Eagle Warriors are now Shock Infantry, along with Jian Swordsmen and Fire Lancers. And maybe something else, who knows. Jian Swordsmen (unsure of their exact purpose) and Fire Lancers weakness is possibly the militia line.
Jian Swordsmen perhaps shock damage unit but is weak to militia. Charge attack? Fire Lancers spearman with a charged ranged attack? Does that mean, they could get some damage in, before engaging in melee?
Fire Lancers, are perhaps more cost effective some units. They perhaps will lose 1v1 against the knight-line but the knight lose more of their HP than from a unit from the spearman-line. However in massed fights, Fire Lancers might win more decisively at the cost of gold.
Civilisations with a weak militia line might struggle to fight these Jian Swordsmen and Fire Lancers?
Edit: From AOE4 wiki. So, maybe Fire Lancers is a unit with a charged blast damage attack?
The Fire Lancer is a unique light melee cavalry unit in Age of Empires IV available to the Chinese at the Stable once the Yuan Dynasty is reached. It features a charge attack that does area damage in a 150 degree circle sector (pie slice) with 1-tile radius centered in front of the unit, but can be canceled by bracing Spearmen. The damage scales down to 75% and 50% at different radii. It also has a powerful torch attack, making it excel at raiding structures.
Are any other units changed to become Shock Infantry
Before we can answer the question we need to look what traits the Eagle Warrior line has and figure out which ones will be common amongst Shock Infantry
Fast Speed for an Infantry
Hight Pierce Armour
Conversion Resistance and bonus against Monks
Bonus vs. Siege Weapons
Small bonus vs. Cavalry
I think the anti Monk bonus will likely not be a common thing because the other civs will be able to train normal Scouts.
The high Speed is implied by the name and the high Pierce Armour and anit Siege attack makes sense in combination.
Anti Cavalry bonus is there to make Eagle Warrior a more all round unit. It might or might not be part of other units in that class.
What rules will the other units have
Jin Swordsman
We know almost nothing about them so they could be anything. The only hint is that they are Swordsman not Spearman so they will likely not have a bonus against Cavalry. Other then that they might be very similar to Eagle Warriors.
Fire Lance
The unit with the same name in AoE4 is a cavalry unit so the units will likely have very little in common.
We saw how the unit looks like and that it will likely have a ranged attack, that is likely charged with the main attack being melee. The unit is also an Infantry unit trained in the Barracks and not an Archer.
Since they have Spears they are more likely to be good against cavalry to some degree similar to Eagle Warriors themselves.
They don’t look like they are fast though but I could be wrong.
They might also have high pierce armour to not be too similar to the Spearman Line.
What existing units could become Shock Infantry
Woad Raider because of Speed (unlikely)
Gbeto because of Speed (unlikely)
Shotel Warrior because of speed (maybe)
Karambit Warrior because of speed (maybe)
Ghulam because of speed and high pierce armour (likely)
Huskarl because of high pierce armour (maybe)
Condottiero because of speed (unlikely)
Scout Line because of speed, pierce armour and anti monk bonus (very unlikely)
I don’t think many of the old units will be changed. Ghulam sounds the most likely.
The Scout Line is stats wise the closest to Eagle Warriors in many ways but they are certainly not Infantry. I’d like that change for balance reasons though, making Hussars actually weak against Champions.
I think you missed the biggest strength of eagles, which is being produced from barracks. They are a lot easier to mass than any other infantry uu, that’s why they have a “clear” counter in the militia line.
It looks like fire lancers will also be made from barracks.
I don’t expect units made from castle to receive this.
It also looks like fire lancers are closer to pikemen with a range attack that they are to eagles. Perhaps they also have a high golf cost. But I don’t think they will be as fast or have 3 pa
Other UUs don’t have favourable armour classes though.
Some Castle UUs even have additional armour classes to receive additional bonus damage (War Wagons or Mamluks for example).
So you think Huskarls are the most likely to get the new Armour class from that logic?
But yeah I really wonder what traits the Fire Lance has to be considered a Shock Infantry.
There should be something that makes sense calling them “Shock Infantry”.
I don’t think huskarls need to be weak to champions, the goths are balanced and to make huskarls from barracks you need a castle and a unique tech,.
I think they gave this weakness to fire lancers because otherwise these would be too strong against all melee units, a bit like kamayuks. But in that case I agree it will be a bit confusing, “shock infantry” is not as clear as infantry or cavalry.
I guess we will have to wait and see what kind of unit the Fire Lancers actually are and if the armour class will be given to any existing unit at all.
I’d personally love to see it on the Scout line for balance reasons but with that name it seems kinda impossible.
I think if any of the already-existing units were going to have the shock infantry armor class added to them that it would have been mentioned in the change log.
So units confirmed to have include eagles (3 civs), Fire Lancers (at least 3 civs in Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, plus up to 5 new civs) and Jian swordsman (up to 5 new civs, but likely just 1). So it looks to me like we’ll be seeing the armor class available to 7-11 civilizations. Probably more likely to be 11 than 7, but there’s no guarantee all of the new civs will have fire lancers.
