Militia-Line Underpowered and Need a Buff?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Militia-line only useful for dark age and early feudal. Also m,a not good for killing villagers if you haven’t scout live for close path of vills. They are very weak and slow on castle . they are average good on imp but very Hard to transition on imp for **just Kill some trash.**Infantry civs very weak when compared with knight and archer civ cause of militia-line not balanced, Underpowered*Also cavalry archer need some delay reducing but this is on another post

For Feudal age:

They are good for opening but not good idea to mass

For Castle age:

We all know LS not usable for castle age. Job of militia-line is killing trashes. they can’t make any job cause there is no trash units on field at all. cost of it (60f) very high for castle age, hard to mass. food and wood more important on Catle Age than gold.have no mobility. infantry civs won’t use Ls, only will use siege of them, some pike and knights( like celts,slavs, teutons)

For İmperial age:

they are going to be more viable for imp, but very hard to transition for killing just some trashes. because research time 260 vs 270 sec of knights and high upgrade cost 1350f 555 gold vs 1600f 1050g knight line upgrades. this much upgrade cost and research time only for kill trashes (rarely eagles) and very slow for kill trashes near of Knight or Archers of Enemy

my suggestions:

  • Speed buff, 1 or 0.95 for LongSword, THS and Champs
  • decrease supplies cost for better feudal agression
  • decrease research time of champ, ths upgrades for better transition
  • stats change

one or two of these ideas

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They arent weak in imp what are you talking about?
Being a trash and eagle counter is clearly what they are designed to do. If they were supposed to be more then that and compete with archers and knights they would need at least a cost and training time adjustment.

The only thing the militia line needs is supplies cost adjustment and longsword onwards being slightly faster

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Completely agree

In imp champions can rock though
Much stronger than hussar, and almost as spamable.

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Ah, no.

In Castle, they probably can use a buff

But in Imp they are quite strong

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It really depends. On closed map like BF yes, they are ok-ish but for something like Arabia they don’t have the mobility and don’t stand a chance against the archer knight combo. They are decent for slow pushes

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yeah 20 gold for a unit with 9 attack, that trains in 21 seconds is awful.

they aren’t supposed to stand a chance against archers and knights. its literally in the tech tree…

the archer line
Create Archer (Cost: 25W 45G)

Ranged unit. Strong vs. units at long range. Weak vs. Skirmishers and units at close range.

the militia line
Create Long Swordsman (Cost: 60F 20G)

All-purpose infantry unit. Strong vs. buildings and infantry. Weak vs. archers at long range.

the knight line
Create Knight (Cost: 60F 75G)

Powerful all-purpose cavalry. Strong vs. infantry and archers. Weak vs. Pikemen, Camel Riders, and Monks.

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Do what’s the most recent time you made longswords in the castle age, to kill trash (not eagles)?

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does it matter? your complaint has more to do with the meta then anything, and the meta is one gold unit (archers or knights) with a complementary trash unit (pikes in the former, skirms in the latter), which doesn’t leave much room for LS because they get countered by the gold units. every unit doesn’t need to see consistent use in every age, and the militia line sees consistent use in every other age in the game. After all, i don’t see you crying your eyes out about Light Cavalry, or heck, most the unique units which rarely see castle age play. the fact is that the militia line has its uses, and does its job well. just because you DON’T LIKE ITS DESIGN has no bearing on the discussion being had in this thread, which is about how STRONG the units are.
yes they are overshadowed by the archer and the knight line. that is working as intended, per the tech tree.
you want the militia line to have more use? go make your own balance mod with them performing the way you want.
again, you’re literally saying a unit that has 9 attack (the knight has 10), and trains in 21 seconds (the knight trains in 30), and takes no bonus damage from any trash unit (the knight line and archer line can’t make this claim), and costs only 20 gold (The knight costs 75 gold), has WEAK STATS.

you want it stronger? make sure you change the cost and the training time when you do it.

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I strongly disagree.

Swordsmen rarely see play in Pro level 1v1s because of their movement speed. But in average ELO Teamgames they can be borderline OP.

If the enemies raids your base with a couple of knights you can garrison your Vills and defend with a few pikes.
If a small group of crossbows tries to raid your base you can keep them at bay with one or two Mangonels.
If you attack an unprepared players base with 15-20 Swordsmen and more streaming in -> its impossible to defend without a proper army. If the Swordsmen are all over the place producing single Knights, Crossbows or Mangonels is completely ineffective. The Swordsmen can even tear down TCs.

This is especially strong if you use it on the enemy pocket so they have to abandon their flank or if you startet going Knights against an opponent who tries to boom and defend with pikes.

