I think ES wanted them to be anti-trash and a soft counter to cavalry. DE devs started several attempts to make them general purpose unit.
Where Woad Raiders really feel incredible is when you can use their Strongholds tech to keep them topped up. You keep running back to a castle from time to time and they’re ludicrously insanely good.
That’s why I really think the answer is at least in part a buff to infantry healing somehow, perhaps while garrisoned. Infantry are quite strong when at full HP, but lose that strength incredibly fast, sometimes in just the first few hits. Celts can counteract that by constantly healing while near a castle, and it really does work very well if you take advantage of it.
If you gave your infantry like +12 healing speed, that would let you garrison your MAA in your TC or a tower somewhere in the middle of feudal age, at the point they’re no longer useful, and in ~2 minutes they’d be fully healed again. Compared to right now, where they’d need to be garrisoned for something like 7-8 minutes, which is impractically long.
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ES actually didnt cared much when it comes to balancing. We are talking about and era where they wanted 75 pop cap. Also esport tournament wasnt on top of the head. I think general purpose is what they had in mind initially.
They changed it for AOM and thats where talk of making soft counter comes in.
Let garrisoned LS shoot arrows in towers to reinforce map control and make guard towers more useful in open maps against cavalry archers.
You will definitely need more garrison space in towers and TC specifically for LS to make healing useful.
Speed + HP seems to be pretty popular.
An alternative to speed would be a charge ability. Triremes in Chronicles gave a speed charge that makes them temporarily faster when attacking enemies.
Making the Militia Line like 20-30% faster for like 5-10 seconds when attacking. This would be more interesting then a general speed boost.
An alternative to more HP would be HP regeneration. Just like 10 HP/Minute would already help keeping your Infantry alive and also helps with raiding in particular.
Just as more interesting alternatives to a simple speed and HP boost.
Well, Sandy Peterson in an interview said Aoe2 is probably the most balance tested RTS game ever made.
I forgot who. But someone made an assumption on original Byzantines design. They have discount on spearman, skirmisher and Camel. All 3 are theoritically countered by Militia Line. That’s why they gave Cataphract massive anti-infantry attack. And originally in Age of Kings, Cataphract didn’t have any bonus armor against anti-cavalry attack either. It was added in Age of Conquerors expansion. So Cataphract was there to counter Militia line, not an exceptional unit in counter system.
Wasn’t he referring to how he used to run tests to balance test they ran initially? Atleast it created a rough base for other games like AOM onwards to balance test. Every units other than Swordsman was fairly balanced but still had very very critical issue. You had to pay 250f for movement speed for Cavalry, You needed to pay absurd amount of techs just to unlock Hand Canons, etc. Game eventually became Huns vs Huns because how bad balancing was. It was series of balance patches is where Swordsman has a new utility where you can think of using it to destroy buildings fast.
Still an assumption. Original game was based around scoring wonder victory and 75 pop. Not conquest mode which we see today. Players after all decided to play in different way. What you feel in unit testing differs a lot when thousands of users get the product on hand.
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What if militia has a cap of taking damage within 1.5s after a tech (replacing arson)? Let’s say HC deals 25 dmg to champions (with no gambeson and final infantry armor). Jaguar Warrior, Slinger, Cataphract do lower than 25 damage per hit. The max damage a longswordsman can take within 1.5s is 25. These anti-infantry units remain hard counter to long swordsman.
This lowers the effectiveness of xbow/CA kiting and killing long swordsman to help them survive longer. Long swordsman will be significantly better against mass onagers/scorpions. But xbow, CA and scorpions can still counter long swordsman.
LS is the worst thing to train against Cav Archer. Tower shooting won’t help you there because Cav Archer player will simply go Imp or add a forward castle on your tower.
Both help in all situations.
The less gimmick, the better.
10 HP/min won’t cut it. Healing need to be at least 20 HP/min. And main problem is Militia Line don’t survive siege and castle fire because of their low HP. No amount of regeneration will help them in that case.
Making LS and tower timing faster should be enough?
Combine with this change xbow/CA can’t kill LS in one round of focus fire to improve LS survivability in higher elo.
AoE4 already has this as a base feature so it’s not entirely new to the franchise.
I think it’s something worth trying out, especially since the code for it is now in AoE2DE too.
I suggested 10HP/Minute to be less then some civ bonuses or unique technologies like the Georgian or Berber bonuses which are both 15HP/Minute.
Berserks have 40HP/Minute.
20HP/Minute would be relatively high compared to most other bonuses.
Even 10HP/Minute would essentially mean up to 9 resources per Minute per Long Swordsman being regenerated. That is almost half a farmer worth of resources.
But it would need to be tested how good 10, 15 or even 20 HP/Minute are in practice.
It should also not make units like Berserks useless. (Though they could be buffed to like 50-60 HP Minute to keep their advantage).
For this reason I would make it a secondary effect of supplies.
I’ll be honest. I have no idea on Celts Mirror. I thought Halb+Siege would destroy everything of a Celts Army. Maybe add some WR to raid.
That’s very unnatural.
I’m thinking if Arson could be more useful. I think If LS had +1 attack, it would be game changer. If Arson could give +1 attack to at least Militia line, they could beat Knight 3 hits earlier, very very significant. And maybe even more for Pikeman. Both of blacksmith melee attacks matter in Castle Age when you’re facing 2+2/2+2 armored Knight.
I prefer directly +1 atk for LS to minimize tech investment cost and time.
It is still a gimmick. And I don’t like this for Aoe2.
Maybe for a new civ.
I think instead of comparing with resource gather, you should check how low infantry HP is. A couple of mangonel/scorpion can just flatten the entire army even before regeneration come into play.
From 6 to 10 attack from just one upgrade feels too much.
That could be a cool civ bonus/UT.
I know that more HP is generally better then regeneration but regeneration has some advantages too.
It would be a nice bonus to an existing technology like Gambesons.
3 threads on “Militia Line”…created by me. I’m planning for a suggestion for a while. Need to hear more opinion and experience.
I honestly believe that free gambeson for LS is more powerful than +1 atk for LS.
Yeah. They will give the micro potential which ML lacks.
True. But in that case PA is going up from 1 to 2. Not too big buff from one upgrade.