You can’t really increase their movement speed overall, or they’ll overlap too much with cavalry. The objective is to make them functional as infantry, not to just…make them into cavalry.
However, you also can’t really increase their base stats much, or they’ll just crush everything. Viper recently did a feudal armenians rush where he just built a bunch of longswords and destroyed all their buildings before they could make any army, and it was more or less unstoppable as long as you could keep them off gold. They’re already in a place where if you don’t have good archer options, you have to pick and choose your fights; make them hardly any stronger, and they’ll become completely unstoppable, especially at average elos.
One of the biggest problems with infantry is how it’s difficult to get value with them before they die. If you DO get value they can be rather decent, but getting that value is hard, and if you lose all your infantry, it’s really hard to justify further investment.
Here’s an idea; what if Supplies made Militia heal faster? Right now, healing is basically irrelevant in feudal age, but if they healed faster than other units, if you had 5 almost-dead infantry, you could throw down a tower and heal them up, basically paying for the tower right there, and make fights with scouts and the like actually cost effective with proper micro. This would also scale towards higher-level play and better micro, keeping infantry from becoming too potent at lower skill levels.
Healing 5 MAA would basically regenerate 400 resources. This also has the effect of giving an immediate effect to Supplies, so it’s not as much of a full investment. Currently, however, this would take about 5 minutes, which is obviously way too slow.
I like it that xbows and knights are the mid game power units (heavy on gold and a wide range of counter units of different degree).
I think it would be nice if the milicia line were good against other units.
My current preference is to give the eagle armor to the scout line. Because currently an average hussar spam vs champion spam is to the advantage of the hussar player for over half of the civs (as champion player I usually wonder whether I am wasting my gold). You can add halberdiers but they can add skirms to snipe them, which makes it more of a skill matchup than it needs to be. Instead, I like the idea that whenever th e opponent is making (well upgraded) champions/LS, you really have to make gold units.
As an additional buff, I like the idea of giving LS onward 1.0 movement speed (let maa slow because I would like to keep them weak post drush). Buffing LS movement speed help them against eagles as well, who become spamable in castle age. LS should still not be that viable due to high food cost and weakness to xbows (and maybe add a nerf against knights), but at least discourage the braindead eagle spam.
But in the end, civ balance is for me way more important than unit balance and I hate changing the whole game dynamics (like games such as Diablo or League od Legends where you may have to re learn the game balance every patch) , so if there is no change I wont really mind.
Hand Cannoneers already hard-counter Champions. You only need Chemistry to start producing them, and they are effective without any blacksmith upgrades or additional techs. They are even easier to make than other counter units like Pikes or Skirmishers (that need a lot of upgrades to trade well).
Often, you need to get Chemistry anyway for bombard cannons, so Hand Cannoneers are a very simple counter.
Even they are in this logic, they are sub-par in raiding while they are the unit to slow down your own eco the most. Even tho LS should be beaten by cav and xbow, it should have a way to slow down opponent’s eco. Cav chase down villagers while xbow dance around woodlines but LS?
I play Ranked 1v1 RM. Before Imperial Age, the Militia-line loses to archers/crossbows,siege and Knights. I am saying that they do have hard-counters. And it’s generally accepted that Champions can be the most useful, so my intention was to say that when they get strong, hand cannoneers without upgrades immediately counter them (and Chemistry is researched anyway).
A lot happens before Imperial Age, but investing so much (in expensive techs) in a unit that will be hard-countered in early Imperial Age is a serious issue. And they still have counters before…
What if the militia-line was better against buildings?
To don’t overlap with rams, their additional bonus against buildings could be when inside a ram. Keep the bonus damage of spear inside rams as it is.
Another type of additional bonus against buildings could be against foundations. This way they would make a threat to a quickwalled economy, and also to a castle drop, giving options both to attack and defense.
I don’t want them to just erase buildings, this would be too much, and I don’t want to loose their current bonus against buildings. So, the additional bonus must be situational.
militia-line doesn’t overlap with rams because rams have much better pierce armor… I don’t mind if men-at-arms “erase” buildings, because they’re bad in most unit matchups, such as against archers and knights
Adding 0.3 range for infantry (except militia, maa, and some unit) may be good. I sometimes get frustration that swordmen fail to attack enemy (especially escaping cavalry). Kamayuk will get 1.3 range.
What infantry UU is the most balanced? And it should not be a counter unit like Huskarl or JW, nor a completely unique like Kamayuk or Gbeto. This leaves us with Berserk, Samurai (Kind of), WR, Shotel, Karambit, Dismounted Konnik, Serjeant and Obuch. I must say Obuch is the best among them.
I think the most important change wouldn’t a change to the militia line itself.
It would be to reduce the timing poweespikes of the current “power units”.
Like increase the training time for Knights by like 1/3 or even more and further increase the upgrade cost to xbows.
I think the Militia line is the most predestined to use timimng advantages as it is not as snowbally in the early/midgame where utilization of the few units you have is more valueable. Also thanks to the comparably high food cost there is a natural limit of how much you can make opposed to the less food intensive archer/knight options.
And then ofc heavily reduce the upgrade cost/times for the militia line.
No need to nerf knight/xbow. We will have cav archer meta instead of militia meta.
For starter, we can make militia viable again in feudal and late game at least.
(1) m@a Speed to 1 to fight pikes and skirm
(2) Rename eagle armor class and then militia have bonus dmg vs light cav
(3) Militia can garrison in rams from 1 range away from rams.
Regarding the bonus dmg, I think we can give negative scout armor to eagles in order not to hurt scout rush.
M@a +0 vs scout; eagle (scout armor -2); scout cav (scout armor 0)
For longswords, it should be fine to have +6 vs eagle warrior and light cav. (compete relics in mid-game in arena. If not, keep the negative scout armor for eagle warrior and reduce bonus dmg to +4
