Unit Balance Issues

Spearmen are too cost-effective against knights/lancers. (Spearmen cost 60 food 20 wood)

But

Knights are too cost-ineffective and inefficient against sieges. (Knight cost 140 food 100 gold)

What is the balance benchmark for counter units?

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That’s it, that’s we should talk about instead of Chinese weak blabla

Imo the spearmen are fine.
The siege being invincible is a fact though.
In aoe3 siege units die in a split second against melee units.

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I believe in hard counters, even when a game has low-end micro like this one.

Pointy stick bros ought to cut Cav, and Knights out to obliterate siege.

yea knights should be smashing sieges like paper, but currently, they still take too long to destroy and when sieges are defended well, they always take cost-inefficient battles.

In what I have seen and experienced about Spearmen, they are mostly effective only and only when they are fully upgraded and are almost equal in numbers to the knights. If they are overrun they are easily targeted by support siege units or just won’t survive due to the knight swarm.

Upgrades are crucial otherwise they are not exactly counter units to them, and when they are fully upgraded they are only able to defend as attacking the cavalry that can reposition fast creates the risk of being overwhelmed by siege, archers or castle defenses.

But if you combine men-at-arms in the front seat and then with spears following it makes for a deadly counter as nobody will stay to micro every unit and if they do mass attack one spearman, they risk losing more knights. For one this helps because there’s relief damage on the spears that now can take on horsemen easier while men-at-arms die to the charge and first shots of the battle.

I would really not recommend fighting Spearmen as cavalry unless they are under-equipped and you carry some type of support with your knights. Get that and they can spam all spearmen they want, it won’t help at all and their economy will crash if they try to spam them without a good strategy.

I agree with the second sentence but not with the first one.
A big issue the game had on the start was that spearman was too ineffective against knights. Right now the balance is just right on that regard and knights also only cost 1 pop, are much faster than spearman and are very tanky against building fire!

cuz the 1st one illustrated how counters should be working.
and the 2nd one indicates how bad the knights are against sieges

Horsemen are best cost effective vs Siege than Knights.

Armored units tend to be somewhat more versatile but less specific.

Oh I see, I misunderstood your question. Sorry about that

The benchmark doesn’t have to be resource cost.
I for one believe that the mangonel range can be reduced, and the firing rate of bombards can be reduced. Also, mango shouldn’t have free ballistics effect. This should allow the opponent to maneuver and micro around siege to some extent, effectively increasing the cavalry cost effectiveness against siege.
I don’t have any issue with the current spearmen though.