The game is becoming a bit stale at higher elos, with a great reliance on scouting your opponent. Making gold units is rarely worth it, because by the time you have a good army AND have crossed the map, the opponent already has the counter units. Knights have a mass issue, and it’s too easy to make Monks into pikes vs them, and the only moment of action there is in the game is when you get the Xbow Bodkin upgrade, after that it’s boom asap to Imp, get Trebs + Halb + Hussar out, any other strat sort of dies to this approach (or a variation of it with Camels or rarely Arbalest)
The culprit of this is how Feudal age plays out: Skirms and Archers are too dominant and Scouts in Feudal can’t really beat ranged units because it’s enough to make 1-2 Spearmen to trade well vs any number of Scouts.
The solution I thought about:
Maceman: anti-Skirmisher infantry. Cost is roughly that of a Militia (not sure if with or without supplies), creation speed is that of a Skirmisher. This will be the first unit in AoE that takes 0 damage from Skirmishers (so that kiting back to TC with Skirms will be useless. They take regular damage from all other units and have stats somewhere in the middle between Spearmen and Militia-line, so that it beats Spearmen, but not decisively, and it beats Skirms.
Nel, the aesthetics is the last of my worries. My main concern is that now Feudal is largely Skirm vs Skirm, occasionally Archer. Castle Age has these weird armies of 2-3 Knights max, 10-12 Skirms and the rest Mangonels + Monks. That’s how 80% of game sin high elo go (assuming one player didn’t manage to win in feudal).
I also feel that the current stale meta requires a new unit to shake it up.
This unit hardly seems necessary. What I’d do is give the swordsman line a bonus against skirmishers. They’re already anti-trash, but it will be an even harder counter.
Feudal is when you start massing Skirms, you can give Men at arms any bonus you want, if they can’t engage the Skirms, it will be useless. Even if you made MAA faster (and imo that’s a recipe for trouble), TC is still too strong vs MAA in Feudal and Skirms can always kite back to the TC.
So how does one defeat these units + archers?
I mean, there seems literally no way to counter a combination like this.
I would like to introduce a new Feudal Age technology “Javelins” in the Archery Range. It would be cheap and fast researched, and the skirmisher units’ bonus against spearman units would have to be unlocked with it.
It seems more like you want to complain about the efficiency of spearmen at the beginning of the post, but what you said about skirmishers dominating the Feudal Age doesn’t seem to be conducive to spearman strategy.
I’m not sure which one you want. To limit skirmishers or to limit spearmen?
That’s how the game should be played isn’t it? We make counter units to win. That’s why we make a combo of army, including counter to opponent counter units
FU scouts in feudal is very strong and they can clean up. Just add a few ranged units to weaken or pick off pikes, then scouts can fight low hp spears just fine,
Just want to add that atm we have a clear tendency to “attention splitting” which is basically directly linked to apm and also units that can threaten eco in low numbers.
Which are mostly cavalry and also to some degree archers (sometimes also mangonels and other high-damage ranged units).
Defending this with only trash is practically very difficult against opponents which have high apm.
I don’t think this is necessary, I think the main reason we don’t see the militia line more often against pure trash comps is the comparably high initial investment. You need armor and the militia line upgrades. It’s not an absurdly high investment, but it’s comparably high and doesn’t give a lot of long-term value.
Also let’s not forget that we basically only see trash openers from the few civs which have amazing bonusses to trash.
I am sorry, it was a very lazy wording on my side because I thought everyone either plays in semi high elo or watches some streamer like Hera and has an idea of how high elo games go.
Right now, it’s basically 1 initial wave of archers (still the meta) in early Castle, very often 1 player is on Xbow, the other on Skirm. The damage dealt by the Xbow here largely determines how fast you can drop TCs, hence reach Imp. From there , though there are many variations ( forward Siege, forward Monks, pure Xbow into boom…), the common theme is always, do not overcommit, and make Monks and/or Mangonels to try and gain an advantage with as few units as possible. Tempted to do +2 Knights? Opponent will instantly make Pikeman, the time it takes you to reach his base + break walls is enough for the full transition (might need 1 Monk that is already inside the base)
So at some point around I reckon 1500 elo, you learn to not overcommit, make a few trash units (generally Skirms), and fight in Imp.
I think this gameplay over and over makes the game repetitive and, although I haven’t given it a lot of thought, an anti-Skirm unit might shake up the meta. Castle Age should have more fighting with your civ’s core units imo, instead right now it’s these weird Monk Skirm Mangonel armies in an attempt to get an eco lead.
An anti-skirmisher unit? Scouts already outrun spears, so they can pick off skirmishers. I think what needs to be done is give units the ability to snare other units, like on AoE3. This way, if your opponent tries to run away with his cavalry after attacking your base, you can slow him down just with a single pikeman.
That can get boring. So maybe aoe3 or aoe4 is worth a try. The nature of aoe2 is repetitive. All civs are pretty much the same if they don’t use unique units
What if you added neutral camps, that are vulnerable to gold-costing units?
So players can be rewarded (or at least compensated) by making risky plays with more army than economy?
It would be cool if there was a map, where booming clearly lost against aggresive plays supported by neutral camps :D. That would make the game a lot more hilarous.
PS. Maybe the militia-line could have a bonus vs. neutral camps, to make it more interesting.
I agree with the diagnostic. Don’t really love the idea as it is. I don’t like that takes 0 damage from skirms.
However, I think a light, faster and cheap footman unit could be a really good addition to the game.
I think militia like could be split:
Militia / MAA / Longswordsman: Now a trash unit. Light, faster and cheap.
Cost: 50F
TT: 15 sec
HP: 35 / 40 / 50
Attack: 3 / 5 / 7
Bonus vs Archers: 2 / 2 / 2
Bonus vs Siege: 3 / 3 / 3
Melee Armor: 0 / 0 / 0
Pierce Armor: 2 / 2 / 2
Rate of Fire: 1.8
Speed: 1.1 / 1.15 / 1.3
Armor Class: Infantry
Upgrade Costs: MAA 150F 100G / Longswordman 250F 150G
THS / Champion: Available since Castle Age. New buffed strong infantry gold unit.
11 I’d like to see what happens when that unit is in play for the Goths. Nothing but chaos. The best way to buff militia line without breaking good infantry civs is to increase their speed (but only slightly)