And that’s the only thing where they are better than existing civ bonuses. Is this really worthy to spend 150f/65g for?
And that’s the only thing where they are better than existing civ bonuses. Is this really worthy to spend 150f/65g for?
It is a offensive and defensive bonus at once. In my experience the malian civ bonus is overall the best in feudal age, because it costs nothing and helps against the weakness of MAAs. However the offensive Japanese civ bonus has its cases where it is good. Basically the higher your infantry numbers are the better is the Japanese bonus compared to the Malian, because even with low defense eventually some Infantry closes the gap and does damage. The Armenian bonus is both in one but more on the offensive side. So I think it will be best in situations where you can make a lot of Infantry. Open maps with extra ressources. Maps like Mountain Ridge or hybrid maps. It is probably not good on Arena or Black Forest. I don’t know about Arabia.
But it needs to be tested. It just looks promising and like the best feudal age bonus for a lot of situations, but we need to see.
The question si also what other strategies do the Armenians have? I don’t think Champions in Castle age will be as good as Longswords in feudal, because Champions gain only little defensive stats and cost much more. The Fortified church is interessting, but often offensive strategies work better than defensive ones. Going for the unique unit is maybe also good, because it might be broken, but that is even slower than a Fortified church rush strategy.
I guess you can make an argument for that. But as you said about other options of Armenians. They have BL and their UU is foot archer. So opening scout or archer is more likely and beneficial in the long run. Castle Age THS is honestly just a joke and Champion is impossible in Castle Age. Seems like Feudal LS is an all in strategy. Maybe paired with Tower, this can be a viable aggression.
Watch 2 video and see not only uu infantry strong -_- nó frame delay from comp bow man and they are cheap ,( infantry speed fast while carry relic too. 
. 3 new civ 3 super man
Militia will run the world
Just wait for it
It doesn’t look promising at all and literally no one competent at the game will be using Fuedal Longswords outside of initial testing to see if it has any value. It’s a dead on arrival bonus. The Castle age Champions might see some niche use but will also likely be not used much outside of a very favorable niche matchup.
Haven’t read through this long thread, but after playing a few semi-competitive games with friends I’m thinking that adding LongSwords to ALL Civs in the Feudal Age would probably make the game more interesting. Getting Pikemen in Feudal is extremely strong Armenian bonus though, probably even their best.
yeah I think cause dark age spears most of the time opponents want to open archers anyways against the armenians. Cause opening scouts against a civ that can just wall up and add spears in dark age and go FC it’s basically suicide.
What you gonna do when you see it? Sending vills forward to trush? Way too late to deal the necessary damage. And the race to castle is already lost.
But imo that’s fine. I see no issue in a civ having superior tools to one of the feudal rushes as there are several of them and also there’s always the option to switch to other units later on. A lot of civs open archers and transition into Knights most of the time in the current meta which I expect to be the most common play against armenians outside of trying to use defenses. Armenians don’t have the best tools against them.
Which is actually a really nice touch from the devs. Wiht MAA in Dark Age the bonus would be broken, but as it is rn I think it’s totally fine.
And whilst I partially agree with the TO that’s not an issue with the militia line - the spear line isn’t as easy to call now. Whilst I think that the upgrade cost should be too high to make them suitable for the respecive one age earlier, I don’t want to underestimate the theoretical potential to shut down cavalry in castel age entirely.
Funnily from the sheer damage output to cav the armenian halbs are actually not very far above japanese and bohemian pikes.
I think high elo players will add archer and try to break through walls.
I think it is fine as well. My complain is that giving both of the unit line earlier is bad design.
I think it could be great if all civs got Longswords in Feudal age, as a strong unit (for Feudal age) that’s expensive to tech into and slow,
and if all civs got 2Hswordmen in Castle age.
Is there any chance at all the devs would make this a general change to the unit line if it Armenian militia-line proves to be not-stronger-than their knight-line?
After watching the video of DauT trying out the Armenian Champions in the Castle Age, I thought that maybe, maybe the Archer-line’s (and the Skirmisher-line’s) speed needs to be slower, like 0.9 or 0.85.
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Actually, the LS upgrade gives more HP, not only + attack.
So if you do the math, they can tank 5 more arrows from fletching archers (20 hits instead of 15)
Chain Mail Armor would give a M@A 23 hit at the cost of 200 food and 100 gold
So LS gives +5 hit, at the cost of 30f and 13g per hit
Chain Mail gives +8 hit, at the cost of 25f and 13g per hit
Gambesons gives +8 hit at the cost of 13f and 13g, but it doesn,t affect melee combat.
So the upgrade could be worth just for the defensive bonus it gives, with a cost that is similar to the armor.
