What if Knights were a regional unit?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Knights are maybe the most European unit. Knights are nearly synonymously with the European Middle Age for many people.

Only one Civilisation outside of Europe has access to the Paladin (the Persians. The Huns and Cumans are in Europe).

But the Cavalier and the Knight itself on the other hand are important units for many civilisations outside of Europe.

So a regional replacement for the Knight would only need one Imperial Age upgrade if we find a unique solution for the Persians.

Southern Knight

This unit is available to Middle Eastern and African civilisation.
It represents the real life Mamelukes (which were mostly horseman in real life) but that name is already taken.

  • Cost: 60 Food 75 Gold
  • HP: 100, 120
  • Attack: 11, 13
  • Armour: 1/1, 1/1
  • Speed: 1.45

They have the same costs as Knights/Cavaliers and the same HP.
They have 1/1 less armour which is made up by having 1 more attach and 0.1 more speed.

The 1 more attack and 1 less melee armour should make them equal in a 1v1 with Knight/Cavalier.
That helps them in 1v1 against units with slower attack rates but those units usually fight in higher numbers, like Pikeman for example.

The 0.1 more speed gives them the same speed as Camels, which many of those civilisations like to use.
It also somewhat makes up for the lower piercing armour because they can catch up with Archer more quickly. Also the +1 attack helps here too.

The Elite version would not be available to Saracenes because they don’t get the Cavalier.

Eastern Knight

None of the Asian Civilisations have any bonus for Knights/Cavalier besides the Burmese but that doesn’t mean the units are useless for them.

I think the Asian Knight should be more of a supporting role then the Western ones.

  • Cost: 60 Food 60 Gold
  • HP: 100, 120
  • Attack: 9, 11
  • Armour 2/2, 2/2
  • Speed 1.35

It losses one attack (same as Keshik) but also costs 15 Gold less.
Other then that the stats are identical to knights. This makes them a little more cost efficient in the damage sponge role as you can afford making more of them but worse at raiding.

Persian Knight

I think the Persian Knight should be a unique unit. Similar to the Sogdian Cataphract from the Bukhara mission.
That unit is very focused on the anti Archer role which doesn’t make them a good Knight replacement.
I would turn it into a new unit line with 3 version. One Castle Age and two Imperial Age ones.

  • Cost: 60 Food 80 Gold
  • HP: 100, 120, 160
  • Attack: 10, 12, 14
  • Bonus Damage: 2, 3, 4 vs Archer
  • Armour: 2/2, 2/2, 2/3
  • Speed: 1.4

This new Knight line is a little better against Archers and also a little more mobile (+0.05) but costs 5 more Gold making them a little less cost efficient against other Cavalry or Infantry.

The Team Bonus of Persians gets Changed to something else.

Central Asians civilisations

The Cumans could either keep the European Knight line or get the Persian Knight line.

The Tatars could honestly get all of the suggested Knights because they are at the crossroad of all those civilisations. The Persian knight is probably the most best additional unit to the Keshik giving players a more interesting choice.

They both also already have the Steppe Lancer though.

The Huns (they are also Central Asian) could also get the Persian Knight line which would likely harmonise well with the Tarkan.

Indian Civilisations

They don’t have access to the Knight right now so they don’t need a regional replacement.
Maybe they could get a unique knight unit that is a little worse then all the others but still situationally useful?

Names

I’m bad at naming things. You got any good ideas?

Balance

Would any of those units mess up the balance too much? How could the be changed to fix that?

11 Likes
2

Not a fan of having to learn 5 different knights.

14 Likes
3

we don’t need complete overhauls of core concepts in this game
what is this suppose to achieve?

13 Likes
4

I actually like the idea.
I probably would make it different: Instead of directly giving the different Knights as regional units, I would make a base Knight line (that is a bit worse than the current Knights)
And then kind of cheap different regional upgrades that specify them into the different versions.
Each of them could have a unique skin so they can be differntiated better.

Realistically it’s kinda unlikely this will be implemented, but I like the idea and the elaboration you put in that :slight_smile:

3 Likes
5

What is the purpose of doing this?
Let non-Europeans have heavy cavalry with different names, looks and stats than Knights?
What is the unit like the so-called “Eastern Knight”?
Did the heavy cavalry of Japanese, Chinese, and Khmer look same?
It’s okay if it doesn’t be changed, but you will face many problems if changed. To achieve the original purpose, you will have to face more and more challenges about details, and in the end it will definitely not be just 5 types of heavy cavalry units.

