Non-intuitive units

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Recently there are alot of non-intuitive new units.
I tried to get a friend into aoe 2 de and he was overwhelmed by so many units that break the intuition of what they are good against.
We had goth huscarls and byzantine catapracts in the past. Other units were more or less logical. Now its really alot of them with strange mechanics even so new players tend to be frustrated. My opinion.

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i think at this point a legacy mode, or classic mode is a must, only vanilla DE or pre-DE civs. remove some of the modern gimmicks (jaguar kill bonus) from them and it’s a great mode to get people into the game

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Unique mechanics bloat has been a huge issue with de.

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Can you share which units were confusing and what your friend thought they would do?

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I agree. In AoK, only Huskarl, Cataphract, Chu-Ko-Nu and Mangudai were exception. Other than Huskarl, you couldn’t tell if they are different by looking at their stat as UI didn’t show much information. Now with more exceptions like Genoese Xbow, Hussite Wagon, Rattan, Ratha, Kipchak, Leitis, Monaspa it would be confusing but new advanced UI helps a lot.

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tbh, I’m even fine with unique units having some strange bonus damage. what I don’t want is the gimmick mechanics of charge attacks, ignoring armour, bullet dodging, mode switching, bleed etc

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Sometimes I feel there are too many “unique western-looking cavalry with a lance” that do all different things. And I can’t tell why the letis ignores armor and the coustilier has charged attack from the look.

I think the gimmicks in the mechanism and counters should be restrained. Many UUs work not because they have a unique gimmick or violate the counter. Units can play significantly different with a simple stat and price tweak (longbow, karambit, magyar hussar, etc) or very easy-to-understand mechanisms (multiple shots, healing, melee at range, enhanced counter but weak basis, etc)

And the stats need to match the looks. Like I don’t know why the various “cavalry with a lance” do different things. Or the new elite karambit being a gold-clad trash unit.

There are two problem imo:

  1. Some of those things do not make the unit fundamentally different.
    For example, longbow just have longer range and less accuracy. It already makes the unit play very differently.
    Something like bleeding——would it make the unit drastically different from another melee unit simply with higher damage? Sure there are marginal cases where they make a difference but quite nuanced to me (correct me if I’m wrong)

  2. Some of them are intuitively universal like charge, mode switches, shielding, etc., and do not feel like a “unique trait”. Save them for a new game not one niche unit

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I couldn’t agree more. many of these feel like the current devs don’t want to work on aoe2, but rather a new game. so they are trying to turn aoe2 into “aoe two and a half”. what makes aoe2 so great is the simplicity of its systems which naturally gives rise to complexity

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They can’t afford (or fear the risk of) making real new games or working on “less popular games”, and have to ride the popularity of the legacy when they try anything “new” (well, not so new tbh). That explains 90% of the problems not only in AOE2 but also other games in the franchise.

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They’re getting cute with designs and mechanics because they’ve run out of ideas.

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What are you talking about? They put 3rd century separatist factions as “medieval civs” and that is the most creative thing ever happened to the game.

/s

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Those are the unique cavalry units that use a spear-like weapon:

  1. Leitis
  2. ⁠Monaspa
  3. ⁠⁠Iron Pagoda
  4. ⁠Tiger Cavalry
  5. ⁠Magyar Huszar
  6. ⁠⁠Shrivamsha Rider
  7. ⁠⁠Keshik
  8. ⁠Coustilier

All of them are unique to their civilization, there’s no risk to see a bunch of them randomly in a match.

You only see simultaneously a Monaspa, a Keshik or a Tiger Cavalry, for example, if their respective civs are present on the match (Georgians, Tatars and Wei).

It’s not about “Oh, a unit that looks like a Knight but uses a spear, what can it do?”. A reasonable observation is to say “I’m playing against Lithuanians, what do they have, and how can I counter them with my own Civ?”.

Units don’t exist in a vacuum, there’s a lot of context.