We already do know at last one new civ doesn’t have Fire Lancers because we saw their tech tree.
We have seen 2 techtrees (partially) that didn’t include Jin Swordsman so it’s max 3 civs, likely just 1 because it sounds like a unique unit. I could be wrong though.
The change log was incomplete. It was posted over a month before the release of the DLC so it couldn’t even be complete if they wanted to.
Nothing that is missing from it is really a hint in anyway.
Definitly the firelancer will have the charged attack projectile mechanics. I mean, I don’t see it beeing a switchable unit between melee and ranged available before chemistery. So only balance logic is that it’s a charged attack option.
That seems pretty obvious.
They are not a Hand Cannon replacement and they are officially an Infantry unit. It would also make little sense for them to require Chemistry to use the feature that they are named after. Janissaries don’t need Chemistry either.
The main question is what stats do they have?
What bonus damage? Against Cavalry? Likely not against Infantry because the Shock Infantry class is being countered by Infantry.
Does the charged attack have different bonuses?
How much armour? A lot of pierce armour like Eagle Warriors or not?
Do they also have the spearman armour class too? Which would practically be negative Pierce armour.
Fast Moving.
Low armor.
Good against cavalry cause spear.
I mean, Ghulam and Eagles are the already ingame shocks we can compare them with, so just see what are their specificities and you’ll have a pretty solid idea of what’s coming for them.
I’d also said their projectile will be gunpowderish style (no kidding…) so for stat, high melee charged attack with poor acuracy and low range.
For the charged attack, I can already predict you something, with how the projectiles works in AoE2, if you use main projectile it takes unit damage stats, secondaries use their own damage values. It means that they can totally go with unique projectile bonus damage. BUT, I doubt they will do, why ? Cuase the’y adding a detailed damage card info, so it would make nosense to have the projectile giving hidden damage bonus. So I think it will just be, as charged attack used to, a bulk +10 bonus logic, not in the number just the logic os boosting base damage.
They mentionned also the Jian Swordman beeing shock troopers, I hope it’s not an editor unit but it could be.
Not only there should be a cohesive element stat wise, but there must be some visual elements that makes these units intuitively looks like belonging to the same class.
Since they came out I’ve seen Ghulams as being kind of a Eagle Warrior alt-unit. There were 3 main visual elements that made it feel they accomplished the same anti-archer, high pierce armor role:
The lance, weilded with one hand
The running animation (instead of just walking in a fast pace)
The shield
When I read about the Shock Infantry class I was happy they were making it official, but then I realised that:
Fire Lancers: hold the spears with both hands, are not running, and do not have a shield.
Also, the Jian Swordsman, whatever it is, obiously does not have a lance or spear.
So, what will the distinctive visual elements of the Shock Infantry class be?
If I, as a new player, look at the Fire Lancer, my immediate thought is that it has the spearman armour class. If the Jian Swordsman look something like this:
… I would think it belongs to the standard infantry armour class.
So… I like they’re rebranding the Eagle armour class to something more generic, but at the same time I fear it might transform in a design tool to hack the balance and make it be what they try to achieve with any substance behind.
This will be more on the behavior, Eagles are schock troopers, so basically, unit that moves fast and strike hard but can’t sustain long fight.
See them as Commandos, or paratroopers. Ingame it will result in fast movement, and charge attacks, with low armors (cause armors are heavy, weight makes high speed harder cause of stamina blah blah blah)
The Firelancer here is a very good example of a specific type of Schock Trooper, it will probably not be based on the “lightning speed” skirmishing attack logic, but on their lance. It’s not a rifle, it’s a fire-thrower tube mounted on the spear, so it will take time to reload (recharge time of the special attack). It will work as a strong shot volley and then melee attacks.
The Eagles are already featuring an increased movement speed, and very light armor style, as they’re meant to replace cavalry too in the movement capabilities, but they’re not reflecting the heavy attack power of a knight line for example.
The Jian Swordman will probably not have shields, or a small round shield. The Jian sword is bascially a double edged straight longsword, good for slashing and piercing. But “jian” can be used to depicte many things so until we get more info, it’s hard to guess.
Eagles have very high piece armor, and I don’t think about them as fragile units in melee combat. Not the best, for sure, but Shotels are fragile, Karambit are fagile. Eagles are not.
From Wikipedia:
“Shock troops , assault troops , or storm troops are special formations created to lead military attacks. They are often better trained and equipped than other military units and are expected to take heavier casualties even in successful operations.”
So thematically, they should be infantry units that are expected to lead the charge and generally be the first to engage. Whether they will be such in game is a different question.
I wonder if Jian Swordsman are just a scenario editor unit so you can have Chinese in a pre gunpowder setting and still have a unit that fills the role of the Fire Lance.
Charged-Attack mechanics is definitly there to allow the “first devastating blow of the fight”. I wonder still if the fire-lancer will be toggleable or charged-attack based.
If you pay attention to the “tanguts” red castle on Red vs Green screenshot you can see a sword on the castle sprite. Jian Swordman are probably gonna be a unique unit for tanguts then, if it’s a tanguts castle of course.
