So I have thought about this for a while now and it makes increasing sense to me: The champion should be a more powerful but more exclusive upgrade. Higher stats than it has now, but, only available to civs that actually specialize in infantry. It should essentially be the “paladin of the barracks”, powerful and costly but not everyone gets access to it.
In its current state it just feels like an unnecessary extra step to gain access to a common unit. It is just bloat. No other unit in the game has FIVE stages. Why is this necessary? Make the champion upgrade actually meaningful by making it a part of certain faction’s identity and strengths. This way we would also see the two-handed swordsman for more than 40 seconds at a time, instead of it just being a stepping-stone.
One way it could really stand out is by having trample damage. Age of Empires games generally like to give this to units with greatswords or similar weapons, so it would make sense and be consistent. But just a good set of stats that actually make it viable as your main go-to unit would also be fine.
The champion is pretty important to a wide swath of civs. Malians, Aztecs, Slavs, Japanese, and almost any civ labeled Infantry. That, and any time you need to murder shock unit civs champions are the way to go!
Not having champions is why Mayans fold so hard if they let Gothy McGothface get some Huskarls going
Let’s cut through the fat of it all: either list the civs that should keep or the civs that should lose, whichever is shorter. You’d b surprised to realize a Frank might use swords vs an eagle focus civ either way
My thoughts: there is a large swath of civs that probably wouldn’t use champions but having them is never a bad thing for defenses. I’d say some non infantry civs could do with just for variety
I’m really curious how did you come with this conclusion when all the units that have trample damage without researching a tech are either elephants or rams or an infantry with an execution weapon.
It’s stated in the original post: Because the franchise as a whole tends to treat greatswords that way. But as I also stated, that is just one option and I would be more than happy with just a strong set of stats.
I imagine the civs that would keep it would be something like: Armenians, Aztec, Celts, Dravidians, Goths, Japanese, Malians, Slavs, Teutons and Vikings. But this is JUST A DRAFT and could easily change. I just like the general idea of it being more exclusive.
I don’t think either of those options is necessary. Just simply make it stronger, so it can actually stand on its own two feet as your main gold unit (if you are an infantry civ) and not just be something you occasionally make in a trash war.
Make the whole militia-line have a “Champion ability” instead of the Champion unit. So after a certain number of kills, a unit upgrades to a superior version. Spit-balling, say, 5 kills upgrades the unit to one with +2 attack and +10 HP.
Make a percentage of the trained militia-line units be the Champion unit. Perhaps this requires its own upgrade, and perhaps different civilizations get a bonus to the ratio.
Both ideas would, of course, need adjustments to the units themselves. But the hope is that it increases the mid-Elo (900-1600) skill cap for them.
But yes, I do agree that THS is basically just an extra upgrade between MAA and Champion. So how much better would it be if there was only one useless upgrade instead of two? Chronicles had a good idea in that they moved THS or champion into a separate tech that was independent of the other upgrade.
It is very hard to balance a generalist unit. Just look at skirmishers, or the myriad of other generalist units.
The weak link in the militia line is the longswordsman. It’s such a bad unit in castle age that you must build your economy to producing a different unit. But after that, if champion were strong enough to be worth switching to, it would be straight up cracked. Buff longswordsman and Champion and Two-Handed-Swordsman will see more play.
I think that’s too complicated a solution tbh and moves too far from the classic implementation. I think a simple change in stats and availability is a more realistic solution.
For Champion, just like Paladin upgrade offers more than just HP and Attack (Paladin upgrade provides 1 PA) and even Imp Camel upgrade provides more than just HP and Attack (Imp Camel upgrade reduces training time by 2 seconds), Champion upgrade should also give something more than HP and Attack.
I remember suggesting the Two-Handed Swordsman upgrade become free upon reaching Imperial, but that suggestion wasn’t popular. Another suggestion was making the whole line either faster or more resistant to arrows (because it never made sense to me for them to be both slow and weak to arrows, especially if the justification for the slowness is the heavy armoring).