But it gives even the offensive bonus of +3. If you apply this to building, you must include even the bonus damage that goes from +2 to +3 with the LS.
The problem IMO is not the cost/benefit ratio per se. The problem is that the general asset of the militia line that get melted anyway by archers and/or force you to go all-in.
But would it? The problem is you pay 2 militia worth of resources AND TIME to upgrade to MAA which is important because the more militia you have the more lockdowns and disruption you can put on your enemy villagers and more places you can disrupt his economy at once. The best benefit is probably upgrading it sooner during age up but Bulgars do it better getting it for free.
If you can send an extra militia to disrupt a different location it serves far better than being 2 behind with MAA.
I also think 5 militia can defeat 3 MAA.
Heck you have spearmen iirc so you can save all your gold for an archer transition while training a unit that moves faster yhan militia, has more HP, and still serves the purpose of tapping villagers or forcing walling to prevent them from working.
If you can keep militia and forward speed consistent with your enemy and you sew you have 2 more than the enemy you KNOW he’s going for the tech qnd you can press the attack to hold the advantage before he gets it after which he has injured maa and is still outnumbered by roughly 2
If you followed the context, you’d see I wanted to compare it with Malians.
I disagree. Right now Romans have arguably the best MAA and LS in the game followed by Malians. A big reason is that their bonus doesn’t force you to spend extra resources. Romans does require armor tech but that’s a must need tech anyway. And not having Supplies is apparently way more than compensated. I think Romans proved that Supplies is a failed tech. If anything I’ll give Gambeson in Feudal at a reduced cost and add a new tech that gives speed to Militia line.
If I recall correctly, they also get extra building damage. That’s going to be the real Danger here, long swords are almost as effective as Rams against buildings, and even deal damage faster than villagers can repair it. In this regard, the upgrade basically increases the effectiveness of your units by 50%.
It could turn into an extremely snowbally effect, if you are able to get even a slight advantage, you could just keep tearing their production buildings down. They won’t be able to repair it, because that will use up resources they need to make units.
Especially against weaker feudal age buildings, this could quickly turn into an unwinnable scenario.
Arriving at unwinnable scenarios is kindof the point of AOE2?
Risky strategies should (sometimes) result in either winning quickly or losing.
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If you ignore building armor your attack goes from 10 to 15. That’s indeed 50%. Palisade wall has 2 MA. So it is 8 to 13, a 62.5% increase. House has -2 MA. So it is 12 to 17, a 41.67% increase. Either way, LS is very good at breaking walls. Now let’s compare it to Romans Feudal MAA play.
Romans
Investment = 100 food (armor) + 150 food (Forging) = 250 food
Survivability = 23 against archer, 45 against skirmisher, 12 against scout
Number of attack requires to kill enemy = 5 for archer and skirmisher, 8 for scout without BL, 11 for scout with BL.
Armenians
Investment = 100 food (armor) + 150 food/65 gold (LS) = 250 food/ 65 gold
I’m excluding Forging here. But you need Supplies for a long time Feudal LS play. So another 75 food/75 gold. Total = 325 food/140 gold. That’s 75 food/140 gold more investment. Worth 2.5 more MAA. And you need to make another 14 MAA or LS to to break even this cost.
Survivability = 20 against archer, 30 against skirmisher, 15 against scout
Number of attack requires to kill enemy = 4 for archer and skirmisher, 6 for scout without BL, 9 for scout with BL.
I’ll be more afraid of 12.5 Romans MAA than 10 Armenians LS. Hopefully I’ll do a detailed math considering Supplies and food vs gold value.
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Still dont see how dark age maa would break the game when teo extra militias would help far more in most combat situations at that point
I would be more worried about an all-in Rush. If you can get to their base with five militia, and proceed to upgrade them straight to longswordsmen, you could destroy their military production buildings before they could actually make the archers in the first place.
Not only would it takes six villagers to out repair this damage, but it would take an additional five and a half villagers worth of lumberjacks to keep up with the repair costs. It would be very challenging to sustain enough resources to produce significant numbers of archers while dealing with that.
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The problem with goin 5 militia and MAA is that by that time the enemy will have either 7 maa or will have started aging up 100f sooner than you because this is a very hungry strategy! At that point archers can hit and outrun.
Speaking of outrunning a spear drush could be mighty scary. Not because they hit hard but because thry have more HP than Militia still force Villagers to distupt their gathering times and cost less food and gold than the club dudes… oh and they can outrun any counter attacking militia and scout cant pick them off and yet… its not the be all end all but its still better than needing to research MAA in dark age if it were available in the civ bonus
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