I’m honestly not even sure on Towers. It’d PROBABLY be fine, but I’d be a bit worried about overlapping too much with the Sicilians.
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They don’t need to get that much better as they are trained from Barracks. I think Obuch -10 HP, -1 MA and Elite Obuch -15 HP will be a fine stat for LS and Champion.
I mean Gambeson can do the almost similar job but only against Pierce damage. And maybe instead of supplies, an HP tech with +10 HP would be better.
I think such small range is weird. Smaller unit size will accomplish the same thing and that will be better in melee combat. However will be worse against siege units.
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Building Palisade can help limit cavalry archers potential, giving long swordsman a way to fight cav archers indirectly.
Sicilians should get back 50% resistance.
I’m increasingly liking this idea.
Maybe the two units could not just be differently strong but fill different roles:
Two Handed Swordsman
- Glass cannon unit
- Same survivability as Long Swordsman
- Does some AoE damage (25% in a 0.5 tile radius)
- Small increase in speed over Long Swordsman
Champion
- Meet shield unit
- 2/2 base armour (+1/+1 compared to now)
- All other stats like they currently are
- No speed bonus
Then civilisations can get access to either of those units depending on what makes more sense and fits more into their play style.
The Two Handed Swordsman will be significantly stronger in larger scale battles while the Champion is a better 1v1 fighter.
The Champion can tank a lot more arrow and melee attacks too with more HP and armour.
In a direct fight the Two Handed Swordsman would likely win in larger scale battles but the Champions can be more helpful in an army combination by tanking more damage.
I think Gambesones should give 1 Melee armour too.
That way the Long Swordsman has the same armour as a Knight and can cost effectively fight them.
With my other suggestion that would mean that Champions have 3/3 armour (without blacksmith upgrades) which would make them significantly more tanky in meele then they are now.
Practically +2/+1 armour.
I think there is an way. At least for the “Infantry” civs. Less tech dependent, and better at their anti trash, anti eagle job.
Malians Knight is still better option. And Goths is the definition of “Infantry” civ and yet not a serious thing as you said.
I would give it as high as +15/+20 HP. Applied to every Swordsman like units other than Spearman-line. There is no point spending on unit which takes time to create and fairly expensive in cost but dies fast. You can increase HP for Swordsman in Feudal Age. Get Gambeson in Castle Age which’ll give cavalry armor resistance thus actually having better role in Knight-Archer dynamics. I still vote for Chieftains becoming universal. Vikings gets something new UU instead. Chieftains does make the investment worthwhile actually for Champs.
I do like the idea of Swordsman line across getting small increase in reach which’ll make it more easy to connect.
TLDR; Basically Swordsman being soft counter and becoming anti-trash counter. Applying it even for UUs. In Castle Age upgrade to LS is more smooth by making M@A research time much shorter but same in Feudal. In Imperial. Instead of two upgrade you’ll do one upgrade only if you have access to Champ. Otherwise 2HS. While we at it, 2HS gets a unique option like having more anti-spear/anti-skirm bonus damage. So there is a distinction between Champ and 2HS. 2HS got weaker stats but gives something counter in return. Applying Persian Savar cavalry logic to 2HS and Champ.
Exactly, it’ll help control archers in general, and it helps synergize with siege as well to help defend. Really, it synergizes with just about everyone. That’s why it’s important it be limited to castle age and take a tech though, because it would probably be OP in feudal.
I’m more talking about serjeants. With normal infantry able to build stuff, they’ll lose a lot of their flair.
Not at all. Konniks cannot build another Krepost to help mass themselves. Serjeant can build Donjons to mass themselves and they resist arrows.
I don’t think you can balance that actually. However, I have an idea of this entire line getting small stat boost on age up just like scout cavalry gets on Feudal Age. You still need the upgrade though.
I’m leaning towards giving them attack bonus vs spear,skirm for a long time. And now skirmisher is officially an armor class, I don’t see any reason why they can’t have it.
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Maybe. It is not easy to keep m@a survive until Castle age when opponents going archers. Skirm can even beat it with enough number and nice micro.
This is just a stat change though.
If you want to buff their skill celling, I’d pick Survalist’s way to use Militia line with skill. The Militia line + Siege Tower combo. I proposed something in a different thread. Let me copy-paste it.
Cost 200w/160g → 375w. Can’t be any cheaper as a trash unit completely ignoring precious stone walls will be OP.
Speed 0.80 → 0.60
Garrison infantry increases speed by 0.05 as usual. But militia line increases speed by 0.1.
Maybe the siege tower cost some gold will be better. Stone wall in late game being useless against some wood unit will be bad. So maybe 200w/160g → 325w/25g will be a good option.
