Please don’t. Let this game stay simple, especially a generic unit that exists since the beginning.
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that’s literally what I wrote:
most casualties were from disease and minor injuries which got infected not actually on the battlefield
but also minor injuries could occur while travelling/foraging/cooking
Something I’ve noticed more and more of late is how similar the militia line is to the villager.
Think about it; in the dark age, the militia is virtually identical to a villager with Loom. And in Imperial, the Champion’s much like villagers with Sappers.
Which got me thinking; why not just lean into this? A combat-capable villager seems like a perfectly reasonable niche to have. It wouldn’t always be something you’d go for, as sometimes you’d prefer the cheapness of just sending villagers forward, but in some cases you might find great utility in having a premium forward unit, much more tanky and able to fight.
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Allow milita line to build light fortifications, including outposts and palisade walls(and, potentially, towers). This will greatly help in the early and middle game, as you’ll be better able to assert map control. However, they should probably build slower than villagers; maybe at half speed?
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Allow militia line to repair siege and ships. This is something that everyone probably SHOULD be doing(especially ships), but nobody wants to pull villagers off their economy to actually do it! Allowing players to do it with military would make this much easier to justify.
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Allow militia to fire arrows while garrisoned by default. At present, this is exclusive to the Teutons’ Crenelations upgrade, but it’s a tiny portion of that tech; allowing ALL militia to garrison in towers and fire arrows would make them synergize dramatically better with towers and improve them significantly overall.
These changes would make the militia line a valid choice throughout the game, even if only used in small numbers, and would allow them to synergize with almost anything!
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Many players would not spend resources and lengthy time to upgrade militia if the pace is fast.
That wouldn’t be a big problem. You still want a role for villagers in combat. You’d also bring them along if you wanted to collect resources.
But consider the fact you could essentially improve your economy with a military building? That alone has a large amount of value, as you could save the villager work time.
Why though? That will obviously make civs with good barracks stronger than the rest.
Interesting. I’m all in for Tower Defence. A tech seems very late to make them viable though. And a free feature only means tower rush with MAA every game which I hate.
Just no need to research in University but researched in Castle age in Guard towers itself.
Not practical as you start with 100 gold and they are the only unit available in Dar Age.
I’d say give it to whole line. Make supplies/gambeson a bit more rare.
This is the one that actually hurting their balance. All melee units that have this attack bonus are badly balanced (except rams).
BTW, is this pathing behaviour actually bad? I think units always calculating the weakest can be a bad thing in a mass battle.
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The current path is atrocious, absolutely atrocious. Another thing that helps the CA to be the strongest unit in the open field.
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I see LC a lot more than LS. Feudal Eagle, I agree. They are rarely seen. But from Castle Age, most of the time they are the main military unit for those 3 civs. Meanwhile LS is not a main unit for any of the 45 civs.
Summary - It is a very dangerous unit to buff. Melee units pathing is bad. I think armor and attack are fine. It is the speed and how they engage in battle which is again can be blamed to pathing. Maybe 0.50 range or more speed.
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That too. the crossbow actually had a slightly different purpose than the bow: it emerged as a reaction to stronger armor, due to its greater penetration power at close range, which compensates for its lower rate of fire and range than the bow. The crossbow was very good against chain mail, but not so good against the thicker plate armor. This is why you see the bow continue to be used alongside firearms (which are sort of the logical evolution of the crossbow) for quite some time after the Middle Ages. Plate armor only fell out of favor once primitive firearms evolved, making it increasingly heavy, expensive, and inefficient. All over the world, weapons and armor developed in reaction to each other.
Yes, it is true. The spear was the most common weapon on the planet, and while it is possible, I have never heard of a military corps made up entirely of swordsmen anywhere in the world. However, it would be silly to argue about this in a game where camels are faster than horses and soldiers fight from atop them. My comment was in reference to the fact that, at least in Africa, infantry could alternate between using spears and swords, rather than using the sword only as a last resort. And I suppose that was true in some other places as well.
