I’m imagining movement speed only for the Spartan single unit.
The reason for this is that it would be making the classic look for the Spartan soldier that would be using only the helmet, shield, spear and a cape. He doesn’t have “chest armor” and would obviously be more agile and lighter than a hoplite who would have all + chest armor. In short, it would be lighter than a fully equipped hoplite.
REMEMBERING: we are talking about a game with an obsolete engine.
In my opinion, if it were possible, it would be cool to make the Spartan soldier be able to hit the enemy with the shield and thus leave the opponent dizzy for a brief moment in order to cause more damage. It would be a “stun shield” animation. But this is impossible to do in this old engine.
most soldiers in the periode wore relatively light armour, the large shields, helmets, body armor and greaves where pretty heavy armour for the time. what made Spartans unique weren’t their equipment, it was their culture and society, with the top being essentially all soldiers and a ##### ###### of mostly slaves to support them as oppose to other societies with more mixed citizen involvement in the military and a smaller by comparison slave population.
Shang is rather an earlier period in history, the archaic era 1200BC.
They are known for bronze and leather equipment/armor, different forms of pole-axes pole-daggers, composite bows, spears, chariots, cavalry, horse archers.
Thus the pole-axedagger halbedier would be a great unique unit for Shang. Which is anti infantry and anti cavalry. As if it’s like a hoplite without a shield and a more versatile brutal weapon to make porkchops.
As example later came the sword and there was also a pole added, the polesword (guandao) which is the weapon of famous Guan Yu, but that is from the later Warring States era. So the poleaxe halbedier would be great for Shang.
Age of Mythology has these as Chinese spear infantry and as myth unit the Terra Cotta warrior.
It doesn’t matter to me if they’re fast or not. This is just a BASIC example, for an old game engine that doesn’t allow for many gameplay improvements. I just made a generic example of difference.
Even because nobody can go back in the past with a time machine, to see which “hoplite” soldier was more agile or better trained and capable or more versatile.
What matters is to place the Spartan soldier as a unique unit for the Greeks, due to their stories and legends that have marked history.
Honestly, as an AoE2 player, AoE1 units were badly designed from the get go. Legionaries, Centurions, Phalanxes, Hoplites, none of them should have been generic units. Those are all unique unit type things. I would have made the Hoplite the Greek UU.
I don’t like unique units that are basically identical with generic units.
Plus the Phalanx tactic was used by many civilisations the most popular ones being the Macedonians.
So I gave them a unit that works perfect in tandem with the Hoplite line instead of a second Hoplite unit.
I first thought about “Spartiate” as a unit but:
how to make it different from Hoplites
what if you want to have Athens or Thebes in a scenario?
Romae ad Bellum has Sparta and Athens as different civilisations so the unit makes more sense.
Similar reasoning.
But the Macedonians were also famous for their cavalry.
Alexander the Great often personally charged with his cavalry and tuned the tide of more then just one battle.
A Phalanx is good at holding the line but cavalry is often what wins a battle.
If unique technologies would be added I think Macedonians should get +1 range on Hoplite line units.
I think they should already get 1 range by default though.
Well this would obviously solve the problem.
I thought about Hannibal and what won him the most battles.
That was the Numidian cavalry.
The reason why the Romans won at the end is because some of the Numidians switched sided. And in the deciding battle the Romans won the cavalry skirmish and should fall into Hannibals back.
Was suggested before. Not a bad idea. I didn’t think about siege.
Every none English word is banned in this Forum.
Fun fact:
The Spartans were the ones that kept the bronze chest armour while most other Greeks switched to cloth based armour.
They were not naked warriors.
Especially the legs were always armoured because the large shield didn’t cover them.
The old AoE meme that Chinese need to get this unit.
Chinese used many many more normal Crossbows though out history.
That weapon was never ever the main firearm of China, but yet in AoE it’s all China is allowed to get.
It Crossbows are added as Regional units for Asians, like I suggest in my Regional unit thread, that would be a good addition.
How can Phalanx be a unique unit if every civilisation in the Mediterranean used them?
Just because the Greeks are famous for them doesn’t make it unique.
That would be like the French being the only one that can train knights in AoE2/4 or the British being the only one with Musketeers in AoE3.
Having the Phalanx in general was a mistake. The grammatically correct unit would be Phalangite for a start. Secondly, as they are so famous for their use by Macedonia, I wouldn’t have added the Phalanx at all, and instead would have the Argyraspide for the Macedonians as a UU. Combine the famous “Silver Shields” and the iconic Sarissa Pikeman into a single unit, like this:
Basically, if you want to have unique units, sometimes to get UU worthy abilities, you need to deprive regular units of those abilities. So no Phalanx in order for Macedonia to get a unique spearman with +1 range.
how to make it different from Hoplites :
Differentiating from hoplites is not difficult. AoE2 is full of repeating units, example: new cavalry, new archer, new soldier and etc. Spartan soldiers would have a different visual skin just like the unique units seen in AoE2. Usually in AoE2 they just make it stronger or having a different bonus damage to another enemy unit and etc.
