YAFTTML: Yet Another Fix To The Militia Line

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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:arrow_forward: PREAMBLE

If you are an active player in the community of this fantastic game, you will know that militia balancing is an evergreen that has never gone out of fashion.

Over the past few months there have been many threads on the subject (here, here and here to name a few) that have raised many important points. This thread is my proposal on the subject.

:arrow_forward: WHAT WORKS

The starting point for this discussion is the Champion and his cousins in the same weight class (aka speed), which is the simplest unit to prove a point. The Legionary, the Obuch and the Serjant are all very good infantry units.

Stats Champion Legionary Elite Obuch Elite Serjeant
Cost 45F 20G 60F 20G 55F 20G 50F 35G
Train time 21 secs. 14 secs. 12 secs. 12 secs.
HP 70 75 95 85
Melee attack 17 16 14 15
Reload time 2 2 2 2
Melee armour 4 6 5 7
Pierce armour 6 6 6 8
Speed 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99

post-imperial, there is also the Flemish Militia not present here

There are some contradictions: Champions are the cheapest unit, with lowest HP and with the highest attack. Yet they are slow. Moreover, while effective in numbers, they are slow to produce. They are basically cheap slow glass cannons, which makes them a difficult unit to manage. In fact, it should come as no surprise that the Armenians (+30 HP) are the most efficient in almost all situations.

:arrow_forward: THE RIGHT DIRECTION

With the launch of the Definitive Edition, the developers added the Supplies technology (75F 75G, today) that reduces the cost of the line by 15 food. While this was a good idea, I think it proved to be eneffective in most cases. Because a slow and fragile unit is still difficult to manage, it only becomes effective in the late game (with some civilisations) because you can spam it without worrying too much about micro-management.

The first step is to return to its own steps and bring the Champions unit more in line with its cousins: remove the Supplies tech and give a fixed discount of 5 food (is similar to the discount the Incas got in the Dark Age). After that, increase HP to an amount to maintain balance.

Using the formula 100F = 100 W = 75 G (Gold is worth 33% more than F & W) we find that going from 45F 20G to 55F 20G means a 14% increase in cost. Increasing HP from 70 to 80 is the same increase.

The second step is to increase the speed of production. Reducing the time by 3 seconds seems absolutely normal to me. That would be a 15% reduction. This would mean that the Goths’ Champion (without Perfusion) would produce at the same speed as the Legionary, which production time has been increased by 1 second to compensate for the fact that it is 5% cheaper.

Putting it all together, here is the new table.

Stats Champion Legionary Elite Obuch Elite Serjeant
Cost 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G 50F 35G
Train time 18 secs. 15 secs. 12 secs. 12 secs.
HP 80 75 95 85
Melee attack 17 16 14 15
Reload time 2 2 2 2
Melee armour 4 6 5 7
Pierce armour 6 6 6 8
Speed 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99

post-imperial

At this stage I would be reluctant to increase the melee armour by even 1. In the end this is the basic Champion. You have to be sure not to break something with civilisation bonuses. More on that later.

The developers have always treated the number 100 with consideration. It is the basic HP of the Knights and the Camel. Only the CA of the Turks reaches those HPs, only the Teutonic Knight has 100 HP among the unique infantry units, only the Eagle of the Maya has 100 HP and so on.
Setting the Champion’s HP to 80 means that the Viking’s HP would be 96, so you can leave the Armenians at 100 HP. Replicating the dynamics of the CA of the Turks & Vietnamese.

:arrow_forward: THE TWO-HANDED SWORDSMAN

In particular, there are two Two-Handed Swordsmen to look out for: those of the Bulgarians and the Malays. In particular, the Bulgarians one must to continue to beat the Champion of the Burmese by a little. This leads us to increase his HP by 10 as well. In addition, the creation time must also be equalised.

