Militia-Line Underpowered and Need a Buff?

In castle age. You need food for booming, gold is more or less a non-issue. *Also, supplies isn’t free.

Tell me how to defend against an M@a all-in when you’re going scouts/archers then. It’s not that different. This goes for Franks too.

Bulgarians have their own infantry obvs lol

They’re boons to an already good unit. Infantry actually need those to be viable. Not to mention cav upgrades bring a ton more value.

+1 melee armor and 0.95 base speed on LS and up. That’s it.

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neither is bloodlines. also the fact is that one of those units survives so yeah.

the difference is that scouts actually do decently against m@a and you’re not buffing m@a are you?

bloodlines isn’t a boon if you’re factoring it into your “who wins a fight”.

and like i said its literally just changed the dynamic between the two units. one used to win only when you had over a 2 to 1 advantage. now that one wins at just a 2 to 1 advantage. for a unit that can be spammed out very fast and very cheaply that is important,

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Alright, let’s talk about absolute necessity then. Bloodlines(150f,100g) compared to M@A+LS+Supplies(650f,265g). I’m not even accounting for research time.

But in feudal you’re just starting your scouts/archers whilst in Castle you are supposed to have a standing number of either/mix of those if you’ve been playing well.

Yeah, that’s what all-rounding infantry stats mean. You have heavy cavalry that is twice as powerful as heavy infantry. Bear in mind that knights cost +5 resources in total vs infantry after supplies, and create 9 seconds (not 21 seconds, which would be double) slower. Not speaking of melee prowess alone, knights are also significantly faster, which makes them worth more than double in my opinion.
Now, if you don’t want them to be a core unit and serve the role of an all-purpose infantry, that’s fine. You have the right to enjoy them being niche trash killers. Just say it outright instead of scrunging up for arguments against those who do want them to be a prominent part of castle and early imperial meta.

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m@a is 100 food and 40 gold. LS is 200 food and 65 gold, and Supplies is 150 food and 100 gold. for a total of 450 food and 205 gold.

except they aren’t twice as powerful with this change. if they were 1 knight would trade with 2 long swords.

well one requires re balancing the game completely around the militia line competing with knights and one does not. just saying. you want the LS to compete with the knight? go ahead. but KEEP IN MIND BALANCE.

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I did 2HS+LS my bad. Still, you get the point.

Actually running a few more tests shows the knight can survive too. Considering it can go either way I say it’s pretty even.

That’s a non-argument. You’re saying they don’t deserve to be made a core unit because it would take too much work, your opinion. Easier to just admit you like them as they are.

I never said the LS was going to compete with the knight: the knight has mobility, can go reliably against archers and is twice as powerful on a melee. Only have to watch out for pikes. Not as good at applying pressure on a base in terms of threatning to level buildings but way better at picking off vills. It’s still a top-tier unit that you will most definitely want on your army.

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You’d literally have to rebalance the entire game.
you’d have to adjust civ bonuses for infantry civs.
you’d have to give a trash counter to the swordsman line.
you’d have to adjust a lot of the game, just so those who are unhappy with the swordsman line can get their wish.

as it stands. yes. but you aren’t the only one who wants changes to the unit. and i’ve seen it happen before where “IT ISN"T BUFFED ENOUGH”

You say this, but then you say what you actually need to rebalance:

there you go.

Is almost every gold unit overpowering them not enough? The two most common ones already kick their butt pretty hard. Even mass skirms can kill m@a with 0 losses bc kiting, what a laugh. And what business does an Elite Tarkan have comfortably winning a 1v1 vs a Champion? Isn’t their role supposed to be siege cavalry? They lose to everything, my guy. And I’m not even gonna talk about utility (ie: sniping siege, map control etc.) because they have none.

But I can only speak for myself, and I’ve stated my suggestions.

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Perfect, they’re gonna have material to complain for years on this forum.

No I didn’t

It depends on the map, civ tech tree, opponent unit composition… Of course on arabia hussar are often preferred due to mobility, on arena champions are way more popular.

No, this is how YOU think militia line should work.

They are pretty spammable once you have farm eco set up.

So you’re asking that militia line should be what it actually is :slight_smile:

Last thought. Militia line as is has few specific purposes in the game, which already accomplishes pretty well. No particular need to buff it to accomplish them.

If someone think that militia line should accomplish other purposes, I respect their opinion but it’s not an objective balance issue, but personal preferences.

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I think it’s not about that, it’s about bringing more diversity to the game. Nobody want them to beat xbows or knights (at least for the reasonable majority) :wink: Just making them more valuable and enjoyable for good/high level players. They just need some small adjustments, like being able to run back from archers without losing all your army will be nice.

Right know Militia-line is descent, but yet don’t worth the investment most of time, even for Infantry oriented civs… and I wish it could get better one day. It’s a personal opinion of course, but it’s starting to get repetitive to always see the same archers/cavs fights 3 games out 4.

