Long Bowman and Composite Bowman already exists, that why Chronicles calles them Laminated Bowman and Recurved Bowman. Also the AoE1 Improved Bowman would be an option.
I mean they could even literally just give the Chronicles Sprites to some civilisations, definitely better then a Crossbow.
âGlaivemanâ instead of âPikemanâ?
That would be more correct.
But I think renaming units after people are used to them for 25 years is not really an option. Even if officially renamed people would still call them by their old name and it would just cause confusion.
I donât know why youâre asking me this. Youâre the one proposing renaming things, not me. Did you mean to address this reply to someone else?
Yes, crossbows were used throughout south-east Asia:
Give them a unique upgrade then,why change the whole game for 6 civis?
I personally donât really care, as itâs âimproved archerâ to me either way. Just posing a question.
In principle, I agree. I remember as a young kid I would avoid getting the crossbow upgrade, because I knew crossbows fired more slowly than bows and I didnât want that. Fundamentally, as a game design principle, I donât like it. Crossbows and archers should serve different purposes. Xbows being extra good at piercing armour, for example.
But this game is over a quarter of a century old. Changing something as key to the identity of the game like that would not be a good move. If I were redesigning the game from scratch, I might make that change. But I would not be in favour of them changing it today.
Not to mention that the Inuit of all people invented crossbows independently. This makes it hypothetically possible for American civs to receive the knowledge through trade, even if that didnât happen in real life.
I can understand. But they changed so much lately that they could fix some old strange stuff aswell âŠ
Why use three different names for a upgraded unit that is essentially used the same after every upgrade. Use 1 name and upgrades donât need to rename unit unless the change it to a units that does sth else aswell form that upgrade on. You can add heavy or whatever u like after upgrade, just the core name should remain.
Yeah probably, âhold my beer i have a thoughtâ was everywhere to make a crossbow, but implemented in war heavily wasnât everywhere.
I can understand your point but am not that sure, as they have lately changed alot, and I am one of that old gamers that started from 1997, and I suggested it and still play this game almost every day.
Yeah sorry i failed the quote.
second part is for you.
Renaming units after every upgrade does more harm than good also from a new player perspective, couse its the same unit, same counters and everything. To give you sense of technological progression in in my view pointless as crossbowmen and archers, pikemen and spearmen and helebaldiers were totally differently used in battle and are totally different units. Sense of progression is in the blacksmith where techs are displayed as you research them. This same unit renaming with upgrades is probably bad design as game was never intended to go this far when it was first released 25 years ago. Back then they tried to show more units to players but they didnât intent to do so many civs that they could do regional units. They could fix that now.
No need to fix what is not broken,game is fine as it is.
I think it can be improved. So we can agree to disagree.
Iâm sorry, but I find this utterly ridiculous. When I first played AoE2, I was 13 years old and my brother was 7, and we had no problems understanding which unit was an upgrade of which. If a 7-year-old can understand it easily, itâs not bad design.
Itâs not broken, it just isnât to your taste. Itâs a highly stylised and figurative game, and youâre complaining because some arbitrarily chosen aspect of it is not 100% historically accurate. I think youâre expecting it to be something itâs not.
knight â better knight â the best knight
Well in current state we have so much different units in game and also so many non intuitive units that it is really becoming a chore for new gamers to process this. It wasnt the same back then as I already stated before. You are entitled to your opinion and I mine.
Well closing to reality is kinda sensible in my opinion as it is trying to be historical based game with campaigns representing mostly real historical events and characters. That we can also agree to disagree.
I agree with this, but I donât agree that itâs anything to do with the original unit lines. This is a problem with new content, not old content.
In that case, why have unit line upgrades at all? Theyâre obviously not necessary for gameplay since many RTS games donât have them. If your ideal archer line goes Archer â Better Archer â Even Better Archer (obviously not with those names), why not just have one unit called Archer with all possible improvements via separate upgrades (blacksmith upgrades, thumb ring, etc.)?
Because it adds flavour to the unit and adds historical aspects to it.
