To make the militia line more interesting. Two units are upgraded by the same unit upgrade and techs, etc. Sword And Shield Militia, and Two Handed Swordsmen Militia. The Two Handed Swordsmen Militia, cost only food.
The stats overall the same to degree, same HP and attack, and cost. But there some quirky things.
Sword And Shield Militia, have 6 base pierce armor, they well armored against archers and towers. (stats can be adjusted per age) Function as a much slower huskarl, but they have a crippling weakness. Two Handed Swordsmen Militia gain plus 10 bonus damage against them.
Two Handed Swordsmen Militia. Do plus 10 vs Sword And Shield Militia and plus 5 vs cavalry. But have 0 pierce armor and 10 less HP. Giving them a crippling weakness to archers.
The Two Handed Swordsmen should demolish the Sword And Shield Militia, while Sword And Shield Militia should be effective against towers and archers.
Funny Iâd go a completely opposite direction if introducing a new melee gold line was possible.
Basically give everyone Kamayuk so we can have proper pike-and-shot warfare.
Give the âKamayukâ such beefy stats they need a dedicated counter (for civs that canât counter them with ranged units).
Then champions can be the pike-square-breakers.
This sounds like the AoE4 Landeknechts which no, ew. If they were split the Champion should become a powerful heavy infantry that could actually fill the role of main units for infantry-centric civs, but in turn it shouldnât be available to everyone just as not everyone gets Paladin.
Yeah, spliting the Two Sword/Champion is a good idea, turning into a powerfull heavy infantry for infantry civs, making them a gold unit that devastate other infantry and itâs good against cavalry.
Then turn the sword and shield infantry into a very low gold cost that is a good all around unit.
remove The Two-Handed Swordsman upgrade for civilisations that have Champions;
move some unique infantry units as a unique upgrade instead of the Champions.
Another good idea they had in designing the Romans.
Because one point continues to be missed here. You can add as many units as you want, but if, for example, you play Vikings you want to make Berserkers in spite of the rest.
In the pre release version of AoE2 the two unit lines were split.
They both started in Castle Age while the Spearman Line started in Dark Age.
You can clearly see that the Man at Arms looks like a dismounted Knight while the Long Swordsman looks like a dismounted Cavalier.
I generally like the idea of having 1 Infantry that is cost effective vs. Knights and Crossbows in most situations and a 2nd Infantry that counters the 1st one.
Shield Swordsman could have like 3-4 base pierce armour (not even close to a Huskarl but enough to significantly reduce the damage from Archers.
With 2 base melee armour and ok stats they would be cost effective vs. Knights and Cavaliers but not Paladin.
The Two Handed Swordsman would have 0-1 pierce armour and the same 2 melee armour but to AoE damage. So they would effectively do a lot more damage to most units.
The Two Handed Swordsman would be a little faster so they can catch the Shield Swordsman or run away from Archers.
The alternative would be to just buff the Milita Line and then add an entirely new Infantry line that uses an Axe for example that counters the Milita Line.
That would be really cool too.
I generally like the idea of moving more UUs out of the Castle to make them easier to use.
Not just Infantry. Why to Britons have Crossbows when they should just have Long Bowman instead?
Especially AoK has a bunch of UUs that are pretty similar to generic units, and then on top of that the civs have bonuses that make the generic units even more similar to the UUs.
British Crossbows have more range, Celtic Swordsman have more speed, Teuton Swordsman have more melee armour, Viking Swordsman have more HP.
More recent civs often have UUs that compliment their regular units.
Ghulams, Composite Bowman, Chakram Thrower and Ratha are units that donât really have an equivalent in the techtree of the civilisations they belong to. Ratha fills the role of Knight and Cavalry Archer for a civ that has neither of those units for example.
I gave the example of the Vikings (or Norse / Norsemen while weâre at it) not by chance, it would be cool to have Berserkers instead of Champions, and the unique unit could easily be a kind of horseman with the typical Icelandic hors (and you might as well remove Cavalier).
But the problem is that afterwards you would find yourself with civilisations with 3 unique units in a game where many civilisations have only 1.
Edit.
Samurai should also be produced in the Barracks. This is because Japanese, Celts, Vikings prefer to go for the UU and not for the Champions if they have the chance.
It would be better to start with civs that only have 1 UU like the Persians did.
The Vikings have 2 but one is on water, so I kinda donât count that.
But I think the Viking UU is a little more unique with the regeneration then other UUs.
Throwing Axeman and Huskarl could be 2 candidates for Reginal units that are available to Vikings too.
Or maybe a Jarl? That has name recognition.
Some UUs like Teutonic Knight could not become a Milita replacement though since they should be more expensive and stronger.
Samuari could become a barracks units or be changed to become more unique. I like the idea of making them get -3 damage from Unique units making them better against ranged UUs in particular.
