Militia line need a mini rework?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Hi there.

I was thinking the other day about the militia line. I dont know why to build the militia line outside of a eagle counter and late game trash killer. I know aoe2 have soft and hard counter. But most units is not a clear cut. So i was thinking why not adding some idenity to the malitia line :slight_smile:

could be done in many ways. But few idea i have is:
Adding more damage to buildings.
Adding a snare to thier attack. (maybe starting from MAA)
Giving them a aura that they take some of the damage done to nearby.
Giving them a stacking armor buff that increase with more nearby militia.
the list can be and/or.

What do you guys think? :slight_smile:

2

militia line has received many changes in the past year and i’d leave them as is for now and wait for path fixing first to really see how they’d go up against their counter which is the archer-line

3 Likes
3

The militia line topic of the week.
-Swap militia cost (resulting in cost similar to eagles)
-reduce its collision box.
-rework dedicated techs (arson and squires in feudal, Gambesons stand-alone tech, supplies moved to imperial Age).
-Add more dedicated techs.

3 Likes
5

Fixing pathing won’t change anything for Militia line but for now I think pathing is the most important thing to be considered.

6

it should at least show when archer-line at their peak vs militia-line with gambesons

7

I think the militia line is cool to look at. But they only have stats going for them. (yes they have eagle dmg and building). And when you only have stats they tend to be tweaked on the weak side.

When you think about the base units.

Archer: When you want a unit with range and good in mass
Skirm: Counter archers
Spear: Counter calavery. So good at defending ranged/siege vs counter.
Militia: Counter eagle and build early. Good vs pure trash in open battle
Scout: Good at giving info. Fast. killing monks. Raiding. And can even tank cause of cost.
Knight: Good and fast stand alone unit. But counters.
Monk: Good vs high cost units.
Siege: Good vs mass units or buildings.

Something i missed? Without having to go to deep into what counter what counter.
I feel like the right time to build militia line is to niche. For us to see it used in high level play.

8

Honestly, We need to talk about Militia line as much as possible because they are just so bad at the moment. May as well throw in bonus damage vs hussar line because champ don’t even trade well against them and 2 handed swordmen do even worse.

1 Like
9

Pathing right now affects archers the most and they are basically out of the meta, si right now it’s the best supposed environment for swordsman, but it isn’t…when pathing gets fixes, archers will return, and militia will be even worse

A lot must be done imho

They could make techs one age earlier and cheaper, like squires and arson and supplies. Then add a Imperial age upgrade that really does something for their population officiency

Militia also do not counter scout line really. They need to add Eagle classe armor to scouts and give it +2 armor to make it a bit more bearing, but at least LS and other can do good with them if they get caught

Also militia cannot even kill a villager with loom basically, and you need MAA or good scout micro abuse to actually do something in early game with them, but still 1 Archer counters everything

They could be faster, cheaper, more population efficient, have more clear strenght in the form of bonus damage, and so on

In short, they need not a “small rework” they need ab estensive rework

1 Like
10

I am somehow fine with the darkage early fuedal power level. It cause you to do a reaction to adapt. But yes after early fuedal they drop off to fast. Cause they are to easy to deal with, with and archer as you say.

11

Of course, I just wanted to remark it. I am promoting a militia line rework since a long time.
It is a problem that can be handle from different spots.

I really doubt that give militia bonus vs hussar would be a solution.
The problem with militia-line starts earlier, and imo it is the lack of a concrete role in relation with its training cost, stats and counters. I feel that nowadays militia-line doesnt fill any relevant role, and cost too much for what it give.

This mean, ok, it is an all purpose as its description says, then, make it weaker but bloody cheap and keep this profile through all ages. Don’t make it compete with crossbows or knights.
Ok, you don’t like this role, you want a power infantry unit. Ok, give them a propoer counter and give them really good stats.

3 Likes
12

that’s it exactly.

AndI think some time ago we already had a quite elegant solution for that. Like with MAA the militia line is predestined to be a timig based small agression tool. Especially even for maps that give you walls from the beginning, as they have bonus damage vs buildings.

