That’s just for useless UT like Nomad or Medical corps. Only UTs which are probably underpriced for their value are Kshatriyas, Artillery, Szlacha Privileges, Stirrups, El Dorado, Warwolf in terms of gold cost and maybe Silk Armor and Sipahi as well. Otherwise, UT are quite high priced compared to blacksmith techs - Recurve bow costs a lot more than bracer, Hauberk costs a lot more than plate barding armor, farimba costs a lot more than blast furnace and so on, as they should be.
1 or 2 second reduction doesn’t matter at that stage and its not even a 1% compensation compared to the benefits of a heavy camel upgrade. Just 400 food, less than 400 gold gives 2x bonus damage vs cavalry, +33% bonus damage against Camels, +1 attack, +20 hp. You’re basically trading off 600 additional food and 100+ more gold but compared to the previous upgrade, you get no extra bonus damage against any unit and just 2 seconds tt reduction. That’s so much cost ineffective. Usually its never seen as a problem because Hindustanis are a very strong civ and even if you remove Imperial camel upgrade they’re fine. But between Hindustani Heavy Camel and Hindustani Imperial Camel the value addition is negligible for the cost, which is actually quite opposite compared to other unit lines.
Yes, Heavy Camel upgrade is very cost effective and Imperial Camel upgrade is exactly opposite that it isn’t worthy to reseach if you don’t make 60+ Imperial Camels which is mostly valuable in team games. Even Paladin upgrade is more effective which gives 2 times hp (40 hp) and +1 PA (Paladin counter foot archers thanks to this upgrade). My idea is bringing back old 9 attack Imperial Camel because Imperial Camel upgrade was designed to make Camels as fighter unit as distinct from generic Camel-line. In return, Villagers bonus turned to “Villagers 20% cheaper in Feudal Age” (Dark Age Villager bonus is removed).
I think that this is mainly due to the amount of investment it takes to justify 2HS. Typically, if you go for 2HS, you also need to get the Long Sword tech and sometimes the MAA tech too. None of these upgrades are particularly expensive, but they do add up (though the earlier upgrades combine to less than the champion upgrade.) Then you have to add in any other relevant infantry/blacksmith techs that you might be missing. The main thing is, though, that if you’re going to spend enough res to make the militia line viable in the late-game, you might as well get all the techs. Particularly since you’ll likely hit pop-cap either way.
Also, most of the cost is in food which isn’t exactly scarce in the late-game when you’d consider getting the champion upgrade (or 2HS for that matter). So if you ignore the food cost, you end up with 350 gold cost, which isn’t a super expensive cost. Mainly though, If you can justify 2HS, you can probably also justify champion. Which means that you likely won’t see 2HS unless the civ is missing champion or unless they’re going to get champions at some point in the future.
And a sidetrack: Champion vs 2HS upgrades is different than Cavalier vs Paladin in my opinion. Paladin is a very expensive tech and takes a lot of knights to justify (about 40 as I recall, per a Spirit of the Law video) and knights are a gold-heavy unit. Champions take some gold but nowhere near as much as knights do, which makes them much easier to mass in imperial age. Plus, the militia-line upgrades are greater-in-number but cheaper than the Paladin line upgrades (750f/205g for MAA-2HS or 1300f/555g for MAA-Champion vs 1300f/750g for Paladin alone or 1600f/1050g for Cav-Paladin)
Overall, I think that the top-tier imperial age unit techs are something that you get if you’re expecting to produce a lot of that unit. They can afford to be overpriced because you’d only get them at a point when resources are somewhat abundant and also only if you’re going to be massing that unit.
Well I am entirely fine with the way champions are currently, but I don’t think Aztecs or Slav champions would be OP if we were half the cost and duration of the champion upgrade.
If it were only a few civs (even 10) making champions in early imperial, it would be more refreshing than annoying for me. Slavs is abad example though, because their UT Drushina is still very expensive for their eco. Vikings would be a goid example of civ benefiting a lot from a champion buff.
Early imperial into champion flood sounds fun to me when you are ahead against counter civs like byzantines. I don’t know whether it would work, but sounds good
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Anyways, given the options OP gave for its pool, I am not taking the thread as
“Champion is way too weak and MUST get a buff.”
but as:
"If we were to buff champions to make them more viable, which way do you feel would be the more healthy for the game ? "
Because no matter how weak or strong the champion are, the pool cannot be used by devs or fans to justify a buff, as there is no option “I dont care how weak champions are, they are fine for me”, which as far as we know, could represent 90% of the fan base (I am exagerating to give the idea)
You’ve even come to the surprising conclusions that the Champion upgrades is Infinitely better than the THS upgrade, and then had to stick in a note “Oi! Cherrypick/ignore this datapoint! Don’t let it deceive you!”
If two handes sword an upgrade was moved to Castle age, would that be op? I think it could be rly interstong having two upgrades in csstel instead of in imp were two handed swordsmen are never hood enough
I don’t think so. Everyone will still choose Berserk.
I’m starting to feel like THS is even worse upgrade than Champion. It doesn’t give you any extra HP or armor, the most important stat of a melee unit. I’ll open another thread for both THS and Champion.
Yeah, very true. Although number of awkward infantry UU is limited to mostly classical infantry UU now - WR, Samurai, Berserk and JW. Among them WR is pretty distinct from militia line and JW’s awkwardness is not related to the stats of militia line. Maybe we can add Serjeant among the new infantry UU who is underperforming.
Maybe in some cases. THS doesn’t get any HP or armor but gets a big jump on attack. Although I doubt we still won’t see it much as the real obstacle is the cost and time of upgrading the unit.
