Knights already trade evenly vs Militia-line, so they are not a counter, this not to mention that if you have a bunch of LS on the field, the transition to Pikeman isn’t rly hard to do.
1 Like
If thats the case, why do we never see 2hs in pro play but see a fair bit of champion? The best players in the world very obviously disagree with you. They like the champion upgrade; militia line sees little play, but if it does, it is (apart from maa openings) almost always champion.
If your assumption, your baseline assumption that made you write that thread, was correct, pros would opt to just get 2hs and dont bother about upgrading further. Like they do with cav (more often than not, paladin is ignored), like the often do with imperial camels. But they dont.
See, its all fine and fun to make models and try to derive predictions from them. Thats how science works. But the next step is then to check if your predictions match the data we have. If they dont, you need to start again.
1 Like
Infact both THS and Champion should be cheaper as upgrades since militia sucksnconpared tonother Gold unit and is supposed to be the cheaper One, but uograding from militia to champion cost almost as much as getting paladin which does not make sense
I believe we see both equally. Champion upgrade is often so expensive that players just can’t afford it and use THS.
Because 99.99% of the time they don’t know/remember that Champion doesn’t get extra MA anymore. If THS didn’t get 1MA buff last year, I wouldn’t make this thread.
THS can be reduced by 50 food at best. Time can be significantly reduced.
From LS onwards, they can get some bonus dmg against light cav. I prefer reduced upgrade cost of champions. Or else, +1 base atk for champion.
2 Likes
-15f Supplies already made Champion very cheap, then cost of Supplies and Longsword upgrades are reduced as well approx. 1 years ago. Cheaper upgrades doesn’t work if aimed unit is very weak. Goths and Bulgarians also don’t use Longsword because cheaper cost doesn’t help. My idea is increasing stats of Champion-line immensely, comparable to Obuch, in return Champion will gain trash counter (last remaining trash unit: Light Cavalry):
- 65f 25g (50f 25g after Supplies)
- All Militia-line has 2 PA, 0.95 speed.
- 55/75/75/90 hp Man-at-arms/Longsword/Two-handed Swordman/Champion.
- Militia-line get +3/+12/+12 bonus attack from Scout/Light Cavalry/Hussar.
You “believe”? how about you link some games where pros go for the militia line and use 2hs, but dont upgrade to champion (or only really late)?
Also, about pros not knowing their game: If people whos job it is to perfect strategies “dont know” something beeing overpriced, it cant be that bad…those guys constantly talk about the game, try new strategies, theorycraft, develop build orders…if they go for an upgrade 9/10 times it can’t be that bad.
TBF when I made my researcha about “what’s the best unit in trash wars” I didn’t see much use of the Champions.
My conclusion at that time was that HCA were the best units if you manage to keep them alive. And ofc it makes sense as long as there are archery units (except skirms) in play, you can’'t go for the militia line.
I don’t know exactly why, but on the ladder we see way less champs lategame than we see on real pro tournaments (where they are used from time to time).
I don’t have a full answer to that yet, but I also assume that on ladder games you usually don’t want the slow grinding champs for you to close a game, you usually prefer to end games more quick so you can get to the next game faster.
And I think that’s the most relateable critique on the militia line… It’s just not fun to play with or against them. It’s usually a grind, and grinds aren’t really fun. If there isn’t a fundamental change to the line how it plays out I don’t want it to become more present in games tbh.
And that’s also one of my main motivations why I speak out for a new, more fun power infantry unit instead of trying to force the militia line to be that.
2 Likes
Id assume its because switching to champs is a highly situational move. In 90% of the cases, its the wrong play. So regular players just dont do it. It takes some skill to know WHEN to go for champs and pull it off.
But thats a bit of a sidetrack. My point was not that militia line is used often; i agree we rarely see it. My point was that IF we see it, we see champion (and NOT 2hs). This disproves the claim that champion upgrade is not worth it.
1 Like
Yeah agree…
The reason isn’t the Champ upgrade. It’s the whole line is so situational.
Don’t forget if you make an infnatry switch you usually need a lot of upgrades like armor also, so you really need to know when and if it’s worth it or if it sometimes is just better to stick with the comp you already do.
Eh Ive seen people IRL and in strategy games blindly apply mistaken logic all the time. Theres a laundry list of possible cognitive biases that cause professionals to be wrong. Pros are the best and trusting them is the best option if you cant condition on anything. But often you can condition on things because the game replay is right there and you can do some calculations. Sometimes something weird is going on with the decision making and these errors can absolutely be correlated across players and time.
There is a lot of bias in AoE2 toward fully upgraded units and eco upgrades even on the pro scene. E.g. You will often see pros grab halb amd blast furnace against FU light cav spam even though you only need 1 of those 2. Youll often see pros grab champ vs eagles even though the fight outcome is almost identical. They sometimes grab champ well before something like garland wars, druzhina, or chieftains which are often much stronger upgrades for their cost, etc.
Cataphracts are another interesting example where logistica is usually better than the elite upgrade because of the selection bias of when you use them but people usually buy them in the reverse order.
