Call me crazy but what if we would change that.
Crossbows lose bonus damage vs. Spearman.
Skirmishers do bonus damage vs. Cavalry.
Like hypothetically that would automatically make Milita viable by making them the only real counter to Skirmishers.
Of course that would make Spearman and especially Skirmishers way to strong.
A trash that counter 2 power units… sounds too strong. Ans skirms are already strong… look at last pro and elite tournaments… skirms deserve a little nerf more than a buff.
It’s interesting that perhaps this entire issue wouldn’t possibly exist if Ensemble was consistent with the counters logic it set out to establish in the game. The militia line would have a clear role, leaving only the discussion of whether it fulfills it well.
I think most of your ideas in this thread are far too extreme 11.
One of the sub-optimal things, as far as I am concerned, is that the line of Champions (with the exception of the Malian ones) are incredibly inefficient against Crossbowmen.
Allow me to explain further. If you take 29 ‘Heavy Camel Rider’ and pit them against 46 ‘Arbalest’ (comparable cost between the two groups), obviously the archers win, but they suffer several losses. In fact, on average 28 survive. So you traded 29 Camels for 18 Archers. Which is a bad trade of course, but not a total loss. And with the exception of the old Indian (especially in team games) no one has ever complained about it. Because it is in the spirit of the game.
I believe that Champions should be able to trade in the same way as Camels against Archers. Now, I have not done all the calculations as I did here, but I should find the time to do something like this.
This was a thought experiment not a suggestion.
Knights and Crossbows synergise too well because they hard counter each other’s counters.
Camels are a semi exception to this rule because they don’t suck vs. Archers as you said which makes camels really good units.
The other exception is Eagle Warriors because they are good vs. Archers without sucking against cavalry.
A big part of that is the flaws in pathing that get exacerbated with large numbers of weaker units. Since you tend to end up with a long stream of units, you can always kill the closest and never take damage.
Perhaps a tweak to just the champion pathing would be desirable. Make them pursue more as a wave than a line; something like, if one unit is already being pursued by x other like units(say, 3), they’ll chase something else.
That would mean instead of having to kill just 1 unit, you’d have to kill more like 3-4 to avoid taking damage. It wouldn’t make champs counter ranged units or anything, but it would mean you could at least do SOME damage.
You are so confident about fixing the pathing…
It is more possible that a random bug that make champion pathing would be desirable.
Make their collision size smaller would improve pathing and performance vs buildings and knights slighly.
Maybe a collision box reducing and a short range. Something like 0.5.
Been really busy lately and couldn’t read anything here.
Yeah. He seems to be the only pro that uses them. His play style inspired me the siege tower synergy bonus.
Right. For 40 civs it would be fine. We can adjust the bonuses for rest 5 civs.
Also HCs, which have been improved in recent years, both in terms of HP and accuracy from long range. So they don’t suck against what isn’t infantry here.
Basically Bulgarians bonus for everyone with the option of further improvement with investment. Totally broken with current civ bonuses. And there are like 25 different bonuses to balance this. And still a completely generic militia line for a particular civ can be OP as that civ might have some crazy synergy with their eco/siege/transition.
I thought that at this point it wasn’t necessary to clarify that any suggestion comes with proper rebalance of civ bonuses… My bad…
Could it be a good idea to have the role of the militia line vary slightly at castle age depending on civs by using “regional” techs or upgrades? I think it could make balancing a little bit easier instead of having an “one size fit all” approach.
Otherwise, I think it could be interesting if the militia-line could play a more defensive role compared to the knight line.
Yes, I see this as a possible approach. I proposed something similar. Give Militia-line low base stats, but add more dedicated techs to give different strenghts to the unit among civs.
So, the same LS could be very tanky for some civs, or very fast for other civs, filling different roles.
Which is a very bad improvement as they die way faster than LS.
Yeah. Exactly.
Or speed. WR is actually way better than Militia line despite having lower armor and dying to archer in less arrows.
Speed will be your best friend. For example, Celts bonus for everyone will help them in fight without theocratically having the same survival stat.
Make militia-line move faster in its own base. Like they can garrison in house and climb over their own wall/palisade. Opponents units get obstructed in your base while militia-line is not. Militia firing arrows when garrisoning TC, Towers and Castle can also fill the role. Militia-line can react faster to raids.
You are out of the context imo. I mean THS upgrade in Castle age. So the survivability should be the same as LS.THS is still facing castle age units.
Having finally had time to do some testing, I’m more of the idea of giving them +10HP and +0/1P more.
Among other things, removing Supplies, and setting the base cost to 55F 20G.
EDIT. When I am finished I will directly make another thread, since in the end it is not about giving them a new role
I would love them to be either the ultimate trash killer with bonus vs skirmisher, spearman and scout line. At the moment, the game has skirmisher and spearman armor class but no scout line class, but I don’t think it’s a problem to add a new armor class just for them. Sure they already kinda do the job but not efficient enough to be worth the gold cost. In fact they don’t even trade well at all against scout line.
Another option I want them to be is building razing units. They already have some bonus vs buildings but it’s really not impactful enough. I think arson should give them even more bonus vs buildings or just give them something like…idk +10 vs buildings at base or so.
Yeah. Maa is good for rush. But literally the worst Feudal unit to continue.
Why not give MAA +1 PA? And then maybe remove Gambeson.