If the criticism is about a difficulty to distinguish visually between units, I can understand, but even than I don’t agree. It’s easy enough to tell apart the current unique units. It’s natural to be overwhelmed at first sight when everything is new and you’re seeing the game for the first times.

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I don’t agree on everything. As long as Devs keep adding new civs (some argue they shouldn’t), it make sense new uu have at least one gimmick. There is only so much you can do with range, speed and armor.

100% agree. People seem to forget they can read a civ’s description in 3 clicks. I did this often when I started. The 5 mins of dark age do serve a purpose.

To me the main issues are:

  • units with several gimmicks, especially when some of them really don’t make sense: urumis deal splash damage (good idea for a whip), have a charge attack (why?) and ignore armor (terrible idea for a whip). The stupid chariot that has two very similar modes.
  • new units that overshadow old ones. The teutonic knight is supposed to be the ultimate melee wall, only beaten by cataphracts. Now it has to face leitis (this one is understandable), the buffed jaguars, urumis and liao dao.

Now don’t pretend that everything in the original game made sense. Why do hand cannons deal more damage to infantry? How can a peasant with a small round shield be more resistant to arrows than a 16th century knight? How can said peasant throw its spear to such a distance? If you can accept that, you can accept that genoese xbow are good against cav.

I started with de, so take everything with a grain of salt. But I would say until Dynasties of India, new civs except gurjaras and one time use techs were ok. Some units like houfnice or leitis are overtuned, but they don’t have mind-blowing mechanics.

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it isn’t at all

I just realised that this became quite an essay. So:
TL;DR: The newer unique units introduce new mechanics, but they don’t actually play differently. This is bad game design, artificial complexity.
When adding a new mechanic you should ask yourself: could i achieve the same or a similar result with the tools i already have? If the answer is yes, you aren’t adding a new mechanic but a gimmick.

Full version:

Leitis, Monaspa, Keshiks, and Coustillier each introduce new mechanics but are basically just fancy knights. Remove their unique abilities and slightly adjust their remaining stats and they are basically the same. Not elegant. Bad design. (Additionally they don’t fulfill a role that their already buffed knights fulfill, making it purely a gimmick)

Boyars achieve the same role, without introducing new mechanics. still only mediocre design as they don’t fulfill a unique role in their armies (similar to eg Longbowmen, and a few others).

Magyar Huszar: no unique ablities, just normal stats and a bonus damage. But fulfills the role of siege sniper. Decent design (still very similar to a normal Hussar)

Shrivamsha rider: fulfills a unique role of arrow sponge and super fast raiding unit. However the same could be achieved by a unit with high pierce armor instead of the fucking magic shield. Awful design (tbh, my hate for the magic shields might be a bit extreme, probably mediocre design), but salvageable by just replacing the shield with +X pierce armor and maybe some extra hp.

The above (sans Boyars and Huszars) are examples of forced complexity: The rules of the system got changed to be more complicated, however the way people engage with the system didn’t change.

The opposite of this is emergent complexity: The rules of the system stay the same, but complexity arises naturally from within:
The War Wagon plays uniquely due to being way more tanky, but slower and more expensive than a cav archer.
The Mangudai plays differently from a standard cav archer due to its higher damage and bonus vs siege.
etc

Notice how most original UUs are examples of emergent complexity, while newer UUs introduce new mechanics, while not actually distinguishing themselves from existing units. Of course exceptions exist.

The Cataphract has a unique mechanic with its negative cav armour. Arguably this is within the normal system (rams also have negative armour), either way it is justified since they play an extremely unique role in the Byzantine army. In this case I think new mechanics are/would be justified
Similarly the Throwing axe man was semi-unique with its ranged melee attack (shared with meme-lukes), but again, it has a clear role in the Frankish army.

For objectivity’s sake, I should mention that not all new unique units are badly/lazily designed. Eg the Chakram thrower is basically an infantry-scorpion, no new mechanics introduced and it has it’s role in the roster.

