Militia-Line new bonus damage

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
41

nailed it dude

20 char

42

That involves even more work tben necessary. Just not adding it negates that entirely.

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43

havent really followed along, but LC will need a value as well anyway, since you dont want champs doing the same bonus damage to LC as they do to eagles.

but easier to not give scouts any scout class (even though its counter intuitive when they fight champs, for example teuton scouts, regardless of how niches the scenario is)

and then give LC a positive scout class value

44

Maybe give them a Barrack tech which when researched gives them 25% walking speed increase. Mobility is their main weakness

45

On top of squires? Chars

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46

Me too. I think apparently Supplies was not enough. An Imperial age technology only for militia line may be added without creating a big balance issue imo.

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47

This doesn’t help where they’re weakest though, and buffs them where they’re actually oppressive in some cases (Eg malians champ spam)

If you buff MAA and LS (where they’re weakest) it means there will already be more units to upgrade in imperial which means they’re already seen more, and the upgrades are made more cost effective

Like having knights left over and taking the cavalier upgrade

The buffing of preceding stages of a unit is always a buff to the later stages of the unit.

And if you only buff the later stages, it means there is more of a counter argument to actually buff them where they’re seen the least already.

48

I get that. But a castle age buff/upgrade will definitely cause a big balance issue as they don’t countered by trash units.

49

depends on the upgrade. what about a bloodlines-like tech for infantry? like +10 HP for infantry? sounds good on paper but vikings have something better and they do not use LS still
 so it clearly depends on the upgrade

50

If your goal is ls being seen commonly the answer is a complete rebalance of the game.

Outside of a few niche situations everything else is just a better option

51

i personally like the baby steps approach devs are using to slowly buff militia line over time. i also get thatprobably it would never change the meta but i also do not think that is the goal. the goal is to make infantry an option that has something cool to offer in castle age besides beating trash and eagles since those options are either late-game thing or limited to 3 civs.

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52

Problem is what can you do with it short of an overhaul that other units dont have?

53

What about adding a new trash unit that synergizes well with the militia/halb comb?
I think this could be a solution without any need of changing the militia line itself.

54

they could be made simply more cost effective maybe? like a slight speed increase to 0.95 for LS, or -5 food cost from start (so 55 F/20G), or general cost reduction for upgrades like arson and squire slight cost reduction, LS upgrade 140 F 50 G, THS upgrade 200 F 75 G, Champion upgrade 600 F 150G, and time reduction for the upgrades (note that all applies past MAA that are mostly fine as an opening, outside the -5 food), or maybe even -2 s TT from LS on (so 19 seconds). (not all at the same time if it would be too much ofc)

in general, make the militia the well-rounded, cost efficient, fast and cheap to mass option, which they kinda already are, but make that aspect better, since atm they are about as expensive to upgrade both in resources and time as a paladin

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55

Except again, there would be no reason to mzke longswords.

Ths and champion, while not common aren’t rare and see use.

Your changes arent going to make long swords a thing

56

Yes but no change unless a complete reshape of the unit line is going to make LS a thing anyway. So why not at least make It cheaper so that one could at least try make them work?

It is following the steps that also the devs are making in the past few years. LS and militia in general is far better than what it used to be with all the buffs received, so why not keep on making some small changes? There’s no downside to that apparently

57

LS is simply too food-hefty for its power in Castle Age. Even your opponents mass eagles, many players still prefer knight for its tankiness and mobility in Castle Age.

If you make LS further cheaper, champion will be also too cheap to spam.

58

I doubt a complete rebalance is necessary. At the very least making that assessment from the current state of the game is extremely difficult.

For example if knights cost 95f and 40g and had a 45s training time youd probably have massive problems with xbow dominance in castle age. But in terms of balance we know exactly what would fix this because we live in that counterfactual world: reducing the villager time investment needed to get X villager production of knights on the field. Which means dropping the training time significantly to allow for less stables and more farms.

You wouldn’t need to touch the unit’s stats and the gold problem in imp could be solved via changing the gold ratio. Increasing the gold ratio drops the fixed cost in castle age slightly so you can increase the training time to compensate. So the training time might drop to 25s then go back up to 30 when some of the food is switched for gold.

The problem with assessing the longswords stats and general viability is that they are confounded by a significantly higher up front cost. If longswords had the same production rate as knight (4.5 res per second per stable) they’d have a training time of 14.5 seconds. If you compensated for their additional farm cost you might drop it to 12 seconds to save more on barracks to free up wood for farms.

Would this fix the unit? Idk. But at the very least it removes a giant confounder and lets everyone get a more honest look at what the unit can actually do. Not to mention its a very safe stat to change from patch to patch.

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59

Militia-line was always weak and it’s very sad that you don’t see often traditional swordsman being used on battles.

Basic solution is just buffing it. Any unit can become good with enough buffs. Buffing the HP, Attack or even reducing gold cost, it does not matter, if you buff it enough, it will eventually become good.

60

My proposals for improving Militia line would be:

  1. Add +1 pierce armor starting from two-handed swordsmen (total of 2 pierce armor) so they can effectively counter skirm (yes, skirm still do good damage against them at the moment).

  2. Add +1 melee armor for champion (total of 2),so they can effectively counter hussar.

  3. Bring squire down to feudal age, allow them to be more threating toward villager, archer and scout.

  4. Give MAA another +2 attack vs building (a total of 4) so they can bust through wall easier (making them more appealing compared to scouts and archers).

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