The main argument against underused UU that I have readed is the difficult to mass, because they train them in castles. I agree, so the idea is simple, an Imperial Age tech that let you train your UU in generic military buildings.
Cost: 400 Stone 250 Gold. Beyond the numbers, the idea is to force you to choose between build a new castle or have the ability to mass your UU.
COnsiderations:
-Training time should be a little higher in generic buildings than Castle.
-Goths and Huns UT’s could change for something else or not, having the same result but for without stone’s cost
-Not all civs should have access to this tech (For example, Mongols, Franks, Cumans, Mayans, etc)
-Some civs I think could have this tech: Indians, Teutons, Slavs, Celts, Incas, Italians.
-Yes, I know it could be a lot of rebalance. Is just an idea. The purpose is give a chance to forgotten UU’s, give them more presence in games.
I think that’s all. Have a nice day!
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Unique units are often weak.
It’s easier to balance when everyone uses the same units so devs tend to make the unique units weaker. Also when the unique unit is just straight up better than the tech tree version, why is it still there?
The Paladin beats basically every unique cavalry unit, infantry is generally bad and crossbow spam is very effective.
AoE2 is kind stuck in a conservative state. Lately Expansions only add new civilisations but basically don’t touch the old ones. Rebalancing all the old civilisation isn’t easy so they slowly added less things to old civilisations each Expansion while reducing some of the more extreme and especially early bonuses.
The Conquerors introduced unique technologies to each civilisation, multiple new generic technologies (Thumb Ring) and multiple generic units (Halberdier)
The Forgotten gave every civilisation a second unique technology, but only one generic technology and the Eagle Scout.
The African Kingdoms brought Feudal Age Ships and two generic technologies but no additional unique ones.
Rise of the Rajas brought nothing to old civilisations
The Last Khans brought 1 technology for most civilisations and the Steppe Lancers for Mongolia. But that was the Definitive Edition that had some additional rebalancing.
Lords of the West brought nothing again.
Making the unique units useful would make balancing harder so they are afraid of doing so.
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Elephant archers are difficult to mass, but is because of the cost, not because of the training time
Most UU have fast TT in castles. It is not weird to see a mass of mangudai, samurai, korean wagons, etc, for example.
I think that the problem of underused units is because they are not worthy. Having the ability to create them from general buildings would make them like another steppe lancer, that could be easily massable but is still useless.
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If I was redesigning the game, I would like your idea. But thing is, changing it now would require massive rebalance of the game.
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Boyar? Leitis? Imp camel?
I feel like I’m going to check all the boxes on my bingo sheet yet again.
People should stop spamming this word whenever they find the game doesn’t change fast enough to their taste. Especially when new civs are gimmick town, at least let us have the civs that made us like the game in the first place 11
Lol no. Like besides maybe TK all the UUs from the civs the OP mentioned do, in fact, have a purpose, and are damn good at it. Just the fact he has to exclude most civs from those who need this tech shows that most UUs are useful and used.
Just divide conscription in two:
First, a castle age tech that improves castle TT only, somewhere between 1,25x to 1.5x the current valor.
Second, the normal imperial tech with their current valor, but this time it does not improves castle TT.
With those changes You would have an easier time massing UU un castle, because they would traín way faster than regular units… and in imperial age it would only have a slight edge.
That is my point. Most UU are useful and good just produced from castles. Like kamayuks.
The underused units won’t be better is produced in a general building. That would be like a steppe lancer.
Underused units usually need better stats or cheaper prize to be worthy buying. You don’t want to mass an unit that is not worth buying after all
All this sounds good, but how much UUs are underused because they don’t have a very good role? Right now the list of UUs you could make out of normal buildings without them being broken boils down to TK, samurai and ele archers. Maaaaaybe karambits. Really the “problem” isn’t as big was what the OP makes it look.