All units seen in every game and situation=no diversity
Sir, I’m afraid we have really different understanding about diversity meaning 11…
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You know you speak about a unit that literally only comes in some closed TG scenarios into play?
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And? That’s fine, not every unit has to be used in all cases.
Look at the eagle warrior, they are pretty much terrible and unseen in TGs, buff eagles pls
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Mayan Imp eagle flood is kinda strong in TGs.
It doesn’'t often come into play cause usually mayans just stick with their archer, but it’s a really strong option especially against camel civs.
Against Camels kinda, but we’ll know that if Ghulam HP had to be reduced then EL Dorado needs a nerf, I can rememeber some #### ####### how that 100 HP eagles were beating paladins in equal resources and that is silly
on top of this, all elephant civs, start with a wild elephant near their TC, which these other things apply to
so you can either kill it in DA for the food boost, or wait until you have the these tech to gain these benefits
OR once you have built an airfield you can call in a C-123, and take the elephant back to its home, for karma points, which can be used to buy SJWs
if you cant be bothered to read the posts, then dont complain about them
“i dont know what these people are talking about, but its wrong”
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Seeing two pop per unit was enough. So, I considered it heresy.
Again, you haven’t answered the question.
You say “not all cases”. But iafaikthere is not a single unit that comes in all scenarios (cases) into play, so what’s the argument?
You can write this to basically every unit in the game, it’s a blunt, nonsensical and vague associative figure.
Nobody wants to make Eles usable in all scenarios, just change up the extremely narrow utilization…
I agree with most of this, but reducing the cost kinda defeats the point.
The point as I understand it is that a unit which cost more resources/pop than a paladin cannot be properly balanced.
The current cost of a BE is about right for a 1.5 pop unit. Making them 1.5 pop and then also reducing the cost feels like it’s over-doing it.
(Personally I’d prefer 2 pop BE, a modest cost increase, a massive stat increase, and reduced vulnerability against pikes and monks. But I could be happy with 1.5 pop BE and EA too.)
The unit is too strong in TGs, because it’s too pop efficient. The unit is too weak in 1v1s, because it’s too expensive, slow, and easy to counter. Therefore, if you make it less pop efficient in TGs, you can try and address the issues for 1v1.
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The problem is you will make the unit absolutely garbage if it’s two population. They would need double hit points.
War elephants are only seen on closed maps for the most part so even in team games they are not that good.
Age of empires 4 elephants have over 1000 HP to compensate that they cost a lot of population. If elephants costume more population I want them feel like the mumakil Rohan had faced.
I think just making them harder to counter and better in castle age would fix all their major problems.
They arent even that good in TGs anymore
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I think the bigger problem for the design of the eles isn’t that eles have that highe pop efficiency compared to the other cav.
It’s that Paladins already have that high pop efficiency.
I remember when I started playing the OG AOE2 I always picked Franks and made a huge Paladin ball.
That was basically uncounterable if you got to.
And I can somwhat understand that parts of the community like it exactly like that. Cause it’s really satisfying to see your cav completely destroying opponents. First you kill their army, then you raid their vills and finally you even raise their camp.
In my Opinion actually Eles could take over that role. But necessary for that would be an iconic model like the paladins have. The current Ele design is not iconic. Also they would need a bit more speed to be able to raid and go further distances faster in TGs.
Paladins already have twice the pop efficiency of other standard units like halb, arb, skirm,light cav…
Battle eles just about 40 % higher pop efficiency. It’s not that huge of a margin actually. But ofc with the lower speed and being even harder countered by monks and pikes Battle Eles need extra oumpf to compensate for that missing which only adds to the discrepancy in raw stats compared to the pop space consumption.
I think it’s ok the game has these pop efficiency discrepancies. But in my opinion the currently bigger issue for competitive play is the low pop efficiency of foot units compared to most cav units. It’s already an issue in trash wars when Hussars have like 30 % or even more (if you factor in the lower efficiency of farmers vs lumberjacks) higher pop efficiency than the other trash. It actually would make more sense if Hussars actually had a lower pop efficiency cause of their extra utility for raiding that the other trash don’t have.
Eles would be kind of an elegant solution for that issue as eles could then take over the Paladin role for the casuals. But I would step away from making Eles less pop efficient than Palas, that doesn’t make any sense to me.
It actually sounds kinda fishy tbh.
yeah you noticed how I mentioned
?
double hp feels a bit dumb, but that’s one way to do a massive stat increase.
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you say it’s too expensive. I say it’s too weak. we’re both saying it doesn’t trade cost effectively against knights, xbows, pikes, or any other common castle age units.
In one way we’re saying the same thing.
But I think a cost decrease will push them too much in the direction of knights.
A stat increase is in many ways equivalent, but it feels very different.
Totally agree on them being too slow and easy to counter.
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+1
I also think if we want to implement it as an cavalry alternative to the knights it needs a proficiency. Whilst knights are for the most part a very generalist unit with only one hard counter that is slower. Eles would need to have one situation/matchup where they are clearly superior to the knight. Something Knights might situationally struggle with. This can be different things like running into walls, monks, big xbow balls…
I just remember watching the last Video of ornlu where he talks about the imp techs. And about a lot of the techs he says: “Doesn’t really change any matchup, makes the units only better where they are already good in.” or stuff like this.
And I think Eles need exactly this rather than higher base stats (in relation to the investment). They need something where you really want to chose them over the knights. Something you can struggle against when you play knights.
One of such idea also could just be to buff them against walls so they become more useful on arena-like maps (and ofc all the time someone brings arena to you). Though we then ofc also need to talk about the Monk interaction.
My ideas (idk if they’re good) would be increasing their speed so they can at least keep up woth monks and maybe replacing their weakness to the halb line with one to the archer line
Don’t really think it’s too strong in TGs. Strong enough to make it viable when you have the time/eco for it, but it’s not dominating TGs out of proportion to any other decent lategame unit. Also, pop efficiency is a factor, but I think people are rating it way too highly here. Especially if you significantly decrease the cost/TT or increase the stats, the massive value gained in (fewer) resources or greater utility much more than makes up for it costing more pop - players will just replenish their eles so quickly that it won’t usually come to matter that it costs more pop (and definitely won’t wait until they have 200 pop to attack).
If you’re only going to change eles via a small-medium early viability buff, you don’t need to increase their pop to justify it. And if you’re going to significantly change their role via a massive improvement in speed, stats, cost, etc, having them cost more pop will probably be a negligible limitation even in TGs (and if you’re going to change a unit that much, might as well just create a whole new unit).
In any case, a lot of people seem to agree that a small speed buff/halb damage reduction is on the table without any kind of accompanying nerf.
This is another case of ascribing too much importance to “pop efficiency” over other factors - infantry being slow, easy to counter, food intensive, and overall less versatile than food heavy units with better stats (cav). Xbow line is much less pop efficient than knightline, but it’s roughly on par in terms of usefulness, hence the Knight/Xbow meta.
Theoretically their vastly superior health pool allows them to do that in a lot of cases and without any kind of gimmick, but that’s undercut by the massive damage they take from halbs and their low speed.
Yeah, I’m primarily talking when you compare it to 1v1s, and then it definitely looks too strong, because it’s significantly more viable than a comparative 1v1 game.