Starting with the units. Please note that these units are theoretical and could be changed if added.
An infantry unit that is more expensive than a champion, but has higher armor, HP, attack, and possibly a bit of trample damage if it needs it
An archer that is more expensive and has less range in castle age than the archer line, but gets a decent bit of melee armor and has a small (0.2 or 0.3 tile) blast radius
Musician - a unit with no combat ability and is very very expensive, but will keep up morale for military units, giving them extra attack and/or armor
A cavalry unit that is like a huskarl. Has an attack bonus vs archers and has 4 base PA in castle age and 6 base in imperial, for a total of 6 PA in castle, and 10 in imp
A doctor/monk type unit with no combat or conversion ability, but can heal either several units at once or heal in a several tile radius
i hope we never see your musician or anything like that.
as for your cavalry huskarl - have you seen the Tarkan? basically a mounted Huskarl. 5 PA in castle and 8 pa in imp. takes 2 damage a shot from your normal archer units, needing 60 (castle) and 85 (imp) shots to die.
does it have bonus damage? no. but it’s also cheap, relatively fast to train with marauders and not nearly as expensive to reach as paladins are.
the only thing here i like is your first one, the infantry unit - but such a unit would need a clear weakness depending on the stats.
That is the point of this poll. To see what people like, so thanks for the feedback!
This cavalry huskarl would have a much faster attack rate and more PA than a Tarkan, and it would trade the anti-building capabilities for more anti-archerness. I would recommend Spirit of the Law’s video on Tarkans vs knights. It shows how Tarkans are actually worse vs archers than the paladin.
This is where hand cannons and balance adjustments come in, especially the hand cannon.
why? the tarkan already does an insanely great job of wrecking archers. its very cost effective.
except that video has numerous flaws.
first of all the tarkan is cheaper then the knight, despite this, he used the same number of knights as tarkans in his tests.
and second of all, while the knight kills archers faster, it took MORE DAMAGE doing so.
and thirdly - the Paladin upgrade is SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive then the Tarkan upgrade.
the one advantage the knight has is time to kill - every other advantage is in favor of tarkans.
an anti archer cavalry would be so similar to the tarkan that they would effectively be just about the same thing. oh by the way - another such unit exists - the keshik.
Good points, but a huskarl cavalry should still exist imo.
They could use their own superior melee unit like paladins, Teutonic knights, Leitis, Boyars, or other UUs. They could also use archer or cav archer UUs with more attack than the archer line so that they can overcome the extra PA. If they are truly desperate, they could use the cav archer line, since an armored infantry like this would have less speed than the militia line, so hit and run would work. We could give the civs who gets the infantry no fully upgraded cavalry or fast units to chase the enemy units down, or we could tell Mayans and Ethiopians to suck it up and beat them before they can make significant numbers. Since this unit is completely hypothetical, we really could make it a balanced unit where needed. Thanks for the feedback though.
My thoughts were to give in 2 more attack to these guys than the militia line, making them a fairly balanced unit against cavalry. They could win in certain situations as with all infantry, but since they are more expensive than the militia line, they would by no means be cost effective vs knights, so I think knights would still be a counter.
They would have more armor and HP than other infantry, so they could beat some other infantry units, but not cavalry. My overall point is to have a statistically more powerful champion than performs largely the same role, just better and more archer resistant, while also being slower and more expensive so it would be good, but not overwhelmingly good.
The TK is too slow to be archer resistant, while my infantry could beat them if hit and run isn’t involved. Even if it wouldn’t see much use from other players, I would still use it. Think berserks. A tougher, stronger unit, and it seems to get decent use.
Although I do see your point, my thought is that it would be a serjeant that trades it’s ability to build donjons and a bit of armor for attack. And it also would have VASTLY less armor than a TK.
