As we now feel more and more the bottleneck of general strategic nerfs to the traditional defensive tools I would like to propose to buff the also kinda falling short of the “strategic defensive play”. Meaning trying to outplay the opponent strategy by getting into counter strategies with lower commitment and trying to get an advantage this way. Atm this strategy isn’t really working anymore as the powerspikes and ############ tools are just too potent to utilize small economic advantages if you don’t have the military tools out already to stop the enemy from destroying your eco.
The idea i want to propose here is to give an additional tool at hand, that can be utilized. But you need to prepare it before it’s too late. And if you prepare too much you might have a big economic disadvantage. Also you need to be clutch to execute.
I am speaking of arming villagers when you need to. Not so much they become powerful units but rather being better protected from raids. In order to arm them you need to craft the armament in the Barracks or Blacksmith (which takes time and essources). The armaments are then put in your Ressource stockpile and you can at any time arm that amount of your villagers with the crafted armament.
The armed villagers are military units and can’t work/buiild/repair anymore. But you can at any time just disarm them. The armament is then but lost, so you would need to craft new to rearm.
The armament should mostly cost gold as it’s not intended to make a new type of trash unit (that btw can possibly counter all other trash units). Also we don’t want to have a too big “revolution” effect there. Despite I have the opinion that a “little bit” of revolution is actually ok and nice to close games against griefers.
Possibly something like 15 g + 10 W ; 20 s crafting time per armament would be fine.
The armed villagers could get +20 HP, +1 / +1 P armor and also receive -1 from scouts and camels, -2 from light cav, hussars, SL and cav UUs, -3 from the knight line and -1 from xbows, arbs and CA. Also they get 6 base melee attack with +3 against cavalry. The bonusses (including reduced damage taken) only apply from castle age onwards. In feudal it’s only the base stats increased.
The values are chosen in (intended) way so the armed villagers would need to fight the raiding units to get a positive trade. meaning in order to make it successfull the opponent has either not to pay attention or you have to trap his units, possibly even supported with your own military.
So it’s a tool that can be utilized but needs a lot of experience and skill for a successfull utilization. And the opponent also has still the speed and/or range of his units to utilize himself against it.
The exact alues may probably need to be adjusted as it is really hard to tell preemptively where exaclty the “sweet spot” in the balance is.
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Fifth resource? if that is the case the fundamentals of the game change.
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It’s technically a ressource. Not something like FW/G/S.
There are a lot of them already…
If its a resource how is it different from food gold wood stone?
Cause opposed to some video games you might be influenced by there are no natural sources for armor or weapons?
And i advise you to stop trying to play this sharade. You chose a battleground you can’t win in.
Isnt this exactly what aoe2 is?
Soy you want armor plants in the game?
I wish you good luck convincing the community with that 11
Nothing to convince to anyone that’s how the game is last time I checked.If you want a more realistic approach do it like how stronghold does it you need people weapons armor horses to make a military unit.
Is there someone else in this thread you are responding to or are you already seeing ghosts?
this would revive forwards more than anything. imagine tower rushing with these beefed up villagers.
also any raid that makes my opponent spend this much res to temporarily protect some villagers is totally worth it in feudal age, and in castle it’s almost easier to replace the vils or even add another TC than spend resources on this if it’s only used defensively
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That’s why they can’t build/collect/repair.
you can’t use them this way
It might turn out to be too costly, but imo then the ressource cost could just be reduced a bit until it’s in a balanced spot
you can still protect them for a bit when under threat, then convert them back and repair
or build a tower, then start battering down buildings/fight maa/scouts coming to take down your tower
I dont see that tbh.
You need to make a barracks or bs (probably barracks is the better call).
This needs to work some time to make the armaments. Which are also not super cheap.
Ofc you arm your vills first when under pressure (presumably by other vills).
But then you need to throw away the just expensively crafted armaments if you actually want to be able to construct the towers. And if you want to repeat thr process you have to craft new armaments.
It’s really expensive for that short usage.
I can see this being interesting for pure vill fights. But if it’s only avaiblable from feudal and you basically losing vills to convert them to be military units I think this is also indireclty a very expensive manouver.
It’s absolutely intentional that the armaments are one-time use and one-time use only. So you can’t just switch it on and off like the ratha stands.
What if vils could shoot arrows? They already fire arrows at boars and other pesky animals (deers -_-), i always thought it was weird that we can’t fire arrows at the enemy with the vils, maybe they should have a toggle for this. Why go after the enemy with a butter knife, when you can shoot arrows? 
could be something like 2 or 3 dmg and 2 or 3 range, idk how much range they have when they shoot those pestering ostriches and the like.
I think the way you’re thinking, whoever chooses to defend this way will be seriously in a bad position, because you’re already being attacked when you make this decision. And if not and you’re just anticipating it, you’re still spending more res than your opponent who might not be thinking about defending.
After all, attack is the best form of defence.
Just my 2 cents.