The tech is great for the most part. However, it has tbe following cons:
It is locked behind Supplies.
Many civs lack it.
However, if I were to add the same Gambesons and make infantry changes, I would do the following:
Gambesons (75F 75G, same time same effect) - Feudal Age - available for most civs (because why not)
Supplies (100F 100G, same time same effect) - Castle Age - available to many civs
Squires (cost, time, effect same) - Feudal Age - available to same civs as current
What does this achieve? Firstly, all of this only changes the Feudal Age since everything is same in Castle Age in the ballpark except availability of techs to different civs.
In Feudal Age, your Man-at-Arms which you created in Dark Age aren’t useless with Supplies (the tech does not work retroactively), but you can get Gambesons or Squires to raid better. In late Feudal Age, both techs will be researched, and you will suddenly see Man-at-Arms achieving something since they don’t die hard to archers anymore. More importantly you can counter Bloodlines with Squires on your Spearmen.
For some specific civs:
Slavs - drush/Man-at-Arms rush will be great due to free Gambesons, just like the Malians
Celts - nerfed indirectly since Squires is available in Feudal Age, eh
Dravidians - probably too strong with their Man-at-Arms. Top civ to be afraid of.
Japanese - already best infantry in melee combat, will become better against archers and raiding
Men at arms is already the most powerful opening and the one that is overall hardest to stop (especially in low elo). With this in mind why would we buff it even more?
Especially given how the strat is always MAA → Archers, so opponent often goes 1-2 archers into Skirms or straight Skirms. Might as well make MAA immune to arrows and an autowin unit, in general I am not sure why many low elo players are such big fans of infantry when archers and knights both take far more skill to play (especially archers).
Yes, but gambesons won’t be free. No need to feel hysterical, in the end is gambesons just what Malians get for free. You really must differentiate between MAA rush and mid-feudal MAA as ramp to upgrade them into Longswords. The mysery of longswords begins in feudal, when MAA are absolutely wasted versus a single archer.
What does token-like mean? 100f, 100g, that is a lot to invest into your MAA. That is double as much as the first armour, and even that is not researched immediately despite affecting many more units than just one.
almost like it’s intended? Archers are the counter to MAA opening. If you found 0 damage by the time the opponent has archers out, it’s a l2p issue.
IMO, all the barrack techs should be ready to tech into in Feudal Age, without behind any pre-tech; in this way the player pick the best combination affordable according to his/her strategy
You can adjust the time or the cost if a tech becomes OP (either way you will rather pick the armor in the BS first than Gambesons anytime)
Gambesons is the counter technique to crossbow and elite skrim upgrade, every unit needs a counter, Squires and Gambesons in feudal times would make an all in m@arms unstoppable, also because archers are built very slowly.
Unstoppable? Seems exagerate
My experience ad middle elo Malian player teaches that +1PA can give more chances to resist archers’ fire, but only if the opponent has very few of them. It’s not game changing. As long as opponent has even 3-4 archers, even Malian M@A with Scale Mail Armor have to retreat. Or die tryng to arrass villagers.
Archers are build slower? Well it’s useless to have a fast training rate for M@A if you have not a food economy to sustain it: if u add too much M@A in feudal, forget aging up…and you could end with your army obliterated by a lower number of archers anyway…
I agree that gambeson should be a sort of counterweight to Xbows and elite skirms, so I would keep it in castle age.
Maybe I would increase the PA granted by Scale Mail Armor to +2, and decrease the Plate Mail Armor to +1
IMO it wouldn’t be unstoppable, just competitive.
Consider that Squires has 100 food cost. Blacksmith upgrades cost food, and M@A production too.
It’s quite hard to keep a constant M@A production in feudal age without affecting your castle age time.
More plausible in researching Squires while you are aging up with a bunch of M@A, using them to keep the enemy away from your base.
If you are able to assemble a strong infantry army in late feudal and keep a castle age time under 21 min please show me how!