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Of course I’ve played long enough to remember all of them without even checking. I just mean their designs are not thematically consistent or elegant.

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  • Leitis is considerably stronger the more relics you have garrisoned.
  • Monaspa is stronger the more of them you have in the same fight, being affected by the Lanchester’s laws somewhat like ranged units (unlike common melee units).
  • Keshik is to be used in raids or prolonged fights so you can gain more gold with them (actually I don’t know how to play with Tatars, haha).
  • Coustilier is specifically designed for the tactic of hit and run. After watching Mr. Yo using them some times you may see the difference.

The play style encouraged by a unit’s “gimmick” is also relevant, not only the overall stats similarities with common units.

Still, AoE2 is not a game where a faction can have a completely unique game mechanic, like AoM or AoE4. It is designed to have similar units and civs.

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Boyars are melee mounted tanks, like a mounted Teutonic Knight, there’s no other cavalry like that.
But about Longbowmen I unfortunately agree
 Britons Arbalests are almost the same as them, and even better in some situations (feudal to castle transition, low number of castles etc.).

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Hit and run tactics. Not the same as if they had high piece armor.

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A lot of the mechanics need to be universalised. As it stands we essentially have a 2 tier civ system. Pre-DE civs which have very few “gimmicks” which are more or less uniform in their unit and tech compositions and post DE civs which are less and less symetrical in relation to the old civs. Its gotten to a point where old civs just feel bland and as you point out, new civs feel like they break from the norm too much. Its essentially like 2 separate games mashed into one. They need to really spend some time and apply some new features retroactively to older civs. This has been done to some extent like for example giving steppe lancers and dromons to the appropriate civs but in my opinion nowhere near enough.

To address this here are some of my suggestions for features to be universalised:

  • Cavalry charge mechanics: It was a great addition when first introduced, too bad it was only given to one unique unit. IMO all knights need to be given this ability. Adjust other stats to compensate accordingly.

  • Dual attack mode for units: a few units have this now but we need more and the units that deperately need it are melee units attacking buildings, similar to how AOE3 implements this. It can mostly just be an animation thing and stats don’t need adjustment so should be relatively easy to implement. Will help greatly with immersion and modernising the game.

  • Regional unit skins: pretty self explanatory and talked about to death in other places


  • House garrison ability for villagers: a feature that needs to be given to all civs IMO. Its just silly that one civ has it.

  • Konik rider resurrection: another feature that needs to be given to other mounted units. Makes no sense why only one civ gets a rider who gets up and fights after their horse dies. Maybe it doesn’t happen everytime but there is an RNG element to it so like your rider has a % chance to get up and fight as an infantry unit when their mount is killed. It would be more uniform across the board and would also create an interesting potential for future civ bonuses, like increasing percentage that a rider would survive their mount being killed for example.

That’s all that comes to mind right now, I am sure there is other things but this would certainly be a good start and would go in some way to make things more new player friendly by making some of those one off features a more integral and logical part of the game.

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Well we had a hindustani and khmer matchup against us. And he had britons- crossbow vs ghulams and then tried to counter ballistia elephants with skirmishers. He played some aoe before even hd.

I actually like charge attack for cavalry and mode switching is kinda ok. dodging and ignoring all armor is a bit strange. I also like new units and skins, but the non intuitive fastoc is kinda bad. Make units with big shields have pierce armor. And remove long swordsman’s shield for example.

that is another topic . i agree but not here.

Yes they are all over the place, but at least they are countered by spearmen and camels.

I agree with all you said.

I don’t have a problem aswell but If the point was to get new players mybe is a bit overwhelming.

Exactly this is probably the right way to go. If they are trying new things with new units and what works should be given to old civs aswell.

Bro exactly all your ideas are great. I would add 1 more walkable foundations until 50% built. Its strange for earthbenders (villagers) to throw so much stuff instanly on the foundation to block army passage.