I was thinking on a unit that fits the universe, that both Portugal and Spain can share with some exclusivity. The Almogavar.
FLUFF: Almogavars were fast moving shock infantry, lightly armoured, specialized in charge sidelines and intimidate enemy forces. They usually lived away from villages, camping in forests and plains, and it shown on their looks: They let their beards and hair grow long (almost looking like wild man), and usually dressed with simple tunics, bearing only a thick leather belt and heavy leather sandals. Armor for them consisted mostly of a pillaged/cheap metal helmet and a wooden shield, and were equipped with a couple javelins, a hunting spear, and a falchion. On later centuries (they existed from the start to the end of the Reconquista) they used more armor (gambesons, for instance), but nothing that could deter their wild charges and sudden strikes.
CRUNCH: Almogavars would be a cheap and relatively fast training barracks unit, priced close to the milita line. Something like… 50f 15g, and accessible starting the castle age.
They would be almost as fast as huskarl (1.0 compared to Huskarl 1.05 and milita line’s 0.9), and have a small bonus against infantry. However, they would have no base armor (depending of blacksmith upgrades), and would have less health. But, would have 1 more melee damage compared with the long swordman, and the aforementioned bonus against infantry. With elite upgrade, would recieve +2 damage, about 15 more health, and double the infantry bonus.
The concept is interesting, but I’m not too big on the anti-infantry bonus that they have since it doesn’t fulfil any niche the Spanish & Portuguese need; said niche is already taken by their Hand Cannoneers, of which both civs have boni for.
I do like how they could potentially be used as support units for cavalry to help take down Spearmen, but all I can see them being good for is their speed and early-age availability (speed doesn’t matter for Spanish because they have Conquistadores).
Agreed. Maybe if some people got their wish and there were a couple more iberian civs then maybe it’d help some of them, and spanish and portuguese would just still have them because they’re in the region, but yeah I’m not seeing the niche this unit fills.
Tangent incoming: Honestly if there were to be some iberian regional unit I think it should be the genitour. Seems cavalry javelineers were particularly common throughout iberia, and I really dislike the genitour as team bonus.
IDK why but the devs have decided that two of the three team bonus units, (Technically you could consider cuman mercenary kipchaks a fourth team unit, but I think design wise that tech is completely non-functional and just needs to be re-worked entirely or scrapped.) should be trash units, and often late-game trash units. I’m not saying it never ever happens, but post-imp team games is NOT what I think of when I think of trash wars. You don’t even HAVE to do the “1 siege, 1 gold, 1 trash comp” as you can make a gold unit that compliments your teammates gold unit and you have access to infinite gold.
Second Tangent Incoming: Isn’t it interesting that the devs seem to want to buff skirms? imp skirms and genitours are team bonus units, just by virtue of being on one of their teams your skirms are a good deal better (admittedly per above grievance I think it less likely you’ll actually use them). There’s no team bonus halberdier upgrade. There’s no team bonus hussar upgrade (Polish and Lith do have regional unique hussar but their team doesn’t have access to it). Those unit lines are just fine and need no buffing. Skirms however seem like they can take lots of buffing and not be OP. AND skirms just got buffed vs pikes, cause they were too weak in trash wars cause they don’t have an imp upgrade. It’s almost like we can kill two birds with one stone and we’re just not doing it cause reasons. imp skirms have +1 atk (and +1 vs archers and ca compared to e skirm). Give imp skirms to good skirm civs, if you think skirm civs need a trash war buff.
But no, let’s instead buff a castle age unit so they it’s balanced in IMP??? I’d say the devs usually put out smart balance changes, but it seems like there’s one change per patch that just boggles my mind. Two patches ago it was the Hussite Wagon being made conceptually very similar to the Organ Gun just after the Organ Gun was re-worked cause it was too similar to the Janissary, this most recent patch, it was Dromons having their damage split, but consequently they’ll perform unintuitively terribly against high melee armor targets (Teutonic Knights for a quick example will go from taking 37 damage, to 5). Last patch it was the Oh so obvious imp skirm hole in the tech tree, the terrible TB implementation of the imp skirm, and the apparent need to buff skirms in imp, and then…buffing the castle age elite skirm.