New thoughts to buff melee infantry under current cav meta

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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It is widely acknowledged that currently, all sorts of knights and horse archers just kind of dominate this game, while barracks and melee infantries being somewhat dispensable. This cav meta has been controversial for a rather long time, and there are already plenty of discussions on improvement, like nerf the knights or buff the spearman.

Here, from a new perspective, I think maybe calvary meta is actually reasonable for this historical game, as an elite calvary army can always be a dominant force historically in the game’s background era. The real improvement should be about, what role should melee infantry take to fit in this meta?

In my opinion, as players will always need calvary as their core mobile forces and ranged infantry for their DPS, melee infantry could perhaps change its current awkward position into a supportive force. An initial idea, brought from camel/infantry support from Abbasid/Ayyubid and Kharash from GH, could be making them able to buff nearby Calvary, ranged units, siege engines, and maybe even workers and buildings, to have extra armor and hp (providing cover for friendlies). They might also be enabled to buff attack speed of keeps, outposts, and even siege engines (providing logistic support).

Another small idea just for fun is that perhaps every nearby melee infantry can be allowed to raid some resource from TC, landmark, houses, and maybe even resource drop off buildings? (when destroying them, an idea brought from Polutasvarf of Macedonian Dynasty) This in my opinion can make playing melee infantry much more interesting with this high rewards, while also reflecting the nasty truth of wars.

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I watch a lot of team games, mostly 4v4 and 3v3, from conqueror-level players, and I can say that 90% of the time the composition is heavy cavalry and ranged cavalry.

I don’t care much about what kinds of changes could be made, as long as a mixed composition between infantry and cavalry is the strongest most of the time.
The easiest and most logical change in my opinion is that cavalry units should cost 2 populations.
Another change could be to greatly increase the multiplier of spearmen against cavalry, this could be an update to Imperial, so that this higher multiplier is only available in the late game.

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El tema es muy complejo, asi que voy a tratarlo por puntos.

Infantry and Cavalry Civs

Well, it’s true that some civilizations, like the French or Mongols, would “normally” be good at Heavy cavalry. Historically they were excellent in heavy cavalry, and they still are in the game, which is great.

However, they are weak in the use of infantry, having almost no bonus in them (French) or arriving late (Mongol - IV age Improved Elite.Army.Tactics), but this is okay because they compensate with massive “Spawn” of more cavalry, or complementary Ranged units (Archers, Arbalesteirs, Mangudais).

The problem is that many “Supposedly infantry civilizations” are also very good at assembling heavy cavalry, which practically breaks the mold of what the civilization was supposed to have.

An example of this can be seen in the Japanese:

  • Fast Castle + Mounted Samurai is a pretty overpowered combo, which has a big problem: Japanese heavy cavalry wasn’t actually that good until the Sengoku period. It doesn’t make much sense that their cavalry in Castle Age is so powerful; it was a terrible design flaw.

  • Because the combo is so good, other good combos are overlooked, like Samurai or Onna Bugeisha.

  • In this case, the problems was not that Cavalry is OP, but they let OP cavalry.

Or in Mali:

  • Heavy Cavalry in Feudal: Sofas and the infinite sofa combo in Castle Age thanks to the economic boom of cows is a pretty broken combo.
  • Interestingly, this is fine, because historically, the Mali empire also had powerful cavalry, but the epithet of some civilizations should be changed (Infantry/Cows/ Gold —> JackofAllTrades/Cows/Gold) .

Few True Infantry Civilizations

On the other hand, there are really “very few” pure Infantry Civilizations or those that have melee infantry as their main strength for the late game or even the mid game.

The best in theory are: English, Japanese, HRE, OftD, China… only 5 out of 22 civilizations.

  • English: Fast-production men-at-arms, +2/+2 armor, and +40% attack speed near defense buildings. Wynguard Footman.

  • China: Palace guard with 290 HP in post imperial (Ming+EliteArmyTactics).

  • OftD: Gilded Chads Spearman and Gilded Chad Men-at-arm. Best Handcannoner of the game.

  • HRE: Men-at-arm +6 anti-armor attack +10%speed, Landsknechts, Melee Infantry Printer.

  • Jap: Onna-Bugeisha Rush, Samurai Rush, Yari Spearman are OP aggainst cavalry even elephants.

Mali, Sengoku, Macedonian Dynasty, have good infantry, but also cavalry and ranged units. They would be more of a “Jack of all Trades Civ”.

Lancaster… counts more as “Ranged” civ than Infantry (Melee) civ. The Rangers+Spearman combo only works if you have more Rangers than Spearmans, and amassing Earl Bodyguard is difficult considering they don’t have the production bonus that Englishmen did.

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Maybe with a negative multiplier against buildings will help the use as a more riding and armor counter intended unit instead of all-around unit