I don’t see the problem with it.
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Two issues when you raise with Viper:
- Most high-end games are for fun and will not be seen in any “serious” game
- Viper himself also likes weird stuff more than others
I think you likely have to pull someone that is slightly weaker (or tournament games) because of that
(E.g. Survivalist loves (loved) to pull siege towers, but I think we can get to consensus that siege towers are pretty weak itself)
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None of those suggestions will fix them where they are weakest, in the middle feudal age.
That’s the whole point of this thread.
The fact they move slower than archers at that stage in particular means they are hard countered by archers there, which means you get to castle age without any numbers and a large research debt, which is too expensive to recoup at high elos where every resource matters.
ANY change needs to primarily impact at high levels of skill. Food cost reductions, for example, hit equally at both skill levels, and if you make it strong enough to make them useful at high elos, it will be brokenly overpowered at low elos.
None of the ideas others have suggested will primarily impact at high elos. Rather, almost all of them make them easier to use primarily at lower elos, without even touching the problems which impact them at high elos. Which is, again, their complete lack of utility from middle feudal until castle age.
Much the contrary, only the highest level of player has the skill to find new things. Lower-level players tend to stick to rules and follow guides, they don’t have the intuition for the game that lets them adapt on the fly to unexpected results.
And while Celt infantry are decent, no other infantry in the game is. That means that players aren’t prepared to take advantage of the unexpected strength.
In fact, I would not be surprised if moving Squires to feudal actually HELPS celts overall. It will give players far more experience with how to properly use infantry in this timeframe, something celts can do even better and for free.
Yea but I won’t really take their occasional game as proof of concept
afaik the Celt metagame still (unfortunately or fortunately) revolute around Hoang style - and you can see actual Hoang style work in tournament games
But I don’t think it’s the case for infantries tho
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(To add content, my REAL answer would be infantry +30% hp in general while moving even slower than now. Obviously I don’t have anything to back my claim either, but I feel like infantry should be the meatshield of the army instead of knights)
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I would argue they are just as weak and rare in early Castle Age. When do you ever see Longswords in ranked games when opponent hits Castle Age?
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Never. Because, like I said in the OP, nobody ever has any left over from feudal age so it makes no sense.
The fact you never see them in castle age is a direct result of their weakness in feudal age, and why the answer must be in the feudal age.
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I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt like this would be the perfect solution. Now don’t get me wrong, increasing MAAs’ speed would be very useful, but it still wouldn’t solve every problem.
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One more problem is that swordsman lacks synergy to other units. We see Pikes+xbows, halbs+knight, archers+skirm, knight+skirm, knight+xbow, knight+monks, halbs+ siege, siege+monks, scout+skirm, scout+ archers, camels+archers, hussar+HCA etc.
But it seems that there is no generic good combo with swordsman-line. They arent as powerful as knight/xbow/ HCA/siege. They arent serving a role as pikes/ camels/ skirm/ monks. They arent as cheap as hussar.
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Well, they’re a generalist. They do many things SORTA well, which is why they’re very good at middle elos, but it also blocks the sort of synergies you’re talking about here, where you have two units that are each very strong in specific ways that synergize with each other’s weaknesses.
On the flipside, they have none of the really hard, cheap counters that most of those units have. Which is really their greatest strength, they can force a response, and when your enemy has to keep their army in one place, that gives you control. It’s not the sort of control you get via, say, skirms vs archers, but it forces their archers to respond nonetheless.
The problem is you can’t really do that before squires, as any number of archers can chase them down indefinitely and kill them.
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Great comparison and perfect example to make my case. Battering rams got free 15% speed buff sometime last year but are still unpopular for the same reason - potential value is too little compared to the cost. You’re not going to break buildings in an instant. Opponent is going to repair and use archers (mangonels in case of battering rams) to stop you.
Squires will let them run but you can’t force a fight or take out buildings with archers firing from behind. If you over-invest, opponent will get castle age, upgrade their army, counter attack and then its over.
By “lower” he means top-100 who are not top-20, not mid elo players. And his point is about ladder games at the top-20 level not being serious. Unless there’s qualification like redbull based on it, they don’t care about winning ladder games because it has no benefits. Their seeding in tournaments are done through ATP or previous results. So they just go random and try unusual things. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But when it comes to tournaments they don’t go about trying gimmick gameplays like longswords or fail and lose when they do so.
And while celt infantry are mediocre no one picks them in tournaments. One of the least picked civs in literally ALL the events. Their infantry moves faster than generic infantry with squires and player doesn’t even have to pay for it. Ladder celt wins are mostly through hoang rushes (market use into fc, no villager production afterwards, siege, a few knights, monks, pikes and repair vills) instead of militia-line play.
There’s actually an interesting similarity between Rams and Infantry; neither can outrun their counters.
It’s only natural that rams are unpopular when they must put themselves in danger, and once there, they can’t escape. It’s too risky most of the time, which is why the main way you see them used is in a very similar vein to how MAA rushes are used; as a suicidal tactic, not a long-term tactic.
That’s exactly what Feudal Squires would change. Infantry at that point can outrun what they can’t outfight, and outfight what they can’t outrun.
Like I said, the problem with Celts is not their infantry. Their infantry are fine, but you can’t play JUST infantry, and that’s where Celts tend to fall behind.
Celts likely need some other form of help, but frankly, given they’re currently above 50% WR at every tier except the top <1%, that’s probably not terribly likely.
