it never happens because many infantry civs aren’t popular but especially because late game king unit in trash war is Hussar, if Champions get a bonus vs Scout-line you will see pros use Champions more.
this is just, like, your opinion, Longswords eat TC faster, and you can set your eco for food. It’s also generally not very true that Longswords are more food-intensive, 45f a piece is only barely more expensive than a Knights if you use a 2-1 ratio. Many infantry civs also have something to help Longswords, Teutons extra armor, Celts more speed (Crossbows can’t kite Celts LS for example).
I think Champion needs a buff but the buff must be one that moves the game in a direction where the pool of strategies available increases, and the game becomes better, not worse. Buffing Champion HP doesn’t make sense because they already trade well vs the units they are supposed to be strong vs. Right now Champions are kept out of the meta by Hussars so this is the interaction you want to look at.
idk civs with bad archer-line or no Handcannoneer would suffer most from this for example. Probably some cav-focused civ without HC like Sicilians could suffer from this, for example. But more generally, this buff is not needed, you can make a custom scenario with mass Champs vs Halb + Skirm, they already do very well there. They also take buildings down faster than cavalry. You could easily justify a late game composition like Champions + few Halbs to deter Knight switch + Siege Ram and idk how a cavalry civ would go about in beating that.
But really the main argument is “don’t fix that which isn’t broken”. Buff vs Hussar and that’s it.
This is a big exaggeration. 2 longswordmen do beat 1 knight in a vacuum; 20 longswordmen cannot beat 10 knights because knights resist damage for longer and can change targets more quickly than longswordmen, hence the advantage in larger numbers. Even in the first super idealized example the longswordmen barely win (I think ~10% HP or so left, which is basically a draw, not an easy victory), and that’s assuming the knight player kindly engages with the infantry army instead of raiding or picking off reinforcements, that the knights don’t have any sort of bonus, that you manage to somehow match production by having 3 barracks to 2 enemy stables and enough farms (and wood) to keep that production, that you have enough resources and time for the initial tech investment, etc. I really don’t get where people get this idea of longswords being “ok” vs knights, in practice I’ve never seen this interaction in favour of longswordmen, and even in theory there are no reasons to think longswordmen have any significant edge over knights (building destruction… maybe?).
we can engage in a “yes but” of LS vs Knights all day, I can tell you that mixing Pikes is easier than for Knight player to add Xbow/Skirm (easier transition). LS also take buildings faster and you get 1 free starting Barrack (don’t get 1 free starting Stable).
In the end you don’t need to convince me that Knights are too strong, I think Knights need a slight nerf now because Xbow is balanced only in 2.3k+ elo and below that, Xbow civs are hard to play. But regardless, I just don’t think Militia-line needs a buff other than bonus vs Scout-line, their role in the game is trash killer, if you disagree with this role, propose an alternative role for Militia-line in the game, just then you need to rebalance every unit around that newfound role, for example if LS trade better vs Knights, then Crossbows would need to do bonus dmg vs Militia-line.
In terms of what I think of this topic, I guess some sort of combination of slight stats buff to militia line in Castle Age onwards (while keeping their weakness to archers), cheaper/faster to research technologies and bonus damage vs hussars would put the militia line on par with the archer and knight lines.
I honestly think more technologies for infantry is the last thing they need, in any case, they should receive more default buffs and remove/discount some technologies.
Maybe 5 won’t cut it. But 70 HP LS will beat xbow gold effectively and beat knight cost effectively (As they already do ever since 1MA buff)
Reducing Champion upgrade cost and most importantly time will make them more viable than a 5-10 HP buff. On top of the expensive upgrade, you are proposing another tech?
Bulgarians, Malians and maybe Vikings vs Mayans, Portuguese, Italians, Koreans, Dravidians, Khmer, Slavs, Persians, Sicilians - These come in my mind at this moment.
Agreed. Obviously there are things that each player can do, but the fact that longswordmen in Castle Age are a (very) rare sight tells me that the advantages of knights vs longswordmen as a whole far outweigh all the advantages of longswordmen vs knights as a whole when put into practice, whichever these advantages happen to be.
Personally I don’t think buffing the militia line as a cost efficient melee fighter, trash counter and building destroyer should fundamentally change all other interactions in-game to the point of making other units useless. Plus, using incremental changes prevents super large swings in meta, so the process to find a sweet spot can be smooth (unless implemented in a dumb way, but that’s true of any change).
ultimately every game will have units that are slightly more efficient than others. AoE2 does a good job in allowing multiple strategies to be viable - if you played any online game, you will see that other games often boil down to 1-2 strats at high level.
