Their spearmen speed got nerfed a bit only in Feudal and Woad Raiders in Castle, but for the militia-line when you consider their speed buff, Celts MAA will be faster than they are today.
I know. But I wish they were buffed even more. 0.96*1.15 = 1.10, sounds really good. And if Gambeson was available in Feudal instead of Arson, I bet they Celts MAA would be one of the best.
I agree with most of what you say except maa donât deal that much damage proportionate to their cost. They do 9 damage to houses and 7 damage to other buildings. If there are 2 groups of archers in patrol, theyâll still reach the point where maa can attack in a few seconds. You might set a few buildings on moderate fire at best.
Lets say you have 3 Slav, Goth maa (+2 vs buildings) or Japanese maa, with some time spent on moving and relocating to a different spot, lets say 70% of the time youâre attacking and 30% of the time youâre moving(will be a lot more time on relocating but lets take a very optimal scenario). Youâll need to do this for minimum 13-14 mins to force 350 wood worth of idle time and repair. You can take any set of buildings to attack and this is the best you can do when there are 2 groups of archers in patrol. If youâre attacking a range or barracks, the opponent wonât even begin repairing right away since those buildings have a lot of hp. Assuming your maa attack starts at 9:30, opponent will hit castle age around 19, get xbow+bodkin and wreck your economy because heâll be atleast 2 mins faster to castle age. So solo maa with no follow up is still a bad strategy. But if youâre able to follow up with a strong skirm play, the left over maa can get decent value.
This is actually the only scenario where you can get enough value by going solo maa. Somewhere they break-in and kill more than 1 villager, the maa player gets back their cost in 5 mins or lesser with 2+ vill advantage. This is likely to happen with those civs that get some extra dps for free against something. Goths, Slavs, Japanese etc.
Before 10 mins, obviously maa number will be more since production starts in the 7th minute of game time. But you will need more vills on gaia food to sustain production and if you put 6+ vills on sheep throughout the feudal age transition and the first few minutes after, youâll run out of sheep around min 11. If you skip eco upgrades you can get 5 or 6 militias and get maa upgrade. Apart from depending on wood, Food being too slow to gather plus being utilized for villagers and eco upgrades will make it very hard. Plus youâll lose maa numbers once archers are out and you donât have a skirm follow up coming. So around 14-15 mins archer numbers will definitely exceed if you only keep producing maa without any follow up. And if you try to do a skirm follow up, you wonât be able to seed 12+ farms to sustain villager, maa and skirm production simultaneously.
HmmâŠMAA have 6 base attack, houses have -1 armor in feudal, thatâs 7, then +1 for forging to 8, then +2 building damage for 10, and then another +2 for arson, thatâs 12 vs houses.
Four MAA with arson attacking a house will take four villagers to outrepair them. Thatâs 112 res per minute. ThatâsâŠnot bad, even if youâre chasing them away regularly. They can just keep coming back, again and again.
AND the archer player is forced to keep a good number of archers behindâŠ
Well I just figured out then 4 MAA can kill house foundations while builtâŠ
This is just broken. Itâs not balanced, but basically impossible to defend against a 4 MAA rush from japanese.
Yeah thatâs too much. Given that repairing an attacked building with villagers is literally the only way to defend against a MAA rush until your military options are available. Again, against Japanese you would then need more repairers than attackers + wood income which would give the attacker for a fairly âbadâ play (just attacking buildings that are repaired) a positive net worth.
In addition to this when you look at Japanese they would just break in and running in your eco, which would make the play even more revarding.
I think it would be a big mistake to do these changes, they are not healthy for the game when some civs literally get tools you CANâT get positive trades against, even when you do the right play (building houses behind). Ofc you could start stone walling behind, but thatâs really tough to pull off against an army that breaks through in 20 seconds - and is strategically a huge disadvantage to spend the stone.
I donât even want to start talking about what this will do to walled in lumber camps. Make it short: That play would be useless you would just have to run, otherwise your vills are dead. (speaking of japanese maa with arson again)
Itâs not a bad strategy per se, itâs a bad strategy if you hit the barracks or the archery range. Or even the Lumber camp.
If you want it to be effective, you should take advantage of the timing and attack the mining camp on the main gold, even preventing it to be build, or forcing a quick wall that let only 2-3 miners inside.
No gold = no archers
I just donât get why we have to do it that way.
Let the militia line generate a little bit of res while attacking buildings instead.
With these changes only the players above like 1k7 elo or so will be able to defend well against a MAA Arson rush even if they attempt the right thing - whilst the âsubobtimalâ use of the maa wonât be punished at all.
Whilst when you just transfer a few res to the attacking player the skill gradiant would be way more healthy.
Itâs not good for the game when certain strats are broken on lower elos whilst at higher elos they then donât really work anymore. And this will be a prime example of these ânoob basherâ strats.
Explanation: Lower elos just wonât have the mechanical execution skills under this pressure to drop down the necessary walls behind in the right places in time. So the MAA will break in and do harnass to your eco.
Itâs not just a matter of resource cost, even the timing matters.
You need 1 minute to research MAA (40 secs)+Arson (25 secs)
Giving the opponent the time to build some defence (walls, tower, archers)
Houses are not defensive structures, they are used like walls because they cover 2 tiles at once, so itâs not wrong that they could fall more easily.
Lower skill player could compensate by building proper walls earlier if they have a clue about MAA rush.
Anyway, we should wait to see how these changes play out.
I think its back to basics now. House walling is a by-product of bad meta habits over the years. If you plan to just wall up and do FC, then the new infantry changes will throw up some surprises. Any civ can make MAA, I donât see why making a barracks in dark age based on scouting enemy base is a bad idea. Just make sure to build stables on other side to counter raid with scouts or even pick reinforcements coming from enemy. Scout the opponent and play the game.
Me neither. It is indeed very risky. But it is what it is.
Personally I donât think other than Japanese, anyoneâs MAA will be an issue. And if Iâm proven otherwise, we can always revert Arson to Castle Age or individual civ can lose the tech.
Iâd also be a bit wary of the initial stats. I assume that Infantry will get VERY good results at first, because theyâll break peopleâs normal strats. People will need to adapt.
Stone walls could actually be worth doing sometimes, now. Thatâd be neat.
High-level gameplay uses every building like walls because itâs cheaper to use a building you were going to build anyways than to build a few extra wall segments. Saves both build time and a little wood. Those savings add up, and can mean the difference between being fully walled when enemy units arrive and having an opening the enemy units walk through.
You know all civs have MAA, so, you can defend yourself with your own infantry⊠maybe the new meta will shinft into all civs train some militias by default⊠Donât see the problem with it.
Simply, now you have to take in count that an upgraded MAA group could put in danger a house-walled base.
Like Archers could bypass walls with their arrows, or Scout could go faster to their target and retreat easily.
And I think we are overstimating Arson, maybe only Infantry civs could show a really effective MAA rush. But that should be ok. Itâs wrong right now, where infantry civs usually go archers or scout since MAA donât have a role or represent a danger.
Forcing stone wall isnât bad. Stone wall should have been used instead of house wall as a norm. Besides, m@a still cost more. Defending m@a rush should also cost more.