The question ofc is how to achieve this. There are a few issues with the current line design that stop this from effectiveness:

A) too high upgrade cost/time. Militia line is one of the most expensive and time consuming to upgrade, especially in early castle age

B) It’s way too easy to counter by any kind of ranged unit

C) Currently Knights (and to some extend still xpows) occupy this spot. I see no other way to make this happen than at the same time reduce the timing prowess of these “Power units”

D) The current design helps Infantry scale very well in the lategame, where it often can become overwhealming especially when the opponent has no further access to gold. I can even imagine some adjustment there with either introducing a specialised Infantry counter (slinger-like) or even reducting the sheer damage output of Infantry swarms

13

The fact that Romans have double armored LS in Castle age and still get outshined by their own knight (which is generic at that point) is beyond explanation.

1 Like
14

didn’t I just explain it in point A) ?

15

I proposed somewhere make infantry dedicated techs more impactful but more exclusive among civs. However, not necessary more expensive.

For example, Squires could affect only militia-line (tweak other infantry units to offset this) but give more speed, like 25% (resulting in militia walking at 1.125).

Arson gives +4 instead of +2 (give defenses +4 standard building armor class).

Gambesons +2 PA

Supplies Reduce militia-line pop space 25% or 50%.

Champion upgrade give overall more stats than today.

This way each civ could have a very different militia profile that fill an specific role or weakness.
Like having access to squires and gambesons to deal with archers, but lacks arson and Champion.

2 Likes
16

Knight is a premium unit and should be good. As is behind on posible creation time (militia you can make in DA and knight first in CA). But romans have one of the strongest bonus for militia in castle age. So is hard to see you make it at all :frowning:

But i think it would be nice if militia was like a soft counter to monks (cause of low cost/convertion). And if we talk about generic version of knight vs militia. I would like knights to win cost wice. But trade more gold on even fights.

But this is more of a balance issue then the role of the militia.

17

Infantry are fine for the most part. They have two main problems.

Pre-Squires Speed

The first, and arguably the most important, is that they cannot be used from mid-feudal until late castle age, because archers are faster than them and hard counter them. Since archers can chase down Infantry, they have no choice but to retreat to safety, and stay there indefinitely.

This means that they lose what SHOULD be their biggest strength; being able to mass them prior to hitting Castle Age. Lacking that, players need to make 50% more Barracks than Stables to keep up production, which makes them a non-option in early castle age, too.

By the time you’re at late Castle, your enemy has the eco to make a quick swap into archers if you choose to go for them.

By early imperial age, population efficiency takes the lead, and since you need a 2v1 advantage to win vs cavalry, you can’t go infantry there, either, because you get pop capped and can’t compete with more population efficient units.

Only in late Imperial do they once again become an option, as gold starts to run out and trash becomes more common - but by then, you’ve got something like 6-8 techs to research to get into them, which makes the transition difficult or impossible.

But, consider what happens if you give them Squires earlier.

Feudal Squires

If you give them Squires in Feudal, then they can escape Archers, where they could not escape before. This means that rather than being forced to retreat all the way home to safety(or just die) they can run away out of LOS and escape, allowing them to attack again, and again, and again. They can’t beat archers at this stage, but they can at least survive, and harass your enemy. Probe from one direction, then another; deal damage to buildings, force repairs, cause villager idle time. This reduces enemy aggression and disrupts their economy, paying for the early investment into Squires.

Going into Castle Age with an existing mass of infantry means you can outmass the first Knights to come out, and, if you go for Longswords, even win that fight. If your enemy takes a bad fight with your longswords they could end up a few minutes into castle age with practically nothing, perfectly setting up the longsword player to win.

This also forces your enemy to play more cautiously, because Longswords can tear down walls and buildings faster than anything shy of battering rams in Castle Age, and if they try to send all their army forward, they might get hammered from behind.

