Poleaxeman. To even out the balance against newer civs we need something quirky to give them pain and even the odds.
Civs this unit is available to. Britons. Celts. Franks. Tuetons. Burgundians. No other civs get this.
Class Infantry/Shock Infantry. So is countered by the militia-line. Cost per unit. 60 food, 35 gold. Movement speed is slow, 0.8, same as a Teutonic Knight. So they can be kited very easily by archers. Trainable in the barracks.
60 hit points. 1/1 armor. 8 melee attack (ignore armor). Plus 15 vs cavalry. Extra 12 damage to camels. Extra 15 damage to elephants, around the same bonus damage as a feudal age Spearman. Plus 1 range. 6 vs Standard building. Reload time 2.
Elite Imperial Age upgrade cost. Edit: 600 food and 400 gold. 75 hit points. 2/2 armor. 11 melee attack which ignores armor.
Role: anti cavalry, anti building. High damaging unit. Available in Castle Age. Quite costly to produce since they take 10 more food, and 15 more gold than a militia-line unit. The Imperial Age Elite Upgrade is a bit substantial in cost.
The problem is that all these civs already have good spear lines, especially Teutons and Celts. And Burgundians also have Flemish Militia. So, this unit would have tough competition. Civs with poor spear lines would welcome it more fiercely, though.
Also, Spearman variants deal slightly less bonus damage to camels than cavalry (like Kamayuk, who deals +12 bonus damage to cavalry but +10 to camels). So, for +15 against cavalry, it should be +12 against camels.
I suppose more buffs for other civs, I guess. But the whole point of this thread is to give some punch to legacy civs. And make strange Three Kingdoms civs suffer. However, I did edit them to be just like spearman in bonus damage.
Not a good unit. No mobility, high cost, mediocre hp. Practically an anti-cavalry being offered to civs which have full upgrades on halbs, only advantage being reduced damage from skirms. Decent option for Britons to guard trebs, maybe slightly usable for Franks against camel civs because of the 1 range but redundant for the other civs listed.
Since it has 1 range, I wouldn’t be too concerned about melee armor. Its supposed to work by the patrol stacking. I would definitely increase the speed by atleast 20% to 0.96, lower the gold cost to 25. Second thing I’d do is give a niche which makes it clearly more useful to halberdiers justifying the gold cost. Gunpowder resistance, lower damage taken from CA armor class units or scorps. Or I’d lower both the food and gold cost, keep them as fragile against anti-infantry units as other infantry but give it some other ability - like repair siege or block projectiles fired at siege by absorbing half of that damage. In that way they’ll be a good addition for Teutons, Celts or protect bombard canons for Burgundians, Franks. I wouldn’t give them to Britons in that case though. Anyways I’m also surprised you didn’t include them for Poles given their name, not that I’m recommending it.
Also I don’t think Franks, Britons need anything against the new civs. They are fine in the settings where they’re supposed to do well. Burgundians are a closed map civ and I think they do well against all new DLC civs in such maps already. That leaves Teutons and Celts. While this could be a good addition for those 2 civs, I’m curious to know the rationale behind picking just these civs.
Good suggestions. The upgrade cost probably should be half the amount I think. 600 food and 400 gold. Instead of 1200 food and 800 gold.
In a hypothetical of scenario of generic post imp 30 Spanish Paladins (with your changes) charging into Teuton (plus 2 melee armor civ bonus) 30 Elite Poleaxeman would they be absolutely be slaughtered? Would they fair far better than Halberdiers?
Unless you patrol stack in a choke point probably yes they’d die to generic Paladin but that’s ok. You don’t want it to function very much like a halberdier which is why I suggested that you find a niche.
If this unit is designed to fight elephant, I think it is fine. But pikes already serve as area denial of cavalry. Why would players produce this unit instead of pikes?
Let’s see how they preform with woots steal. Same tier 1 spearman bonus. 5 melee armor. 15 attack. These be Elite Poleaxemen vs Post IMP Paladins. I gave them 85 HP.
Without micro. All these tests were done in the darkage. Not I said reload time is also 2, not 3. Can’t seem to change that with scenario editor.
With 75 HP. They sill win without micro.
Teutons ones with 7 melee armor. Without micro.
The same test again with Post IMP Halbs vs Paladins. They lose decisively even with Woots Steel.
I think that hussar, double-hand swordsman and even fire ship shall be regional unit just like paladin, the siege machines(at least high level siege machines) shall be removed from native American civs.
