This is a proposal to rename some unit upgrades mostly for consistency. “Elite” is the term most commonly used to denote an imperial age upgrade in this game (see: elite battle elephant, elite steppe lancer, all unique units), and is also the term used for all units in aoe4.
There is one counterexample, which is skirmisher. Elite skirmisher is not an imperial age upgrade, however it is the top-level upgrade for most civs, so perhaps “elite” really means “top level”, and “imperial” on an upgrade name means “special extra level only available to 1 civ”.
I also want this for flavor: the term “heavy” doesn’t really make sense as an upgrade on a unit that kites.
There is one other top-level upgrade that uses “heavy”, which is heavy scorpion. But I feel that makes more sense because it’s a siege weapon, and “elite” make less sense on a siege weapon than on a soldier.
I also think this proposal is well-timed because the devs mentioned they are already going to rework some terminology in the big upcoming patch, like using unit family terms more consistently.
I personally dislike that everything just has an “Elite” slapped onto it.
It’s very boring and not interesting.
AoM and AoE3 are even worse in that regard because the upgrades aren’t new units and just stat boosts to existing ones. So the name just becomes useless fluff.
Also Elite, Champion, Guard and so on are implying a higher rank of a unit not a technical advancement.
As if your army is suddenly way more experienced then before. Which kinda feels even more wrong when you consider that you will likely spam a lot more units in the late game then you do in the early game.
Heavy doesn’t sound much better but it implies more heavily armed instead of just better trained.
It should be Elite Cavalry Archer and Heavy Battle Elephants. LoL but it is vice versa in game.
Cavalry Archer becomes heavy while Elephant does not. Doesn’t make sense.
It should be changed. All units with Heavy prefix should be changed to Elite.
Those are fair points. But I believe that AoE 2 has way too high of a learning barrier (RTS games in general have high learning barriers, but especially this one), It takes a lot of experience to memorize the names of every upgrade level of every unit in the tech tree, and until you do, you can’t easily tell how powerful enemy units are. Having a consistent naming formula for unit upgrades helps with that
I’d say Elite term should be exclusive to UU. And Heavy should be used for generic and regional units. Personally I don’t see either being better than the other. Elite Eagle Warrior and Heavy Eagle Warrior both are same to me.
There’s a lot of inconsistencies with the full upgraded units name. Some units have unique names like Champion, Paladin and Arbalest, and others just a “Elite” or “Heavy” before the previous unit name. For consistency sake “Elite” should be exclusive to castle upgrades, and the rest of generic units should get an unique name when possible or at least a word that is consistent to point out that is the best in its line. Or maybe use “Champion” (change last infantry to “Champion Great Swordsman”) or “Veteran” or something like that, and have something like “Champion Crossbowman”, “Champion Knight” instead of Arbalest and Paladin to have a less localized European name.
Some of the most important upgrades don’t even change the unit name or visuals at all so not sure how important that is.
I don’t think people will get confused by “Heavy” Camel Riders at all.
I don’t want them to remove the flavour and suggestion of advancement by removing names like Arbalester and Paladin. But I would like to see the Knight line become a regional unit for European civs and replaced with a generic Heavy Cavalry unit for others. Japanese could get Mounted Samurai as the top upgrade.
They should stop having European visuals before we can talk about giving them generic names.
Chronicles does have different skins and names for the AoE2 units while keeping the stats the same.
But regional names will likely cause more confusion then regional sprites because it makes talking about units harder.
Not just unique units.
I was thinking about how Bracer is more important then most unit line upgrades for example. A Crossbow with Bracer is better then an Arbalester without.
AoM(R) does visualise blacksmith upgrades but that works better because it’s a 3D game that can easily replace parts of the 3D model.
Yet another bad suggestion to rename something that has been in game for more than 25 years just because of logical inconsistency. The new players don’t really get confused by it and the older ones will have to learn the new names for no reason.
Sieges and Ships are a bit complicated. But let’s give it a try:
Heavy Scorpion → Springald
Elite Cannon Galleon → Bombard Galleon (This one is hard to find an appropriate and historical name.)
Heavy Demolition Ship → Hellburner
Fair. But “Cataphract Archer” might be confused with “Cataphract”, and “Armored Cavalry Archer” is not that much better than “Heavy Cavalry Archer”.