[Suggestion/Discussion] Balancing utility of militia line

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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There is disparity in the utility of gold units. Militia line seeing less use in general. Because they don’t add much value to an army composition.

Primarily because some trash units provide a lot of utility or value in comparison.

Skirmishes counter both ‘all types of ranged units’ and also the most common infantry unit. This is too much utility without gold cost.

Suggestion-
Remove bonus against spearman line from archers and skirmishers.
Add an imperial tech in archery range to give +2/+3 damage against spearman line to archers and skirmishers.
Decrease base damage of spearman line by 1. Increase building bonus damage by 1 to compensate. Remove bonus against eagle warrior.
For militia line add 2 bonus damage against new scout tag. Which includes eagle , hussar line and maybe camel scout/camel.
Edit - this was not intended to be in place of the existing eagle bonus damage. Which could be adjusted accordingly.

What do you guys thinks about these changes? How will it affect the army compositions in game and use rate of different units.
Which civ should not get access to the new imperial age archery range tech?

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So you nerf archers/skirms vs spears for no obvious reason
Then you go ahead to nerf spearmen for no reason at all and make a unit, which is in a very good spot worse overall (if you want to nerf them, the only think to possibly talk about imo would be reducing their damage vs elephants a tiny bit)
Then you nerf militia line vs Eagles, even though you wanted to buff that unit line.
Than finally you give them a small bonus vs Scout line, which they do fine against anyway.

So overall you’re proposing a lot if useless changes, which make some units (especially spearmen) worse for ne reason and don’t even achieve the goal you were aiming for, because you actually reduce the utility of militia line (is not a hard counter vs eagles anymore) and instead give them a random bonus vs scout line.

Just proposing +2 damage vs scouts would be a way better suggestion.

6 Likes
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Archers and skirmishers are nerfed against spears to promote use of maa against spears. In more numbers archers will still counter spears. After the tech in late game skirmishers will regain their counter to spears.

The 1 less base damage will not affect the main utility of spears against cav. It is to balance them after the buff above- receiving less bonus damage.

Maa are supposed to be same against eagles. The addition was for scout and/or camel line. To give them more efficiency in certain unit compositions.

Currently they are not good in any role. Outclassed by archers against other infantry, skirms against pike. Very inferior to pike against all cav. They need a role in army, instead of a generic buff like cheaper or more Armor or speed.

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Except you nerf knight/skirm in castle age against xbow pike, giving archer players a significant advantage as knights dont have a solid counter to spears that is gold free anymore.

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Among all desperate attempts to “balance” the Militia-line, yours seems the most reasonable.

The Militia-line will NEVER be balanced, at least not as Xbows or Knights, as long as this game involves:

  1. Micro - which mostly playable with mobile units and ranged units
  2. Warfare mechanism in AOE II, ranged units benefit from mass so heavily.

These two components are fundamental, these what makes the game so lovely and unique comparing to other RTS games, however what also make Longswords an impossible unit to fully utilize.

In order to make the Militia-line fully viable at all stages of the game (just like Archers) we’d have to completely rework the game, which nobody would want. Unlike many over-engineered RTS games where there is a very simplistic RPS mechanism (rock papaer scissors, in AOE II it’s much different and more complicated. We dont want to over-rational the game with cheap mechanisms. The current state is quite impressive, as if it was evolved organically.

You cant do that, impossible to be integrated, Why? because spearman line units are faster than Archer/Skirm line units at all stages of the game, they can easily overwhelm them, meta would just be mass Spearman line, even in Feudal Age. Good luck countering them with even slower Militia-line.

I admire this kind of idea, honestly, but since the damage vs. Spearman line is essential we cant play with these numbers.

I like this one. They’ll still be OP regardless. Unless you make it -2 damage rather than -1. Which will result an unit with just 1 damage, which is not too intuitive.

Now you’re talking, I’ve heard this suggestion before, it makes sense, Champions deserve to be more efficient vs. Hussars. (Not sure about camels, but yeah why not)
Most importantly, it doesnt pretend to make the Militia-line a gold unit powerhouse like Xbows/Knight, it accepts the raw asymmetric form of AOE II, with the understandment that not all units have the same relevancy at all stages of the game.

Yes for buffing Champions.

3 Likes
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The idea has been around for at least 2 years.

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Champion line getting a buff vs all mounted units would be nice.

Then if they were made stronger vs cav they might need a trash counter which would be the skirm in the form of a small damage bonus vs swordsman.

Pikeman = hard counter cav
Swordsman = soft counter cav
Archer = hard counter swordsman
Skirm = soft counter swordsman

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You mean the unit that attacks once every 3 seconds against a unit which has 5 pa? Yeah. Really good trash counter there.

Besides, militia is supposed to be good vs trash.

I support giving them bonus vs scouts. But vs cav in general? No ty

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Tbf if you read his post properly and try to understand it from his point you would’ve realised what he meant.it was pretty obvious even before the edit

I take this as another one of the internet seeing someone else’s view and starting from the point that “they are wrong,I must correct them”

This is true. But then this also applies to the scout line. It is actually only the pike line that is so pigeonholed.

