even if they were cost effective against knights, i’d still rather have pikes and save myself the gold.
this is true but
and persians have better knights then chinese.
i’d say its more Knights then Archers.
because long swords are trash killers, despite your thoughts that they are supposed to be some sort of part of a triangle with knights and archers. you don’t see much trash use in the castle that requires you to micromanage your gold.
why are we talking about hussar vs champion raiding? you don’t make champions for raiding.
byzantines, lithuanians, anyone playing against archers as a non archer civ will frequently make a good number of skirms. pikes see common use in the castle age.
Exactly one is killing eco and other is killing army. I would rather kill all eco and put some castles for defence.
So to use longswords in game, first I have to play only 1v1 and pray to God that I get lith and byz as enemy then pray again that they don’t make cata or leitis. What u are saying is 1% chance. They are not situational units as they are available to every civ atleast till longsword.
Only on Arabia we saw the same civs over and over again. On other maps there was pretty much many diversity in the civs. Giving the settings and the results i dont think the conclusion is ‘we are stuck with the same for already 20 years’. If so, you dont have much diversity in the picked civs and maps for example.
And yes, archer flank and paladin pocket is the way to go for most games. Now we can have fixed positoin this will be even more the case. I do think fixed position isnt an issue at all. Just compare it to formations in a ‘real’ sport (i mean no eSport). Have a look at for example soccer. It is not like some manager pick 11 players (like we can pick civs in AoE II) and something random placed all players somewhere on the field (like we had random positions in the past). The managers starts with a formation, 4-3-3 for example and players play from that position. The same happend with fixed positions, This means players can be much more specialist for one role during a tournament, and thus the average level of the games will be higher. This mean that some civs will be much more picked as pocket, other much more picked as flank. I dont really see an issue with that.
I also dont really know why having the same meta for years is also an issue. It is not like we only saw archers and knights. Also some other units were viable. If BoA2 learnt us one thing, it is for me the balance between the teams is better than ever. Lets give a shout to the devs to there great work for balancing the civs so well!
every unit has a role, just because you don’t like that role doesn’t mean it needs to be adjusted. the swordsman line is fine and even if you made it cost effective against the knight to complete your supposed land triangle, no one would use it because the pikeman is a much more cost effective unit.
why is it so important for you to use longswordsman? they have a role to fill and do it well, if you buff them to be cost effective against knights, why would i make knights? all you’ve done is traded the Longsword with the Knight.
by the way, i’m still waiting for you to prove that the swords line was intended to be part of a 3 part triangle with archers and knights. please provide a source that shows Knights > Archers > LS > Knights is Intended.
You have 1v1 and team games. Depending on the match up civs will picked and are certain units viable. This also depends on the map (open, closed, hybrid, …). I think most units are pretty viable at some moment. I dont think it is an issue if some units are much more viable than others as long as you can see every unit at some point. I think we saw many different kind of units during the tournament. So i dont really see a big issue.
My conclusion is the balance is great. No need to big changes to shift the meta.
Longsword should be atleast cost efficient ewual when fighting knights.
Historically knights were scare elite soldiers with equipment very hard to produce. One the other hand swordsmen represent the common foot soldier, easy to mass. They lose to shock heavy cavalry charges but if allowed to fight openly then they are just winning by sheer numbers.
Aoe does not represent this, where knights cost efficiently beat longsword. Knights are faster, a very big point in rts so they can also raid and fight archers.
Longsword should be a bad but super affordable unit, it is too expensive to train and upgrade currently.
At the very least, the longsword need to be buffed to be able to fight knights cost efficient.
So +5Hp to longsword (including two handed swordsmen) and cheaper food upgrade costs for all of militia line +trained faster starting from longswords, supplies tech also slightly cheaper by 25 food.
No, common easy to mass soldier is represented in game by spear-line, not militia-line. Spears were the main weapon, the cheapest, the easiest to train.
By the way.
Since the OP wants to say that the Knight, Crossbow, and Long-sword apparently all are supposed to make a triangle of one counters the other…
does that mean that if the OP is asking to buff the LS line he is also in favor of adding a trash unit to the game that counters the LS line?
seeing as both knights (pikes) and Archers (Skirms) have trash counters, it follows that if those three are in fact, part of a balance triangle, then of course LS should have a trash counter.
When u have gold- all units literally archers, CA, HC, knights, scorp, mongo, UU and longswords also towers and castles counter longswords. No unit has this many counters.
When u don’t have gold- Exchange rate at market 100 for 14 gold, u have to spend 200 wood or food and another 45 food to create champion, so that’s total of 245 resources which is enough to make 3 hussars or 4 skir or 4 halb all of which can kill 1 champion. So there goes ur trash killer down the drain.
No one makes militia line to counter trash, they make trash units themselves, so tell me again what’s their purpose?
your stance is that they are supposed to be part of a triangle with the other two. if you buff them, they won’t be losing to all those units. from the sounds of it you want them to counter cavalry. that means you can take knights off that list. and if you’re literally saying towers and castles counter swordsman, better add those to the counters to knights and archers too.
i see you’re ignoring the existence of relics. also if i sell 300 wood or food instead, i get 2 swordsman. and thats before guilds. so for 400 food or wood i get 2 champions. at best you make 5 hussar. of which only 15 civs get FU hussar.
even so those hussar are doing 7 damage an attack. meanwhile they are taking 14 damage an attack.
also, this still means nothing. if you’re argument is that in fact swordsman are supposed to be part of a triangle with knights and crossbows, you’d have to buff them in some way. which means they would be taking even better trades.
then by that logic they should also have a trash unit that counters them.
despite your claims, they counter trash, also they beat huskarls, eagles, etc.
except you’re ignoring that you want to buff them to be part of your supposed triangle.
so obviously, they would be doing better wouldn’t they? and some of those counters you listed? they aren’t counters anymore.
like lets say you make swordsman the part of the triangle that counters knights. you do so by either increasing their base attack or by increasing their armor, or by giving them bonus damage.
no matter what, they are going to take better trades, and have less counters.