Well, strictly speaking yes, but their ultimate stats are unchanged. That being the case, it’s more a timing change than anything.
At the core, it’s not meant to make them directly stronger, just allow them to survive to take advantage of their other new strengths.
I don’t dislike the idea, but it’s a very specific scenario I don’t see making a difference on a more broad level. Siege Towers are predominately a surprise tactic, as they can be fairly easily neutralized if you know they’re coming.
I’d be down with it in general - but I don’t see it fixing the fundamental problems of the Militia line. They simply need to be able to do more than walk slow and deal good damage.
militia lines need to get tankier…
if they were tankier they could trade better against cavalry and it would be a lot harder for archers to kill them… but they would still have some critical dissadvantages since they would be slower than both of them
I think it could work the same way as xbows vs knights… like if you have a few xbows they are no threat but if you get certain number it starts to snowball. Maybe if militia was slightly tankier, they could be a threat to xbows or knights once you have a critical mass… specially with some of the bonuses for infantry civs
Also include some of the techs in the upgrades… right now it cost too much resources and time to upgrade milita… 4 upgrades and 4 barrack techs is too much time and resources, maybe the longsword upgrade could include +1PA, so you get rid of gamesons
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I personally would get rid of two handed sword, get rid of gamesons and give the a little more hp and most importantly armor like
Milita (the same) 40 HP, 0/1 armor
MAA 55HP, 0/1 armor
LS 70HP, 1/2 armor
CH 80HP, 2/2 armor
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How about:
The Militia line is fine right now. Everyone just has overblown expectations for what the unit should/should not be doing, and want it to do something it clearly isn’t supposed to do.
Should there be a unit line in the game with 4 upgrades that is only useful in very special scenarios?
Should there be a unit line that is practically useless in Castle Age despite having extremely strong civ bonuses like -30% cost, +33% attack speed and so on?
Currently the Milita Line only really has 2 roles:
- Being the only unit in Dark Age so you can build some before going to Feudal
- Being good against most Trash (not Hussars) and Eagles in Imperial while costing relatively little Gold
A lot of people just one to see more then 2 different units in Castle Age all the time.
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Why not?
And also good at destroying buildings. That’s honestly still a fair amount of things it can do. It shouldn’t be allowed to do everything, which is where buffing it relentlessly leads.
Which 2? Crossbows? Knights? Pikes? Steppe Lancers? Camels? UUs? Cavalry Archers? Scorpions? Mangonels? E Skirms? And hell, I’m starting to see Battle Elephants crop up too.
Because there is not other unit with a very specific use case that requires a lot of upgrades.
Petards for example basically only benefit from Siege Engineers (if we ignore technologies that affect every single unit).
So the Milita Line is one of the unit lines with the most upgrades while simultaneously being one the most niche ones.
All other units are either expensive the upgrade of niche and not both.
Isn’t this the whole point of the thread. Finding a role for them instead of suggesting blind buffs in all directions.
There are a whole 3 civilisations that have Steppe Lancers and even those might often use Knights.
Pikes are only a reaction to Knights. Pikes barely win a 1v1 against a villager and do almost no damage to buildings.
Skirmishers are similarly only there to react to Crossbow.
Mangonels are also just a reaction to Crossbows for the most part.
Unless you have a regional unit or Camels you have to either use Crossbows or Knights as the core of your army because any other unit is only there to interact with those 2 units.
For a unique unit you need a Castle and for Cavalry Archers you need like 5 different technologies to make them usable.
Long swordsman is supposed to be a reaction to eagles but knight is the practical reaction mostly. Skirmishers can also help knight deal with spears. Pikes also serve as meatshield for xbow/siege. One of the advantage of Halbs+arbs over cav+skirm is that you are losing mostly trash units. Pikes/skirm are even more multi-purpose than swords-line.
Good at force fight but die in direct fight. Not mean to buff them in terms of raw power but at least give a unit synergize with it.
And? That just describes it, not why it’s bad to have those traits.
Anyway, I would argue that while they have a lot of upgrades, each individual unit is cheap.
The problem is that that will likely lead in the same direction anyway.
Mongols.
Also Tatars tend to use Steppe Lancers more, as they have bonuses for them.
*And other cavalry units.
*And other archery units.
“Unless you have a regional unit or camels”
That’s 22 civs. Around half of them. Not what I would call niche.
Not strictly true, as some civs have them outside of the castle (e.g. Gurjaras & Incas). But also, and? UUs are seen a lot more often than they used to be now.
Oh yeah, they only became THE meta pick for what…most of 2024? When even civs with poor cavalry archers were using them.