Optimization is all about asking “is the marginal benefit better than the marginal cost + opportunity cost”. So the question becomes “when does the return on champ exceed all possible other uses of 750f and 350g?” After all the only reason youd ever buy it is because youve bought everything else thats even better. And a lot of times there is something better on the table even in the late game. Whether its an extra 2 trebs worth of gold, 25 extra 2hs at near bottom market prices, etc.
The champ upgrade can still generate a decent return but often times players dont optimize properly which muddies the water a bit.
3 Likes
if you have light cav in your eco they will usually have run past some castles/towers/tcs so there might already be some chip damage. also you can then push forward where you will probably encounter enemy castles/skrims/arbs etc
units dont usually fight in isolation. same for champs vs eagles
what? 10 extra hp on champion makes a big difference
it’s comparable to bloodlines on knights
usually melee units struggle to close the gap. more hp helps more than more attack/splash damage/bonus damage against cav respectively.
also these comparisons are way more difficult because unique techs take up castle time, which is often at a premium for trebs, conscription etc
for cataphracts i again think that 40 extra hp is worth so much more than splash damage
2 Likes
Weird post. You write things that make some sense and mix them with stuff thats absolutly insane.
I mean, you advise against picking up blast furnace. This one single upgrade increases the damage a halb deals to non-cav units (e.g. other halbs) 40%. But you would rather not get it, because…they can kill lcav without it.
See, you might be right if this game was about winning one single fight: Upgrades are hardly ever worth it. But games go on for a long time. And in every fight, those upgrades matter and make your units a bit more efficient. Not to mention pop efficiency: You can only field about 70 military. So you want those 70 guys to actually pack a punch.
1 Like
Im not saying these decisions are bad over a long game. Obviously if you analyze the game in its entirety youre likely going to want to get every upgrade for any unit you field in appreciable numbers at some point because at some point you run out of things that are “profitable” so to speak.
Basically im saying ive seen things where players overinvest for the situation at hand and the likely near future. In effect the order of the upgrades seems off.
If youre killing chinese light cav (which is one example I remember) the chance that you need FU halbs is low. Chinese arent going to suddenly field hussar or mass cavalier in mid imp. But in one game they had longbows and priotitized halb over elite longbow. He even admitted it was a bad idea after the fact.
Ive also seen players prioritize champ over better siege vs mayans and that doesnt seem right. At least prioritizing siege tends to work better for the small sample of cases ive seen.
Like you implied, if youre at pop cap you might as well upgrade the units on the field. But upgrades bought in this circumstance are hard to judge as “good”. After all even something with a tiny positive payoff would be bought in this situation because you have no other option to obtain returns in the near future.
So after all is said and done its hard to map this behavior to a metric of “good” or “bad” upgrade. Between the pop cap risk and the possibility of upgrades being out of order (making it look like a higher priority than it should be) its just a very tough judgement call.
Edit: you can compare it to paladin. Paladin is an expensive upgrade on a pop efficient unit. We all know its a very good and worthwhile upgrade but its cost and research time delay the effect and combined with pop efficiency of cav mean theres often better investments for obtaining advantages in the short term. So this is kind of the opposite effect of champs. So for a symmetric reason calling the paladin a bad upgrade wouldnt really make sense.
1 Like
Pretty close poll. A bit surprised to see the result so far. I thought reducing upgrade cost would be more appealing.
My proposal would be either of these three -
-
THS upgrade cost 300f/100g → 250f/100g and time 75 sec → 60 sec
and Champion upgrade cost 750f/350g → 600f/250g and time 100 sec → 75 sec -
THS HP 60 → 65, attack 12 → 11, Attack bonus vs Standard Building 4 → 5, upgrade time 75 sec → 60 sec
Champion MA 1 → 2, Attack bonus vs Standard Building 4 → 6, upgrade time 100 sec → 75 sec
Following civs lose access to Champion - Berbers, Chinese, Cumans, Magyars. -
Just remove Arson. Increase LS and standard infantry UU attack bonus vs standard building by +1, and THS, Champion and Elite Infantry UU attack bonus vs standard building by +2. This will indirectly reduce the upgrade cost of Militia line. Spearman line absolutely don’t need attack bonus vs building. And Eagle may not get attack bonus vs building either as they need a nerf anyway.
2 Likes
The pool may be read like choosing between:
“Let’s make Champion easier to tech into for a more efficient mid imperial trash counter”,
VS
- “Let’s make champions a viable core of army like cavaliers/arbalesters/HCA.”
No matter how cheap you make the champion upgrade, many people on the forum will ask for the better stats to “make the champions great again”.
I like this change.
1 Like
This is another reason why I want Arson to be replaced with a better generic tech. Infantries attack bonus vs building can be increased just by their stats as everyone but Goths have this tech. (And Goths essentially have this tech for free). Another tech will add more variety as well as make it easier to balance different civ without going through different bonuses.
How? You mean there is one upgrade path directly to champion and another path only to THS? like hussar and winged hussar?
I don’t think so. Buffing an Imperial Age unit by a little won’t make it a viable army like Castle Age meta units.
That’s true.
I never thought like that. I thought just one upgrade - let’s say Heavy Swordsman. Basically THS with 70 HP or Champion with 12 attack. Upgrade cost and time can be discussed. I’ll go with 500f/250g and 60 sec.
Survivalist just made a video about the Militia line:
