Remove Team Units

I think team units (condottiero, genitour, imperial skirmisher) are not especially good design.
I used to support the idea of team units as a fun idea but the more I play the game, the more annoyed I am with them.
I just think they either mess with civ balance or they’re totally useless.

Condottiero:
I find it pretty annoying when I happen to be a civ that is a bit more dependant on gunpowder and the entire enemy team has condos because one person on their team is Italians.
Or with civs that are meant to have lacklustre swordsmen but then gain decent swordsmen through condos.
Just make it an Italian UU and maybe buff it a bit or reduce its cost.
Maybe give it a Castle Age version and a purchasable elite upgrade in Imperial Age, as a way to give Italians potentially another option in Castle Age.
You can have Silk Road as their team bonus, since it’s a bit of an underwhelming Imperial Age unique tech.
However it’s done, making the condottiero exclusive to Italians would buff them since you can balance the unit better.

Genitour:
Have Kasbah be their team bonus and make the genitour as an Iberian regional unit (Berbers, Portuguese and Spainish).
Since it won’t be a team unit anymore, it’d be easier to balance since you don’t have to factor in all the potential different types of genitours there could be.
You could give them certain civs specific buffs, sort of how steppe lancers all have different civ bonuses.
Giving genitours to Spanish and Portuguese would be a little bit of a buff to them as well, both civs that wouldn’t hurt to give a bit of a buff.

Imperial Skirmisher:
Maybe this is a terrible idea, but I think this should just be a standard upgrade avalible to certain civs.
I feel like how the spear line and swordsmen line are design in terms or upgrades works well.
Some civs have bad swordsmen but good spears (Lithuanians, Persians, Byzantines, Ethiopians) and some have good swordsmen but bad spears (Berbers, Mongols, Malians, Aztecs arguably).
Aside from a few exceptions (Spanish), if you have bad archers, you’re very likely to have bad skirmishers.
I feel like this doesn’t work as nicely as it does with spears and swordsmen because there isn’t a halberdier upgrade equivalent available for non-team Vietnamese aligned civs.
If the imperial skirmisher was available as an upgrade for a select few civs, I think you could help balance out some tech trees, like giving it to Celts and Burmese.
This way, Celts and Burmese can still have their lower quality crossbows but not at the cost of poor skirmishers.
Imp skirms avalible to more civs could be seen as a little bit of a nerf to archers but archers are probably the strongest units right now so I don’t really see that as an issue.
Last comment, the Vietnamese team bonus should be that everyone on your team can see the enemy locations.
It’s a bit ridiculous that you have to flare the locations for your teammates every game and spend time in the chat saying which civ is located where.

If all my suggestions are bad, then that’s fine. I’m not infallible.
All I really want is team units to be gone, in whatever way possible.

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While I agree with your thoughts on these 3 units, I have an opposing thought.

Actually I think cuman kipchaks can be new team units (research cuman mercenaries) as long as the kipchaks work like converted unit and unaffected by allies tech. (kipchaks without bracer or other civ bonus)

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I appreciate you supporting me, but I disagree about the Cuman Mercenaries comment you’ve made.
Right now, Cuman Mercanies is totally useless, so I get where you’re coming from and you’re trying to buff the tech in some way.
But making the kipchak is a bad idea for the same reason condottiero is a bad idea.
It’d just make everyone on the team able to field a decent cav archer unit, which is not how civs should work.
If it was unaffected by allies tech, then that would be even worse.
Civs with bad archers would suddenly get decent archers, it’d ruin balance way more than the team units that are currently in the game now.
No team units. It’s not good design.

Sounds good.
It can counter Spanish, Portuguese and Turks.

Perhaps the Turks too?

Perhaps give the Vietnamese a Skirmisher bonus as compensation?
Such like making the Skirmisher upgrades cheaper, or free Elite Skirmisher upgrade.

I agree, condottieri twist the balance too much, expecially in some matchups, and the shared trash is just useless in team games.
Concerning Cuman Mercenaries, I don’t think anyone would waste resources to research that.

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If anything, it should only actually be the Spanish and Portuguese, because they were the ones using Genitours against the Muslim invaders.

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I don’t think so.
I think the Turk’s bad spears and skirmishers are really part of their identity and one of the aspects that makes them interesting and different from other civs.
They are a really strong civ outside of the weak trash, so it’s also part of their balance.
Now they also have the +1 pierce armour on their hussars to help them deal with archers.
So even if we ignore the whole genitours not applying historically to them (as far as I know), I think giving them the genitour would make them too strong and less interesting.

Their skirms already have the highest HP in the game and they’ll beat any other imperial skirm from any civ (with the exception of Sicilians perhaps, I haven’t tested it). They should be able to beat even Lithuanian skirms.
More civs getting imperial skirms wouldn’t change them from having top tier skirms.
If Vietnamese were to get a buff then they should get something more than just cheaper skirm upgrade.

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I’m not a history expert, but I think it’s fine for Berbers to have the genitour.
From the little I’ve read about them, it seems that the Moorish and Christian kingdoms were sort of mutually inspired by each in regards to some of their battlefield tactics.
The word jinete (genitour) is of Berber origin and the Iberian almogavars’ (Spanish and Portugese skirmishers) title and tactics were apparently adapted from the Moors.
Also, many Christians fought for Moorish kingdoms, an example of which is actually in AoE2, El Cid.
I think there’s enough justification for Berbers having genitours.

The muslim invaders were the ones that introduced that style of warfare to begin with

You’re aware that paladins and arbs kill gunpowder units anyway, right? So condos aren’t exactly changing anything. Also only 4 civs have FU condos but bad swordsmen: Persians, Malay (considering that trade removes the point of forced levy), Ethiopians and Mayans. And all of them have something better to do than condotierri in a TG most of the time. And if they do pull of something with condos then it’s a deserved use of a TB like any other.

Genitours and imp skirms do struggle as TG units because they aren’t gold unit, but Spanish and Portuguese don’t have issues with trash units anyway, and you really can’t slap imp skirms on other civs because that would be an overbuff for all of them. Except Burmese where it would be useless cuz it does nothing in castle age.

More HP for archery units should be enough bonusfor Skirms… maybe just a flat +1 PA from Imperial Age.

On topic… Found 3 points really solids.
In case of condos, I would make them cost just gold. Maybe 60G. After all their worked as mercenaries, is logic that play the role of shared unit between allies.
And for Genitur, I like give them the regional status. I would give them to saracens too.

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Making Condo more gold-intensive seems a nerf as condo is available in imperial age. Besides, condo falls off fast after early imp.

It would cost gold just for a non-italian ally

The thing is, Saracens, Turks, and Berbers all already have good CA or in the Berber case Camel Archers, so they don’t really benefit from Genitours in the way that Spanish and Portuguese could.

But CA And Genitour doesn’t play the same rol

There are plenty of civs that don’t have paladin or arbalest.
And for the civs that do, they actually need to upgrade their units to be effective.
The archer line isn’t instantly ready when you get to Imp and researching paladin takes ages.
Condos are instantly ready to create when going to Imp and are easy to mass because of their fast creation time.
There’s very little investment needed in them.
If it was for one civ, then fine. That’s just how that civ works. But anyone on the team can play like that.
Civs with paladin and arbalest can beat gunpowder units? Great, good for them. Those civs have been balanced around those units.
Having an easy to access and quick to create anti-gunpowder unit only because someone on your team is a certain civ is something I find disagreeable.

My point is that they shouldn’t even have that option.
Every now and then, condos can find themselves being useful as a surprise option for non-infantry oriented civs.
Sure, it’s not every game, but it’s a situation that shouldn’t even be happening.
I don’t see how it makes the game better.
If you got rid of the condo as a team unit, you could make it work better for Italians and that is something that I would consider as an improvement for the game, as a way to buff Italians.

I know, that’s why I only said it would be a small buff.
Genitours that recieved a unique boost for whatever civ they attached to would be decent.
I’m not saying it’s the best way to buff Spanish and Portuguese, but it’s a way to remove a team unit and give a little boost to a couple of civs that aren’t top tier right now.

I think it’s possible to achieve and I think there’s a balanced way to handle it.
It wouldn’t be something all civs have access to.
The price might be some archer tech trees might be slightly altered because of it, but I believe it would result in stronger and more diverse tech trees.

My ultimate objective is to remove team units.
Sure I have my own ideas of what could be done after they’ve been removed, but I’m not married to any of them.
However it’s done, I just want them gone.
I’m sick of years of pinging locations as Vietnamese.

I agree with this.
Maybe the new Imperial UT could be «Free Companies» reducing the own condos cost and unlocking the condos for allies but costing full gold for them.
Idk if can be done, but, hired condos shouldm’t benefit of blacksmith upgrades.

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I just said paladins and arbs because they are the common TG units, but tons of other stuff can be used against HC as well. Since HC are unlocked in imperial age and chemistry takes a while chances are the opposition will be able to have a bunch of cavalier or bracer arbs when it happens. Or CA/skirmishers. Truth be told not a single civ lacks a unit that can kill gunpowder units in imperial age.

The deal is that the condo as it is right now works very well for the Italians themselves. They go through the ages faster but have no other eco bonus otherwise so having a unit that needs much less upgrades makes sense for them, and they are a water civ and turns out having a unit that you can use even after having spent tons of ressources on upgrading your ships is pretty good as well.

But no civ that has FU skirms needs imp skirms, and you can’t just give imp skirms to civs with not FU skirms, as it would defeat the point of them not having FU skirms in the first place, and this regardless of other units the civ gets in its archery range.

