This needs to be very cautious as nothing outrange the Teutons Castle in Castle Age then
Being fair little outranges fu castles in castle age as is
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Ironclad is a pretty solid tech imo. It makes their siege better than generic in castle age (something not particularly common) and Teuton siege is a strength of the civ. And ironclad battering rams are much more resistant against villager pulls (taking 2 damage instead of 6). Issue is that you don’t always see both a castle and a siege workshop in castle age (and especially unlikely to see both in early castle age). If you do see both though, then you have siege that is significantly more resistant to melee attacks - making them notably easier to protect.
In my opinion, the biggest advantage crenellations gives is allowing Teuton castles to range BBCs - something that requires Teutons to also get the range upgrades and isn’t relevant until imperial age anyways. But it’s a benefit big enough to justify the 400 stone cost on the tech.
Also, why would skirms be a weakness for Teutons? Longswords, scouts, and knights all outspeed and only take 1 damage/shot. And skirms aren’t all that great against siege either. The one unit Teutons use that are vulnerable to skirms are halbs, which are somewhat expendable.
I do think that Teutons as they currently stand would be completely unbalanced with Folwarks (cheaper farms is a strong eco bonus and Folwarks are a very strong eco bonus).
I could see it getting some use, especially in Feudal age. Placing a tower using starting stone means that you effectively only need to worry about the 35w cost. And having towers scattered throughout the map has value as well, and the bonus would be nice in combination with a tower rush (as if the tower is next to an enemy resource pile, it’s now your resource pile with a dropoff right next to it)
If this tech ever comes back, I wish Teutons get it for free.
Sorry, I appreciate your enthusiasm but I really fail to see the reason to add this unit. Man-at-Arms and Long Swordsman already have a shield (higher tiers are visually heavily armored eliminating the need for the shield) and already counter Skirms in reasonable numbers.
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It would be about as good as your average team bonus; aka a meme bonus. On the off chance you build a tower near a resource you’d have an extra drop site. Although now that I think about it, it could be useful for farming: the one defensive tower you build could have farms placed around it for safety.
But I think it would be more useful as an offensive bonus: you tower the enemy wood-line and then go straight to work once they abandon it.
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Then explain to me why we see numbers of Skirms every game but LS basically never…
Ranged units (even Skirms) are powerful when massed, because of their ability to shoot most or even all projectiles into a single target. This plus speed (the same as Long Swordsman without upgrades) means that with micro a large force of Skirms can deal with a smaller number of LS.
A way to tackle this would be to just give more HP to the Militia line so that they can tank more shots.
Then they would also be better in melee, against defenses, for raiding…
Do you see the issue with that approach?
One of the main aspects of a dedicated skirm counter like the shieldman that it is specified in that role and there are ways to counter itself. Different ways even.
The other actually main aspect of the skirm meta isn’t that skirms would be dangerous themselves. It’s that you can transition from them to basically any other main strat pretty easily. You see what the opponent commits to, you do your counterstrat. It works perfectly when you are ahead in eco in castle age. THAT’s the main point of the Skirm meta and we see it against every civ. Even against Teutons who don’t even make ranged units themselves - which don’t have a good answer btw…(and have bad Skirms themselves)
Buff doesn’t have to be HP, it could be unit price. Militia line is already underused either way. But it’s not the only solution anyways.
You can buff Militia line. You can buff Scouts and their American equivalents. You can nerf Skirms.
Plenty of ways to tackle the issue without resorting to adding a confusing unit. I’m not against potential line splits / regional units in theory, but another dude with a shield would just feel bland, I’m sorry. If anything, I could see a speedy Axe-wielding shock infantry with high damage and pierce armor but low HP.
This is actually how the militia line should have been in the first place. Axes were way more common than swords. And ofc it’s one direction that would make sense to bring the militia line IF there was an infnatry unit that could hold the line against ranged attacks.
Currently the militia line is neither one nor the other, tries to be a weird hybrid that can’t really work well without breaking at some points.
I mean it costs gold and is only called Militia in its first iteration, so it ceases to depict mundane foot soldiers later on. Also the progressively better armor makes it look tank-y, if it were to be turned into a low HP unit, it’d need to be reskinned.
