Yeah, ik, biggest problem with Jian swordsmen is it’s bad design gameplay wise. It’s busted in early castle but then is almost useless in imp? Doesn’t make sense because in aoe2 your units generally become better with each age up. Definitely a bit too similar too huskarl as well.
It feels kinda like an hybrid between Huskarl and Eagle Warrior to me.
I think they are unique enough as a unit but they should get different base stats between Castle and Imperial Age.
Not just passive buffs though civ bonuses in Imperial Age.
They are a unit with high pierce armor and bonus damage vs archers. They are weak to the swordsman line and strong infantry. They are trained at barracks. Reminds me a lot of Huskarl.
My proposal if we’re keeping 3k civs in game:
Move Jian swordsman to castle but buff its stats to be more unique. Make fire archer a crossbow upgrade replacement and have elite fire archer be their arb replacement. Maybe buff it’s attack by 1 in castle and Imp versions to make it more comparable to its counterpart vs units.
They aren’t weak in Imp as you might think, they are a giga counter to ranged units in Imperial and you can go very easily into Halb+Jian Sword for instance, what makes them not s great is the so high gold cost.
The cost should be changed in order to be hard to rush out in castle age but being better in Imperial.
They still take 1 from arbalests but start taking 2 from heavy cavalry archers. They aren’t terrible but not a good meat shield in the late game cause of their high gold cost. It would be cool if WU had a unique tech to make them cost significantly less gold or replace their gold cost with food cost.
I’m also just realizing their late-game champions aren’t amazing, missing out on gambesons
AoM extended edition had Bogsveigir (which got replaced by Godi in Retold). Retold then has Dragr (which Freyr gets when he chooses Ullr, the god of archery), which are armed with bows. I’m not going to claim to be well versed on the matter (or more importantly, be able to tell how remarkable or accurate things are), but what little searching I’ve done did include some interesting finds (things like a law requiring mustered soldiers to have a bow/arrows, heavy archer fire during a siege of Paris, mentions of bows in sagas, etc).
I think hp regen more than makes up for the missing pierce armor. Should be situationally worse against ranged units (especially if the ranged units are microd), but hp regen makes a unit basically immune to chip damage. And champions are a unit that requires relatively little micro (usually the best strat with them is to give a general attack-move order and then micro any ranged units/siege accompanying them). They’ll definitely be better against enemy melee units, especially if they survive the fight.
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As I said, every civilisation used bow.
But the Vikings were certainly not known for being some of the best Archers in the world, were they?
Yes I know that they used to have an Archer unit in AoM but there is a reason this unit was removed again.
So should they have one of the best Arbalests in the game?
I don’t think so.
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The reason Bogsveigar exists as a tech is because old competitive players kicked up a fuss when Thumb Ring was removed and they had to stop using an infantry civ as an archer civ, so this was made to placate them.
That’s it.
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Their are bigger fish to catch than viking archers for historical reasons.
Let’s start with 3k civ rework.
Or regional unique skins for baseline units,
Does that fairy tale ship still exist for that Indian navy civ? Sry can’t be bothered to remeber a hoax.
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People complain about bogsveigar but El Dorado, Torsion Engines, and Kataparuto make even less sense. Also it was added for balance reasons, the Vikings had no decent back line DPS before the change.
The name is dodgy, but the reasoning behind the tech is actually fairly solid.
Japan never had large siege engines. Theirs were small and easy to pack and unpack. It’s not a great implementation of it, but given the game’s mechanics, it’s fine.
That’s only one, there’s still torsion engines and el dorado.
And people complain about those. Seen many times.