Anyway, Celts are actually very good, and they get better at the top 1%(other than the top 0.1%); if anything, that supports this suggestion.
The point of early castle age Longswords is they are supposed to be a hidden surprise attack. It should be a tech switch you build up secretly on the way up to Castle Age. Ok, let’s say they give you the feudal buff you wanted with early Squires and you already have a load of man-at-arms out on the field, then there will be no element of surprise if you transition into castle age Longswords, since the opponent will see how much you’ve invested into man-at-arms numbers + upgrades. Opponent will just go crossbow and easily destroy your Longswords and Squires won’t make much difference. Whereas if you open with feudal archers or scouts vs. say, a meso opponent who is opening with his own feudal archers, his plan will often be to transition into massing eagles + siege or monks in early castle age. If you keep your barracks and upgrades hidden inside your base in feudal and he’s only seen your stable or range, the Longswords should theoretically be much harder for him to defend because it will unexpectedly take him off-guard. Which is why a castle age buff to infantry is just as (if not more) important than in feudal age.
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The militia line could have more the role of a cheap unit. Change the order of Gambesons and Supplies, and make supplies more effective. The option of more pierce armor in feudal age would be a good option but not too overpowered, while Supplies is not that effective in feudal age now, because you pay to pay less, what only is good in the long run. But In castle age much cheaper Infantry could work. In the very late game it would again be not as important anymore because population effectivness becomes more important than cost effectivness, and gold becomes the major problem about costs. Supplies could be -25 or -30 food cost, available in castle age.
Like many ppl suggested, moving squares to feudal age would be worth trying.
Also, gambesons should be independent of supplies and could provide more HP aswell.
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That was the intuition behind the ram speed buff as well but failed to achieve it. Just to refresh your memory, ram’s speed was improved by 20% from 0.5 to 0.6 a year ago. Yet they are still niche. In a regular game, they have to be stationary to do damage and if they have to move, you’re getting no value. Unlike cavalry or other mobile units you can’t get out of the archer los, circle around and deal damage elsewhere while ranged units are out of position.
You can just play ranged units get bodkin, ballistics, thumb ring and do damage, you can just play cavalry do bloodlines, husbandry, +2 armor and do lots of damage but you can’t play just infantry even if you get half a dozen upgrades which is the problem. When you invest thousands of resources into a unit line, but still need to switch into something else without getting enough value, that’s a HUGE problem. Quoting you from the previous message “Players arent prepared to take advantage of the unexpected strength”. There is no strength if the game is played the way it is right now with walls and market usage.
Again that’s got nothing to do with this post which is about maa and longswords, faster movement speed from feudal age.Celt winrate stats is mostly just Hoang rush.
In your original post you’ve already established that dark age militia and imperial age champions are fine and the weakness and your solution is just about feudal and castle ages. Should your idea about squires , this game play should have been a good strategy and used in tournaments often. Zero times used in Shenaixie which is Arabia based or warlords 3 chaotic maps where the lead could be snowballed easily.
Ok then when do you ever see longswords from CELTS after opponent hits castle age.
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That’s only true now. It’s true, your enemy can ‘just’ go for archers to counter you; but if they do, they’re forced to play completely defensively. If you move your archers forward, they can hit you from the back. If you keep part of your archers behind to counter them, it renders your attack far weaker.
The only point I’ll agree with you on is the implicit conclusion that they wouldn’t be overpowered. But I’d argue that’s absolutely fine and intentional. They should be balanced, not OP.
You could be right that they may need additional help in the castle age afterwards, but squires needs to go to feudal first, so we can see what actually happens when you can smoothly transition your infantry through the ages.
The militia line is already exceedingly cheap. Make them cheaper and they’ll be OP at low ELOs without being better at high ELOs.
At the very least, it needs to happen first. I’m not saying that nothing else is needed, but this is the clear first step.
Because, as I pointed out, it doesn’t allow it to outrun its counters, like squires will for infantry.
Like I said, several times from top players like Viper. Most lower-elo players lack the adaptability to adjust their playstyle when it’s such a rare possibility, but it does happen. By making it more universally available, it would become more common for all civs, especially Celts.
Honestly tho, only non serious Viper
(Viper in tournament does some weird stuff but never Celt MAAs)
Also afaik people in 2k3 range creates the most new stuff as we seen, the fast castle pushes which are kinda battle proven to an extent
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On the other hand, you can definitely adjust the speed of infantry to compensate and make it work
I dont find it interesting tho as it starts to overlap with what cavs should do
Imo cavs should be less tanky and infantry should be more tanky to diversify the two units
Otherwise we can rename MAAs to be cheap knights and that is insanely boring to me
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Well, like I said, Celts are pretty non-meta in general at the highest level. Their infantry being able to actually fill their intended role doesn’t help hugely when they’re only getting picked, uh…let me check…
Twice. Twice in the last Hidden Cup.
Anyway, my point being, the problem with Celts isn’t their infantry. People who try them are pleasantly surprised by them, it just doesn’t fix the civ’s other challenges.
It’s not just the speed, it’s the timing of that speed. Just making them faster would weaken their identity, like you say, as well as making them much stronger at lower elos without making as much difference at higher elos.
But making squires in particular come in earlier is very different. It’s a tech, not an inherent bonus, so it takes skillful timing to use properly. That shifts the balance point much higher, making it more useful at the higher levels of play than the lower ones. Infantry would still be slightly more powerful at lower elos, but less so than a simple bonus, whereas high level players would be able to take full advantage.