Time to get rid of upgrades into downgrades

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

There are several unit upgrades that make the unit weaker in certain aspects. They are counterintuitive and unnecessary. I suggest to remove them all.

Paladin

Paladin has a reload time of 1.9, a downgrade from cavalier and knight’s 1.8. What if we give paladin 1.8 as well? The tiny difference here means paladin gains +5.5% DPS in a long-term continuous attacking scenario (i.e. vs buildings), while vs most units the difference would be zero:

Because # of hits are integers, you would need to attack 20 times to get one extra hit compared to before (in a period of 19 * 1.8 = 18 * 1.9 = 34.2 seconds). Factor in the time of pathing between switching targets, this extra hit would never happen in practice.

Why do I suggest this change then? It makes paladin vs savar a fair fight 1v1. They take the same number of hits to kill each other, but savar wins because it reloads in 1.8s. You see how devs implemented savar with 1.8 reload time? Because that’s only intuitive and natural.

Militia line / Eagle line

I’m talking about attack delay here. It’s really random and all over the place:

  • Militia: 0.5
  • Man-at-arms: 0.88
  • Longswordsman: 0.63
  • Two-Handed Swordsman: 0.5
  • Champion: 0.63

You probably have noticed since AoK how fast militia and 2HS’ attack animations are, and how slow MAA’s is. It actually matters. Because damage “is only inflicted after half of the attack animation has elapsed”, according to this wiki: Attack delay | Age of Empires Series Wiki | Fandom

This is why MAAs are so clunky to micro when chasing down vils, especially if you lost your scout. Longer animation makes it way easier to not register a hit, and takes way longer to start moving again after a hit.

You might remember that hussar attack animation used to be disgustingly slow and patch 37650 reduced it to be the same as light cav / scout, with the exact purpose to chase unit better.

My suggestion is to unify the militia line with 0.5 attack delay.

Same thing happens for eagle line: eagle scout and elite eagle warrior have 0.8 attack delay while eagle warrior has 0.63. I suggest to make them all 0.63, or at least for elite eagle.

Light Cavalry

Scout has 1.55 move speed while light cav / hussar have 1.5. Again I don’t understand why. Yes when LC are mass produced you likely get husbandry too so it’s still faster than feudal age scouts, but it’s not like LC with 1.55 speed would be broken?

More annoyingly, if you play Turks on Arena, you are winning a scout war and chasing, and you reach castle age first, suddenly you cannot chase anymore…

Elite Chu Ko Nu

Firing 5 arrows vs 3 from non-elite version, the elite chu ko nu has effectively worse reload time (3.89 vs 3.44). The mechanism is weird: non-elite chu ko nu always fire the 3 arrows one by one, while elite could fire 1 or 2 arrows at a time (so it could be 1+2+2 or 2+1+2 or 1+1+1+2 or even 1+1+1+1+1 etc.) I’d suggest to force all arrows shot in 3 rounds, i.e. either 1+2+2 or 2+1+2 or 2+2+1, so that reload time remains the same.

11 Likes
2

It probably will for Hussar.

3

Are Cuman hussars broken? Not even a top 5 hussar in Hera or SotL’s list.

4

I think 0.63 will be better.

Once base Hussar is faster than Current Cumans, some Hussars will.

5

1.5 * 1.15 = 1.725 > 1.705 = 1.55 * 1.1

So no, base hussar with 1.55 speed with husbandry is still slower than current Cuman hussar. This little boost is negligible in its strength. Otherwise it would at least be a top 5.

I don’t really mind, as long as the whole militia line has the same attack delay.

6

My mistake.

I beg to differ. Tatars, Turks are already insane at raiding. And with speed boost them, Bulgarians, even Malians will get unnecessary buff.

7

It’s totally because of the extra armor. I think it’s manageable even given a speed boost. I mean you rarely hear people complain about Cuman cavalry’s move speed right? If anything Steppe Husbandry plays a more important role.

