The key factor is this; if you don’t keep using infantry throughout the ages, you will have such a large Tech deficit it will become impractical to make it up. Which means people need to be using them at all stages of the game. And right now, they are completely unusable from the middle of feudal age until the middle of Castle age.
Until that problem is fixed, there will always be a tech deficit, and it will be almost impossible to make infantry balanced. That’s the core problem that needs to be fixed first and foremost.
In some cases though (like the Goths), you don’t have much of a choice, as your opponent will expect infantry. That’s one problem of buffing infantry. Civilizations that can quickly tech into them (like Dravidians) get a major advantage.
To a point, but that’s one of the nice things about Squires being a relatively cheap Tech. Dravidians, For example, would only save about 50 gold.
On top of that, even after having squires, the difference in speeds is close enough that you can’t just do anything and win. It relies on a good sense of where the enemy will be, as well as a good ability to use your own units effectively. So it will naturally be a lot more useful at higher skill levels than lower skill levels, helping to keep it balanced.
Goths might seem like they might be excessively helped, but if you think about it, most of their bonuses really kick in in the late game, so having this wouldn’t make that big of a difference to them in particular, I don’t think.
Buffing militia thru monks is probably a way to promote militia in higher elo as low elo players tend to underuse monks.
Now knight can evacuate and escape from its counter, returning to monks to heal. Militia cannot do this. The recent change of Saracen UT give me an idea that when monks heal a militia, other militia also receive healing in 3 tiles x3 tiles area.
The Squires idea in Feudal is good. If Scout rushes can commit with Bloodlines, it makes sense that MAA can commit with Squires
Another point, I have always wondered if just giving infantry Arson for free would be a good idea (for the civs that have it). I feel that MAA and Longswords don’t do much damage to buildings anyway. (Pikemen also take an eternity to deal damage, so it’s not a big deal if they benefit from Arson)
This could be a good idea, though I fear that Eagles might benefit a lot from it and they are already super strong in Castle Age. A simple +1 bonus damage vs buildings for the whold Militia-line would be the better choice imo.
MAA are the best source of damage vs buildings in Feudal Age already, but I agree with you that they should lean onto that strenght even more - thus +1 bonus damage vs buildings.
Cavalry can kill all siege but other siege units are made along with monks, camels or pikes. People don’t make rams because of mangonels not cavalry. You can outrun a mangonel with garrisoned units but still that defeats the purpose of making them. And anyways squires wont let you outrun CA by that logic.
Like I said if you run away you get 0 value from the high investment you have made. Crossbows are great in early castle age, knights are great in late castle age but there’s no such timing window for longswords in this meta.
Yes and “balanced” means people should consider a supplies maa into gambeson longswords opening at least half as often as crossbow-ballistics or knights +2. They don’t have to win games alone but should be a common opening. Like for example japanese doing a maa into longswords and then later switching into CA is fine. Or Malians opening longswords and then switching into farimba cavalry or camels. That’s not how it happens though. Nobody makes longswords and squires in feudal age won’t fix that.
Why do you think the best player who has used several units to their full potential in tournaments in the past, was surprised about a unit that has existed for decades? He’s surprised because he never used them and that’s because they’re not going to fetch value in most situations. Yes dodging around and forcing attention is some utility but that’s not enough to justify all those costs associated with producing and upgrading that unit in the current meta.
I’m not saying this change shouldn’t happen. It could be interesting to see if it gets used sometimes, other than shore fish maps where else it gets used. I’m just saying its not “THE REAL answer” or solution to the maa, longswords problem. That’s got more to do with the modern builds with 18/19 pop feudal, amount of food a player can collect before farming, proximity of wood, berries and mine, hp and build time of palisade walls, their repair cost etc. These things make it harder to get value from a unit like maa even if its speed is improved a little bit. Personally I feel there shouldn’t be a maa upgrade and militias should just get +2 attack and +0.1 speed upon hitting feudal apart from changes to the tower line, walls and market.
Hmm that’s quite a statement. Even in the current meta, a well-timed MAA rush can be game-winning (it’s easy to prepare or quick wall, but the potential is there).
I think allowing Longswords to build Rams like in Age 4 could give them a real tactical niche (besides countering Eagles).
I’d say it’s the opposite, actually. People use mangonels to kill rams because people won’t even bother running, because they know that cavalry can chase them down if they try it. This is a similar chain of reasoning to why people don’t bother even trying to keep their MAA alive, even though people often don’t even bother making their counters. The fact the counter exists is enough.
