Bloodlines is considered my many to be one of the stronger bonuses for cavalry. This bonus adds a bit more survivability to already high-hp units. This is important in mid-late game, as cheaper but weaker units are almost always worse than powerful but expensive units at that stage.
Infantry get supplies for the militia line, which reduces its food cost (Not that useful since people don’t use militia to begin with. But if you do, an essential tech), arson to increase building damage (useful if you are going full infantry, but people just use trebs, siege rams and bombards in most cases), and squires (the actually useful one you almost always pickup because it makes your halbs faster).
So, I think that there should be “bloodlines” type of tech for infantry, which adds somewhere between 5 and 10 HP to infantry. How does it change things? Firstly, FU generic champions lose 2v1 against paladins right now. A single champion also loses to 2 hussars, with both hussars surviving. Whenever people claim that champions are “trash busters”, this is what I’d like to point out. They aren’t even remotely “trash busters”. They aren’t good against hussars with late game market prices, and are even worse against winged and magyar hussars.
Note that even with a +10HP, they still don’t kill a single hussar when going 1v2. However, they become a little more viable, and they do beat paladins 2v1. More importantly, this isn’t a unit modifier. Meaning, devs can grant this to certain civs while not giving it to certain other civs.
What do you think?
EDIT: Some of the concerns with other infantry units has been addressed by @Skadidesuhere. Shout-outs to them.
Should it only apply to the Milita line or to all Infantry?
Some units would have to be rebalanced. Maybe remove 5-10HP form the Pikeman line and some of the unique Infantry Units and of course Eagle Warriors (unless none of those civs would get the tech).
Pikeman is slightly too weak in Castle age (likely solved by buffing Squires and/or Pikeman upgrade cost).
Skirms are too weak in Imp
Paladin is meant to be a power play unit, it’s incredibly hard to get to so they should win 2v1 vs Champions, that’s the whole idea, it’s a short burst of power that you can’t sustain forever.
You are correct. I only thought about the Militia line and the Spear line. Eagle warriors and infantry UUs will need more rebalance. In that case, you can just apply it to the militia line.
I don’t think you realize how expensive the champions are. You need a ridiculous amount of resources to get to champions all the way from the militia. This isn’t as bad as paladins, but there is another issue, which is the time consideration. Either you spend those resources in earlier ages, which is more risky, or you wait for like 7 mins in imperial till the upgrades come in.
I would argue that “a short bust of power” is firstly incorrect, and secondly, not a good mechanic to begin with. They are as expensive as knights in terms of individual unit cost, and more population efficient by a huge margin, which is a huge deal in late game.
Also, that argument is meaningless, considering how they already lose to pikes, another infantry unit.
Here’s my usual argument when people make the argument you make: what is a champion’s role? when do you make them? The only case that comes to mind is against eagles.
“But every unit doesn’t need to do everything”: yeah, but every unit from the main 3 lines need to have regular uses imo. There is a reason everybody just uses the archer line and the knight line. Would you okay with nerfing all of the cav units to have 0 pierce armor since “all units doesn’t need to everything?”
Yes, the whole game (The military part) is designed around these 2 units (or 2 types of unit). Adding infantry into them is a very normal thing to come into mind. But infantry not only takes bonus damage from “trash” units but also doesn’t make a good military combo with any “trash” unit. You need to change whole military balance to successfully add militia line to compete with them.
No, I didn’t. Only 3 out of 48 or so civs have eagles. That’s not “regular use” by any stretch of the imagination. By that logic, I could create a unit that is good only against steppe lancers and you would call it a unit with regular use.
Again, Hussars are cost-effective against champions. Even with this change, that is the case. I don’t like repeating myself, but people never seem to actually address this issue.
Additionally, there are units already in the game with no trash counters by your logic. Mamelukes and cataphracts are the primary ones. Huskarls and eagles, kamayuks, berserks, urumis are some of the others.
Trash counters aren’t necessary for balance. That is a fact. Don’t divert to “those units are expensive” or “those civs don’t have great eco”, because that is the point I am making. Trash is one way to balance things, it is far from being the only one.
Eagles would be easy to rebalance because there are only 3 civilisations that can build them.
If Inca and Aztecs don’t get the technology (Aztecs already have strong infantry) and Mayas unique technology gets imply changed to adding 30HP instead of 40HP.
Unique units would be less of an issue too. Just remove 10HP from every unique unit of every civilisation that gets access to the technology.
But that could also be the change to buff a few less powerful unique Infantry units.
It would potentially change the power spikes of those units and make the upfront investment higher.
Depends on what age the technology would be at.
If it’s an Imperial Age technology the stats of the none Elite Unique Infantry units would not have to be changed for example but most Elites only have +10HP compared to the standard version so they would all need to be changed to +0.
I still think all infantry should be affected by this technology.
By infantry I always think “Militia line”. And I thought you were also indicating the same?
I used my words very carefully in my logic. I said “Not taking bonus damage”. Indeed Champion is countered by Hussar. Some proposed giving champion (militia line) bonus damage against Hussar (scout line) which I’m not against.
Yeah. Because they are infantry.
Never heard this before. Where can I find this fact?
Considering that you ignored Cataphracts and Mamelukes, and the rest of my examples, nowhere. Engage in good faith, my dude.
That is the point I’m making. Champions are also infantry, it can be fine for them to have no trash counters. But they still have a trash counter. So, this is irrelevant.
