So trash units need a tweak imho. There are 3 main problems for these units:
1: scout line is too strong to the point where not even Champions are a good counter to Hussar, but it’s infact the reverse. To offset this, make Eagle and scout cavalry a unique armor class that takes bonus damage from militia line so that THS and Champs beat hussar
2: Castle Age upgrade costs are wonky, with light cav costing 200 res while pikeman cost like 305 and elite skirms 360 even. Make pikeman and elite skirms lower in cost. Maybe not as cheap as light cav if it’s to much but closer to 250 res total i would say seems fair, or at least lower than 300
3: Skirmishers are weak in Imperial Age, and the lack of even one blacksmith upgrade makes them a dubious counter to archers, making many civs being easily hardcountered by missiles. Also Skirmishers is the only generic military unit to lack an Imperial Age upgrade without a clear reason for this. Spears have halberdiers, scouts have hussar…skirms have nothing
Make Imperial Skirmishers a generic unit upgrade, costing in line with others (300W 600G?), Giving to civs following similar process than others. So like civs with already strong skirms (FU and with a bonus like britons, mayans, lithaunians) or with strong Archer themselfs, or with already FU hussar and halbs, do not get Imperial skirms. On the other hand, civs who are supposed to have great trash, like Bizantines, or that lack good scout line (dravidians, Vikings), or that lacks upgrades for skirms and/or have big weaknesses to missiles (burmese, teutons…), will get Imperial skirms
Imperial skirms is a good unit that can compensate for the lack of bracer and/or last Archer armor without being to strong (Vietnamese already have them FU and they are absolutely not dominant, especially against other Archer civs)
Then obviously Vietnamese would need a new TB or move the TC location bonus to TB and get a new civ bonus like portuguese treatment
Tbh, I think skirmisher can have their range independent of the blacksmith upgrade. As soon as they age up, skirmisher gain +1 range. Skirmisher Base range change to 5 and 7 for elite one. But keep attack dependent of blacksmith. This helps a bit for civs lack bracers to deal with archers.
Yeah but “some time” has already passed since Vietnamese came out and it’s a pretty established fact that skirms are a weak unit in imp and basically not worth making without FU, and even then, not as good as the other two trash options. It’s something that could and should happen asap
This sound very strange to me especially since after researching bracer they would have crazy range…i think adding Imperial skirms would be much smoother and easier. Also their base Attack is 4, like a Feudal Archer… So it’s not like this unit would be OP. Just don’t give It to already strong Archer civs for start
good idea BUT MAA vs Scouts in Feudal already favors MAA all in all. I would say the bonus damage should start from LS onward or something like that.
Elite Skirm upgrade is fine already because already Knights counter Xbow so the windows to do damage with Xbow are very small… Also Elite Skirm counters Xbow harder than Pikeman counters Knights. I do agree though Pikeman upgrade needs a buff or maybe even a creation speed buff, to counter all-in Knights you generally need 3, often 4 Barracks and that feels wrong.
agreed and here the culprit is mostly Hussar.
disagree with this, keep Imp Skirm a Vietnamese unit.
Agreed, Agreed, and Agreed. I still don’t know why they don’t get an imperial age upgrade when both of the other trash units do. The upgrade prices are also weird. Spears are still viable against knights, and pikes are viable against cavalier. Skirms without upgrades will just die to archers IIRC.
We have second upgrade for knight line in imperial age (cavalier->paladin). Halberdiers were introduced to fight paladin. But halbs has to outnumber paladin to win.
Whereas, there is only one upgrade for acher line in imperial age. FU Elite skirmishers can actually win arbalest in equal number.
I think we should also respect that skirms need to target the archers first to kill them.
Also halbs not always fught Paladin, it’s actually more common for them to figh cavalier which they shred.
Imo the issue for skirms comes mostly due to their extremely low damage output against basically everything they don’t counter. Even the damage against Halbs isn’t like extraordinary high. And then they have to be manually targeted against archers and CA if there is a meatshield… tough to do in this lategame mass battles. This paired with being super fragile themselves is just not a good setting for being a strong unit.
I think an argument for making an imperial skirm upgrade can be made there.
The thing is… archers just have been nerfed in general with no compensation. I don’t see a necessity to nerf them again, really.
Interesting concept. Could just be the “scout unit” armor class or something like this.
Don’t know if this will impact trash wars much, but it’s an interesting idea.
Whilst I agreee that especially the pike seems to have problems with performing, I’m not sure if I would touch this. I think there should be an emphasis to use that early castle age Knight powerspike. So the upgrade cost snd duration gives a longer time window for the Knights to do their work basically uncontested. I would rather prefer to Nerf Knights directly as for me it looks currently that they are just too strong overall and not specific to that one matchup.