Arbalesters are an improved version of the Crossbow so it makes sense in a historical context. Also everyone is used to the names by now so changing them just to streamline them would cause more confusion then it would fix.
I want the game to change even more, but just texts string in an interface are the least important thing to me. I want to see spearman fighting knights and not the word âspearmanâ fight the word âknightâ.
It is unnecessary to get the nostalgia crowd angry over name changes when they could put their effort into real useful changes like removing archaic armour groups, inconsistent projectile logic and so on.
For a newcomer its all new content so I do not agree.
Yes you can have upgrade, that does not change the unit name at all. If you remove the upgrades you will change the games balance alot, so I donât see that happening. Tier1 to tier 2 or whatever.
Arbalester is a french crossbowman afaik. He usually used winched cranequin crossbow. It is an improved crossbow by increasing power from a goat lever crossbow and reducing attack speed even further. Tod workshop did a test where archer shot 6 arrows long before second bolt was fired from a windlass crossbow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w8yHeF4KRk
Its not an upgrade it had certain uses especially in sieges.
But naming matters, because if you have 3 names used for spearmen, noone can then have pikemen or helebardiers their UU/regional unit for example unless they will name them Swiss pikemen like Genoese crossbowmen for example. And when(if) they make em, you will have 2 same names for a unit that is trash, anti cav and a kamayuk(similar) for example. And when we talk in discord ill have to specify which pikemen i mean couse they are totally different units.
I agree there is alot other stuff to fix, but what u mean by inconsistent projectile logic and armor groups?
I agree that making Crossbows and Archers different unit lines like in AoE4 would have been the better solution but I donât think such a massive change would be possible now after over 25 years.
We already have a 2nd Archer Line with the Skirmisher in AoE2.
Halberds where super wide spread and are definitely generic enough to be worth being a generic unit, the same with crossbows.
It would be crazy if either of them where a generic unit.
For Chu Ko Nu or Mangonels one projectile does a lot more damage then all the other projectiles. Mangonels are the most extreme example where all the other projectiles only do 1 damage.
While newer units like the Organ Gun or Dromon do the same damage for all projectiles.
A lot of units have left over bonus damage from the time where Camels used the same armour class as Ships. Like why do Spearman have bonus damage vs. Ships? At least they cleaned up the Condottiero armour class, until recently every unit with bonus damage vs. Infantry also had bonus damage vs. Condottiero besides 2 gunpowder units, now we just have 3 gunpowder units that have negative bonus damage vs. them.
This is not correct. Maybe you mean bows and spears, than yes, but not crossbows and halberds. where did you pull that info from?
Ok i know this, but that is technicality that makes balancing a harder issue its a coding problem that is still in the code for 25 years already. why its 1 projectile dealing 50 dmg in mangonels its so armor is not calculated N number of times, it was simpler back then to do it this way and it works. Ok, this is out of scope of this discussion.
Bows and Spears were used by like almost 100% of cultures, yes. But Crossbows and Halberd like weapons were used by almost half of them. And 50% is a pretty large percentage.
Crossbows and Halberds were way way more wide spread then most siege weapons where. I mean a Scorpion is just a big Crossbow. Any culture using that definitely also used Crossbows.
But yes I think there should be regional skins that turn Crossbows into Archers for civilisations that did not use Crossbows. But I donât think splitting the unit lines would really be possible because it would require a lot of rebalancing. Since not every civilisation used Crossbows we would have a lot of civilisations that should not get access to them, therefor those civilisations would suddenly be weaker and would need something else in return. This would then also be balanced again. It would be a change that completely changes pretty much every civilisation in the game.
Also what roles would the 2 different unit lines have. And what would the role of the Skirmisher be. The Archery range already has the most unit lines anyway, do we need even more?
They added Rocket Carts last year that fill the same role as Mangonels and do the same damage for every arrow. So it is possible do do that and it was certainly possible to do that originally. And yes changing it would require some rebalancing but I think it would be worth it to make the game more consistent, logical and easier to read.