AoE1, AoM, AoE3 and AoE4 solved the issue. It is an AoE2 only issue.
AoE1
- Swordsman Line is very cheap, high HP and only 0.5 population
- Hoplite Line is very tanky in melee with an extremely high attack
AoM
- Infantry has high base stats
- Almost all Infantry has some kind of bonus damage since AoMR
AoE3
- Melee Infantry (besides Pikeman type units) has high stats and often AoE damage
- Melee Infantry almost always has bonus damage vs. Cavalry
AoE4
- Man at Arms has a lot of armour
- Almost all melee units have a charge ability that makes them a little faster
But all those games have generic units that do bonus damage against those units (besides Hoplite Line in AoE1 but that has very low speed and pierce armour)
I think the solution is pretty obvious:
- Make the Milita Line strong
- Add a generic counter (that is available before Imperial Age and not a gunpowder unit)
2 Likes
I think a soft counter is a solution to move forward. Eagles do have a soft counter bonus. Vikings Champs are pretty good to use. But they still lack the resistance level which Eagles lack. So magical softcounter bonus wont solve much. That’s where extra HP/armor talks comes in. Also a slightly more mobility than now.
The issue is that the Milita Line can’t really be buffed because it can’t really be countered.
Currently it’s balanced because the unit is weak even with a strong civilisation bonus.
But if the unit becomes strong it will be hard or even impossible to counter for some civilisations.
Another issue is that one of the main counters to the Milita Line is micro.
You can micro archers to kite Milita Line (especially Cavalry Archers) or Micro cavalry and even pikeman to avoid having to fight the Milita Line because of their speed.
But that means that in lower ELOs (or casual lobbies) the Milita Line is stronger because people are not as good at micro.
If the Milita Line is buffed without giving it a hard counter it will likely dominate lower ELOs and casual play while potentially still being useless in high ELO.
2 Likes
I want to keep Archer to be the counter and Knights just simply happens to get less benefit but counters. Thats why the term soft counter. Thats how AOM solved it. Also I advocate for removing Supplies and keep the old 60f thing for this reason alone. You pay good price and get good utility instead of mass spam approach often suggested just based on how Goths work.
In AoMR Archers hard counter Infantry.
Almost all Archer units (besides counter Archers) have bonus damage vs. Infantry now.
In some ways armour can effectively be a hard counter too. Archers do pierce damage so high pierce armour is effectively reducing the damage of Archers.
Adding Gambesones more the Milita Line less countered by archers but because they are not really useful for anything this reduced weakness doesn’t help much.
Archers are actually better counter compared to HCs at far distance. If im not wrong then not long ago, HCs had less projectile speed. That made DPS much bad. Besides, having Gambeson hardly changed any status quo rather Champs have been as weak as they ever had been. Thats why renewed discussion of buffing infantry again. Even Malian champs are bad. So far in my opinion, Serjeant has been a better infantry unit and still not broken despite high armor and pierce. Actually feels a better replacement with utility. Altho they are more of Donjon rush unit.
So I would say devs perhaps should actually let Swordsman line OP in all stats. Which includes UUs. Then start nerfing from there.
People are starting to believe… They call me crazy (?)…
Honestly, I don’t think that would fix anything. That really just moves them from their current spot to the spot of the Battle Elephant. Strong but easily countered is powerful at lower elos but not anywhere else.
They’re already strong at low elos. They need better HIGH skill gameplay. And honestly, Survivalist and others already use them fairly effectively even at ~2300.
That’s why I really like the idea of making them even more of a generalist. The biggest problem with their generalist role right now is it’s too narrowly focused, and you don’t usually NEED a generalist unit. But if they could do everything, repair siege, build palisades, heal faster, repair buildings, and on and on, then any time you’ve got a problem you could be like, ‘I wish I had a few longswords here…’
That’s how you make them just feel good. Any time there’s a problem, you’ve got a longsword, ready and waiting.
Is not the same… Elephants can’t outrun pikes.
A militia-line (or infantry in general) melee trash counter should be as slower than the slowest infantry unit (teutonic knight).
However, I think that giving militia-line a overal stats buff buff and give them building or repairing abilities could coexists.
I 'd restrict this ability to building and repairing rams, siege towers, palisades and outposts. Maybe behind a tech.
Honestly given they’re mostly hard countered(and outrun) by archers the parallel is pretty striking.