In a general way it doesn’t only concern infantry civs, but all the 35 civs, to commit in this line in more situations and create differents strats. If we go further, with more LS/THS/Champs we will naturally see more underused units like HC, scorps and CA which can only be good for the game if you ask me.

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The reason the LS doesn’t come with the 0.95 speed is probably because it would be too fast for celts.
Currently LS have a movement speed of 0.9 and 0.99 after squires. 1.035 for celts. For comparison an un-upgraded Berserk or Huskarl has a movement speed of 1.05

After a buff to 0.95 it would be 1.045 after squires and 1.09 for celts. That is almost as fast as an eagle scout (movement speed of 1.1). Imagine MAA or LS running around like eagles, while being a lot better at destroying buildings.

Interestingly the speed increase would help the generic LS a lot though, closing in against archers and trading pretty well with equal numbers. The matchup against knights would be unchanged, however the LS could pick fights a bit better. They should not beat knights in my opinion though, we have pikes for that.
I could imagine that a speed increase would help enabling infantry/siege strats in castle age. I’d find that refreshing :slight_smile:

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Yes and no, I want militia to be stronger and to compete with knights and xbows. But I don’t want to buff their combat stats, I think a better option is to make them even cheaper and lower their TT

I could recommend new line (Heavier Infantry) and Goths will not have that line but I can’t imagine anything heavier than a Champion.

It’s the truth
And 4 out of 4

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i am all for increasing their speed slightly, and lowering the cost of LS and Supplies, but much more then that would neccesitate changes to the game that would drastically alter balance.

i mean infantry is clearly designed to be a support role unit, the fact that its so low cost and so fast to train reflect that.

the issue with Hand cannons is their accuracy + low attack speed, Scorpions are terrible when infantry get close up, and cav archers saw heavy use even when Infantry was bad, so that doesn’t mean much.

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my concern with this is civs like Malians, whose infantry could in theory counter archers, Japanese, whose infantry attack insanely fast, and of course the Goth Flood.

It’s similar, lower their cost or buff their stats are different ways to make them trade more cost-efficiently, which they aren’t supposed to do against knights and xbows.

Well I get this seems repetitive, but I feel this game doesn’t lack variety, because variety lays in other aspects of the game.

As you said, (on open land maps) a lot of the 35 civs are likely to go for xbows/knights at a certain stage of the game. Variety lays in the fact that there are a ton of ways to transition in/out of these unit, and the best way to do that depends from a lot of factors (civ matchup, map gen, opponent choices, ecc).

Example: if I am ethiopians on arabia, I will certainly go crossbows in castle age, but there are a ton of ways to get there, such as drush FC, straight FC, drush into feudal, m@a archers, straight archers… Which one is better depends on a ton of factors such as matchup, map gen, opponent strategies. Even once you get crossbows, games can take different directions: for example if enemy start massing knights, how do I answers? I can try to outmass with xbows, add different types of counter (monks, camels, pikes), or try to sit back, boom and go to imp to get arbalest. Even here, no answers is correct 100% of the time.

2nd example: Celts on arabia. An infamous case of a labelled infantry civ that frequently tends to go xbows in castle age. This seems to be detrimental to variety but in fact it isn’t at all, because the celts crossbows play will be completely different than ethiopians one. While with the ethiopians the goal is generally to get to arbs, with celts (unless you want to eat your opponent TCs at all cost), the goal is to leverage lumberjack bonus to ease the imp infantry transition. So, most time you’re gonna try to get a very good position early castle age thanks to great eco and mangonel power spike, to try to get map control and deny your opponent boom while you’re booming behind, in order to survive bad late castle/early imp (no thumb ring, bracer and arbalest) and get a good position for the final push with infantry and siege.

So, even if in these example, extensive usage of crossbows is involved at a certain point, the fact that there are 35 (soon 37) civs, resulting in more than 600 unique matchups, plus the fact that map generation impacts a lot, means that if you start to see the game in his transitional aspects, you’ll likely never play 2 equal games in your life. And this kind of variety is really healthy for the game because it pushes player to improve their game-reading and decision making skills.

So, even if xbows/knights are dominant in open land maps castle age gameplay, I am fairly certain that the game doesn’t lack variety in the current state. Pushing different units outside their actual intended use might only risk to overcomplicate an already hard to learn game.

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You’ve presented a well thought-out comment. As a relatively new player, though, I feel the need to ask if there isn’t an incredibly significant point of variety that this argument ignores.

Sure, you’re never going to play 2 identical games even if the infantry line is completely ineffective save for one or two incidental roles like it’s discussed to have; but doesn’t the fact that the metagame is centered around controlling engagement and disengagement severely skew the meta to one where micro-intensive units that rely on speed completely dominate units that are not micro-heavy?

