min on the house and 12.5 wood per minute on repairs, 25 wood/min on villager idle time. You’d have to force 8 minutes of repair for just 300 wood. Wood being a faster resource, 300 wood is still less damage compared to 250 food 100 gold the maa player spends on them. And practically 8 mins of repairs is unlikely to happen. Slavs, Goths, Japanese, Burmese, Magyars, Bulgarians (with an extra maa) alone can get more value by forcing another repair vill.
Absolutely. The changes are definitely valuable to get more damage done from the starting 3-4 maa but its still going to be a situational unit.
Well, that’s what changes, see. Before, if you attacked with MAA, the defender can guarantee killing them if they want. Because the archers can outrun them, you cannot possibly keep the MAA alive if your enemy wants them dead.
But now, you CAN run. So you attack for a little bit, do pretty major damage because of their high attack and building damage, and then just run away. And you can do that over and over.
I think it’d be reasonable to expect, say, a 50% attack time, with 50% repositioning. Ideally you’d probably have something like 4 MAA, because that overwhelms the first, hyper-efficient villager and forces the enemy to use two villagers to outrepair your damage…and at that point you’re burning something like 70 wood per minute. That’s maybe 350 wood over Feudal.
And that’s just a baseline. It doesn’t account for what happens if your MAA get in, which is a very real possibility.
We’ll have to see how it plays out. Drushes and MAA rushes will be easier to pull off (due to the reduced price), and the higher movement speed means archers won’t be able to kite forever (or pursue as effectively). So retreating the MAAs would be an option. And with arson being cheaper and available in Feudal age, a mass of MAAs will be able to tear down buildings quickly (potentially even the TC if the defender doesn’t take the threat seriously).
I think the end result is that it will take actual investment to repel MAAs (a comparable number of archers as opposed to just a few archers kiting them). And having retreat as an option means that attacking MAAs won’t lose as much value if archers come out (opening up the option to have them come back in castle age with/as siege support). But until we see actual gameplay, it’s hard to know.
Food may be worth more than gold and wood in Feudal age (but only after natural food sources start to run out), but militia/MAA production starts in dark age and MAAs train significantly faster than archers do (21s vs 35s). And an archery range costs more than the MAA upgrade. With all that said, I think it would be very possible to outmass archers, especially if the civ has a bonus coming into play (like Teutons cheaper farms, or Goths discount/production speed boost/longer lasting hunt, or Aztec carry bonus/military production bonus).
Overall very good change. The problem is that no one can afford MAA+Arson in Feudal Age. Armor is the main upgrade that you will pick for your MAA if you want to invest on them. Having same speed as archer won’t stop archer player from counter rush to your base and MAA without armor, or even with armor won’t be able to defend them.
Instead, Gambeson in Feudal would be real deal. And at half price just like Arson price is halved. PA is the only armor that you should care about. MA is not important as all melee units are inferior to MAA anyway. You could justify delaying Blacksmith and relying on Gambeson.
Now you can afford MAA+Supplies if you set your economy the right way aging up to Feudal.
Supplies cost 75f+75g
Arson will be 75f+25g
So you could display 3-4 MAA with Arson in early Feudal. I suppose this could keep opponent’s archers in his base.
Armor upgrades would be more necessary if the opponent get fletching.
We should see how the changes play out, then we could know what Militia line needs to be competitive.
yup! but MAA should be far better now. feudal play may go on longer and FC builds behind walls could be punished.
You always could. But that’s a bad play in general. 175f/65g on upgrades for MAA vs 100f/50g on upgrades for archers. Archers will still win. And Archers don’t cost food either.
Good thing is the speed. So some really aggressive MAA civs like Japanese, Malians, Vikings, Goths, Bulgarians, Slavs may have some solid MAA+Arson opening against bad archer civs.
Wish Celts speed was not nerfed. For Romans, I can understand the removal of Arson.
I have a couple of questions about the changes
It seems that Drush and early MMA will become stronger,
For me the question now is whether this will also make strategies like going full MMA in Feudal age where you start the Produktion off MMA after reaching Feudal age viabel? Like you would do with archer.
What I also ask myself is will it now be possible to Transition from Feudal age MMA, Archers or Scout into Longswordmen going up to Castel age. Will Longswordmen in Castel age be good because there only get a Speed and cost adjustments, is that enough?
Yes, if you can combine then with a trash option such as skirms or transition to Sorpions which don’t do friendly damage. It will work. But you need ballistics and other upgrages to stay on top of knight spam.