Stats Two-H. Sw. Champion Legionary Elite Obuch Elite Serjeant
Cost 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G 50F 35G
Train time 18 secs. 18 secs. 15 secs. 12 secs. 12 secs.
HP 70 80 75 95 85
Melee attack 16 17 16 14 15
Reload time 2 2 2 2 2
Melee armour 4 4 6 5 7
Pierce armour 6 6 6 6 8
Speed 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99

post-imperial

:arrow_forward: THE TRICKY CASE

Long Swordsmen are probably the most discussed unit on the entire forum, but we should not shy away from the discussion and applying the usual buff seems absolutely natural. Strangely enough, the Serjeant in the Castle Age is much stronger than its Long Sw. equivalent. Anyway, the melee attack of Long Sw. also needs to be raised by 1. And because he has already received a buff I would not reduce his creation time as well.

In direct confrontations Obuch is clearly the stronger unit, but this is expected because it can only be produced from the castle.

Stats Long Sw. Obuch Serjeant
Cost 55F 20G 55F 20G 50F 35G
Train time 21 secs. 12 secs. 12 secs.
HP 70 80 75
Melee attack 12 10 10
Reload time 2 2 2
Melee armour 3 3 5
Pierce armour 4 4 5
Speed 0.99 0.99 0.99

full castle age

Also, since the Drush or MaA costs slightly less food for all civilisations. Other than moving Squires to the feudal age and slightly reducing the cost (75F) I wouldn’t do anything else for now.

:arrow_forward: THE NEW LINE

Putting it all together:

  • Supplies: removed. Instead, -5 Food for the whole line.
  • Squires: 75F, availability in the Feudal Age.
  • Gambesons: unchaned.
  • Arson: unchaned.
Stats Militia Man-at-A. Long Sw. Two-H. Sw. Champion
Cost 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G
Train time 21 secs. 21 secs. 21 secs. 18 secs. 18 secs.
HP 40 45 70 70 80
Melee attack 4 6 10 12 13
Reload time 2 2 2 2 2
Melee armour 0 0 1 1 1
Pierce armour 1 1 1 1 1
Speed 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90

:arrow_forward: CIVS FIXES

  • Armenians
    → Fereters 550F 400G 450F 325G
    Infantry units (except the Spearman line) +30 +20 hit points. Warrior Priests +100% heal speed.

  • Goths
    → Infantry are 20%/25%/30%/35% 15%/20%/25%/30% cheaper in the Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age.
    → Huskarl 80F 40G 75F 40G.
    → Elite Huskarl training time: 16 15 seconds.
    → Perfusion 400W 600G 350W 500G.
    Barracks work 100% 80% faster.

  • Incas
    → Military units cost -10%/-15%/-20%/-25% food in Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Ages.

  • Burgundians | Chinese | Cumans | Lithuanians | Mongols
    Remove Champions.

  • Vikings
    Remove Gambesons.

:arrow_forward: THE ALTERNATIVE

If you want, you can put the added 10HP behind a technology available since the feudal age. And you can also make Supplies and Gambesons apply to more infantry units as Fereters. This while maintaining a discount of 5F across the board.

  • Supplies: 75F 50G, availability in the Feudal Age. Infantry units (except the Spearman line and the Eagle Scout line) +10 hit points.
  • Squires: 75F, availability in the Feudal Age. Infantry speed +10%.
  • Gambesons: 100F 100G, availability in the Castle Age. Infantry units (except the Spearman line and the Eagle Scout line) +1 pierce armor.
  • Arson: unchaned.
Stats Militia Man-at-A. Long Sw. Two-H. Sw. Champion
Cost 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G 55F 20G
Train time 21 secs. 21 secs. 21 secs. 18 secs. 18 secs.
HP 40 45 60 60 70
Melee attack 4 6 10 12 13
Reload time 2 2 2 2 2
Melee armour 0 0 1 1 1
Pierce armour 1 1 1 1 1
Speed 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90

Note how Supplies and Gambesons have no effect on the line of the Eagles. It would be possible to do this in the future, but it would require extra work.

:arrow_forward: CIVS FIXES

  • Armenians
    → Fereters 550F 400G 450F 325G
    Infantry units (except the Spearman line) +30 +20 hit points. Warrior Priests +100% heal speed.