Whether those units happen to be Knights, or infantry, is largely preference. I personally think Knight/Crossbow meta is more interesting than some infantry-based meta, largely because infantry is more forgiving on micro. If you disagree here it’s fine though, everyone likes different things.
The good thing about buffing Champions with a bonus vs Scout-line is that since the Scout has its unique armor class, you could set the bonus arbitrarily low or high without messing with the balancing of other units. For example if +4 isn’t good enough, you could easily put +6 without buffing something like Knight-line armor.
I am not against buffing champions against trash units. I’d be perfectly happy if they had a bonus like +5 against all units that does not cost gold. In fact, that would be far more preferable to me instead of +10 HP. Now that being said, let me address some of the points.
This is just untrue when it comes to almost every civ. Even infantry civs play cavalry in castle age. You rarely, if ever, see militia line units in castle age. That’s just a fact.
Another thing you are factually wrong on. With wheelbarrow and gold mining, you need 17 vils to keep 2 barracks producing constantly. The number is 12 for knights. However, militia line takes 21 seconds to produce, while knights take 30. Even accounting for that, there is a 4 vil difference. It gets even worse. Militia line needs 12 farmers, while knight line needs 6. 12 farmers is 2-4 extra vils on wood as compared to knigts. That is like a 6 vil difference in total. To make things worse, they don’t properly counter knights, and lack mobility.
So no, that is not opinion. And you’ve made far too many factual errors that I’m actually starting to suspect if you know the militia line very well.
I don’t really understand how this particular upgrade would decrease the pool of strategies and at this point, I’m a bit annoyed that you are just bringing up statements without a solid ground to stand on. So let’s take the only example you’ve given, which is sicilians. They have FU arblasts, except for the last armour. They also have their own, extremely strong infantry unit. In addition to those, they also have FU champions. This is one of the worst examples you could’ve chosen. Seargents + arb mass shreds that whole combo easily.
Now, let’s take your other example, cav civ vs champions, few halbs, and siege ram. The only option that is now gone are skirmishers. Also, if you have FU champions, halbs and SR, you don’t have resources for much else. You didn’t give a single example, so I’ll give a few examples. You can add some if you want.
I’ll exclude elephant civs because elephants will absolutely destroy the militia line, even with +10 HP. Then they can add skirms or something else to deal with halbs.
Franks can full counter that combo with throwing axemen and it wouldn’t even be close. Mongols have mangudai, Berbers have camel archers (this combo only happens at the imperial age, and berbers should have those by then), Poles have obuch, Cumans have kipchaks, Huns have cheaper cav archers, etc. There is not a single civ, and I’ll repeat, there’s not a single civ which doesn’t have a counter to this combo. If anything, I consider it a pretty weak combo. Remove halbs and add skirms. Now you might have a slightly better one.
Their proposed role is trash killer, but they don’t do that, we agree on this point. LS can trade better against knights and that doesn’t change much. In open maps, LS lacks the mobility, and in closed maps, you’ll do better by going with halbs. I don’t know why we are going over this point. Especially since, as I’ve explained above, it is just easier to mass and deal with knights than militia line.
Also, goth militia do trade really well against knights. But guess what, most people don’t use it that way. If there are a lot of knight line units, goths just use halbs. Now, what is their new role? the same as before. A general purpose unit which trades reasonably well against everything under certain circumstances. However, those circumstances can easily be prevented due to pop limitations, mobility and micro.
This exchange is meaningless because crossbows already destory militia-line, and if you are going with full knights, a full archer switch is crazy difficult to begin with.
I think that the militia-line need to be stronger, not just cheaper. Cheaper units are valuable earlier in game, and in late imperial when gold starts to run dry. However, units also need to be strong after early imperial because you are pop-capped by then. It doesn’t matter if your champions are cheap to upgrade if a bunch of cav or archers can completely overrun you and destroy your eco.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you are picking one from Bulgarians, Malians and maybe Vikings, and one civ from the other 9. I don’t think even a single one from these will be horribly unbalanced just because of this change. Yes, mayans are weak vs malians, but that’s already the case. Can you give me 2 or 3 of the most egregious examples, so that we can focus and talk about those?
