But that is the direct implication of being a trash killer: if the oppinent only makes trash units, he loses.
The milicia line is not cheap to get running mid game and takes time to upgrade late game.
So if the opponent camps gold, there is still time and gold left to fight and take control. Just like in Arena 1v1, if you dont fight for relics, you must make a big push or you will get oulasted.
This is also a problem if players never feel the need to take map control or gold control and just wall into boom into hussar spam⊠For me this is way worse than gold camping (wgich isnt a bad thing for me).
What you describe sounds like a design problem: champions are dedigned as trash killer but are not strong against hussars to prevent gold camping. So they are not trash killers as intended.
Yes, this is a valid alternative if the milicia is good against knights (much better than now). I like the trash killer design, but this one is also fine.
So basically comparing LS to pikes, you trade " gold cost and strength over skirms" against âstrength over hussarsâ. LS would then probably be designed to br viable when used along siege (scorpions or rams?) and pikes, to fight off xbows and hussars.
This is a good topic by the way. I believe it would make more sense to argue about the ideal/desired champion line design (starting from current state) before talking about the actual changes (as proposed by topic owner).
I have said it several times⊠Militia line role should be defined and enphatized in some logic wayâŠ
For example. If you want infantry massively deployed in the battlefield, then make it super cheap (like 30F 30W) but weaker than today.
This way, spamming militia since dark age could be a good strat.
But making it even weaker would only make it less viable for mass battles.
There are 2 effets: Before the mass battle happens there is usually some kind of skirmish where weaker units are way more likely to be taken out.
And in mass battles usually there are some area dealing units (mangonels, but sometimes also bbc etc) involved which just flatten weak units.
Itâs already that cause of the kinda fragile design of infantry they are most often not used for mass battles but for streaming in like in the goth flood.
And guess what goths infantry is: more fragile and cheaper.
So, no. I donât think going this direction would make infantry more ârealisticâ for mass battles.
I also just remembered: For one of my Roman designs I gave Roman Militia line the bonus to only take half Damage from Siege. I think this kind of Bonus would help a lot to make it more viable for larger scale battles. This was ofc assuming Romans had bad cavalry and therore be very vulnerable to Siege pretty much like Armenians are atm.
There should be a poll for buffing militia for infantry civs only.
For example, I wanna give new tech to replace arson for Celts, Goths and Armenians, which allows LS to pass thru woodlines to force opponent spend more resources to wall and guard woodlines.
Arson should be auto upgrade to LS in castle age instead, somewhat like tracking.
Most infantry civs are doing just fine, statistically. Often because they have a dedicated infantry UU, though.
I remain of the opinion that the big limiting factor is upgrade time and cost. They should continue to reduce the upgrade time, at least.
For example, there are many circumstances where adding a handful of militia line to your army could improve your overall composition, but because it requires expensive upgrades, doing so is rarely a good choice. But if going full infantry is bad, and going partially infantry is too expensive, whatâs left?
What if they just rolled the Longsword upgrade into the MAA upgrade? Change it to something more general, like Armaments, and you get an automatic upgrade to longswords come Castle Age, and maybe even to 2hs in imperial.
Youâd need to buff the Bulgarians a bit after that, but thatâs fine, theyâre kinda bad right now anyway.
I think we see with Armenians, malay and Romans that for lower levels good Militia can actually be quite strong already. And thatâs ofc a major concern, that blunt buffs to the line might bring the line up to dominate at lower level whilst itâs still unusable at higher.
Also some of these civs also have just good eco, so itâs not always they get good results because they have good infantry. Best example is ofc Vikings, which have one of the best Militia Lines in the game but rarely use it. Ofc as said, some Infantry UUs see a lot of utilization - and imo mostly because you donât need to upgrade them like the militia line.
And this shows, that the concept of just reducing that upgrade investment can actually do a lot and from examples like the Berserk, Woad and Condo we see, it is actually very well Balanced and fits nicely in the game.
I can kinda understand that but shouldnât denying the enemy of gold be a strategy that gets rewarded. Especially because Infantry is pretty bad for map control.
The problem is that the Scout line is already the strongest trash unit by far.
Hussars have 7 attack with 1.9 reload time while Halberdeirs only have 6 with 3 reload time
Hussars have 75+20 HP while Pikeman only have 60
Halberdiers have no armour and take bonus damage from almost everything ranged
Hussars only cost 1 resource while the other trash units cost 2 different ones
Hussars are the fastest unit in the game (besides Scouts)
There for they are the worst candidate for a Milita Line counter in my Opinion.
Thatâs why many people want the opposite. Give Infantry (especially Milita Line) some bonus damage vs. the Scout Line the way they already have against Eagle Warriors.
The Milita Line doesnât represent the basic Infantry, they represent Heavy Infantry.