One crazy idea could be to just switch food and gold cost whcih would make knights less affordable in early castle age, but more sustainable in the lategame.
Great suggestions, would definitely be interesting to see how this plays out. Would help a lot with balancing civs on Arabia without making them broken elsewhere.
And a great point about light cav - its an extremely cheap upgrade but adds 2 attack and 33% more hp over it’s predecessor while hussar costs 5x more and yet only increases the hp by 25% over its predecessor. Imo light cav-hussar stats need a small rework as well.
Good points and great ideas. My only comment is regarding potential swordsman bonus damage to scout cav. It should not be the full +8 that champions and 2hs have against eagles. They should be more of a soft counter, with maybe +3 bonus damage for champions. There’s always the option to mix in some spears for the hard counter (which should be a cheaper upgrade to pike). Agree with the comment above to not mess with MAA feudal balance so no bonus there. Then longsword could get +1 against light cav, and 2hs +2 on the way to +3 for champ vs hussar.
Elite skirms upgrade is fine as is after nerfing archer upgrade cost. Pike is debatable maybe should be adding cost for light cav upgrade. light cav 200 resource is now actually cheapest unit upgrade in castle age. It should add more cost for light cav.
Skirms aren’t actually weak. Do you see any pro games fighting in imp? Actually skirms are most common unit when both civ don’t access to great Hussar line (Koreans vs Ethiopians for example). Fighting against two non-cavarly civ easily going to skirm war. They aren’t seen much only when both civ has good hussar and game goes to hussar raid.
It is personal preference, but I don’t think skirms war are really interesting to play or watch. Trash unit should be meant to be support/counter unit and not supposed to be main unit, and skirms are just good as doing that job of countering archer. It win arbalest 1v1. Just Hussar are too all-around unit for trash unit. Other two trash line are work well as support unit.
Other gold unit such as many UU, champion and Seige unit need to be seen more, and trash units are already used frequently, and game should be more reward players who have map control and getting control of gold in the map. Not rewarding players sitting in the corner of map and spamming trash unit.
Having some asymmetry can make things interesting. But it doesn’t inherently make it interesting. For example, let’s say you remove pikes and halbs from the game. It is more asymmetric now, but is it more interesting?
That is a good point. I didn’t consider that before. Were halbs and paladins introduced in the same expansion? If they weren’t, how did people handle paladins before?
But also, this means that hussar upgrade shouldn’t be a thing. Halbs counter cavalry, Skirms counter archers. This means hussars should counter infantry. They do counter champions, but not infantry in general. So, what is the point of this unit?
There was no bloodlines before the first expansion and Paladins were only countered by civs with Heavy Camel.
But there’s the upgrade cost difference, unit cost difference between Paladin and halberdier. Yes, its not “needed” to have a generic imperial skirmisher if that’s what you’re trying to say but I guess it would be interesting and won’t break the game. Like the author says, some civs with strong skirms and generic units can miss out on this upgrade and the supposedly “weaker” or “late game” civs could get it. And also right now we do have Imperial skirmishers for Vietnamese and they’re in no way considered broken. Ultimately its still going to be effective only against ranged units and low p.armor units.
So suppose if it wasn’t given to any of the S tier civs but some civs like Cumans, Teutons or Celts, which lack ranged unit upgrades, that could be an interesting change.
As I said in earlier post. I don’t think watching & playing more skirms war are more interesting. What we have to do is buffing more underused expensive unit like seige other than BBC-treb, UU, elephant , champion etc.
Cumans already have faster paladin to deal with ranged unit. It would be more interesting to give them more bonus to go Steppe Lancer instead. Celts are actually power creeped by strong late game/gunpowder civs that counter celt seige. I don’t think giving good ranged unit make them interesting. I would give them Castle age capped ram or other more seige bonus. They have so many terrible matchup in imp and want to end game early.
Teutons also have amazing seige. Not all civ need good skirms to counter archer. Some civs have other unit line to counter archers. Same as good camels civs and Italians don’t access to halb.
@AbuzzJam4677680@Pulikesi25
So you are telling me that there was a time when there was literally no counter to paladin for non-camel civs? That sounds pretty crazy tbh.
Light cav does the same thing tbh. Idk, I’ll look into when these changes came about. I’m convinced of why an imperial upgrade for skirms is unnecessary, I know why halb upgrade is a necessity. But there is no explanation for why hussars are necessary. Not that there has to be a reason.