This carries longswords all the way through to late castle age and even early imp; at this stage, population efficiency will provide natural counterplay and force the Infantry player to do something else, but that’s fine; all they have to do then is survive for long enough that gold runs low, and their existing techs will make a re-transition into infantry far more viable in the lategame.

Making squires available in the Feudal age is the answer to problem number one.

Problem number 2: Pathing

The second problem with infantry is Pathing. Because they are individually weak, they rely on getting multiple units into the fight at once, but while an army of knights might be 1 or 2 units deep, an equal army of infantry will be 3-4 units deep. This means they need to path around each other to even engage in a fight, and it means that equal-resource fights between, say, 5 knights and 1 longswords, will almost always favor the longswords, but 10 knights vs 20 longswords will almost always favor the knights.

The only way to correct for this at present is to abuse formation-switching to stack infantry on top of each other, which obviously isn’t ideal.

The answer is pretty simple; just reducing the size of the Militia Line(not their model size, their collision hitbox) by something like 15-20%. This is enough to make sure they at least can trade evenly with these enemies.

After that, it’s just a matter of making sure you’ve got the existing units after hitting Castle Age to make those favorable trades.

image

So, to sum up:

  1. Move Squires to Feudal
  2. Reduce militia pathing size by 10-25%.

Problem solved.

4 Likes
18

Yeah I guess. But even with +2/+2 armor, Romans LS still can’t stand a chance against just generic regular Knight. If it was Franks or Teutons Knight, it would be fare I’d say. But now when you have one of if not the best LS vs generic Knight, and you know what, knight is better in 95% situation.

19

That oversemplification, it would never be enough.

Make squires more affordable for feudal eco maybe by making it 75food at most or 50 food 50 wood, and make militia nove faster by default, at around 0.95 speed.

Then i personally would make the unit faster to produce, not a ton but a few seconds less, and reduce upgrades cost and time even further

Then make them do bonus damage vs scout to properly kill trash units

Maybe make them 50 food instead of 60 and supplies cut the cost by 10 food instead of 15.

All these, combined, probably would still not make the militia worth over knight, but factoring in some civ bonuses it could be enough

2 Likes
20

Challenge is, MAA rush is already almost perfectly balanced. Reducing their base cost could make MAA rush too powerful.

I wouldn’t be averse to a price reduction after testing these changes out. Honestly, Squires is already ludicrously cheap, and it’s a major game-changing tech, shifting the dynamic of archers vs infantry completely. Having it be the same price as the feudal armor upgrade seems pretty reasonable to me.

Bear in mind, you would not need it to start. You would only need it after forcing your enemy into archers to counter you. It’s not a combat tech, it’s a survival tech, so theoretically it’s worth it if it saves even 2 units.

2 Likes
21

Id say the could use a major rework.

Look at all the extra techs they have while still not being enough to get the job done.

  • Supplies for lower cost - but still too food heavy to compete with knight production in castle

  • Squires - or else outpaced by foot archers and vils

  • Gambesons - or they get squashed by town centers

All that on top of their personal unit upgrades. They also have an unfortunate food cost - food being harder to get in age 3 than gold is a big reason why most opt for knights over long swordsmen.

Another big reason is they’re shear stats - they need a 2:1 advantage to tie with knights (generic vs generic), which makes sense given the cost. Trouble is, the same number of vills to make 3 barracks long swords in age 3 is also enough to make knights from 2 stables - and 3:2 means the knights win easy. In theory, maa dont have a hard counter like knights, but in reality they’re hard counter is knights.

As is, the milia line is just flat out inferior to heavy cav in not only stats (which is fine), but also in resource efficeincy (which isnt).They need a major power spike in the longsword upgrade and onwards at minimum.

Off hand, I’d say something like better attack speed and some bonus damage vs spear units +2/+4/+6 for longswords to champions. Nothing I can think of to handle the knight or archer problem head on without making them overwhelming, so the next idea is to add a minor dps increase and an emphasis to the anti trash identity - make them a more appealing as a secondary support unit to keep spears off your hard hitters.

3 Likes