The basic Infantry is the Spear Line.
The Spear Line is a lot more useful unit but also the one unit with the most counters.
I guess thatâs the hard part, people have very different ideas of what the Milita Line should be:
Super cheap unit that can easily be massed (reduced Population cost)
Strong heavy but slow Infantry
Fast Shock Troopers
Some kind of specialist (super trash killers)
The problem is that the strong Infantry civs are often just not played as Infantry civs.
They often have good economic bonuses that just turns them into decent Knight and Crossbow civs.
Thatâs why I think Infantry and the Milita Line can only really be buffed if there are new dedicated Infantry counters are added to the game.
But adding a new generic unit is something that seems to be almost impossible after so many years.
Youâre right, I completely forgot about them.
The Scorpion Line is kind of in the shadow of the Mangonel Line atm, since the Mangonel Line is practically better at almost everything that the Scorpion Line is good at.
Maybe giving the Scorpion Line bonus damage against Infantry would be the easiest solution.
Every civilisation has access to the Scorpion and they also donât require any technologies.
They could be the perfect generic Castle Age Infantry counter.
And the Heavy Scorpion with Siege Engineers is available to more then half of the civilisations too.
Yeah and I donât see any reason to change that. They are also most expensive among them after all. And Iâm not making Infantries any weaker than current against them. Iâm just keeping their relationship steady.
Absolutely.
I used to be on 4th line. Now Iâm on 2nd line. I donât know what shock trooper mean btw.
Mostly archer civ. Especially if it is âInfantry + Naval civâ, rest assure it is just an âArcherâ civ - Japanese, Vikings, Malay, Dravidians, kind of Armenians. Congrats to Romans for being only exception.
After making swordsmen viable again in feudal and late game, at least make infantry civs play more infantry.
Steppe lancer, winged hussar and elephant archers are added pretty recently. So I dont think that is impossible.
I dont think the generic unit should necessarily be an infantry counter. You can add new unit costing only gold such that LS+new unit counter archers, forcing tech switch. And monks can heal LS faster to synergize LS more when facing cavalry
I think one of the first things to adjust before or alongside any additional change to militia line is to make its attack/animation delay consistent between of the multiple stages, like explained in this thread:
Right now a man-at -Arms (0.88) âattackâ slower than a militia (0.5), then speeds when upgraded to long swordsman(0.63), and two-handed-swordsman (0.5) and finally slows a little in Champion Level (0.63).
Thatâs 100% my target. Right now only Aztecs and Incas play Infantry which is Eagle and a bit of Kamayuk. So only Goths on the right spot. My goal is to make Dravidians, Malay, Armenians, Romans, Vikings, Slavs and Celts reach on that level. Meaning their military unit will be Militia line or UU infantry if any. Cavalry/archer of respective civ will be rightfully nerfed for that. Iâll pass on Japanese, Teutons, Sicilians, Bulgarians, Burmese, Malians as all of them have a lot of other tools than infantry.
All of them are available for 2 or 3 civs. Also W.Hussar is nothing different from Hussar in role.
As I said, Hussars are already the best trash unit and therefor should not be made even better because they get better if every other unit gets worse against Infantry.
Plus they donât counter Infantry now. The two units are kinda equal.
Fast and hard hitting unit. Kinda like Eagle Warrior.
Itâs an official unit tag in AoE3DE.
Those are all regional units, not a real generic unit that is available to almost all civilisations.
Yes technically regional units donât officially exist as a concept, but being available to 3 civilisations is a lot less then being available to 90% of civilisations.
Also regional unit are almost never added to existing civilisations. The only ones I can think of are Mongols and Lithuanians.
So giving most civilisations a new unit so they have a hard counter vs. Infantry would be something very different from anything they have done yet.
To be able to make the Militia Line actually really good, like Knight and Crossbow, there has to be a direct counter unit.
A counter unit that is so good that it can counter a Milita Line that has a strong bonus (like 33% faster attack or 20% more HP) and not just a generic one, or else some matchups could just be won by building Long Swordsman.
BTW, Iâm not advocating for a trash unit counter to infantry. Just saying this will help to get rid of the fear.
Is Eagle hard hitting? Their attack is lowest among all gold infantry.
I guess youâre expecting something other than HC as they are limited in imperial only for half of the civs. In that case CA and as pointed out, Scorpion is a good counter. And scorpion can also get some love in general just like militia line.
I intend to make a composition of militia+ gold-hefty unit good but not militia alone good. If you make militia good while making good infantry counter, infantry UU will be way worse and knight+that infantry counter unit can fight pikes much better.
And I will make composition with militia of infantry civs good first instead of making it universally good
What about adding an additional formation move called âShieldwallâ for all militia line, it reduces missile damage significantly but reduces their movement speed too