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Bruh, you can easily kill swordmans with knights or crossbow. They hardly kill a knight, 3 swordman.
I want a small speed buff to be more viable for every game. No one using swordmans and champion on team game or 1vs1. It is not good to give cost of paladin upgrade for kill just some trash and counter eagles who have on only 3 civ of 35 total

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swordsman are cheaper and faster to mass, which means you can overwhelm your opponent with numbers, sure at high levels its not likely to work but at lower levels they don’t play nearly as optimally, and sorry, but 4 swordsman definitely kill knights.
a knight has, assuming full upgrades, 120 hp, 12 attack, and 4/4 defense.
a longsword has assuming full upgrades 60 hp, 11 attack, and 2/3 defense.
4 longswords would do 28 damage per attack to a knight (11-4)*4 longswords and the knight is going to deal 10 damage back. 4 longswords would therefore kill the knight in 5 hits and the knight isn’t even going to kill a single longsword.

they already are viable every game. they aren’t intended to be a unit that is used in every situation.

this is false. i see pros use the militia line a bit. even in tournaments. i recall seeing them in the 2v2 world cup that just ended and they definitely saw use in KotD3

Norway vs Spain game 4 and game 5. Militia line sees use.

every civ uses trash, not just 3.

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i will say, problem of militia-line isn’t stats. it is mobility of them and very very limited use and hard to transition. Don’t lie to yourself pls cause you are a knight or archer lover and don’t want militia-line becoem stronger.

i said this for eagles. they limited with only 3 civ

okay , this is true. i didn’t overthink when saying that. but you forgetting two thing. it is mobility and transition. stats of longsword is good enough for his cost. but very limited use and being very weak against ranged units making them not usable. i never saying they should kill crossbows, but they need some speed a bit for escape or, catch trashes or eagles of enemy before archers kill them.

i want castle-imp militia-line be more core unit than just kill trashes or eagle which rare to see. reduced supplies cost or champion cost can be good enough to see them more. because transition is very hard for champions

And stop trash talking. i don’t have unlimited time for read your very long comments
they are main units of game, archers, knight, infantry. archers an knight good as a main unit. but why militia-line seeing use only for counter trashes (rare-eagle)? infantry civs not good because of that.

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except they aren’t supposed to compete with knights and archers. it’s literally in the tech tree.

see here:
the archer line
Create Archer (Cost: 25W 45G)

Ranged unit. Strong vs. units at long range. Weak vs. Skirmishers and units at close range.

the militia line
Create Long Swordsman (Cost: 60F 20G)

All-purpose infantry unit. Strong vs. buildings and infantry. Weak vs. archers at long range.

the knight line
Create Knight (Cost: 60F 75G)

Powerful all-purpose cavalry. Strong vs. infantry and archers. Weak vs. Pikemen, Camel Riders, and Monks.
the swordsman line is SUPPOSED TO LOSE TO KNIGHTS AND ARCHERS, so your argument is bunk.
know what else reinforces this? the fact that the swordsman line is dirt cheap (Only 20 gold, less then half archers cost, and less then 1/3 of Knights cost), the fact that they train faster (21 seconds compared to the 27 for crossbow and 30 for knights), and the fact that they don’t have a trash counter (unlike the other options).

i’m not forgetting anything. you want the swordsman line to be something it isn’t. something more well rounded. i can tell you that isn’t going to come without losing some of the benefits they enjoy.

they aren’t intended to beat archers. they cleanup against trash and eagles, something archers would mostly have trouble with (3 of the 4 of those units give archers trouble).

ill give you that, i’d be fine with increasing LS speed to 0.95. and THS/Champion to 1.0. archers aren’t going to kill eagles or skirms, eagles and skirms laugh at archers. and scout line units are getting better and better against archers too.

that isn’t going to happen with completely changing the cost and training time of the unit, and possibly even giving them a weakness to a trash unit. right now the advantages they enjoy is because they are weak to both archers and knights, to make them seen more you’d have to reduce/remove that weakness, and given how cheap they are, that’s not feasible.

not really - most people already have M@A researched because its one of the most common openers, and from militia to champion costs a grand total of 505 gold. so your calling it a “Paladin level cost” is false.
for perspective pike + halb costs 690 gold.

i’m not trash talking, i’m just pointing out the facts.

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The only time I use the LS upgrade is if I have a decent amount of Men-at-arms left over from attacking an opponent in Feudal. Once I get a castle down and start pumping out Huskarls there’s little point to researching it.

Do Vikings/Japanese/Aztec players go for LS or just do the standard crossbow thing?

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what about when your fighting against an eagle civ? seems to me that LS would be better in that situation. also what if you don’t have the time or resources for a castle?

depends what you’re fighting. crossbow isn’t going to do much against Huskarls or Eagles are they?

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1350f 555 gold for militia to champion. 1600f 1050g for paladin upgrade. and think research time. 260 second milita-line vs 270 sec knight line. Like you said They are not main unit of game, so research time need to be less

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okay they are cheap side of gold. but when we are at castle age, food is important aswell and 60 food is expensive, longsword hard to mass when compared with 25 wood archers

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funny how you include the entire line for one but you don’t throw in the cost of cavalier for the other. biased much?

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Doesn’t matter. Paladins are 5 times better than Champions.

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those 25 wood archers also cost 45 gold and take longer to train then the militia line does as well.
also that “60 food cost” can be reduced down to 45 food, and you see people going 2 knight production in castle age all the time, which costs 120 food, and making villagers at the same time.

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