Far as I can tell, because militia is ineffective at map control against nearly all other units and is incapable of deciding the moment of engagement or disengagement, of course they’d get trounced by cavalry and archers. Isn’t that severely limiting to any player whose more basic instinct is on a lumbering push rather than having units dance at engagement? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to have infantry units which are supposed to be effective at a committed engagement? Or rather, that can perhaps force commitment from an opponent? There doesn’t seem to be any unit that truly fills that niche presently in the game, except for siege units. Maybe infantry should be something closer to a weaker siege unit – not so vulnerable to cavalry, at least?

Well, Militia don’t seem to be so, as everything indicates that Knights are just as effective in pitched battles despite having superior speed. I don’t know what tools these infantry units should have to be able to compete with the resourcefulness that an ability to disengage combat at any point with minimal losses gives, but something that brings battles closer to committing in combat would probably give you more variety than a meta that appears (at least, at first glance) to be dominated by micro-heavy dances of engagement. Something that I thought centered this was how structure-heavy AoE was, at least when looking at gameplay from well-known players like Hera and Viper. If infantry could at least better serve the role of protecting villagers while they created structures (or could aid in building/build structures themselves), that could be a form of forcing commitment. Yet it seems Cavalry and Archers are better at this too. It might be that the developers are moving in the right direction with the Serjeants of the Sicilians, who can build a defensive structure themselves.

Ultimately, however, the most important point, I think, is simply that having infantry be so underpowered or so niche just limits one of the most fundamental aspects of enjoyment in a video-game, and that’s basic aesthetic variety. I’m not sure this is something the more competitive side of the player base would even care about, but as a yet amateur mostly playing on the weekends, getting better with friends, and playing ranked now and again, it saddens me to know that when gameplay gets more severe, if I ever were to reach that level, I wouldn’t be able to produce and fight competently with some of the units I find most pleasing or – for lack of a better word – cooler. It seems to me more important to win while thinking you look cool than to win at all. And for a category with several cool unit models and animations, it’s saddening that they are all purportedly useless in even intermediary-level play.

Imagine I were to play, for example, Teutons; I’d want to win with my infantry, because that’s what would bring me most enjoyment, as it meshes best with the aesthetics of the civilization and my personal preferences for it. It is an infantry civilization, after all. Having learned that I’d be severely gimped if so, and would only able to win by dancing around with cavalry instead of lumbering forward with Teutonic Knights and Towers, would be pretty disappointing.

Or anyways, that’s what I initially gather for now. Maybe as I play the game more, it’ll all seem different.

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Well I would not say that knights are a micro-heavy unit, at least compared with xbows… In fact, while xbows require a lot of micro to engage properly, knights play require a more macro approach to be able to set up an adequate farm eco to afford their cost.

Well this is an interesting point. Forcing engagement is already how slow snowball pushes actually work. And how you say, siege is the main way to archieve these pushes, but infantry is generally a good way to complement siege due to its ability to protect siege, help sniping some production building, protect from melee unit, kill villagers. The issue with this kind of pushes on open maps is that if opponent can’t deal with them with brute force, he’s probably gonna have the chance to counter attack and try to base trade, that’s why slow pushes are not that popular on arabia and player generally try to go for different approaches. So, in my opinion it’s not a matter of lack of unit but about the nature of the map.

That’s why if you want to see more of this kind of playstile, you should try arena if you haven’t done yet. In fact, infantry + siege is one of the most common composition on arena, due to mobility a huge issue in that map.

Ok what I can suggest you if you like infantry, you like grinding pushes and you’re not into heavy micro management, is to ban arabia and try arena with your beloved teutons (that are the best civ in the game for arena) next time you play ranked. Maybe what you’d like to see is already in the game :slight_smile:

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Nope

As @GroupGorgon896 pointed out

This applies to protecting siege too.

Knights & xbows are better at protecting siege than Longswords are.

That’s why the famous Houng rush consists of siege + monks + knights, not siege + monks + longswords, even when it executed with Celts or Goths.

Pikes do provide amazing value / res for protecting siege against knights, but those seem to be outside the scope of the discussion. (Only one person has argued Longswords should be more like Pikes.)

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Yes Celts would need some tweaks, that can be address with a progressive bonus like :

  • Infantry is 5% faster in feudal age, 10% faster in castle, 15% in imp. (But maybe it’s too much of a nerf to their feudal age)
  • Or something like infantry is 5% faster in dark age, 10% faster in feudal, 15% in castle and imp

1.09 is quick for sure, but I don’t think it would be broken when you see actual LS Celts speed. And actually Eagle Scout are not that quick in feudal, when you compare to elite eagle warrior (1.1 → 1.35 without squires) :slight_smile:

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