I would only do this, it never made sense to me that pikes are so hard countered by archers. Leave skirms as is for now. Or maybe reduce the bonus but not actually remove it. Trash has always been a rock paper scissors thing and it makes sense why

I don’t think this makes much difference at all. If anything eagles aren’t meant to fight infantry anyway, they already counter so much and the spear line has such low dps, I think it’s fine leaving the bonus

Due to their bad ROF their dps is very low. I don’t think this is necessary either

As mentioned when this suggestion has been made previously, I don’t think the champs should do the same massive bonus damage to scout line, so give scouts bonus to their scout armour class (like armoured elephants have bonus elephant armour class)

With their atrocious dps? And the amount of raw damage they? Why aren’t archers overwhelmed by Celt MAA? More expensive but much stronger

Not necessarily. Tweaking numbers can still work. Changing food to gold ratio while buffing their late game stats to compensate is arguably enough.

They’re too food intensive to use in mass early enough. As is proven by their use in the late game when food is more viable, yet the same counters exist. Even more so with siege and CA

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Militia is balanced. You people dont have success with it because you dont commit to it. If you buff it more then eagles will be useless. Alot of strats fail in this game because of a lack of commitment

I recently beat a mayan player with seige ram champ and skirm push as spanish. Full commitment

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Yes. Absolutely agree.

BUT I don’t think it’s a bad thing for the militia line actually. Because they actually SEE use we know that they do it despite not adding someting to the comp.

They add utility and they are very gold efficient. Meaning they are ideal for long-lasting games. Even if you lose a lot of them you still can win cause the opponent might just run out of gold at some point.
The opponent is basically forced to play gold units against militia.

So Militia has it’s utility. It doesn’t has a trash “partner” that covers the weaknesses.
BUT I would also be careful with adding one cause of the low gold cost of militia there is a risk involved of making the com totally OP in the lategame.

In a previous thread of me I posted one Idea how I think there could be a Trash unit designed to synergize with the militia line, the Shieldman.

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They are. One of the main reason Hoang push was so successfull is the fact Militia maintained their relevancy and pressure even in vs. Feudal Army.

Agreed.

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I would simply add the scout armor class for Eagles and scout and use that bonus

I have also proposed a bonus vs villager to give them a possibility of damaging eco of the opponent trough sheer brute force over knights mobility and Archer ranged attacks

Other things i would like to see are faster and cheaper upgrades for militia line (especially THS and Champion) to make it easier to switch into since atm it requires almost as much time and resources as getting a paladin

1 Like
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This isn’t their problem, they already trade well against those units. Its their speed and the vulnerability to archer-line which makes them unusable after a few archers are out.

Could be interesting to see how these alter the castle age meta. But these 3 changes have nothing to do with militia-line balancing.

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You probably are more experienced than me. That is why we need a discussion.
Currently against xbow pike going full skirms is a significant advantage without gold cost. And adding few knights to raid.
With these changes you can still counter the archers with skirms. The pike can’t do much damage to anything other than cav. And after dealing with archers the pikes can still be sniped with skirms. Hitting an enemy base after Archer critical mass is depleted or not massed yet, LS complement knights better with better countering pikes and being good against buildings.
What can be done is- to still give skirms +1 bonus against pikes instead of +3. 50%dps increase instead of 150%. While keeping the spear line base damage nerf of 1 less base damage. So they can’t counter ranged units with their hp and movement speed. And do even worse against all infantry.
How the compositions may change- xbow pike will need huss/LS for enemy skirms. Knight skirm will need LS against enemy pike/camel.
What do you think?

As militia line is slower, it seems intuitive for them to have some advantage when they actually get to fight against mobile units. But imo they should not get bonus vs knights or other heavy cav.
There are gold units, trash units and then a very less gold cost hybrid unit- militia line. The gold units have good dps but get countered by a specific trash counter unit, which is only effective against them. The hybrid unit counters all trash but should in turn get defeated by all gold units. So militia line losing to both archers and knights is fine.

With making them more effecient against light cav and camel, they get more use in some matchups as a versatile alternative to pike.
When having a match against a civ without knights. Or a civ with militia line buff against a civ with bad knights. Long swordsman + light cav as trash support can be a good combo.

These changes are not focused on champs. The imperial age status quo will remain same after the tech restoring the current bonus damage against pike for Archer skirm. These changes are intended to bring more utility/purpose to the unit in early ages. Eg Archer scout cav and maa skirm armies in feudal age. With maa being preferred over spears to protect skirms from enemy mele, and being useful for pushing also.

LS can complement knight civs as a versatile anti-anti cav. In many matchups where camel over shadow knight civs. Being soft counter to light cav and camel doesn’t cut it.

There are other possible changes related to scorpion or balancing elephants which could be tuned depending on what effect above changes have to meta if implemented.

Those changes are specifically intended to make maa or long swordsman best at their job- anti infantry(read spear/pike). Mass of archers still better. But the former are not vulnerable to any trash.
This can never be real till skirms remain a cheap counter to multiple common units.

1 Like
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Ls dont complement knights at all, first off youre talking two gold units, secondly, ls are food intensive. Thirdly the ls sill just get picked off by archers befoee they can do anything.

And mass skirm isnt really rhe counter to archer + pike.

I think the idea is not very good at all

Currently archers + pike is a go to comp that cav players counter with knight + skirm. Both have trash units that complement them and help shore up weak points.

With your change cav players get shafted

Serious question for you. If skirms are so strong, why aren’t mass skirm plays meta?