I don’t see them look that tanky in comparison to stuff like TK or Serjeants. Or legionaries.
And if this was to be intended they screwed it up by making it a Glass Cannon anyways.
This type of unit never really existed anyways. And it’s obvious why. It tries to be everything. Ofc there were highly trained elite foot soldiers. But this would need to be reflected in the game with an associated high gold cost. The standard infantry was usually composed of not very well trained soldiers with different types of weapons and they had their specific roles.
And yes, in the early medieval era in Europe these were mostly Shields and Axes usually.
At later stages there were other types of heavily armored infantry, usually using stuff like Poleaxes or Halberds which are way more versatile in actual battles.
So I also want to remind you to that the way you try to argue here is flawed. The Militia line in it’s current design is actually way, way closer to a high DPS glass cannon than a tanky unit. If you want to add an even more glass-connonesque type like the Axemen the overlap would be so huge that one of them would see basically no play - giving the current stage of Infantry that’s actually quite a weird perspective.
Maybe you don’t like Shieldmen. But they actually WERE utilized and the depictaciton of MAA with shields is just a graphical touch of the Militia which doesn’t really reflet the units actual performance. So you try to set up a weird “logic” were you use a wrong depictation to argue against a practical performance in the game. Which I think is really deceptive and not helpful at all.
Reality is there is no widely available Infantry unit that holds against arrowfire and that’s an Issue for that class. Ofc there would be the way to give that to the militia line, but that would only cause major balance issues, especially on lower elos. That’s why the Shieldman would be an elegent solution.
It just doesn’t look intuitive at first glance. If one line (Militia) is intended to be a class cannon in your design and the other (Shieldman) a tank, why would the tank move faster than the damage dealer? Tanks feel proper when they are slow and sponge-y, to catch a fast unit like a Skirm you need shock infantry that outruns them.
Who said the Shieldman would be faster?
I think it should be the same speed so they could be mixed together well. Here is one design of mine from some time ago:
| Name | Shieldman (F) | Elite Shieldman ( C ) |
|---|---|---|
| Armor Class | Infantry (+4) | Infantry (+6) |
| Armor Class | Shock Infantry | Shock Infantry |
| Produced at | Barracks | Barracks |
| Production Time | 10 s | 10 s |
| Production Cost | 15 F, 10 W | 15 F, 10 W |
| HP | 45 | 55 |
| Speed | 0,96 | 0,96 |
| ROF | 4 | 4 |
| Attack | 1 | 1 |
| Atk Bonus | 2 vs Archers | 2 vs Archers |
| Atk Bonus | 1 vs Skirmisher | 2 vs Skirmisher |
| Atk Bonus | 2 vs Standard Building | 2 vs Standard Building |
| Atk Bonus | 1 vs Gunpowder | 2 vs Gunpowder |
| Range | - | - |
| Accuracy | - | - |
| Melee Armor | -2 | -2 |
| Pierce Armor | 2 | 2 |
| Benefits from | Infantry Upgrades | Infantry Upgrades |
| Upgrade Cost | 100 s | 300 G, 500 F |
| Special | Consumes only half | Population space |
| and stacks twice as | dense as other infantry |
With the super low cost they are ideal arrow sponges and don’t need to be speedy to be effective against Skirms.
If they’re gonna be anti gunpowder might as well let them share condi armor as well
If it’s the same speed as Skirmisher then it wouldn’t change much because it’ll still be tedious to catch them. Half pop space and low cost does help though as you could overwhelm the enemy with numbers, but I’m not convinced it befits the tank archetype…
no they are not anti-gunpowder, it’s jsut they take more damage from high damage units so they also do some extra damage to it. It’s not massive, but a small tweak
I don’t think you need to catch them, Just occupy them, not allow them to herass as they can otherwise.
I don’t understand what this is supposed to mean. I don’t try to befit a Tank Archetype, I try to design a unit that is historically inspired and would fit in the game, be of use for certain civs who lack a tool there and doesn’t break anything…
I don’t care about “Game Pop Culture Archetypes”. I actually think they are silly in many cases. And if there is the desire from the community to get one - just make it a UU?
The militia line is so good against skirms, but only in the post-imperial age.
But how shieldmen helps Teutons, Franks and Britons? All of them aren’t infantry civs.