What if Knights were a regional unit?

For ME Knights. I would still keep the 2 pierce armor. Making it 1 makes the whole Knights vs Archer play pointless. You’ll be left with high HP hussar as Archer meta is extremely strong. Also I will never get this why Saracens doesn’t get Cavalier/Paladin as they were highly well-known(Farussiya basically alternative name for Knights/Cavalier) for that.
However I still don’t know what Persians falls into. Sometimes they are known as Sassanids and other time as an auxiliary civ to Saracens. However for Knight skin they would fall same umbrella under ME civs primarily.

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All the units I suggested are heavy horsemen.

Regional skins are a different topic.
My concern here was only gameplay.
Those “new units” could even just be a knight with modifiers without new visuals.
I mean a Malian and a Sicilian Cavalier look the same but play quit differently already.

I thought 1/2 armour with +1 attack and +0.1 speed would potentially make them too strong vs. archers.

Balance and prejudice I guess.
In AoE3 the Mameluke is the strongest heavy cavalry in the game and of course uses a horse and not a camel.

I think the Persians are a special case.
Some people already called from them to get a cavalry unit as a second unique unit. So I kinda took up the idea here.

1/2 armour is still somewhat ok but not so sure for melee fights in team games. A defensive Knight civ like Teutons will be too strong if opponent pocket in Knights. +0.1 Speed and +1 attack is still not that strong. Rather situation-ally strong. But maybe considerable. Saracens, Berbers are stuck with Knights/Cavalier. Persians can be too strong. Finally I think, +1 attack, -1 melee armor and 0.1 speed will be ok.

Also originally Saracens supposedly strongest Light Cav focused civ. Later just made them Camel civ. You have to remember AOK Ensemble devs had a very different mindset, Also no internet to get informations. Mamelukes IRL used Lance and Archer. Their military was designed as anti-Mongol tactics. In theory should be a Steppe Lancer unit and Cav Archer switch unit or Knight/Cav Archer switch. If it was designed in 2023. Definitely not riding a Camel. Camel itself is wrong. In theory Camel should be located for Central Asian civs like Mongols, Tatars.

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That unit was supposed to be also added to the African civilisations.
That would make the Malian Cavalier even more offensively strong.

Yeah they valued uniqueness over historically correctness.
Also they liked stereotypes way to much.

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There were several discussions some time ago about turning the Boyar into a regional civ to replace the knight for several Eastern European civs. The same thing could be done for Cataphract, considering Byzantines have quite a few candidates to replace it as a UU and it could be shared with Central and even Eastern Asian civs.

The Boyar and the Catapract have very different stats from the knight line.

Stats can be rebalanced. Elephant archers were completely reworked when they were turned into an archery range unit (though they’re not really competitive in their current form)

Stats should be the same to that of the Knight line for balance purposes.

Then, you will have add a regional archers/xbow, then maa and pikes… and only region will have different units, and the nightmare begins to learn all this stuff. Too many unique units is one of the biggest problem of AoE 3, which hold off many new players…

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My whole idea is about different stats not different visuals.
That’s a whole different topic.

I suggested small changes that are less then most civilisation bonuses.
But the problem with civilisation bonuses is that they can’t make some aspects of a unit worse.
You can remove a blacksmith upgrade but that doesn’t change the Castle Age stats for example. But it would also effect Camels and Light Cavalry.

No. Those units are more neutral in their gameplay.
Yes crossbows look like crossbows but they behave exactly like bowman. They look out of place for some civilisations but their stats make sense everywhere.
Same with Pikes or Militia line.

There are 100 thinks people claim to be the biggest problem of AoE3.
It’s probably not this one.

Also a lot of people, me included, love AoE3. It is a different game that is fun for different reasons. If it was more like AoE2 it would be a worse game because AoE2 already exists.
You don’t want to eat the same food every day either, do you?

I think the differences of the different Knight “skins” should be held as marginally as possible.
I thnk it’s important that the general interactions stay basically the same. But wiith a small change to the stats the “streamlined” Knight play would get a bit reduced.
People then would be encouraged to adapt a bit more to the type of Knight bonusses they get from the different civs.
And especially the Knight v Knight matchups would become more interesting as not both get the same units and therefore there would be some more enocouragement for an addition of other unit types. Making these games play out more diverse.

