Never seen so many unbelievably terrible suggestions crammed into a single thread before.
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Attack like a war wagon? Balancing xbow will need them to be bottlenecked in Castle (replace Petards and petards to siege workshop) or TC.
I donāt think infantry needs another counter in Castle age.
One bow is now a UU other one could also show up at the rate things are going.
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The recurve bow has already shown up as the Magyar UT. That would be very confusing.
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Completely forgot about that.
Yes, I know. I want to stress, in case it wasnāt clear, that Iām not actually suggesting any actual change to the game, and I think the current archer ā crossbow ā arbalest progression is good. Iām just talking hypothetically, i.e. if archers and crossbows were separate unit lines, what could their upgrade progression be like?
Archer ā heavy archer ā imperial archer
Crossbow ā arbalest
I prefer no separation of archer line.
Easy to say without backing up, so what is that terrible and what is wrong with our suggestions? Did u even read the whole thread? I bet what u think terrible is easily fixed or you got it wrong.
Sry i donāt get what u are trying to say? mybe couse i am no native speaker please elaborate.
What attack like a war wagon, where did i say that?
Why? some civs are forced to play archers couse imperial HC are often too late to counter infantry, I donāt think its that bad of an option. It should be worse āarcherā overall like hc mostly good vs inf. But with lower attack than hc.
IMHO:
- Archer ā Longbowman ā Composite Bowman
(Armenians get Ayrudzi UU instead, Briton UU is renamed āBritish Longbowmanā)
- Crossbowman ā Arbalester ā Hand Cannoneer
Both Arbalester and Hand Cannoneer would be Imperial Age upgrades. Alternatively, if thatās too complicated, it could be:
- Crossbowman ā Hand Cannoneer
With the Arbalester becoming a scenario editor unit so that the skin isnāt wasted.
My 5 cents to that to reduce too much changes.
Crossbowman should be a unit in castle age that you instantly get, than it upgrades automatically with chemistry in imp, you donāt have a separate upgrade for it. So those civs that do not have crossbows and do have hand canonners would get them anyway in imp like they do now.
I agree. But arenāt some other units/upgrades not also essentially things that existed in antiquity like Long Swords, āHeavyā Cavalry Archers and so on. Onagers in particular are an ancient upgrade to a medieval unit if you think about it.
Yeah I know. Just something I would personally prefer, not something I think could realistically happen.
Double the damage with half the rate of fire is always better in pretty much any situation, even if you ignore armour. You start with 2x the damage and then you are always ahead in damage vs. the unit with twice the rate of fire and half the damage. The only small disadvantage is more overkill but that is probably not really an issue for a relatively low damage unit like this.
If we add in armour the advantage becomes even bigger. But a small disadvantage like 1 less range could already made it balanced.
What I would probably try if I could ignore all the people crying about changes:
Barracks: Spearman + Milita + Hand Cannon
Stable: Scout + Knight + Cavalry Archer
Archery Range: Archer + Crossbow + Skirmisher
That would also mean that Hand Cannons and Cavalry Archer would no longer be getting Archer Armour upgrades. Hand Cannons would also lose the Archer armour class.
Or go even farther and introduce actual new unit lines like a real Pikeman and maybe Axeman.
Yawn, boring! I know there are other unit lines like this in the game, but this gives no real impression of any progression through time.
On the other hand, this suffers from the same problems as my suggestion.
Maybe thereās not actually a solution that gives a historically accurate impression of technological development. I donāt actually know what the medieval improvements in bow technology were, but Iād guess they would be technical things that canāt be captured easily in a short unit name, e.g. better wood preparation techniques, better methods for combining materials in a composite bow, etc.
Yep. But if the aim of this exercise is to improve historical accuracy, youād probably want to change those too. (Though as Iāve said, all this is hypothetical and shouldnāt actually be implemented as far as Iām concerned.)
Good points, double is evidently too much, especially on its own. Shorter range seems to make sense both physically and for gameplay.
No need to be condescending. Disagreeing with arbitrary changes to a game you like is perfectly sensible, especially when those changes are being made purely for historical accuracy reasons but would have a massive impact on gameplay.
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Higher damage per shot + slower reload rate will be similar how war wagon attack. 9 pierce with 2.5 rof. I donāt think balancing such new xbow will be easy. Or will you elaborate how to balance the xbow if I misunderstood you?
exactly, just 2 more damage as ranged units is alot already. I agree.
Really nice idea tho its drastic changes, would need to try it out, if you have a scenario map I am up for a test if u like. Still its getting offtopic for this thread.
Its a game we love as is, but still doesnāt mean we canāt suggest improvements. And historical accuracy is still the reason i as a kid was interested in this game 25 years ago and am still to this day. Tho i wasnāt that specific and knowledgeable back then.
Yeah i would add only 2 more damage than ācurrent crossbow archerā, remove 1 range and add +5 against infantry. increase reload time by x1,5. So in fact a worse unit overall but couse it wont need archer upgrade (except blacksmith) than its a way to make HC units before you hit imperial age. But as soon as you hit chemistry in imp you get regular HC from them.
(Also as a fact hand cannons were the reason why crossbows were getting extinct. As they were as easy to teach to use, cheaper to make and more damaging while still being outmatched by trained archers for quite a long time especially in rate of fire.)
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No one ever earned even the proposal of fundamentally changing unit roles, upgrades, or counter systems for an established, 25+ year old game. Not even the devs.
Why split the archer line? Or why make hand cannons an upgrade of arbalesters? The archer line is your generalist ranged unit and follows a singular upgrade line, like other generalist units from the Barracks and Stable.
Hand cannons canāt be a final upgrade either. Tthey are supposed to be countered by the same thing they are proposed to be upgraded from. Hand cannons were never intended to be just better crossbows or arbalesters.
I think if the Archer line is ever split, the primary line should keep its existing stats (the current Crossbowman and Arbalester would just be renamed and reskinned to carry bows), and the new Crossbowman would get new stats that are a slightly weaker variant of the Hand Cannoneer. So (new) Crossbowmen and Hand Cannoneers would still be countered by what they used to be countered by.
But yeah, Iām not sold on it, the game survived decades without such a change so thereās no reason really to do it now apart from pedantism.
As i guessed you donāt understand.
Archer line would remain the same line, just the naming and visuals would change to a man with a bow in hand.
Than there would be a secondary regional unit called crossbowman that would be an earlier version of HC. All the counters would remain the same.
It did but why then make a definitive edition of aoe 2 de and keep making changes to it.? They changed the game far more than in hd or ever before that and definitive edition means last version afaikā¦ so the game will keep changing but I would like it to change for the better not the worst as it happening right now mostly. Its my opinion, you can have yours. Currently htey are just slaping new civs with ever more strange gimmicks.
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Honestly, I would really like an answer to this question from the devs. Theyāve made such significant changes to the game recently that to me it feels like they want to make a different game rather than work on AoE2 ā possibly even several different games, since there doesnāt seem to be a coherent direction.
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Because AoE2 is quite possibly the best game ever made, and good games constantly evolve.
A slightly weaker variant of hand cannons would be OP in the Castle Age.
Janissaries are the closest thing to this, and they have almost 60% less attack against infantry. This hypothetical unit should be weaker than Janissaries against infantry.
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