Here in this case, a fictional example the Spartan soldier can have bonus damage against a Unique unit. Or they can have “adjacent damage”, being able to hit more than one target at a time and so on. The options are varied, in short, you can do anything to be different, as seen in AoE2.
what if you want to have Athens or Thebes in a scenario? :
So make the Greeks an umbrella civilization. Take the opportunity to make new extra civilians and thus make the Sparta vs Athens campaign. You mentioned the “Romae ad Bellum” mod, it would be nice if they did that too.
The possibilities are endless. It just depends on the interest of the developers in having a huge content for AoE1, being equivalent to AoE2 or having a smaller and more summarized content compared to AoE2. The choice will be up to the developers.
This idea is also very good.
Anyway, we hope this DLC brings a lot of content and is better than the old AoE1. I think most people who love the ancient age are looking forward to seeing improvements and more content.
May be I confused the name of the mod.
But a long time ago, I saw a youtuber playing a mod for AoE2.
In this video mod, there was Athens and Sparta separated and each civilization had unique skins, there was no repetition.
It was very beautiful the mod. But that’s been a long time.
I think it was on the channel : “mayorcete gaming” or "El Rincón de la ###########
hannibal also used lots of iberian and gaulic cavalry, numidians where famous for sure but far from the only important aspect of hannibals army. i just thought something other than a cavalry unit might be interesting considering you have a couple other examples of such.
the filter can be overzealous but we dont actually ban none english words. if you find examples then pleas say it so we can add a bipass, i cant do it myself but i can get it changed.
what exactly made Jurys words censored, i got no idea.
coming as an AOE3 player id say that also somewhat applies to AOE2, although at least it uses more generic terms like “spear man”, but its still pretty euro centric.
i agree though that legion, hoplites etc. should have been none generic units but the game came out in 1997, and was overly broad in its scope, it was bound to run into difficulties and still would today simply because it tries to smash so many different cultures and time period’s together.
My idea was to give all Phalanx 1 range but Macedonian one 2 range.
Considering how long the Sarissa was that wouldn’t be that crazy.
In a traditional Phalanx you would run into the spear of the solders in the second line but for the Macedonian it would be the 3rd and 4th line too.
The thing is that I really want to see the Macedonians having a unique cavalry unit.
In a game like AoM, AoEO, AoE3 or AoE4 that wouldn’t be an issue because you could easily give them lots of unique units.
We can be happy if we get 1 unique unit for each civilisation.
And both Greeks and Macedonians getting a Phalanx infantry as a unique unit is a little boring, especially because you can’t remove the generic Phalanx from the game.
I think a lot of people want Return of Rome to be Romae at Bellum.
AoE2 is also full of unique units that are never being used.
(now someone will argue that they all have some use cases but 90% of matches are decided by Knights and Crossbows)
I think that’s a little over ambiguous.
And even if we’d get new civilisations it would be a waste to go to Greek first, considering that also the Macedonians already exist.
So many regions of the world have 0 civilisations.
I’m not totally against Greeks or Macedonians getting a unique infantry unit but please not both.
I also made the suggestion that the Hoplite line becomes a regional unit in my other thread: New Generic Unit ideas
well, AoE2 has always been like that.
Even so, unique units always came.
The problem is that these units are more expensive than standard units. And since it’s decided by the player who deals more damage and is faster, almost nobody uses the unique units… it takes time to start making them and they are expensive.
The problem is that AoE2 was designed that way. It would have to change the gameplay… something that, unfortunately, will never be changed.
In my case, I play AoE2 to pass the time. So I play as I can.
I don’t think it’s a waste, because AoE2 has an absurd amount of civilizations and many concentrated in a large area.
For AoE1 to reach more than 40 civilizations, we will need to “Open” this umbrella. There are other games that have already done this, like the “Total War” series of games.
Remembering, I would like AoE1 to gain new DLCs with new civilizations over time and thus reach 40 civilizations. The ancient era has to show all its wealth in the 4 corners of the world. lol =D
In short, I want to see a lot of DLCs yet for AoE1, and that will only happen if they explore to the fullest.
Yes but how many years will it take until AoE1 is at that point.
AoE2 has been getting new DLCs constantly for 10 years by now.
I don’t think that RoR will ever get that far.
I hope we see an Ancient AoE5/6 till then.
And AoMR is also around the corner.
There is a long wish list of civilisations that people want to see before the Greeks are being split into city states.
So better give them a bit more generic unique unit in my opinion.
You don’t need to forget that people actually play AoE2DE competitively and hopefully the new RoR too.
So people don’t want to learn new civilisations all the time and also the balance is always broken after every DLC so with constant new DLCs the game would never be balanced.