This is false. 23 villagers for 2 stable knights. 11 on food. 12 on gold unless your talking mono stable knights but thats not even a fair comparison.
1 stable is 2 knights a minute.
2 barracks is 6 militia a minute. Say what you want about mobility but 1 stable knights is not beating 2 barracks production. Especially since you could easily mix in a few pointy boys. Either way if im going 2 barracks production my opponent is going to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers and laughed off the map when you wreck his production and then tcs
The comparison was 1 stable vs 2 barracks, ofc. That was what the conversation was about. Leave out the pikes for a minute, because we are only talking about militia line here. And, I evened out the production speed. Maybe not very accurately, but I did that, read the comment again. You will win 1 knight vs 2 militia line with decent micro every single time. You can run back low HP knights, heal them up, run around the map, raid their vils under tc fire, and even run under castle fire.
Also, how is 2 stable knights vs 2 barracks m@a a fair comparison then?
Also also, if things were as simple as you make it out to be, why doesn’t every pro player go full militia line and overwhelm their opponent with numbers? Come on dude, please read the full convo before putting things here. This is just cluttering things.
So while those low hp knights are getting healed by 100 gold monks, or trying to cross the map to do damage, the militia player with his 6 militia a minute is doing nothing? Heck no. Id be raiding your stable and wrecking it. Then moving onto your tc.
By the by your math is definitely off then.
You said 2 barracks is 17 cillagers and 1 stable is 12.
True. But 2 barracks is 6 militia a minute to 2 knights. Not 2 to 1. Its 3 to 1 advantage. Youre definitely not winning that. Idc if you do pick 2 or 3 off and then go heal.
Because no one is dumb enough to go single stable production in that situation. Thsy always go 2. So 2 barracks production vs 1 stable isnt really a thing
Furthermore the argument was 2 to ls against a knight Which you somehow equated to 2 barracks production against 1 stable. Again. A 3 to 1 production ratio. Not a 2 to 1. Which was the original argument.
To get a proper 2 to 1 ratio youd have to have 4 barracks (12 a minute) ro 3 stables (6 a minute)
Which is 23 farmers and 9 on gold for militia to 16 farmers and 18 gold miners for knights.
you did not get the message right, what I meant is, if you want the game to have meta units Crossbow + Knight, or the meta unit to be Longswords + (for example) Scorpions is a matter of preference. Yes, infantry civs play Crossbow or Knights in Castle age, worth mentioning that the “infantry civ” tag is just to give a player guidance and not something official.
are you gonna account for the fact that Militias take nearly 1/4th the gold to produce, hence 2 Rax LS is like 5 on gold vs the 12+ required for Knights, or are we gonna conveniently leave this little fact out?
because Champion-line is not broken, and not every unit needs to be viable in every age. Cav archer isn’t viable in early Castle age, and Arbalest isn’t viable in late Imp. Champions and their niche is late Imp trash wars. If you are unhappy with this niche go propose your own rebalancing of units and counter-units but going vs 84 HP Champions from ANY civ, let alone those that have bonuses like Teutons, Bulgarians extra armor/free upgrades, NO TY. This not to mention stronger ones like Burmese with their 21 attack or Vikings who would have some 110 HP at that poin
no we don’t agree, I said that they trade well vs every trash unit, minus the Hussar. Again, +5 bonus vs Scout-line and call it a day is my change, nothing else.
Crossbow doesn’t “destroy” militia-line, you do 4 damage per shot so it takes some 15 shots to kill 1 LS, which costs a meager 65 total resources. You also need to keep microing the Xbow while you can patrol the LS in and forget about it. In your elo this APM loss might not be a difference but in mine it is. Crossbow better “destroy” LS given how much micro it requires to do so. Time to take out 15+ LS with Xbow, the other player plants 10 Farms, adds 1-2 production buildings and a university. Some players literally play this way at high level too btw, keep throwing army at opponent forcing micro time and beat them in the macro race (e.g. DauT).
Your 6 militia will die to anything. You need at least a dozen or more. Heck, you need at least 10 knights to wreck a tc. 10 militia line units are going to immediately die to a tc.
No. If it was just this, just add a few pikes to your militia line. 3 barracks should destroy 2 stables if you mix pikes with miliita line.