Like the above example, the mere fact they exist will cause the enemy to play significantly differently. You can’t send your army forward if they have an attacking force behind. This forces archer civs to play significantly more defensively, and opens up paths for infantry development which currently don’t exist. I think this absolutely would happen a significant amount of times; basically any time a MAA rush goes well, it would be a reasonable possibility.
If you have your MAA behind their lines, harassing them, forcing them to repair, forcing them to respond, it will make perfect sense to upgrade them. This requires keeping them alive, which requires Squires.
That’s sorta self-contradictory, no? If he’s surprised at how good something is, that means he’s never tried them in that way, but it also means they’re good enough to be worth using in that way.
The fact people rarely try new things with Celts also shouldn’t be surprising, given most pro players play on random, only play maybe half a dozen games per day, and so probably only roll the Celts at all once a week at most. Most people won’t feel any need to bother mastering a tactic that is only usable by one civ anyway, and a mediocre civ at that.
In that light, Viper is really one of the few players who will be able to provide a reasonable viewpoint on it. However, if Squires becomes available in feudal to all civs, it would actually make this tactic much more common for Celts, as they could do it better than anyone else, and also for free.
Like I said before, moving squires to feudal could actually help celts pretty significantly.
I think that would be dramatically overpowered. The MAA rush is already more than decent as-is, even at the pro level. This change would make it downright overpowered at low elos, and maybe high elos as well.
Any change MUST happen in Feudal, but it also can’t be a free massive stat change like that. It also needs to be skill-based and it must require good tactics.
What fits those requirements better than Feudal Squires?
I would say the real problem here remains the fact the militia have nowhere to go. Your enemy can only make such a minimal defense because they know once Feudal hits, they can effortlessly repel the infantry with archers.
But spearmen aren’t going to keep working against MAA in Feudal, so if Squires is available, are you going to risk such a minimal defense that may play directly into a viable potential strategy?
But m@a is a timing thing. If it does not work due to spear in early feudal, m@a will be harder to gain advantage. Spear alone requires more m@a to be effective. When more m@a produced, archers and scouts are coming.
No. People don’t use cavalry because they need to get close to the rams and might lose units to conversion or get forced into a bad fight.
That’s not much value. Spamming dozens of high food units just to keep opponent from moving out with most of their army is not worth it.
It won’t. For this to workout you have to increase bonus damage against buildings in general and additional bonus damage against walls and gates. Like town centers, cost of repair for walls and houses should be 2x the building cost instead of 0.5x and rate of repair should be small. Otherwise villager idle time and cost of repairs is too little compared to cost of maa upgrade, supplies, squires, +1 armor and the unit. Assuming players with equal capabilities, in the scenario you went for supplies+squires, for approx every 3 extra maa you do beyond the initial 3, you’ll be behind to castle age atleast by 1 min if opponent is fully walled. And you cant do squires, supplies and spam maa with just the sheep, boar, deer and berries. You need to setup your farming eco.
No. It means he thought they were absolutely terrible but they’re just less bad than he thought. If its good enough to be worth using, some or the other tournament he’d have used them. People did pick Celts a few times in hidden cup.
People do try different things with celts sometimes. Crossbow opening followed by castle drop into woad raiders, heavy scorps + halbs, the famous Celt Paladin from Hera in Hidden cup finals and by Vinchester in Kotd5 winners round. They don’t try a maa into longswords because everyone knows its terrible. Maybe like Viper realized, its a bit less terrible but terrible nevertheless.
At pro level maa is just abysmal. For quite some time, players have adopted the french drush and stopped at militias and added a spear. Because their opponent can always quick wall and not doing maa helps them follow up archers and get f letching sooner. This change will make french drushes very powerful against meta feudal and greedy fc. That alone could bring about imbalance but thats why I said it has to be accompanied with changes to wall, towers and market. That way no one will be able to do militia opening and wall behind to use market and reach castle age. This will bring back dark age pre-mill drush since that’s very effective against tight french drush builds, double range opening since it will be good against militia into 1 range follow up while its not easy to wall, towers into 2 barrack supplies maa etc. So the meta itself would change quite a bit. It won’t be always scouts and spears or scouts and ranged units.
This depends on your definition of massive. But imo there needs to be atleast 3-4 changes. If you’re not removing maa upgrade itself nor changing their speed by default, the other way to do it is weaken ranged unit play by adding upgrades to them (could be production time, speed, base accuracy etc) OR make dark and feudal walls and houses quite a lot against maa along with slightly shorter distance between players and longer distance of resources for each player.