Ofc tests would need to be done to show how much of a difference in raiding it brings.

Anyway this one is less annoying to me than MAA’s slow attack animation.

8

My point is Hussar is already on the stronger side of balance. There is no need to make even stronger. Also don’t you think reducing scout speed will be better for TG that you always complain? Reducing Feudal Scout speed will be good for TG as enemy will arrive at flank slower and games will be less snowbally. Although a 0.05 speed reduction will be barely noticeable.

9

I understand your reasoning but from a realism perspective, heavier armoured units would move more slowly and attack slower, because they are carrying more weight in armour and in some cases, heavier weapons. Also buffing Paladin to compete with Savar is just another power creep. Savar just needs a nerf. Otherwise the inflation of power in the game is just gonna keep going up and up.

2 Likes
10

No.

The Savar needs a reason to exist other than being an aesthetic difference.

2 Likes
11

Fine. But Paladin doesn’t need buffing. Unless they fix pathing and as a result, arbalest micro goes back to being ridiculously overpowered again.

12

yeah, give persians paladin again. none of this goofy OP upgrade silliness

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13

Yeah good point.

There are plenty enough.

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14

This logic is not consistent here:

  • MAA attacks slower than militia
  • LS attacks faster than MAA
  • 2HD attacks faster than LS
  • Champion attacks slower than 2HS

Complete randomness.

Did you think of another guy? I rarely talked about TG because I rarely play TG. Not qualified to answer.

People are obsessive with this phrase now. But aren’t we exactly fixing a power creep (from savar) by giving paladin its deserved strength? And I did the calculation, it’s barely even touching the balance other than paladin-savar head-to-head fights.

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15

Yeah, right. I mixed up.

I think it will also change some of Paladin vs the heavy cavalries - Leitis, Keshik, Konnik, Coustilier, Centurion, Monaspa (Wow! We got more cavalry UU in 4 years than foot archers UU in 24 years) and Boayar.

16

Nah, none of these gets an impact, only boyars. See my calculation in OP, for every 19 hits before, you get 20 hits now.

A paladin takes down a leitis in 12 hits, keshik in 12, konnik in 11, coustillier in 12, centurion in 15. Which means, before the reload change effect kicks in, either the paladin or its opponent is dead.

1 Like
17

I think about half of this stuff should change. Streamlining attack delay on swordsmen and EWs I think is reasonable. Stuff like Paladins attacking slightly slower I don’t really care about because it’s still an upgrade into higher DPS and I don’t think improving every attribute simultaneously is necessary (although fair point WRT the Savar). But I think having some things that become slightly worse with upgrades is fine and reflects the IRL reality of usually having to make a tradeoff rather than being able to optimize every characteristic at once.

A reasonable implementation of this is the War Galley upgrade - war galleys are larger and clunkier than galleys, which is fitting, but they’re also enough of an improvement that nobody is ever tempted to skip the upgrade to take advantage of galleys being slightly more maneuverable - and this was true before the upgrade affected other ships as well.

Anyway, if you had to streamline all cavalry unit attack rates for some reason, I think it’s just as reasonable to give Savars the same attack rate as Paladins, or even give knight-line the same 1.9 attack rate as paladin. If pathing were better, you could even make the argument that they should all be a flat 2, since there’s no obvious realism or gameplay reason for why knight line and its derivatives should attack faster than the standard 2 seconds for almost every other unit type that isn’t explicitly stated as having fast attacks. But this is far from necessary.

7 Likes
18

I didn’t realise that 0.1 faster attack rate was OP -_-

19

I think he was talking about savar being OP, not the attack rate specifically. But savar is not that OP and it’s nerfed anyway.

I’d be happy to accept this too. Most cavalry UUs have 1.9 reload, like leitis or boyar. Although I don’t understand why cavalry need to attack faster than infantry.

1 Like
20

way cheaper to upgrade, more pierce armour, generates gold when killing. not the attack rate that makes it OP

1 Like