This doesn’t even matter. I just tested 10 japanese longswords against knights, and 6 knights are enough to beat them. For britons longswords vs spanish knights, the number is 5 knights against 10 longswords. This was a head on fight with no micro. And of course, we are ignoring arrows from defensive structures, raiding, etc. To repeat, longswords lose 2v1 against knights. And since we are talking about early-mid castle age where you need 15-18 vils just for constant production from your tcs and food for upgrades, the number is a lot more skewed than it looks.
We don’t disagree on this.
This is literally irrelevant in castle age. You have plenty of gold in castle age, and not enough food. So yes, we are going to leave this out.
Okay, I don’t know how you can be wrong on both of your -seemingly- best examples. Cav archers are fully viable in early castle age, if you have a few pikes/camels to defend from raids. This is more true for cav archer civs, ofc, but they aren’t ever remotely close to unviable. Arbalest is fully viable in late imp with hussars for support.
Let me list all of the trash units in the game. Skirmishers, halbs, hussars, winged hussars, magyar hussars, persian crossbows, malay 2-handed swords.
Militia do well against 2 out of 7 (also considering resources spent). Now, let’s group all the hussars together. That’s doing well against 2/5. Champions go against hussars in late game only. This is when raids happen frequently. Your champions don’t do well there either.
Seriously, who makes champions against halbs and skirms? Show me pro games where this has happened. People keep saying that they are a trash buster. Firstly, that isn’t true. Secondly, they wouldn’t be great even if that was true with their current stats.
If this is what you consider trash counter, alright.
This is some crazy logic imo. You don’t send like 4 xbows to take out militia line, you send a archer ball of 20-30. Also, why would you just create xbows with 0 support? Just add the pike line or the scout line for support. You don’t even need a lot of those. 5-6 will do. Now watch them go against each other.
Lastly, 65 isn’t a meager amount of resources in early castle age. And it’s double that you lose with every volley when you go against an archer ball. We might as well be playing different games at this point.
I think we are at the end of the road for this convo. But we do agree on one buff. +3 or +5 against all non-gold units is perfectly fine by me.
They are called trash busters mainly because they don’t take bonus damage from trash units. Most non-siege units take some form of bonus damage either from Halberdiers or Elite Skirmishers. Everything from the archery range takes bonus damage from the Skirmisher, everything from the stable takes bonus damage from the halberdier, Spearline units take bonus damage from Skirmishers as well. So, Champions play a role similar to the Teutonic Knight.
I see the Champion as more of a counter to Eagle warriors, Huskarls, Halberdiers, Skirmishers. I would rather send a group of them to fight a mass of halberdiers than Paladins/
Hussars are more of a general purpose unit that’s spammable, counters siege, archers and monks. Hera loves them for a reason.
Magyar Huszars are a unique unit. Unique trash units are pretty strong in general.
Sounds like an OK idea… maybe in the form of a tech that can be researched? Maybe +10 HP to militia line and +5 to spearline… but no changes to Eagle warriors and unique infantry… How about giving the Militia line (from longswordsman onwards) some bonus damage against the Scout line?
They donr need to start with a tc. Start with production bldgs.
And 6 will shortly become more…
So on one side tou have 450 food and 200 gold and on the other side you have 360 food and 450 gold. See the problem yet?
Furthermore id feel much safwr running yhis test myself, seeing as you blatantly lied earlier about production.
Except it does. Your point was that the knight player can invest more eco elsewhere. Which was proven false. And then you doubled down on it. Now your trying to pretend it donr matter.
Wither way, i feel we should buff militia within its job, and not in ways that have minimal impact and will have people like you complaining for even more buffs down the road.
Militia has roughly same base attack as a Knight, while costing 1/2 the resources, and a further (iirc) +2 vs standard building which can be boosted by Arson to a +4. 6 Militias end up being like 9 Knights in terms of the pressure they put on buildings all while costing like 30% the total res.
they don’t.
it is not, villager time is villager time, and those extra ~5-6 villagers you task to gold might as well have been farmers or lumberjacks. The LS transition isn’t a hard one. It’s basically the same as the Castle Age 2-3 Stables Light Cav and although you see that one rarely, it’s possible to do it.
The myth that “gold is an abundant resource” in Castle age is like… just something people hear and repeat. Yes it’s abundant but you still need to task villagers to it.
maybe in your elo yes, in my elo you die to Xbow because Xbow beats CA in small numbers. Knights probably beat CA also in small numbers or at least force you to give up all map control.