Jarl is a Scandinavian noble title. It would be like the Boyar for short, so in the context of the game it would be fine. Because even for the Norse, they were the ones mainly on horseback together with their escort. Obviously less armoured than the Boiards / Paladins / Savar.
This instead is a member of the bodyguard of the Scandinavian kings. Why it is the UU of the Goths I have no idea. But the Goths as well as the Celts do not really make sense tbh. The only thing I could find:
In the fifth Design Document of Ensemble Studios (dated 17 July 1998), the planned unique unit of the Goths is the Berserk, while the Vikings are planned to have the Longboat only. No characteristics are specified, but it is likely the early concept of the Berserk was split into the Berserk and the Huskarl.
There would be so many things that could be done to make some civilisations more interesting to play and more historically accurate. The two do not have to be at odds.
Edit.
The Teutonic Knight were the members of the Teutonic Order, so it makes sense that it is not the mass-produced unit of the Teudons.
You can leave the Samurai in the castle in that case. Someone had suggested (sorry, I donât remember the name) making the Samurai like the Ratha: archers when needed.
I think the Huskarl is very iconic in AoE2 now and even appears in AoM with the same role.
It will have to stay an anti archer unit and it will have to keep being available to the Goths.
But I think they could become a regional unit since they are already trained in the Barracks anyway.
The Saxons would be a prime candidate for a civ that could share this unit.
The Vikings theoretically too but they are already pretty strong and donât need another bonus tbh.
If they were an upgrade to the Milita Line then they would have to share the same costs and therefor be made weaker then they are now to be balanced.
This unit is to iconic to be changed in that way in my opinion.
The Long Bowman on the other hand costs almost the same as a Crossbow and could probably just replace it without changing the unit stats.
Someone? Ensemble Studios.
The Samurai was supposed to be able to transform into an Archer but this feature was strapped because they thought it was to annoying to use.
Now we have the Ratha and Immortal.
But there is one big issues with this concept. The unit needs both armour classes and therefor can be counted by both anti archer and anti infantry damage independent of mode.
The armour canât change between modes or else you could micro the unit to change right before they get hit by a projectile and then instantly switch back.
So Samurai would die to Skirmishers and probably have troubles dealing with Huskarls or Ghulams.
Skirmishers only do relatively little bonus damage vs. Archers (+3/+4/+5) while Huskarls do a lot (+6/+10) so the Ranged version would be way too resistant against Skirmishers while the melee version is still getting significant bonus damage from Huskarls.
Even the Japanese Cavalry Archers themselves do +2 vs Archer so it would nullify their own bonus ironically.
It can still be a worth while tradeoff.
One idea I have is to make Samurai receive +3 damage from Unique units, that would make them more resistant against ranged UUs in particular which would help the unit fulfil itâs role.
This idea could of course be combined with the transformation ability.
Or you give them extremely low archer damage without giving them the class. We already have War Wagons that are not siege weapons for reasons. Despite having bonus damage against buildings and a high pirce armour that makes them anti-archer CAs
The Immortal has this weakness and so itâs not like itâs unprecedented.
Just something to keep in mind.
If the ranged attack would be weak it would be kinda useless to have. It makes more sense to just buff the unit a little bit overall to make up for that weakness. The -3 attack from UUs would be a good compensation in my opinion.
Japanese have good Infantry and good Archers so you have a choice if you donât want this weakness.
What about making the samurai a cavalry unit that can switch to cavalry archer and when unhorsed fight again as infantry or archer? Basically a mix of a ratha and a konnik and the most versatile unit in game.
I donât think the Goths need yet another Infantry unit.
I think they need something to replace the Hand Cannon for them. The Hand Cannon is totally out of place (and no them turning into Spain 1000 years later is not an argument!) but they really need them for balance reasons.
I would suggest Mounted Slinger as a Goth UU. This would make sense historically since they were living in the Steppes and did started using horses a lot.
Are Danes supposed to be renamed Vikings or a new civ?
How would that unit be called in the German version of the game though?
Itâs literally just âknightâ.
This unit would need a transition animation though
It would look extremely silly if they instantly lose their horse
It would be hard to balance because of the different speeds between the units
If the unit can transition instantly then both versions would have to share armour classes which would be practically all armour classes at once
A unit with Cavalry, Archer, Cavalry Archer and Infantry armour class would practically take almost all bonus damage in the game.
You misunderstood, I meant that you train the samurai on horse and it can switch to horse archer like the ratha.
Then when itâs killed, like the konnik, it has a second life as an infantry unit that can switch to archer.
It canât switch from cavalry to infantry or foot archer.
Yes it has 4 armour classes but I think you can balance it accordingly, why not.
I disagree completely. The last thing they need is to become even MORE niche. Rather, they should be even more of a generalist. Let them build fortifications like palisades, and repair siege and ships.