No amount of stats buff is gonna fix them as long as that happens.
Militia with squires outrun archers… the problem is that squires appears too late.
Arson and squires should be able in feudal.
At this point… militiashould get at least, a base speed buff.
1 Like
Is the Celt Milita Line competitive?
We can actually answer the viability a lot of suggestions by looking at existing civs bonuses:
- More speed
- More attack
- More HP
- More melee armour
- More pierce armour
- Lower cost
- No Gold cost
- Attack bonus vs. cavalry
- Free upgrades
- Cheaper upgrades
- Free armour upgrades
- Double armour upgrades
- Available 1 age earlier
- ignoring armour
- attacking faster
- trample damage
Though a lot of those bonuses are locked behind Imperial Age so we can’t tell if they would make Long Swordsman more competitive.
A few more HP can turn a Paladin into the one of the best if not the best unit of the game.
Most of the Milita Line bonuses out there would be utterly UP if they were applied to fully upgraded Archer of Knight line.
1 Like
Aoe2 mechanics seem to be unable to mimic swords infantry in medieval warfare.
Doing far better in swamp, forest, mountainous terrain than spears and cavalry.
Ambush and surround enemies.
Cut spear shaft.
Pommel and half-sword technique to fight plate armor.
Able to change formation swiftly. Attack flank of spear formation. Turn around to attack enemies far easier than cavalry.
Easier to dodge stones or arrows than cavalry via sidestep or crouching.
3 Likes
We got 25 years to see if the unit was good. If the real reason was unfun while the unit is actually good, we could see that in scenario editor tests and in non serious play. Militia line still sucks.
I’m working on converting resource cost into villager working time. And in Castle Age, FU LS cost 425f/280g and then 45f are looking too much. Especially the food cost.
Except they’re used to some effect by high ranking players that like them fairly regularly. Watch Survivalist sometime; he often loads them into rams and uses them for remarkably effective attacks.
It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it’s too niche imo.
Terrain effects have been proposed several times. I really would like have these in game. Would add more strategy layers, plus, more interesting maps.
That would be new swamp maps which have swamp distribution like water distributed in hybrid maps? Only swords/axe infantry would not get speed reduction?
1 Like
Around 10:16 is a fine example how turning Swordsman into soft-counter of Cavalry doesn’t necessarily makes it broken. A Castle Age tech doing this on top of some pierce armor or HP resistance can solve few things. If I were to rebalance it then
- I would bring Squires to Feudal Age. Simply give Gambeson for free in Castle Age instead for all civs. Malians can re-adjusted by 1 age later.
- M@A instantly upgraded if its not researched on Feudal Age. But takes the cost still.
- A separate new tech which’ll give anti-Cavalry attack to Infantries. Chieftains is replaced by something new.
- 2HS and Champ are separate upgrade lines. Meaning civs having Champs wont need to tech for 2HS. Utility wise 2HS is faster than Champs by small margin since they already are cheaper upgrade and inferior stats. So more unique way to distinguish across many civs.
As for Chronicles,
- Delete Battle Drills and simply give the upgrade with the treatment above. Its more than annoying chore.
- Greek Hoplites 100% need small bonus damage vs Cavalry to make it worthwhile
- Sparabara is a new Barracks UU for Archaemanids if Sparabara is researched. Basically a weaker Spearman but without the downside of anti-archer bonus as they cost gold to begin with.
- Make Polymarch Barracks based instead. It seriously suffers from the classic problem of too much tech and just 1 use case specific. No need to limit the number rather make it expensive since its a hero unit.
- Spartans are worst civ to play in Chronicles. No mobility, not much good infantry bonus, bad defense since no Stone Walls and I still dont know why they dont have it. Even Infantry UU is very weak compared to Athenians in term of utility. Even Archaemanids are a better infantry civ despite not being an infantry civ. Immortals and Sparabara feels more useful to play rather than Spartans.
A crazy idea, what if militia-line stats automatically upgrade to current MAA when reachs feudal age.
Then MAA upgrade could have a rise cost but its takes militia stats to current LS and so on with LS and THS upgrades. Champion could give an extra stats buff but being more exclusive among civs.
Currently, Champions are cost-effective against cavalier in imperial age. Just give Armenian earlier upgrade to all civs would be more than enough against cavalry. THS have +3 atk compare to LS.
