14 attack and faster movement speed. Might not seem like much but it could have wild implications.
For the sake of the argument let’s consider a generic Britons’ Champion vs a generic Spanish Hussar, halberdier, or elite skirmisher in a separate matchup. Factor in the now cheaper upgrade cost for the champion and the overall cheaper recruitment cost. Granted, they cost five food more without supplies, but at the same time that’s an unnecessary tech.
How much more effective would a generic champion be in pure trash wars? How would a more specialized champion do such as a Teutons (extra melee armor) or a Celts champion with faster movement speed? Japanese, and various other specialized infantry bonuses for certain civilizations.
Champions are indeed trashbusters and they eat through halbs & skirms, only hussars aren’t hopelessly outmatched. Having +1 attack may not change that much change much, need to do the math on that though.
But in practice trash wars are rare, the biggest question is how they do vs knights and xbows.
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But in practice trash wars are rare, the biggest question is how they do vs knights and xbows.
The changes seem to leave their actual performance in the mid game onwards the same, and focuses more on their early rush potential.
I’d expect the same performance vs paladins/arbs.
The issue is that at least in high elo (1k8 +) even in trash wars we usually see addition of either CA, Hand Cannon or a ranged UU that just makes it impposible to make low numbers of Champs work.
With this tendency, starting about like 2 years ago the traditional Impression of Champs being the king in Trash Wars isn’t viable anymore and it’s more a simple cause who has still access to gold and who don’t.
I think we need a new categorisation for these late-game scenarios.
With the upgcoming changes the raw performance of champs in this scenario won’t change much.
It’s one of the little figure-outs of the community that changed the lategame interactions forever. i don’t think this can ever be restored cause at it currently is these units just have increasingly more dps against champs than arbs according to the pierce armor they get and increaing the pierce armor will only lead to a disfavourable matchup against archer civs who don’t get FU CA or HC.
Imo it would be easier to rethink trash wars as they are currently (allowing to give one side gold income over map control) than trying to “fix” this. It would probably break way more than the rare case of trash wars in the current meta.