Here’s some units I would like to see to change the game’s meta.
A skirmisher unit with high melee armour. Basically functions like an elite skirmisher, but cost a small bit of gold. Like 10 gold per unit, and 35 wood. Role tank a good bit better in melle combat, but still has minimum range. Will still lose to a champion, or just about any melee unit in a 1v1 fight due to minimum range, but still last longer in melee, while doing low damage to non archer units.
An Armoured Spearman (or a Heavy Pikeman) unit that has the same stats of a halberdier, but has high melee armour. Weakness even slower than a teutonic knight, is rather costly.
Maceman. A fast unit which has similar stats to a longswordsman but ignores armor. In some ways, a cheaper Leitis, but on foot.
A unit with a charged ranged attack. When it enters a fight, it throws something at the enemy like an axe or spear before fighting up close. A perfect example, a Roman Legionary throwing a Pilum javelin spear.
I feel like those would be mostly useless. If only used for Siege defense, in which case Halberdiers are still better as they can manouver around better and kill attacking units faster, while also being cheaper.
I would suggest the Nagitana Rider (like in AoE3) being a unique unit for Japanese, maybe replace the Hussar just like Winged Hussar replaces Hussar for Lithuania and Poles.
I’ve been wishing for this ever since I knew about AoE2. It’s a iconic warrior so this seems …missing out. Oh well but how many people play Japanese anyway. xD
Yeah my point is that a charged attack on a ranged unit is possible, as long as the unit stays ranged.
Though I wonder since it’s possible to add values onto an attack, it’s probably also possible to add values to the range. So maybe it’s possible to create a unit with 1 range (not sure if it’s possible for a melee unit) to get some range bonus in addition to the attack, after which needing to get close.
I’m not a fan of replacing standard units. A unique extra upgrade, yes sure. But standard units are abstractions of military roles. A halberdier is a tier 3 level pointed weapon warrior, which can mean a literal halberdier if you’re playing franks, or can be a eastern spear wielder if you’re playing as saracens or persians.
I was not a fan of the winged hussar for that reason. It should have been just another upgrade.
You might be able to do a work around. First make the regular melee technically a ranged attack that does melee damage and has roughly the same range as a melee unit and disable the projectiles sprite. For the charged attack add range, modify the damage, and have a unique charged attack animations that lines up with the now visible projectiles. Even if this works this is a very jury-rigged solution that is very likely to cause glitches.
and a lot of people like it. instead of an unnecessary 4th tier, it made a unique unit , instead of bloat for the sake of it
yeah exactly, could be 1 range cavalry, that gets a +5 range + 20 attack charge, well that kind of mechanism. but either way i think its doable. i dont think people expected hussite wagons or obs…
well there you go, it would be used as siege defence, to bolster pike siege. either way you do know that cav can actually beat pikes if you have the numbers? whereas with this heavy pikemen, it makes that situation much less likely, as well as being stronger vs a transition into militia line
i mean it could still be as slow as militia line, just make it cost enough so its balanced, or even give it a negative armour value(like rams, or take bonus damage) its definitely do-able
yeah give throwing axemen 0 or 1 range or whatever, then give it the charge attack + range value. it might not be super simple, but does seem likely
ive been playing other games recently like warhammer 2, and im always surprised when i come back to aoe2, how stagnant a larger portion of the community is. they’re more than happy to keep things exactly the way they are, and are very resistant to change or even making mods. considering the insane unit roster that the total war games have
and then i come here and people whine when we tried to make the militia line more viable(still cant believe the devs actually did it), or the hand cannon not suck as much. or giving step lancers to more than 3 civs. like the world is going to end if we make more units more viable
like why arent there people making mods for these things? or making skins? or the hordes of stuff people make for other strategy games.
i know there’s mods, but i mean even something as niche as Supreme Commander has more impactful modding done to it. its like the type of person that plays aoe2 online, just doesnt want change as much? whereas the people that play other RTS are more inclined to want to expand them?
Using the Kamayuks as a base line seems cause problem for one thing A kamayuk with extra range would act like a hitscan scorpion. You could give it minimum range. But you would have to also have the attack range and attack delay vary based on the distance of the target. and that solution would likely cause even more issues. Would this bypass Hussite wagons? What about Rams? Good luck trying to apply ballistics.
Full disclosure: I have zero modding experience and I apologize if me talking like I’m an expert is frustrating.
Winged Hussar is stronger and has its own unique upgrade. Actually I meant reskin more. But c’mon they even created the Steppe Lancer in for history’s sake.
Speaking of Japanese medieval warfare, isn’t the image of a mounted samurai holding Naginata and carrying Sashimono (banner) always pop up.
I think it would be interesting if Certain civs had semi-Unique units that acted substituted for the regular upgrade paths. Heavy Pikes which are more tanky but lack the Dps of halbs, Heavy Swordsmen which have more PA. Javalineers which have the same PA and BD as non-elite Skirm but more base damage. But doing this retro-actively would cause players to riot.
have you tried playing custom scenarios? there are extremely wild ones out there which completely overhaul the game
but in the end this is a 20 year old game, most people here like it the way it is. so why change anything?
regarding the unit which has a charged ranged attack and then goes to melee range: i think the bigger issue is that we would probably want the unit to deal piercing damage with the ranged attack, but melee damage with the melee attack. i am not sure how easy it would be to do that
I’m well aware of Kamayuks (and Steppe Lancers), but they’re not ‘melee’ units as we know it.
yeah but you’d still rather have just halberdiers defending, not sure what the stats of your unit have to be to beat 1o1 a knight though, otherwise they’d just be strictly inferior to halberdiers due to lack of movement speed (even when defending pike siege) and vulnerability to siege as well
Kamayuk doesn’t do line damage, so not really. It would act like that Pikeman bug in AoE4. Though I do wonder now, do Kamayuks do less damage to units behind Hussite Wagons? They’re a tile wide right?
In the end, Kamayuks aren’t a ‘melee’ unit. They’re a range unit with 1 range, with melee unit/armor classes. Otherwise, melee units would show up with 0 range indicators.
