Teutons - Crenellations should let Teutonic Knights build Towers

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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A few points to recognize before starting.

  1. Teutons are generally balanced at the moment, so we don’t want to buff them much, if at all.
  2. On the flipside, Teutonic Knights, even with buffs over the past few years, remain one of the worst UUs in the game.

These two things in mind, it would be neat to see the TK get a buff that doesn’t dramatically change the civ as a whole, but gives TKs a bit more of a niche.

The big problem with TKs is that they’re a reactionary unit, but which are too slow to actually react. What do I mean by this?

You mainly build infantry to counteract counter-units. IE, if you have cavalry and they build halbs, you can build infantry to counter them. If you have archers and they build skirms, you can build infantry to counter them. In very few cases do you want to build infantry first, since the point of infantry is making their counter-unit investment worthless, and forcing them into a more expensive unit. If you lead off with infantry, they just build the more expensive unit to start with, and you’ve cost them nothing.

Of course, there are a few civs where this isn’t the case, but they’re the exception, not the rule, and Teutons are not one of them.

Anyway, that being the case, Teutons have a choice between their powerful Champions, or Teutonic Knights. The biggest trouble with Teutonic Knights is that, even with their better speed, they’re still slow; too slow to engage, and too slow to run away. If they get attacked by any type of archer, while Champions can run, TKs will just die. Champions can force engagements, to a certain extent; TKs cannot. This means that TKs are a much more risky investment, and outside of a very small number of niche cases, they’re not generally worthwhile.

So, how can you make them worthwhile? Increasing their speed isn’t on the table; any faster and they’ll be just as fast as champions. Increasing their pierce armor isn’t an option; make them invulnerable to archers and nothing will be able to kill them!

To figure out what their niche should be, I turned to their Tech Tree, specifically their bonuses, and the following bonuses caught my eye:

• Towers garrison 2x units
• Murder Holes, Herbal Medicine free
• Crenellations (+3 range Castles, garrisoned infantry fire arrows)
• Town Center garrison +10

Why do they have these bonuses? You might think it’s for base defense, but they also have +10 town center garrison capacity, meaning there are no cases where you have too many villagers to all garrison. This leaves offense, but when do you see offensive towers? In feudal age, maybe, but other than that, never.

Which finally brings me to the idea!

Crenellations should let Teutonic Knights build Towers.

What gameplay would this create? Well, Teutonic Knights big weakness is being chased down and sniped by archers, right? Wrong. They build a tower, and now not only can they garrison their entire army inside, they can heal 6x faster, AND they can fire arrows at the same time. Players would have a new incentive to include even just a few TKs in an army - which is exactly what you want! A few of them mixed in to boost the diversity and durability of an attacking force.

One might say this bonus is too similar to the Serjeant, but there are many cases of a unit from one civ doing a weaker version of something another civ can do, and this bonus would have nowhere near the raw power of a Donjon.

I think this bonus would help make TKs more generally useful without making Teutons overpowered, and would be a neat way to evolve these really cool looking units.

Thoughts?

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I think this is a bad idea because it causes overlap with sicilians, and the two civs already heavily overlap

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Why is increasing pierce armor not an option? I’d go that road, a gradual increase until the unit becomes viable. It doesn’t have to be a Huskarl-level of PA, but a bit more to cover the lack of speed might be justifiable.
Make it so that the opponent actually has to use hit+run; currently the unit has trouble to even close the initial distance before dying.
I’d balance it so that TK dies hard only against hand cannon and cav archers, but not necessarily against ordinary crossbow/arbalest.
Overlap with Serjeant is apparent though… we just have too many civs in the game. :wink:

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Another horrible idea to ruin a classic civi.

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I still find it weird how people consider this overlap. They share one trait. One.

So that means almost all cav UU overlap.

Almost all infantry UU overlap

Ghulam should be removed, it overlaps more with eagles than serjeants do with TK

Do they though? Sicilians hard counter is actually strong melee civs(proven statistically) The serjeant per cost is better Vs ranged units than it is Vs melee units. It is actually a poor melee fighter for its cost.

Sicilians have a completely viable ARB line, that in itself makes them very different to a melee only civ

Sicilian siege is mediocre at best. Teutons have amazing siege.

Teuton eco is specifically at its best earlier in the game, sicilians (paraphrasing you) only really comes in (mid?) castle age.

People seem to look for similarities and then call the civs overlapping. When there’s more overlap in more cases elsewhere.

Overlap: serjeants have high MA, farm eco is cheaper (late in the game) “towers” garrison more.

Heck that’s not much overlap in any one’s book

I would bet big money you could change elite TK PA from 2 to 3 and the unit would still be balanced. It’s slow speed would allow arbs to still kill it with micro. Nevermind CA/HC

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Both have slow heavily armored infantry uu.
Both are cav/infantry focused.
Both have farm bonuses focused on making farms more wood efficient.
Both are focused on units having more survival over outright damage.

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Which fill two VERY different roles. LB, plumes, rattans have more overlap than serjeants and TK

Basically almost every cav civ in the game, except Sicilians have arbs

Mayans, Aztecs, Vikings, Britons, mongrels, Tatars etc all have harvesting bonuses??

Burmese, Celts, Vikings, Burgundians, Turks, etc etc etc all have eco bonuses

Britons, eth, mongrels, Tatars, Burmese, bohemians, burgundians, Spanish etc all have damage bonuses

Burgundians, Vikings, burmese, bohemians etc all have tech discounts

We can literally categorise anything we want to as long as we’re looking for it with confirmation bias

I already explained how different the civs are, just because there’s overlap depending on how you categorise, doesn’t mean the civs even play the same

We need absolutely nothing except Sicilians are countered by melee civs, teutons counter melee civs.