Only civ I’d say can open CA in early Castle age is Huns due to a mix of Wood savings and their CA being cheaper.
Trashbows and Magyar Hussars should do well vs Militia-line because they are locked behind a tech, and a UU respectively. Champions should do well vs Hussar, Skirms, Halbs, full stop.
it is very true, they murder Halberdiers, and do well vs Skirms, taking a mere 2 damage from each shot which becomes 0 damage when you close the distance. Skirms in Imp are a last resort anyway, you nearly always must give them the correct target else they shoot the enemy meatshield. So you won’t see many but I would say 2 damage taken hence 35 hits to kill a Champion is fair given how much micro time and Skirm mass the Skirm player needs while Champions player can patrol once in and go back to macroing eco.
we can flip this argument and say that if you see 30 Crossbows, let alone give your opponent the chance to mass so many, you should be switching into counter units. Furthermore if you add meatshield of Pikes (say) to slow down the LS, it’s fair to assume opponent also had time to add a secondary unit so he plays LS + Skirms for example.
Yes I play in an elo where “30 Crossbow” isn’t a thing because I try to either force my opponent off of Xbow or kill them before hand. You probably play in an elo where you let such mass build up, archers are stronger when massed, yes. But here you aren’t losing cuz LS are bad, you are losing cuz u got outmacro’d and outproduced. It’s like those games where you see Viper lose to Bloodlines Scouts, and resign in Feudal, why does he resign? 3 Knights clear all the Scouts once he is up. It’s a little concept called outmassing. Once you are behind in production, you either add production buildings to catch up, or add defensive structures (Castles, TCs), or resign.
only vs Hussar, Champions don’t need to 2-shot Halberdiers, that’s unfair, they already like 4 shot them.
Likewise Skirms should be a unit that at least poses a minor threat, if Champions 2 shot them no point making Skirms.
Even against counter units you should stand a fighting chance to a degree that’s the principle of AoE2.
Okay, I’ll try to explain this slowly and steadily. Maybe you’ll get it.
I gave the example of japanese, because they have 33% faster attacking infantry. Maybe you aren’t famililtar with that. That was to give an example of a significantly stronger longsword. ### longsword is even stronger than +10HP longword.
So, let’s take the example of a regular longsword, which loses 5v10. Now, you have 450 food and 200 gold vs 300 food and 375 gold. That is 650 resources vs 675 resources, just for losing.
But wait, there’s more. You don’t get longswords for free. You need to spend 150 food and 65 gold on that upgrade. And get to the unit before that upgrade, you need 100 food and 40 gold. And of course, there is supplies. Without supplies, you can add 150 more food to that original cost. Supplies cost 75 food and 75 gold.
Now, the blacksmith upgrades. That will be 150 extra resources for the cav player. You need two barracks, but you only need one stables. However, you need the barrack before the stable. So, it’s equal for now.
So, let’s calculate the total, by the time you get your first 10 units out. Longswords is 150+65+100+40+75+75+650=1155 resources. For the knight player, it is 675+150=825. That’s a difference of 330 resources for the knight player.
But maybe you haven’t played enough to know what the difference between 450 and 300 food is, in early castle age. At that point, you have to spend your wood on monastery, stable, new TCs, and farms. Those farms then have to generate food. Not to mention the mill upgrades. However, you just need a mining camp, and one upgrade for mining gold. If you are going for one to one production, you are spending way more food, which you also need it for technology and booming.
Maybe you will realize that I didn’t lie, and everything I said adds up completely. Maybe you won’t.
Go to scenario editor and try FU britons longsword vs knights in castle age. I don’t know what to tell you if you decide to deny reality.
There are a lot more disagreement I have with your comment. For example, scouts+crossbow will beat longswords + skirms every single time if both players play properly.
Give the Scout Line 1/2/4 Eagle Warrior Armour.
They already play the a very similar role so it wouldn’t be crazy (the only 2 unit lines with attack damage against Monks).
Scouts would take +1 damage from MMA
Light Cavalry would take +4 damage from Long Swordsman an +2 Damage from Teutonic Knights (no other Castle Age unique unit has more then +2)
Hussars would take +2 damage rom Long Swordsman and +4 from Two-Handed Swordsman and Champions.
Not sure how much Magyar and Winged Hussars should get.
And maybe some other unique light cavalry?