I’m not against this suggestion at all. I just don’t think this alone is “sufficient”. Its not the “real answer” but maybe a tiny step towards it in the best case.
That’s fine but my opinion is to get to a point where the current meta has broken and we’re looking at least half priority for militia line compared to archers and cavalry.
Imo, that’s good for units that are close to balance. For units that have several issues with usage, maybe just a little bigger change might be good. The militia line changes have been happening for 5 years now. I wouldn’t want to wait another 5-6 years to see a state where something like scouts or skirms or some other opening into 2 barrack supplies maa is a powerful play with infantry civs, comparable to the current likes of 2 range xbow ballistics or 2 stable knights with upgrades
Exactly. Its a problem related to its usability and purpose. Beyond the first 2 minutes of feudal there’s no need to prefer maa over other feudal units in the current meta. Somehow OP thinks maa are not used only because the left over starting 3 maa get chased down and killed by ranged units and if they can run away people will keep making them.
Well, there’s a civ that already have free Squires in Feudal. Try use Celts’ infantry 20 times and tell us how many times you got the upper hand thanks to it.
For my part, I play almost exclusively Infantry, and my strats got me from 1200 to 1450 elo, with a peak on 1650. So I think I got enough experience to have a fair and balanced POV on it. So please trust me, or try by yourself.
You’ll see that in the current situation Infantry play is possible only as an opening into something else or as all-in/meme strategy.
You’ll see that Celts aren’t even the best suitable option for this, Malians and Romans with the armor bonus are far better.
If you use M@A only for opening, their survival to Castle Age isn’t a priority. It’s true that their best value would be make the opponent lose time by chasing them. But Feudal Squires would not move so much since he does not need all his army to chase, but only a few archers. So it would be a great investment for a little reward. That 100 food would be better spent for your fletching or skirms at that point.
Squires could be more useful if you commit to M@A in Feudal Age. It is possible, I repeat, I use it at 1500 ELO. If you have a dozen M@A and you could use them to make real damage in Castle Age, Squires would help. But it won’t be decisive a moment later, since the true problem of infantry does not lie there.
Wrong, there is already a unit which is like that. Can you guess? It is also the reason why infantry is pretty useless in castle age, because the knight does everything better.
Only civs with great bonuses can use infantry in all game phases, so infantry at it’s basic is clearly to expansive and hard to mass until the late imperiale age. Therefore make the milita line build faster or cheaper to produce.
This…
As I see it, there is a couple of path to take militia to a good spot.
Make it cheaper and easy to mass. Nerf it if necessary.
Split militia line in light and heavy infantry.
Make militia line base stats weak but add more dedicated techs and make them more impactful (f.e Gambesons +2 PA).
Give militia-line some ability with great micro and tactical potential (f.e. can build siege, stand ground stance give huge armor, trample damage, etc).
Any other soft tweak will not have a good result I’m afraid…
The current feudal meta is just evolving around scout. Scout has become more and more important. We even see archers/skirm or even spear/skirm combo more than m@a. It seems degenerating.
M@a is more and more irrelevant as the feudal meta evolves.
Only reason 2-4 militias are produced and sometimes maa is done, is because its available before reaching feudal age and the player can start putting pressure right away. Otherwise there’s no purpose for that unit given the current meta.