What's up with the cavalary bias in regional units?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I stand corrected, then. I guess it makes a bit more sense considering that eagles takes bonus damage from almost all infantry units.

A regional unit is a unit who is available to multiple civs, and “available” here means “available in all contexts, as part of the civ”. If you want to argue that Imperial Skirmisher is part of the spanish civ, go ahead. You know that’s silly, as do I. Winged Hussar, on the contrary, is available as part of 2 civs, without them being bonus from another civ.

Those other units you mentioned are unique units. I’m specifically avoiding those here.

Camels. Because knights are a generic unit, which upgrade to only unit at the end. Or are you now going to argue that Siege Onagers are regional units? Please think through your arguments before posting them.

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Paladins are available to 11 civs, Camels are available to 13. Which one is regional?

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If original DE is your cut off point then doi civis dont matter right? So BE is regional EA SE units are not counted.even then the old indians lack knights so camels are not regional.

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That requires a brain which I don’t have.

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This is not a thread about what is a regional unit. This is just derailing the thread. The argument is about how much variety is available from each building. If you want your argue about whether camels are regional or not, please make a new thread. I consider them regional, because of the reasons I’ve outlined.

Let me answer that question, and let’s not engage in this argument here any longer. DoI civs definitely do matter, and they do have regional units. I gave that definition because knights mess up the definition, as they are available to all civs except DoI civs, but they don’t feel like regional units.

This is why I think the 75% definition is the superior one, and I’ll stick with that, generally speaking.

Hey, I respect the self-deprecating humour.

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Same argument for Winged Hussar.

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I won’t argue if someone says knight is regional unit now. Although I disagree. The region is everything outside of America and India.

In his definition, units that are shared via bonus (civ bonus, team bonus or UT) are not regional units.

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Let me give my definitions. You can tell me if you agree or disagree, and then we can work from there.

Generic Unit-Line: A unit line whose base unit is available to over 75% of civs. As an example, let’s take the militia line. The base unit is militia, which is available to all civs. Therefore, this belongs to the generic unit-line. Another example is the Mangonel, which is also available to all civs.
Generic Unit: A unit which is available to over 75% of the civs, or is part of a Generic Unit-Line which has no variation. In cases where the Generic Unit-Line does have variations, the unit is generic if it is the standard continuation of the unit-line. That is, if the unit is present in the unit line for the overwhelming majority of civs it is available to.

This is important. So, trebs are a generic unit, because they are available to all civs. However, they cannot be upgraded. Therefore, they are not part of any generic unit-line. Siege Onagers are available to less than 25% of civs, but they are still generic. Now, consider Winged hussars. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the scout line end in hussar, if hussar is available. Similarly, legionary is an upgrade to the militia line, but it is only available to one civ. That makes them non-generic. Same for imperial camel.

Unique Unit: A unit that is available to just one civ, but can be shared via UTs. Meaning, only one civ can produce them, in all standard game modes, and no data mods. There is one notable case here, which is the Kipchaks. They are shared as part of a UT.

Bonus Unit: A unit that is shared by one civ to another civ as a civ bonus. Imperial skirms, condos, and genitours belong to this category.

I am putting these in a separate category because they are extremely difficult to classify otherwise. They are certainly not generic, because most civs won’t have access to them under most circumstances. They are not unique, because everyone on the same team gets to produce them. They are also kinda weird in terms of flavour.

Does it make sense that meso civs, south asian civs, and african civs get to produce condos because they have allied italians? Why are no other units shared? Why is one of this an upgrade to a generic line, while others are their own units? Why does only one of these have an elite upgrade?

Regional Unit: Everything that does not belong to any other category I listed. So, these are not generic units, and not unique units.

I hope that answers your question, feel free to ask for clarifications, or disagree with any of my points.

Yeah, this is the problem. It feels like Knights are in a weird place right now. They were decisively generic a year ago, and suddenly kinda not. So, I’m not sure what to do with them in terms of theory crafting, and even gameplay-wise.

What? No. I’m avoiding them because unique units are difficult to classify in the variety available from a building. Let’s say they introduce a new civ which has 33 new units in the barracks. Does that now make the barracks the most diverse building, when everyone else only has 2 units?

A unique unit, by definition, is a unit defined by a single civilization. It does not matter if it is produced from barracks, or archery range, or stable, it does not count towards how diverse that building is, for the entirety of the game.

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Ok so the point is the regional unit per se, not the variety of unit in every military building. My bad

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Same is for BE and camels.

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Ok, then I would not count Winged Hussar as Regional Unit, is simply part of the Scout-line. Poles and Lithuanians have no access to Standard Hussar, it’s simply a variation of it.
Same for Xolotl Warriors, they are a variation of Knight-line.