1 Like
6

I prefer name and looks changes only
For Western civs: Knight → Cavalier → Paladins (perfect as is)
For Eastern civs: Lancer → Medium Lancer → Cataphracts (Byzantine’s Cataphracts should either be renamed to Tagmata, Excubitores, or Varangian Guards)

1 Like
7

Central Asian civilization could get a skirmisher heavy cavalry unit, a heavy cavalry version of the genitour well armoured and all and fast.

8

I would leave knights as they are. They are a well established and iconic base unit of the game. Just change the skins regional (that should happen to all base and trash units, villagers, monks etc. in the game in my opinion). But nonetheless some cool ideas :slight_smile:

9

Knights are already kind of regional because quite a few civs don’t have them: Aztecs, Bengalis, Dravidians, Gurjaras, Hindustanis, Incas & Mayans. And there are already a lot of unique units which are similar enough to knights so I don’t think adding more is particularly necessary. Sure, you could offer optional regional skins as free DLC to match your variations or something, but I don’t think changing the generic base stats is a good idea from a balance perspective.

1 Like
10

The game has so many civilisations now but before you build a castle there isn’t that much difference between them.
Giving early Castle Age a little variation without destroying balance.
The changes I suggested are less then many of the civilisation bonuses affecting the knight line.

That’s why my suggestion only changes half the civilisations and doesn’t touch most of the iconic knight civilisations.

11

it would be interesting perhaps to take away the +4 armor from many Knight civs so that full Knights into Cavalier wouldn’t be such a good option and create a new archetype of Handcannon/Halb civ for Arabia. Probably with significant buffs to HC that would make is a more “vanilla” option for Imperial age. But that would likely take too long to re-balance the game.

12

i feel like the differences which already exist are just the right amount. enuogh to make the civs distinctive but without overwhelming new players by making them all completely different
if it’s just optional skins i can live with this, but changing the game by adding or removing armour to/from a core unit means you need to play with it completely differently. think of how much of a difference it makes if you are missing armour or attack upgrades

1 Like
13

Asian civs use heavy cavalries too but they are not called knights and some of them used to be the main force of militaries

14

I like the idea. Same could be done with Militia Line.

15

Yes lets screw balance and readability at the expense of playerbase. No thanks.

4 Likes
16

2023 could be the year with the most terrible ideas yet.

6 Likes
17

My issue with the current system is that everyone is the same but a few are different.
With my suggestion there would be 3 buckets and then some variance in those buckets.

I think it’s strange that civilisations from the same cultural group (architecture set) don’t feel similar in any gameplay way.
Changing from the Koreans to the Britons or Chinese feels about the same. That is only different for recently added civilisations that share regional units like the Battle Elephant.
But then Vietnamese feel more like South East Asian then East Asian, despite having the East Asian architecture set.

That’s a different topic. My suggestion is about making gameplay a bit more varied between civilisation and not about changing the visuals.

The Middle Eastern version of the Knight I suggested is basically 1 attack upgrade ahead and 1 armour upgrade behind.
So it should be about equal in strength in most situations.
In a 1v1 against an European knight there would be no difference, both would to the same damage to each other.

That’s why I suggested an alternative Knight for Asians.
No civilisation will lose a unit, just none European civilisations get a new one with slightly different stats to suit their game style better.

If AoE2 players can manage to learn to read 2+ new unique units for every DLC then they can manage to learn to read 2 new cavalry units.
Especially when the stats are similar to the base knight.

How many people quit the game over the Mongols getting the Steppe Lancer? Or when they added regional skins to the Trade Cart?

AoE4 players must be super humans for being able to play a game where every civilisation has completely unique skins for every unit.

2 Likes
18

But do they want to?

Yeah, how is 4 doing compared to 2 again? Oh. Right

1 Like
19

Considering that people always want more DLCs and more civilisations, I guess yes.
Every new civilisation gives you new things to learn.
Most major updates also change things about existing civilisations like replacing their unique technologies.

So my suggested change would be accompanied with a DLC that brings new civilisations and other changes.
Also the new units I suggested don’t have to be all added at once.
I mean technically they wouldn’t even need to be new units but just modifiers to the knight line shared by a group of civilisations.

I would be more interested in your detailed opinion on my ideas other then just “change = bad”.

Looking at the numbers, not bad.
Yes it has less players on Steam (and probably also overall) but not that much less.
Also it has like 10% of the content that AoE2DE has.

1 Like
20

Most/A lot of civs that used horses, used heavy horsemen.

The solution is optional regional skins, not a new unit.

1 Like