it has always bothered me that while you can train an anti-cavalry cavalry unit and an anti-archer archer unit, yet no such unit exists for infantry. I cannot help but think the devs are always treading a fine line when balancing the Swordsman line because they don’t have hard counters like Crossbows and Knights do in the Skirmisher, Spearmen and Camel lines. The only generic unit to get any bonus vs infantry is the hand cannon which arrives at imp and is only for some civs.
I suggest that a new unit be introduced called the Maceman. This unit would be trained at the barracks starting from castle age and have bad stats at 60 health, 2 melee armour, 0 pierce armour and 6 attack. It would cost 20 food, 35 gold, being cheap but gold intensive, as to not be a good replacement or counter for the militia line in the late game when gold is running out. It would have a speed of 1, the same as a Samurai and only slightly faster than Swordsmen and an attack speed of 2.1 just more than a Swordsman, but much less than a Pikeman. The only redeeming feature would be 8 bonus damage against infantry, allowing it to take out Swordsmen in 5 hits and Pikes and Eagles in 4 hits.
This unit would allow the developers to buff infantry and infantry unique units without worrying about making them unbeatably cost effective against their current counters. You could even have an imperial upgrade called the Maulman, although I am less sure about that since it eats into the hand cannoneers niche. Jaguar warriors, since their role is being taken, can gain anti-infantry armour, making them the only infantry (other than the Condottiero) that cannot be countered by the Maceman.
Anti infantry infantry at melee is a bad idea. Ranged units are still going to be better at killing infantry. That’s why jagaur warrior is so bad. This unit is not needed.
current patching is focused on making ranged units less good at killing Swordsmen, but they cannot commit to making Swordsmen and Archers an equal matchup because there is no other easy counter to Swordsmen, so Archers are better than Swordsmen. With this new unit, Swordmen could gain more pierce armour and it wouldn’t break the game balance.
good idea,
i got this one:
Militia line should be split into two categories. militia to long-swordsmen as is now and then to shielded swordsmen next in imperial as shielded unit with good ap, and then you would get two handed swordsman line separate in imperial as trash killer unit. so you won’t need to upgrade from militia if you decide to transition into infantry.
i really want to make infantry work in aoe, as now its still archer/knight/camel and nothing else… but devs think our way, so mybe we will see sth someday soon…
we got gambesons already.
The sword-line is already quite good at being anti-infantry. They surely are extremely effective against the spear line and eagles, and trade evenly with themselves.
As for making a dedicated anti-infantry infantry with hard bonuses against it, I don’t think there is a need. Infantry lacks both the range of archers and the speed of cavalry, making dedicated counter-units required to offset that. But infantry is mainly the cheap damage sponge, the anvil to the hammer formed by other units. They already get beaten by archers, gunned down by hand cannons, can’t withstand the brute force of knights and don’t get me started on mangonels.
While I like the idea of having a specific anti-archer variant of swordsmen, since lack of variety is what hurts infantry nations so much, for historical purposes, I don’t like the idea of having a shielded imperial age unit.
I think upgrading shielded swordsmen into unshielded two-handed swordsmen does well to represent how in the late medieval ages people stopped using shields as plate armour protected troops much better than shields could.
Which is why Swordmen are currently a niche unit that we see against Eagle warriors. Against Pikes, they are also considered less effective than Archers as they don’t have range and move slower than Pikes, but they are sometimes still used.
I want to have an infantry unit that is not just a useful edge case to counter certain types of units, but a unit you can build your strategy into and win with, like the Knight or Crossbowman. To me, that unit should be the Swordsman.
Giving up the identity of an infantry killer to another unit is a good way to let the Swordsman become a cost effective yet slow and not ranged unit. Right now if you made the Swordsman too cost effective against archers and knights, it would have no counter.
Castle units should be powerful. Currently it’s the unique unit, trebuchet and whatever the petard is supposed to be (nearly as unused as the siege tower). Not a simple counter-unit to an unit class that has traditionally been second fiddle to cavalry and archers.
I agree with your full statement the castle unit should be a powerful counter not just a generic one.Reason im suggesting castle is the barracks is already full.adding more units will have to replace current units or move to the second page.
you can just put Condos where Genitours currently are. It would help standardise the system as well
Alternatively it could replace the eagle line for non-Meso civs, like how the elephant archer replaces the cav archer. 2 of the 3 Mesoamerican civs already have a unit that directly counters infantry.
The Spear Line Started in Dark Age.
There were 2 Sword Lines starting from Castle Age. The one with Shield and the Two Handed one.
That’s why the Man at Arms looks like a Knight while the Long Swordsman looks like a Cavalier.
Well, I totally agree, but shields were dropped because of good armour which than should be high. Others who couldn’t afford plate armour still used shields for quite a long time. But for game balance i would add a unit that has the role of goth huskarl but with worse stats.
the unit wouldn’t be a counter to archers but just a bigger dmg sponge.