I still think it’s a great idea to increase the diversity of the game. I personally would still prefer if there would be a base Knigh line (which is a slighly nerfed current Knight) and then a regional upgrade that gives it it’s destinct regional features.
These upgrades can also reflect how dependent certain regions are on the Knigh line. Like many European Civs are extremely dependent on them, whilst civs of the middle east also have camels. Steppe Civs have their CA and SL. Other regions are just in general more geared towards archery and their Knights could just be mostly a supportive tool against skirms and siege…

and aoe 3 not to say, especially the Asian civs…

but this is exactly what’s putting me off those games. it just raises the bar for entry, and in my opinion pointlessly. why break the game like this?

I think I should make a lit of civilisations that would be changed.

Civilisations without Knights

Aztecs, Bengalis, Dravidians, Gurjaras, Hindustanis, Incas, and Mayans.

Civilisations that would keep the default Knight line

Bohemians, Britons, Bulgarians, Burgundians, Byzantines, Celts, Franks, Goths, Italians, Lithuanians, Magyars, Poles, Portuguese, Sicilians, Slavs, Spanish, Teutons, Vikings

Civilisations with the Southern Knight

Berbers, Ethiopians, Malians, Saracens, Turks

Berbers

  • Bloodlines
  • 15%/20% discount

Ethiopians

  • No Bloodlines

Malians

  • Bloodlines
  • +5 attack in Imperial (unique technology)

Saracens

  • Bloodlines
  • No Cavalier

Turks

  • Bloodlines

Not sure if a bit faster Knight with +1 attack would be too strong at raiding because they can keep their distance to Camel Riders.
All those civilisations also have Camel Riders themselves though.

Civilisations with the Eastern Knight

Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, Khmer, Koreans, Malay, Vietnamese

Burmese

  • Bloodlines
  • +5 attack vs Archers in Imperial (unique technology)

Chinese

  • Bloodlines

Japanese

  • Bloodlines

Khamer

  • Bloodlines

Koreans

  • No Bloodlines

Malay

  • No Bloodlines
  • No Chain Barding Armour

Vietnamese

  • Bloodlines

Only the Burmese have a unique technology that improves Knights.
For Asian civilisations Knights usually play a supporting role already so this would probably benefit them a little to get a cheaper but offensively less strong Knight.

Other civilisations

Cumans, Huns, Persians, Tatars

Maybe they should just keep the normal Knight line besides the Persians that get a unique one.

For those people that enjoy AoE3 the way it is.
Just because game A is less popular than game B doesn’t mean it should be more like game B.
There are to many games out there that just try to be like Call of Duty, Fortnight or whatever is popular right now.
You don’t want AoE2 to be more like SC2 either, just because it’s more successful.

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then they can play aoe3. i sometimes go back to aoe3 for the campaigns myself

calling the kettle black? I’m in favour of keeping the differences between aoe2 and aoe3, you are the one who wants to make them more similar with basically the same unit looking different in different civs.

I am not advocating changing aoe3, please don’t put words in my mouth

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Thats not what we’re saying.
If you want game b stylw units go play it. Stop changing game a into game b.

The beauty of aoe2 has always been its relative Simplicity. Change for the sake of change is not a good idea.

It makes the entry level higher then jt already is.

You want unit skins? All for that
Keep em client side only
Base gamd doesnt need changes like this

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Peak players yesterday for aoe2 de is 26498
Aoe4 is 16691.

Thats almost 10k more.

Basically aoe4 has 60% of the playerbase aoe2 has.

“Not that much less”

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I think it would probably have been better if knights were a regional unit, because it does feel as if franks etc are (supposed to be) a “knight civ” rather than merely a “cavalry civ”, whereas eg Khmer are an “elephant civ”

but i cant see any real potential in changing the baseline knight unit in a complicated manner at this point of the design process.

Southern knights are weak for their cost. They should be the ones to get a cost reduction. Ideally they should get a slightly higher food cost because of being faster but considerably lower gold cost 65 food and 50 gold. If you want to keep the gold cost for -1 p.armor they should have +30 hp or some other mechanic through which they don’t die easily.

Eastern knights have a huge favorable trade -15 gold for just -1 attack. Should be something like -5 or -10 food. Don’t design based off unique unit stats, those need a castle and they don’t replace knights for their civ.

Ideally they should just get a slightly reworked Shrivamsha riders with a civ specific bonus similar to elephants for ROR civs. So the current or slightly nerfed version goes to Gurjaras and the other civs get a version with different bonuses that fits their needs.

Not a bad idea overall but the community won’t like it since it’s a huge change that affects the builds of almost all the civilizations.