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Feel free to. But then you’d have to apply the same logic to the legionary, and houfnice. Or, read my definitions above and we can take it from there.

But I can grant you that Xolotl warriors aren’t regional units. They are just reskinned knights, and I’ll remove them from the list.

My definitions:

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I would make it a UU Trebuchet for Turks

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Replying to the OP, I think it’s much harder to design a regional infantry unit that’s actually worth using, because champs are hardly worth using to begin with. BE and Camels are less useful than knights, but that doesn’t make them useless. Something that’s less useful than a champ would be.
There’s also the issue of theme, where knight replaces are relatively easy because you just replace the mount, but you can’t do the same with archers or infantry.

There are some niches for regional units that have instead been used for unique units, or for a generic unit:

  • Archer without an imp upgrade (Slinger)
  • Archer available only in Imp (Hand Cannon)
  • Champion available only in Imp ( Condottiero)
  • Camel-mounted cav archer
  • Genitour

Some of these it would be cool to grant to more civs, but with HC for example I don’t think we’re losing any depth due to the unit not being ‘regional’

Some more ideas:

  • @DukeOfLorraine suggested another Siege Workshop regional unit that I think would work well as a Heavy Scorpion replacement (Imp only, blocks access to scorpions)
  • A ‘regional’ variation of the spear line with +1 range would be nice
  • A ‘regional’ infantry unit without an imp upgrade could perhaps work
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A unit is made up of a Human, Animal and Weapon. Suppose I have 5 types of animals, 5 types of melee weapon, 5 types of ranged weapon.

Barracks = Human + Weapons = 1x5 = 5
Stable = Human + Animals + Weapons = 1x5x5 = 25
Archery = (Human + Animals) + Weapon = (1+5)x5 = 30

Archery Range should have the highest of unit variety, closely followed by Stable and Barracks very behind. This is according to mathematics of combination.

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Sound to be a good explanation

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I honestly don’t think it is hard in any way. You just have to be creative about what you want, and what need it serves. I’ll explain more below.

You can, and it isn’t even hard. See, the mount is just a skin. What matters is how they function. A camel rider isn’t different from a knight because they ride a camel, they are different because 1. they are faster than knights, 2. they get bonus damage against cavalry, and 3. they are weak to everything other than horse cavalry, and especially archers

You could dress up the militia in 5 different hats, make their functionality different, and you would have more depth than having 5 different mounts which are functionally the same.

Let me give you like 5 examples of possible regional infantry and regional archers to illustrate my point.

Infantry:

  1. A shield carrying infantry which is good against everything as long as their shield is facing in the direction of attack
  2. A shield carrying infantry which can protect all units behind them from arrow fire
  3. A shield carrying infantry which increases armour of nearby units
  4. A trash infantry unit which is instantly produced from barracks which has low attack, but decent HP and armour. They aren’t really good at killing many things, but exceptional at stalling everything.
  5. An infantry unit which is really fast, and can create outposts, and walls. They have low HP, and aren’t very good at fighting anything.

since there are multiple shield entries, a few more infantry ideas.

  1. Heavy infantry which is specifically good against arrows from towers and castles, and trash units, with a bonus against stone defences
  2. Medium infantry which can set fire to buildings, which will automatically destroy the buildings unless quickly repaired.
  3. Kamayuks as a regional unit (a unit with similar mechanics)
  4. Infantry unit which can cross over buildings which has less than 75% HP

Archers:

  1. Shielded archers which are horrible with micro. You let them stay in one place and protect them, while they deal with everything else.
  2. Archers which are good at picking targets. They won’t attack the closest targets, if the closest target have high pierce armour, if better targets are available nearby.
  3. Sneaky archers which morph into trees if you let them sit for 25 seconds. They do need the space and will reveal themselves if they attack/come within 3 tile radius of an opponent unit.
  4. Genoese crossbows, except mounted
  5. Archers which will attack in melee range with a sword

This isn’t even hard. I can probably come up with 30+ ideas like these within the hour. Refining them into functional and useful units will take a lot of time and play test, but I think I’ve illustrated my point here.

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Can’t wait for the Deer and Llama cavalry!

The majority of soldiers in almost every army in almost all of human history where Infantry.
There is a big variety of different infantry weapons. A lot of them are things that you can’t use on horseback.

So that calculation doesn’t make that much sense.

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Sorry, I can’t take you seriously if the source you use is an editable fandom wiki.

However I agree with you respect of winged hussar. They are a Unique Upgrade, not regional, why? Because if you play full tech tree you don’t have access to it at least you choise the civ that have this Unique feature.

You are comparing a whole line with a single, thought rare, upgrade.

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-Shielded infantry, tanky but slow, good vs other infantry. A kind of human wall.
-Light infantry, cheap but weak, fast. Good vs siege and archers soft counter. Can build rams.