I’d prefer to give the militia line the “role” of area denial.
That requires longswords to have a good matchup vs knights when they meet head-to-head.
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Trash killer, but effective. Whereas today, you need at least the fully upgraded Generic Champion to be effective.
This idea that infantry suddenly have resistance from siege blows does not appeal to me at all.
It would be enough for champions to have +2 against the new light cavallary class or +2 against the scout line (whichever is easier to implement). Furthermore, I will repeat it to death, but I believe that the civilisations that have champions should be able to skip the two-handed swordsman upgrade.
why do you think that the militia line needs change?
it’s important to note that: militia line costs significantly less gold than the units depicted here
even historically, swordsmen were the exception, not the norm in armies
In reality most soldiers in the middle ages where Infantry, across all continents. Only a few armies had more cavalry or more archers.
The Spearman line in AoE2 is kind of a joke. They are hyper focused on killing cavalry and do very little damage against anything else and on top of that almost every ranged unit has bonus damage against them.
You can’t make spearman the core of your army, you can only use them to defend your actual man units from cavalry.
Changing this unit would completely destroy the current game balance though. Everything would have to be rebalanced if they changed.
The only other generic Infantry unit is the Milita Line. That one is very different because it has no bonus damage against any generic unit, only one unit that can be trained by 3 civilisations.
This unit had currently very little use in most matchups but it has the potential to become a viable unit without disturbing the overall balance too much because of that.
Adding 1 more unit to most civilisations that is viable in more situations means that there is a lot more variety in builds and therefor the game is overall more interesting.
Of course the same thing could be done by adding a new Infantry unit to all civilisations that is more useful then the Milita Line and the Spearman Line but that seems to be a much bigger change that most people would likely not accept.
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It depends on what point in time. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the infantry regressed and cavalry assumed importance. The Roman army in the 5th century onwards consisted mainly of horsemen and divisions of horse archers.The classical legion began to disappear altogether.
Moreover, with the beginning of feudalism (9th to 15th century), whoever took up arms to defend a territory also took control of it as feudal lord, and fought on horseback, he and a few of his peers, because in the feud he was the only one who could afford it.
In this period, the infantry consisted of mercenaries or serfs forcibly conscripted from the feudal lands: poorly motivated to fight, poorly equipped, poorly performing in an open field battle, they were mainly used during sieges. This is one of the reasons why wars could not last longer than a couple of months and necessarily had to be on a small scale.
With the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) and the introduction of infantry and mercenary armies, vassals lost their importance as knights, and the strengthening of state power (also due to the loss of importance of the nobility) allowed for larger-scale, longer and bloodier wars, with more means and more men.
These changes began to mark the end of heavy cavalry and the rebirth of infantry. From that moment on, the infantry of the European countries, mainly made up of mercenaries, further developed tactics that made them almost invincible against cavalry (such as the use of the so-called ‘square’ formation from which a wall of pikes was erected on each side that was impossible to overcome on horseback) and again became the main force of any army.
So this idea that longswords should dominate the battlefields of this game makes no strategic, tactical or historical sense.
Edit. Syntax corrected
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I think Skadidesu is referring to infantry being the largest part of almost every army in the world, not the most important. Horses were extremely expensive almost everywhere, hence the reason they were usually restricted to the elites and archery is a difficult art that takes years to master.
Perhaps in Europe swords were not used much outside of their secondary weapon role, but aoe2 covers other regions besides Europe.
True, in fact only the English paid for training to become an archer. Which of course took years.
The other feudal lords:
- they were afraid to train the serfs;
- they didn’t want to pay all this money.
Solution? The crossbow became the weapon of choice. Training takes a few months, and you don’t have to worry about anything else.
correct, across most of human history, most people fought on foot. And until the advent of cheap guns, the most common weapon was some form of spear or halberd and a shield. these kinds of battles often didn’t do much damage to each other, most casualties were from disease and minor injuries which got infected not actually on the battlefield.
the same is true in most regions of the world. not least because metal is expensive and forging swords takes a lot of time. slapping a bit of sharp metal (or even just a sharp rock) on the end of a stick is way easier, so it’s the way to go if you want to equip a large number of (expendable) peasants quickly
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I think the best 2 solutions involve adding a new infantry unit.
Buff Milita
- Militia Line gets buffed to to point that they are cost effective against Knights and Crossbows
- New unit is added that does bonus damage vs. Milita Line (and against similar Infantry unique units but not Spearman Line or Eagle Warrior)
Add new Unit
- New Infantry unit that is cost effective against Knights and Crossbows
- Milita Line gets bonus damage vs. this new unit
- Similar to Eagle Warrior (Maybe even using the same armour class)
The results would be similar. You have 2 new factors that will make people train more Infantry. You have a strong Infantry unit that is mostly countered by another Infantry unit.