I covered an extensive list of changes to make maa feasible in a thread I made here, check it out:
I think you’re intentionally strawmanning maa to justify your own proposals. I’m sorry, but your ideas are simply excessive and entail way too massive of a change, both from a balance standpoint, as well as from a development likelihood standpoint.
In reality, forcing your enemy to play differently with a cheaper investment very much can be worth it with the proper strategy and tactics, and that’s exactly what feudal squires allows.
I’m not but I can understand why you’d feel that. If you don’t watch S and A tier tournaments, its quite natural to feel that way about maa based on your own experience or watching just a few pro ladder games posted on youtube. And I’m not saying your change is completely useless, it can have some niche impact in a few games and make this slightly more usable. Lets say currently in tournaments, maa is used 1 out of 20 games and you want to improve it to 1 out of 17 or 18 games, your change is totally fine. (And yes it is that less often, you can check pro tournament VODs if you want to see how often supplies maa is done.) But that’s not the “real answer” imo, you’d have to make maa->longswords, towers etc a bit more mainstream like atleast 1 out of 5 times.
You could be right, but I’m very wary of the impact even small changes can have, when they reverse a dynamic like this. Especially for civs with potent infantry bonuses already, adding this on top could lead to some unexpectedly major shifts.
Say we did this first and it made the difference you predict; what next?
I assume you mean it makes very small difference as I predict. In that case people still won’t be doing maa most of the games and realize ultimately you need to break the meta. That needs a larger set of changes. Direct way is to remove maa upgrade and let the militia get extra attack and speed like scouts. This way players can follow up with fast f letching or add 2 more militias. If that’s feared to be too powerful, a couple of indirect approaches.
Could either be done through the map layout, resources, walling. Legacy arabia type smaller and farther forests, mines and berries. Trying to go for more than 1 deer push should be a risk and scouting for forward should be prioritized. 18 or 19 pop feudal builds should be nearly impossible with most of the civs and have some significant downsides. This makes walling and quick walling harder, tower rushes more rewarding.
Or let the players continue doing the meta builds but make the other feudal military more difficult to use. Like scouts should cost more and have a supplies equivalent, likewise for ranged units which makes their default usage weaker before upgrades. This can be like very cheap 50 food 50 gold or 80 wood 50 food etc but should take like 35-45 seconds. The idea is without such upgrades, tight build scouts and ranged units should get harder to use. This way relative investment on other units is high and defending from the initial maa will be harder.
Either way, apart from one of these set of changes, market rates for food and walling should be nerfed a little bit as well. And that will be a good spot for infantry usage.
(Not necessary.) Rename Man-at-arm into Swordsman simply. One day the term Man-at-arm maybe could be used to name a Camel Scout-like unit for the Knight line for a civ from Europe.
Remove Militia and let Swordsman trainable from the Dark. Swordsman has some nerf in the Dark and gets improved back in the Feudal with shadow upgrades, similar to Scout Cavalry.
The base speed of the Swordsman line units become 1 (at least in the Feudal), same as Spearman as well as a bit faster than Archer.
(Not necessary.) The base training time of the Swordsman line units get 5-10 seconds more than the current, and the base cost of them get reduced by 15 food. Meanwhile, the Supplies goes to reduce the training time rather than the food cost.
New tech Military Drums in the Feudal Barracks as the prerequisite of Squires to increase infantry’s speed by 10%, so infantry can be microcontralled more conveniently. The effect of Squires get changed to increase only the Swordsman line units’ speed by 5-10%, so they can persue most of infantry.
New tech Fencing School in the Imperial Barracks to research all the Swordman line upgrades instantly and give they +1 attack, at a cost of maybe 100 food + the sum of maybe 110% costs of the upgrades that are not researched yet.
New tech Sack in the Imperial Barracks as the next of Arson to allow Swordsman line units to generate gold when attacking buildings, so people are encouraged to use them in the late game.
(Not necessary.) Just for reuse the Militia skin. A new Button in TCs to levy a group of maybe 6 Militias at a cost in a pretty short leving time, or at no cost in a not short leving time. The Militia here could have a totally new stats stronger than current. However, the Button can only be pressed once for each TC.
Obviously under this situation, the civs that currently do not have Squires would not have Military Drums, and not every civ could have the new Squires, Fencing School, and Sack.
The Celts would have +5% infantry speed and free Military Drums.
The Bulgarians would have free Fencing School.
The Goths would have no Fencing School.
The potential Vandals might have double the Sack effect.
Etc.