The militia line is an abstraction of the heavy infantry, and the spears of the light infantry. Both start as levies and become professionals only in the late Middle Ages, with spear line taking on an increasingly specific role against cavalry (and being used with hand cannoneers, pike-and-shot*) and the militia becoming increasingly heavy in armor. So the visible distinction here is more in the armor/shield aspect than in the swords (since large spears* require the soldier to hold it with both hands, forcing him to forgo shields and very heavy armor). At least, that seems to me to have been Ensemble’s logic.
That said, if we were being realistic, militia line would have to be extremely cheap to create (in order to be the largest part of the army along with the spearmen), be as fast as spears, and have the ability to absorb/share ranged damage as it grows in numbers (in order to survive a mass of archers and represent a shield wall). Militia would actually oppose the archers, and spears the knights, with militia being countered by its historical counter, the skirmisher. Another difference would be the increasingly higher upgrade prices of the militia line compared to spears, obviously representing the evolution of armor. Both lines would start out roughly the same, then, and would progressively move away from each other towards their specific roles. And this is just talking about the infantry, of course. Other differences would be the knights being really expensive, the crossbowmen being different from the archers, etc.
Edit: typo
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Well, I once thought about asymmetrical technologies. Although it was not directed towards militia line techs.
To be honest, Champions are so slow most of the time that using them to chase eagles around your base becomes a nightmare
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Maybe it can be tech in siege workshop. Rams can gain its full speed with only 1 garrison longswordsman. Longswordsman and rams can help xbow to fight skirm and siege. Squires also gives +0.01 for each garrisoned infantry in rams. Rams will have 0.96 at full speed.
This combines with longswordsman upgrade instant research and +0.1 speed for long swordsman. Probably, squires, supplies, gambeson can be also instantly researched.
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I think full speed with 1 unit is kinda strange.
I have an idea:
New technology (replaces Arson):
- Garrisoned Milita Line have double the speed increase for Rams and Siege Towers
- Garrisoned Milita heal Siege units and buildings with 10 HP/Minute when garrisoned
Siege Tower Changes:
- Speed bonus halved to 0.05 like Ram
- Gold cost halved to 80
This way Milita is better in Rams and Siege Towers. Siege Towers are less of a generic armoured personnel carrier.
10HP/Minute is a nice bonus. It would still take 2.2 minutes to fully heal a fully garrisoned Siege Tower.
A full Castle would take 24 minutes to heal, a Town Centre 16 minutes and a Keep even 45 minutes so it’s not that strong on buildings.
Healing transport ships would be a nice bonus for naval landings. Yet another role where it makes sense that the Milita Line excels at.
This tech should not be available to the Mongols so they don’t get super fast Rams.
Maybe it would also be to strong for Celts and they should probably use their UU instead of Milita Line anyway.
Alternative idea:
- Milita take up half garrison space
- provide normal speed bonus, there for double the max speed
- Maybe a 5HP/Minute heal
This would also allow landing 2x as many units with a transport ship. Knights would probably still be more space efficient and obviously elephants too.
This would require you to train 2x as much Milita for the same effect but it would allow you to have more solders plopping out of those siege towers, rams and transports.
The logic behind that would be that a Sword is a pretty small weapon compared to a spear, bow or crossbow so they are more suitable to be garrisoned in siege units or buildings.
I think Mongol Drill increase 50% speed is more strange 
Since longswords is food-hefty, it is important to reduce its critical mass in Castle age.
Kamayuk without the range? Or more accurately Mayans Eagle? I don’t think such generic unit should exist. And to be anti-cavalry, you need speed. And to be anti with this unit, you again need speed. So why not just give the extra speed to militia line anyway?
So you generally mean there can only be 2 types of units that can possible be viable:
Ranged units or fast units.
A unit can never be good it it’s melee and slow?
And with good I mean a general main unit and not a special purpose like rams vs. buildings.
Obuch. But it synergizes with xbow.
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That’s how the game is designed. Only a handful non-ranged slow units are viable (at least in 1v1). Serjeant and Obuch comes into my mind. That’s why I always lean towards toughness (HP/armor/S.Rider dodging mechanics) whenever I propose a militia line buff. Let “Toughness” be the rival of “Mobility” and “Range”.
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