Simple buff to Militia-line by shorten its attack delay, to improve its "stickiness"

[ter]

Hi everyone, I know it is a long-lived topic. Milita-line need a proper buff to enhance the chance for Militia-line appearance in current game meta. I have been reading through a lot of the Militia-line improvement suggestions and I have a simple suggestion.

I propose the simple buff for Militia-line - To shorten the animation duration ( the attack delay of melee, non-ranged attack ). Here is the link to the wiki page of the explanation of this term. https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Attack_delay

As a result, the Militia-line unit would be more sticky while chasing other hit-on-run units.

Few points as follows. While it has a shorter animation duration, there will be a faster actual damage happening on each of its attacks.

1. To emphasize, this is NOT the change about the rate-of-fire. The time between its two attacks would not be changed. After this change, for example:
   a) while a Man-at-arm standing fighting against other standing unit on 1v1 (without micro), the end result will not be changed (unless in a very low chance, originally the fight ended with both being killed at the same time, now you might has a better chance living)
   b) while you microing a Militia raiding against a village, it would become slightly multitasking friendly since you can have a shorter time seeing the damage has been done and move away from your Militia earlier such that you could do other things, however the village is still able to fight back the same way.
   c) while a group of Man-at-arms fighting against another group of units with patrolling (both without micro), now the Man-at-arms would have a nicer edge of winning. The Man-at-arms that finished killing a unit, will first quickly end its animation and move forward against other units. Also, if a Man-at-arm has reloaded its attack ( after its CD = rate-of-fire ) while the Man-at-arm is in the back or while moving, it can now spend its attacks faster if it faces new units. Repeating this step would effectively increase the average rate-of-fire of the longsword group. Buffing the massed Militia-line matched the vibe of this unit type - to mass and steamroll.
   d) while chasing a moving unit. This change would greatly enhance the chance of winning the fight against an Archer doing hit-and-run micro. Originally, every time you attack the Archer, the attack animation would cost the Man-at-arm being left behind a distance from the Archer. And the long distance is the actual time period that the Archer could out-micro the Man-at-arm. With this change, the Man-at-arm would be more sticky to the Archer. It decreases the distance and greatly increases the number of attacks while chasing. That’s why you have a better winning edge. Of course the opponent can still do the micro, however, the time the player invests on micro will be less effective to the fight. With this change, it would make Man-at-arms / Longswords much more viable in the high-elo game because the high-elo players microing Archers against Militia-line is less effective now. On the other hand, in the low-elo game, the fight result would not change dramatically since the players have less micro in the game anyway. This is what the community wanted for long about Militia-line change in different elo games.
   e) To conclude with this change, the Militia-line would be more buffed in chasing Archers (most importantly), massed fight and high-elo game which make sense. If it is a successful change, and Archer-line would be obviously weakened by being most affected, we can slightly buff the Archer-line again such that currently the Knight-line are a little bit OP in current game meta.

2. This is a simple change and it is intuitive. Just shorten the time duration of attack animation and maybe it requires changing the sprite of the animation as well. Most players may not notice what has been changed but they will just find out the Militia-line is now much more usable and viable.

3. Keep this first army of the game ( first unit in first military building) as simple as possible. It won’t change any other numbers such as the cost of Militia, the moving speed, rate-of-fire, bonus damage to building, trash unit,etc…to avoid a dramatic shift of the current game meta. Also no complicated mechanism such as let it building rams or fortification, or increase its armor while standing ground.

4. It is thematically correct. A unit walking and carrying a handy weapon (sword) should just have a first attack happening when facing an opponent unit. ( I would suggest giving Samurai - Japanese UU a super short attack delay, this unit needs a big buff anyway and this change also fits its theme by assassinating other units.)

To be honest, I dont have the exact number of how much the attack animation should be decreased. Perhaps 50%? It can have a different value of different stages ( less decrease on Militia, more decrease on or after Man-at-arms).

Please share your opinion on this and I wish the community and the dev could really look into this, thank you very much.

[casusincorrabil]

I think melee units mainly have that attack delay so they can’t “snipe” foundations.
One major reason why I would prefer to leave this kind of technical adaptation to the devs, cause we often don’t even know for what reason they have been implemented in the first place. At first glance you would question “why do melee units have an attack delay anyways?”. It’s not that there are ways to micro to abuse having no delay.

I also don’t think this would do much to a slow melee unit like the miltia line. If you’re running behind enemy units you won’t inflict much damage anyways. Ofc the attack delay has an influence, but the two main factors are that’s melee and slow.
Yet you still can get value by forcing the opponent to abandon his camps, so it’s not entirely necessary to inflict direct damage to the villagers.

Ofc we can discuss about if it could be an idea to reduce the delay so you can snipe the foundations - but as I said in a different topic especially against MAA it’s often the only way to defend with walls (and japanese maa already can outdamage a palisade builder). So i rather prefer to keep that interaction as it is and look for different tweaks.

[ter]

Thank you for your reply.

I am not quite sure the melee attack delay is designed for avoiding building foundation snipping. According to the wiki page I shared above, the damage of the attack is actually happening at the middle of the attack animation, that’s why even if we shorten the attack delay, there should still be enough time for the building foundation to survive.

I would guess the attack delay mainly is used for simulating how a melee unit should fight and sync with the behavior of a ranged attack animation which needs to “charge” to throw a projectile. Turns out the byproduct of the melee attack delay makes a melee unit being let behind a distance while making an attack while chasing a unit which is moving away from it. This distance determined the dynamic on how every fight/engagement would happen in AOE2 during these 20 years.

Even if shortening the attack delay would make the Militia-line easier to snipe the opponent’s building foundation, I don’t think it would be an issue. It can be a nice-to-have ability of Militia-line units and it matched the aesthetic of an aglie sword swinging. It may turn out being another micro technique for Militia-line units to deny the opponent’s quick wall/house and reinforced its anti-building identity. Some legendary moments could happen like an attack ground mangonel hit destroyed a castle foundation. Anyway, I don’t think snipping foundation would be the main focus of the idea behind my suggestion.

Most importantly, the distance being pulled away between each melee attack could significantly increase the melee unit damage output while chasing. An archer that is hitting-and-running needs to stop, throw a projectile, finish an attack and start running again. This idle time would let the melee unit getting closing again. If this distance being pulled away is shorter after each melee attacks, the melee unit must suffer less number of attacks from the archer between each of its melee attacks while chasing.