Would a better name than Iraqi be the Abbasidians?
Franks already lost their spot the moment Bloodlines, Hussar, and Thumb Ring were introduced.
Adding more Paladin or camel civs, Savar, Centurion, buffing Teuton Paladins, etc. made the Franks an even more pointless civ. A cavalry civ having generic knights doesn’t cut it anymore. That extra 12 Paladin HP doesn’t make up for missing both Bracer and Ring Archer Armor either.
People dislike extensive reworks of classic civs.
In my proposal the UU is simply renamed “Ghazi” (a term denoting Bedouin raiders and later warriors of Islam). Mamluk is a proper horseman on his own.
It is, but since the devs already started splitting Teutons after ethnic lines (Bohemians belonged to the HRE after all) and making even smaller groups into civs (Burgundians), I feel that separate Middle Eastern civs aren’t that far-fetched. Iraq, Al-Andalus, Syria, and Egypt each hosted high population, had a vibrant cultural and political situation, differed from each other in military and economic terms.
Mountain Iranic groups like Kurds and Daylamis, as well as Somalis and Nubians, were smaller in population than these big four, but they too had distinct military traditions and histories making them good candidates. (And Nubians remained independent Christians for the majority of the medieval era.)
That’s a very disingenuous take to write in a post where you accuse others of disingenuousness. Sassanid Empire outlived Three Kingdoms by centuries, and shortly before its conquest by the Rashidun even managed to conquer and hold enormous swathes of Byzantine territory for decades.
I’m not aware of the modern unit by this name, but both “Aswaran” and “Savaran” were used to refer to the Sassanid unit.
Hey, I’m all for a separate Beninese civ.
No one really identified themselves by the name of the ruling dynasty unless they were related to it. They saw themselves as Muslims, Iraqis, or Arabs (albeit “Arab” as a term didn’t have the ethnic connotations of today, city dwellers outside Arabia proper usually thought only of the tribal Bedouins as “Arabs”). Abbasids are fine in AoE4 as that game uses state and dynasty names, but I don’t think the name fits AoE2.
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Savar is much more anti-archer focused. Takes more arrows to bring down (83 instead of 60) and deals more damage to archer units (arbs without last armor upgrade go down one hit sooner). Outside of that, Savar is roughly equal to a generic paladin (albeit a bit more vulnerable to counter units), but a bit cheaper to get into. Celt paladins meanwhile miss the last armor upgrade (results in them having less pierce armor than a generic cavalier, and therefore leaves them more vulnerable to ranged units than generic cavalier) and bloodlines. Still a paladin, and still strong if you catch an opponent off-guard with them, but not something Celts tend to go for.
Savar vs generic paladin is a bit of a trade-off, though Savar is generally preferable. Frank paladin vs Celt paladin is arguably the best paladin vs the worst paladin.
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Can someone deep dive explain why a Frankish lack of archer techs means their paladins are worthless? People keep saying this and Centurions ruin their power can someone of 1300 elo or higher explain
Short answer: Frank paladins are far from worthless. They’re arguably the best in the game. We just have one person (maybe two) who seem to think they’re completely powercrept and therefore no reason to play them. From what I understand, Franks are still one of the most popular civs though (second to Mongols).
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I’m just wondering why it feels like this section is overflowing with concern that they’re powercrept into worthlessness and how we can get the spam to stop before we may need to consider it blacklisted for repetition and topic dulling
I agree with you the Franks seem pretty good as is. Maybe make the castle discount 20% so it isn’t a worse Inca stone discount at first?
Yeah. This topic feels like the tail wagging the dog.
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Too much flip-flopping.
The Franks can’t be bad in one post and good in the next.
that would make the situation worse, not better.
yes, the trade-off gets a unique skin, while the “clearly worse unit” looks the same. please make it make sense
The Savar is based on the Sasanian Aswaran, which is also the basis of the Byzantine Cataphract. However, the former is resistant to archers, while the latter is anti-infantry and resistant to anti-cavalry attacks.
But unlike the 3K, the Sasanids reached the 7th century, which is why they fit in AoE 2, unlike the former…
Exactly, the 3K were born and died in the 3rd century (220-280)…it’s like if you put civilizations like the Gallic Empire and Palmyra in Age of Empires 2 (which is why the latter is in Return of Rome)…
That’s right, in AoE 4 you don’t have the Saracens, but you do have the Abbasid dynasty which encompasses the entire Middle East, and then as a variant the Ayyubids which represent Egypt…
Any way to put a stop to this tail wagging?
Yeah, the Frank Paladins are far from worthless.
All they did was add Bloodlines, Hussar, and Thumb Ring; add more Paladin civs with better tech trees; add Savars, Centurions, and Fire Lancers; add more camel civs, armor-ignoring units; and buff Teuton Paladins, elephants, infantry units, and cav archers.
But the Frank Paladin is still the king, trust me bro.
This happened in HD while Franks had ~55% win rate in Arabia for a decade.
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No seriously how the f does thumb ring hurt paladins? If anything enticing more arbalests for a base 7 PA unit is a good thing for paladins. More camel civs I get the complaint but not every civ has camels and Axemen sorta just chop through them and pikes and any other anti cav
At least in 1v1s we have other civs taking the cav spot from franks:
Wei
Romans
Khmer
Khitans
Persians (that is argueably even the best TG pocket now)
georgians
lithuanians
(burgundians)
In most 1v1 setings these are just strictly better than franks because of their better timings.
I see the tendency here to try to make the discussion down by picking a few outliners who claim franks would be dead (and which were already responded to btw). And with this trying to set up a wrong narrative about the before healthy discussiion here that was quite consistant with the practical reality of the game. Trying to ridicule with a constructed strawman.
Ofc some changes happened before DE but they were actually ok for franks state. Some changes came in DE (including direct nerfs to franks and britons), some other civs took the spot and also the meta shifted in a way that isn’t good for some of these older civs.
But we already spoke about that actually. IDK why I have to repeat this only because some people try to set up a wrong narrative.
Well, I’d separate the Franks’ Paladin issue from their other issues.
The first one would still be there even if they had a 100% win rate on Arabia.
Mandatory Georgians sucks reply.
A terrible design flaw of Georgians. Seriously, a “defensive civilization” that gets a plurality of its strength from hyper-aggressive timing is bad design.
You should start this topic on another new post but not post here
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They have stronger eco in general. But their cav become weaker than Franks in imperial age. Nerfing their tech tree will be better than heavy cav. More predictable and easier to counter.