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Your comparison doesn’t quite work because it assumes anything that can kill a hand cannon is the same and that this issue is exclusive to hand cannons only, since this applies to gunpowder UUs as well.
All the units you listed still require an investment, are more costly to create and upgrade over the condo (excluding skirmishers and excluding the arb unit cost only), in addition to them all being created slower than the condo.
Skirmishers are a bit different where they are cheap but they don’t win with equal numbers vs hand cannons but win with cost effective trades.
Condos are cheaper than hand cannons and will in equal numbers cost effectively.
Bombard cannons can actually perform pretty decently vs archers if they’re at a safe distance, but that isn’t true for condos.
If I have a cavalry army and I decide to start adding in hand cannons in later, an enemy with an Italian ally can respond to that extremely quickly with condos and easily clean up my hand cannons.
Maybe I’m Portuguese and I want to go for halb, organ gun and bombard cannon. A condo army will just eat that up.
This isn’t some post where I’m complaining about condos are overpowered or something, I want to see them buffed even, it’s just that I think they should be exclusive to a single civ.
Someone arbitrarily getting a new unit in their tech tree only because of a teammate is bullshit.
I don’t really get the relevance of a lot of what this discussion have devolved into. Are you trying to make a case for condos staying as a team unit because cavalry archers can kill hand cannoneers?

I’m not trying to take it away from them.

I don’t play a lot of water maps, but I feel like using condos on water would be a niche scenario.
If I’m wrong and there’s some kind of meta for condos on water and they aren’t allowed a Castle Age version because of it, then whatever.
I just don’t want them as a team unit, I don’t really care too much how it’s executed.
I just feel that outside of arena, Italians can struggle to even get to Imperial Age.
I know that Castle Age infantry for Italians isn’t an amazing option but it’s an option.
And as someone else pointed out, it’d be pretty useful for fighting back fast Imps or Spanish and Portuguese castledrops into UU.
If condos worked like you want it to on water but it was removed as a team unit, then I’d still be happy.

Maybe.
I see where you’re coming from but I’m not going to say it’s impossible without it being tested
I think a way can be found and if it can’t then that’s fine, as long as it’s not a team unit.

I’d push back on the condo being a “bad” bonus. If italians had a bonus where team infantry dealt +10 bonus damage vs gunpowder and had 10+ infantry armor it’d be approximately the same. I know condos are faster than champs but still. If you think the condo is too strong, the balance can be adjusted, but in concept I think it’s justifiable.

Not EVERY team game will have gunpowder units, but considering approximately 2/3 of civs have at least the HC or the BC, you’re pretty likely to run into some gunpowder units in at least most team games.

So from the standpoint of “is the bonus an actual bonus? Does the unit serve some niche role? Is it likely to be used?” then yeah this makes sense. Italians most of the time are at least offering a useful option.

The Genitour and Imp Skirmisher are harder to justify IMO.

The Genitour because of it’s mobility and the fact it’s available in castle age isn’t impossible to justify. But team game meta isn’t heavy on skirms at any point in the game. At least the Genitour can counter archers but is also mobile enough not to get rek’d by knights. It’s more situational than the condo IMO but it’s conceivable that’d it’d be helpful in some situation.

The imp skirm is only available in imperial age and doesn’t fill any niche not filled by the elite skirmisher. I don’t think the late imperial age team-game game-plan for many civs is to go heavy on skirms. Most civs have some power unit they’ll use in team games, and not resort to trash units. You’re buffing a unit in the situations in which it is the least likely to be useful. This is somewhat hyperbolic but this bonus to me feels like if there was a team bonus that buffed pikes but only when exclusively against meso civs.

I’m sure you can think of some civ combo/matchup with the imp skirm or genitour where it’s legitimately good, but I think those represent the exception not the rule.

I think qualitatively you can look at the other team bonuses to confirm this is not optimal design. No other civ has a team bonus that exclusively buffs skirms or pikes, and of the two civs who exclusively buff the scout cavalry, mongols +2 LOS is more about early scouting than anything else, and Poles +1 vs archers, can be helpful from time to time. Nearly every player starts with a scout, and nearly every team game has at least some archers, and scout opens aren’t uncommon.

Cuman Mercenaries is just an overall worse execution on this team unit concept IMO. I really like the concept of cumans, being mercenaries, have something team unit-y, but this tech is just clunky imo.

I’m not of the opinion that team units are intrinsically bad however the execution has missed the mark more often than not IMO. I feel a team unit should fill some role that is likely to be useful in a team game but is also unlikely to be filled by the units available to the team members. The condo passes that test, the genitour is very iffy, the imp skirm fails hard.

I’m pretty solution agnostic, but would like to see some changes, even if that means removing team units altogether. Cumans having a team unit and condos being a team unit make sense to me, but it’s definitely not a game design hill i’d die on.