Units like Hand Cannons, Scorpions, Cavalry Archers and so on would of course still counter both of them in most situations.
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Synergy is established when at least one of the weakness of a unit is covered.
Knight’s weakness; pikes, monks, camels
Pikes get countered by xbow and skirm.
Camels get countered by pikes and xbow.
Skirm help in knight vs xbow mass.
Monks help in knight vs knight and knight can retreat fast and heal more HP.
Xbow’s weakness; scorpions, mangonels, skirm, rams
Knight can pick off siege and skirm.
Mangonel can flatten siege and skirm with micro.
Pikes help xbow against knight.
Mangonel and Skirm help in xbow vs xbow war.
Imo long swordsman have to cover at least one of the weakness of either knight or xbow to be more viable in castle age. Then Even they don’t have the power equal to knight or xbow, they will still appear together with xbow/knight.
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Right reasoning.
and Champions.
Monks also help in a Knights versus Camels situation.
And Knights, pathfanding is unfortunately horrifying, and we have forgotten how well Knights used to kill Crossbowmen.
If you play crossbowmen, you would ideally want a stable. This is one of the reasons why the pros say that Ethiopians are much better than Dravidians. Because just in case you get a few knights out of them. Same with Vikings or Saracens or Koreans.
Bengalis suffered a lot for this reason, the devs ran for cover by giving +2 to light cavalry against skirms. And it actually improved the situation a lot. Hindustanis were given a strong UU against archers/skirms for this very reason too.
If you play knights, definitely a monastery, then add skirms if you play against crossbowmen & pikemen, or in the long run pikemen if you play against camels. What do you need champions for?
So actually the design of the champions, ever since the game came out, is to be a counter to counter-units. Strong against halberds, skirms and camels. Basically the Byzantines’ bonus, which is why they have the Cataphracts of course.
Moreover, there were not as many civilisations that made Hussars as there are today such as Poles, Lithuanians, Bulgarians and so on.
Some functions can be given to long swordsman. But I think some of them may mess things up.
Knight and hussar get their attack (-4)/speed(-0.3) reduced when get injured by long swordsman until fully healed.
Take -20 damage from mangonel and reduced nearby unit damage by mangonel to protect archers.
Attacking siege can cause siege unable to attack for 5s. (Cavalry better vs xbow and swordsman better vs siege then)
Pikes get anti-cav bonus reduced when injured by long swordsman. (This should be the messiest one imo)
I think that barracks should have an answer to each posiible power unit. Not hard countering all, but at least a medium or soft countering.
For this, I proposed and support the idea of expand the barrack’s roster of generic units.
1- Spears: counters cavalry
2- (new trash unit) Raider: A cheap, fast with good pierce armor light infantry good vs archers and siege.
3- (new trash unit) Shieldman: A tanky (specially in melee) and slow infantry with very low dps but bonus vs infantry.
4- Heavy infantry (reworked militia-line): An all-rounded power infantry, with little trample damage which make them better in numbers (lose vs knights in low numbers, but win in large battles).
With this you have much more combo options and easy to tech into because, except khmers, you always have a barracks available.
For example, if you go (reworked) Militia-line and your opponent goes archers, you can mix with raiders, skirms or siege while the crossbow player could answer this with shieldman, knights or monks (now reworked militia-line is more worth to be converted).
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Or make guard towers more meta-relevant for infantry civs?
Like towers and Donjons become universal resource dropoff site.
Rename Teutons UT to ‘Bastion’ and give towers a tech ’ Crenellations’ to allow long swordsman garrison adding arrows. New ‘Crenellation’ and tower upgrade can be researched in towers itself.
Am I the only one confused here? How both units can counter each other?
Mine is Synergy table, not counter table.
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Practically an eagle that doesn’t cost gold
A champion with less attack, but more bonus attack that does not cost gold.
Practically the champion of the Slavs.
Exactly, except that is only good vs archers and siege. Its attack should be low but with bonus them. It is a good raiding option (just not so good as loght cav line) for those civs with low mobility or non focused in cavalry.
More like a semi teutonic knight, in terms or armor and performance vs infantry. Still die against range and siege units. To cavalry could take a little more time, because of high melee armor, but still win without taking much damage.
But with overall better stats. Slavs UT could add more trample damage and include the others infantry which still is a good bonus.
Nice. How can we achieve that?