I don’t understand what point you are trying to make. So please clarify that.
Champion upgrade is 750f 350g iirc, all other upgrades are very negligible in cost for a Imp eco. The main resource here is time, not raw resources which is why Champion transition is considered difficult.
do you play TGs? The only people who I see think Paladin is OP is TG players. In 1v1 if anything, Paladin could be a bit stronger, you burn like 70% of your gold until Imp anyway, then you need a 1000g for Paladin upgrade, so to keep the Paladin going you very often rely on Market/Relics/extra gold piles (which are easy for opponent to deny).
Burst of power is the healthiest mechanic for a game, else every game becomes a slog of spear/skirm camping castles. You have these bursts of power (equally lethal) in other ages too btw: Franks early Castle Age Knights, Bulgarians MAA opening, if you think any of these are less game-deciding than a Paladin flood, you are wrong.
yes but this is also beaten by the fact that he needs to come in your base, which gives you reinforcement advantage. 8-10 Barracks Halberdiers still beats Paladin spam if you play well.
It’s a trash killer and the main unit holding it back is Hussars, not Paladins.
You are comparing them in a vaccum. If most games started in imperial age, you’d be correct. But you start from the dark age and have to upgrade them all the way from there. You get knights for free in castle age, and only need 2 upgrades.
Yep, I mostly play 3v3 team games. However, it is not significantly different in 1v1s. In 1v1s, most people stop at cavalier, but most people also never go for anything past m@a. This tech wouldn’t change a lot, aside from maybe making champions a little more viable.
This is a complicated topic, but what I meant there specially is that burst of power in of itself isn’t a good mechanic. You need counters, eco balances, and other things for it to be interesting. And this proposal isn’t going to completely change that.
We agree. We also agree on the halb spam. So, what is your disagreement? This tech is too weak? Because spamming militia line against paladins is less viable and more expensive than spamming halbs. So, this change is meaningless in that area.
And you ignored me agreeing that Hussar counter champion. I need to give it back to you.
Not to mention those 2 are the 2nd and 3rd most expensive UU. War Elephant being the 1st. Meanwhile militia line is generic unit with least amount of gold cost.
Again, I’m okay with buffing Champion on that regards.
Infantries don’t countered by trash (I was using taking bonus damage. But I’ll go with countered by from now) until Hussar is researched. So making them as good as archer+cav will be problematic. If your issue is Champion vs Hussar then sure buff Champion at that stage.
paladin upgrade lasts longer than Champion upgrade and Cavalier also lasts quite a while. Regardless, if you suspect opponent is going mass Paladin, you should be teching into Halb, not Champion.
it literally is, in 1v1, trash units are a thing, in 3v3, they aren’t.
Champions need a better 1v1 vs Hussar, not to have HP buff for no reason.
I just think Champion doesn’t need a buff because it’s a low-eco unit, costing 20g, so you can spam it late game unlike Arbalest/Cavalier/Siege. I would give them bonus vs Scout or something like that, not HP buff because it already trades well vs compositions like Skirm/Halb (worth also noting here that Castle age Longswords easily beat Knights 2v1 while costing same resources and do far better vs buildings resource-wise, too).
Give the Scout Line the Eagle Warrior armour type.
But give them some resistance against it.
If Hussars had Eagle Warrior +4 then Champions and Two-Handed Swordsman would make +4 damage, Long Swordsman +2 and no other unit would make any extra damage.
So, we agree that champions need some kind of buff. You don’t like this particular buff, if I’m getting you right.
This seems to be the crux of your argument. But I don’t think that’s true. A 5 HP buff or a 10 HP buff isn’t even close to making them as good as archer+cav. Archers will still destroy them, heavy cav will still destroy them in terms of population efficiency. By the time you get to late imperial, when paladin vs champions will maybe happen, you are pop capped, let’s be real.
I don’t know what games you’ve been playing, but that’s never been the case for me. Mass trash has appeared in every single team game I’ve played, especially halbs and hussars. What is uncommon is skirms.
Except, this never actually happens. How many late games have resulted in late game champions in, say, the last 5 S-tier tournaments? I can think of maybe one instance.
Also, they hard die to archers even with a 5 or 10 hp buff.
Early castle is the most food-intensive time in the whole game imo. So, it doesn’t matter if 2 longswords beat 1 knight. 1 knights is almost always more valuable.
@Green4uu@SMUM15236 It seems to me that you guys dislike this particular change. That is fine, I have no issues with that. What I do have an issue with, however, is that you guys are implying that this break the balance. That the militia line will become too good and take over the meta or something. So, can you give me examples of civ matchups where this would drastically change things in a bad way? Assume that you get this tech in castle age, and civs like, say, goths and japanese don’t get access to it.
I have several quetions about our tech Idee. i Hope you would Like to answer them
I have assumed that the Tech only applies to the Military line. when the Spearmen ist affected too, then the question also apply to them.
What ist the usecase of the Tech ? currently i See two usecase for the Military line. Drush, swordmen rush with Archer or late Game Champions.
When do you want that this Tech will be reseached?
Will this 10 HP create other usecase for this unit ?
Create this Tech a Powerspike for that unit?
What will this Tech cost ? to much and it will be useless for early game
Why does ist need to bei a Tech?
can this 10 HP boost be a generell buff to the Line?
or can it be added to a other Tech (swordmen Upgrade)?
Which civ should have Access to the Tech? when every civ have it then Back to question 3.