Even if we ignore every other difference, this is enough to make them 2 different civs.

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How many civs overlap with the same civ in so many ways?

Are they obviously different civs? Yes
But there are too many similarities to add yet more similarities

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My thoughts is that your suggestion is not in the right place and nor Teutons or their UU need a buff.

Many greetings

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I’m not against giving old civilizations new things, but I don’t like the idea. Please try to use new concepts.

If I had to emulate an existing concept, I would prefer Konniks to Serjeants. Gives TKs a preset mounted mode that is fast but very weak and very easy to kill, and turns into a classic tough but slow foot mode after being killed. This helps them get to the battlefield faster and get closer to the enemy, but without losing the disadvantage of being difficult to fight against ranged units.

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The main point is to accentuate their existing bonuses and improve the UU, without massively buffing the civ as a whole. Adding something entirely new would not really achieve that goal, and at the same time change a unit that’s fairly iconic, so not an ideal change.

This change would be relatively minor, but would perfectly synergize with their bonuses and the unit’s existing strengths and weaknesses.

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and how does allowing their UU to build towers really help? come on now, how often are people ACTUALLY building towers in aoe2?

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To a degree, it may help with building bombard towers in key situations, and rather than waiting and protecting villagers to do it, the tk’s could do it themselves with relative ease.

At least in offensive scenarios rather than defensive

I think the larger bonus would be for Teutonic Knights to build Town Centers and Towers, or just town centers.

Essentially being able to field their own healing and arrow station in key positions, which, alongside a 3 range buff when researching the unique imp tech, would have great utility.

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I don’t think the cavalry mode is necessary, but in fact, your idea gave TK far more power than mine.
With towers, ranged units would no longer effectively counter them.

Technically, these are two different units, just as Konniks and dismounted Konniks. I only introduce a preset cavalry mode with very weak stats, the infantry mode itself is still classic and not changed at all.
Honestly I think giving them the ability to build something is the real change to this fairly iconic unit.

Not practical at all.
Even worse idea than being able to build towers.

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What an interesting and novel idea…If only there were someone to advocate strongly for such an idea, perhaps even make a number of threads advocating for adjacent ideas…use of these abilities could even be developed into a tactical package with a slick name…something like
“The Rhenish Redoubt of Restoration,” or perhaps “The Swabian Salubrious Stronghold, The Hochdeutsch House of Healthfulness, The Thuringian Towers of Treatment, The Prussian Patch-Up Pavillion, or The Germanic Garrison of Gesundheit”.

If only.

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Not often at present, but a large part of that is because it requires the sacrifice of villagers, and their weakness in later ages makes their survival very unlikely.

Teutonic Knights don’t have either of those weaknesses. I wouldn’t expect it to happen all the time, but it would be a neat and useful trick to have in the back pocket, and would make investment into TKs less risky.

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That’s only partially true. A tower is a big investment, one that couldn’t be used willy-nilly. Used properly it could be advantageous, but it could also be a negative if used poorly; by contrast, making them mounted is a pure buff.

Further, it synergizes their unique unit with their civ’s trend of area denial and control, which is the alternative to moving faster. If the Teutons could be described as anything, it would be ‘slow’, and I wouldn’t want to take that away from them.

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The player’s operation does not affect the balance discussion, otherwise any OP civilization can lose to a weaker civilization due to the poor use.

It is undeniable that getting the ability to build is a net buff too. It’s like making Serjeant unable to build Donjon is a net nerf. You gave TK a move that is effective against ranged units, which has essentially changed TK’s balance. I don’t want to see such a UU that already kills the vast majority of melee units effectively, and then even has the opportunity to kill ranged units in such an efficient way with towers.

Any mounted unit of the Teutons, including TKs’ cavalry mode, still lacks Husbandry so actually the identity of slowness is still maintained.

You can imagine that the stats of the cavalry mode is almost as bad as that of the LC or even that of the SC, while the speed is not faster than that of the knight. It really just means they have a chance to move from the Castles to the front line faster. Once on the front line, it quickly turns into the classic infantry due to the ease with which it can be killed, including by archers, therefore, the cavalry mode has almost no impact on combat balance.

In any case, I have little enthusiasm for changing the Teutons. No cavalry mode is fine too. To this day, I’m still very grateful to the dev for the idea of extra armor that saved this once-meme-like tower civilization, subtly putting them in a very good balance.

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Bavarian Bonesetting Bastion?
Alemannic Amelioration Alcazar?
Lower Lorrainian Leechcraft Lounge?

On topic, if Serjeants didn’t exist, I’d probably be all for this. As it is, I’d rather that the Serjeant’s unique feature remains unique (and probably should be buffed). Also, this would give Crenellations three effects, which seems a bit much. If think if a technology needs three effects, either those effects are too weak, or it’s covering for a design problem elsewhere.

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That’s not strictly true. If you were to give a unit extra health or armor, there is no way to use that in such a way that the player hurts themselves. The worst case is no worse than it was before the change.

This change, by contrast, requires a skilled Tactical mind. Using Stone incorrectly can be a game making or game breaking decision.

It’s interesting you should say this, because personally, it seems to me that giving them the ability to be mounted makes them dramatically more effective against ranged units, far more so than giving them the ability to build towers.

You have to remember, the objective here is not just to fix them, but to fix them with the minimum of changes while synergizing with the rest of the civilization. Making them mounted not only doesn’t synergize, it actively goes against their concept as an infantry civilization. By contrast, giving them the tower bonus does not change their focus as a tower civilization, and also synergizes with a large number of their existing bonuses.

1 Like