  • Goths
    → Infantry are 20%/25%/30%/35% 15%/20%/25%/30% cheaper in the Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age.
    → Huskarl 80F 40G 75F 40G.
    → Elite Huskarl training time: 16 15 seconds.
    → Perfusion 400W 600G 350W 500G.
    Barracks work 100% 80% faster.

  • Incas
    → Military units cost -10%/-15%/-20%/-25% food in Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Ages.

  • Aztecs | Celts | Japanese | Teutons | Sicilians
    → (Elite) Jaguar Warrior: -1 pierce armor.
    → (Elite) Woad Raider: -1 pierce armor.
    → (Elite) Samurai: -1 pierce armor.
    → (Elite) Serjeant: -1 pierce armor.
    → (Elite) Teutonic Knight: -1 pierce armor.
    Reduces the cost of upgrading to Elite by 75F 50G.
    Make the same argument for the new Supply tech.

  • Dravidians | Vikings
    Remove Gambesons.

:arrow_forward: FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

On the whole, some other adjustments can be made, however, they are changes in the right direction without having to upset things too much. Especially if they were to be coupled with the idea of Battle Drills from Chronicles. So you can actually save time to make all the necessary upgrades.

I would also like to point out that the ultra heavy infantry, i.e. the Teutonic Knight, has a strange cost, considering that it is a walking block of steel and costs less gold than a Serjeant.

In any case, thank you for your patience in reading this far.

EDIT. Add “The Altnerive” chapter.

3 Likes
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I think Champion should be something like region exclusive or UUs simply. Like how Legionnary is simply an upgrade for Long Swordsman. Tbh, I dont like Legionnary’s design at all. Feels like making stronger Jaguar Warrior from Barracks and Romans should be something for Chronicles era and shouldn’t belong to AoE2 era at all.

OR

If we are sticking with Champs then civs that has Champs will skip 2HS. Civ that doesn’t have 2HS will use Champs. You can make the argument about making Champs and 2HS distinct in some form which I want as well. I would make 2HS more faster moving with weaker stats(cheaper to upgrade after all) while Champs stays as it is.

Gambesons, Battle Drills, Supplies shouldn’t exist at all in AoE2. It breaks the rule of upgrades applying to other units as well. No UUs gets any benefits of it. Making it a lot worse than it should be.

1 Like
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Are there not enough topics on this already?

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Whatever changes we give to Champions, we should probably also be giving to AoK Infantry UU: Jaguars, Samurai, Berserk, and Woad Raiders. Idk how scary Woads w/ +1 PA would be, but Samurai could really benefit from +1 PA

5

In my opinion. The Teutons dont have any light cavalry or hussars or good cav archers, so they more focus on endurance. This is more in a broader perspective of the whole civ and its playstyle. And we don’t have any mounted crossbowmen units yet in the game.

AoC *

6

Obuch is good, Serjeant is situational and legionaries are not. Obuch alone is good not just because of 95 hp and armor but it also complements the civ well. Many civs attempt to go for Camels, halbs or some other stronger cavalry against Poles and the armor tearing mechanic works well when mixed with their own cav units.

Serjeants are ok because if someone quick walls but doesnt have upgraded ranged units, Serjeants can build Donjons to force opponent off that resource. But otherwise they’re very expensive and not a mainstream unit.

Legionaries are just a special champion that many other civs have and are about the same as those civs. Infantry getting bonus vs infantry is not that powerful and doesn’t have much of a purpose in the game.

Rest of your discussion is about infantry in Imperial age. There’s nothing wrong with the cost or stats of infantry at that stage of the game. They’re almost never used because they need too many upgrades and don’t have any purpose beyond the first 12 mins of a standard RM game. And that’s because walls and other military units make them scale poorly. No one gets intermediate upgrades and hence its becomes too difficult to tech into them.

Mostly speaking this is sort of Viking infantry line beyond feudal age and this isn’t going to magically make them usable.
Ideally you’d have to give them a good purpose and make it easier to use to get value from them. First step would be to make barracks cheaper and walls weaker until castle age. Second either maa upgrade should cost very low like 50 food, 30 gold and supplies should be available in dark age costing 40 food 40 gold. Or Maa should have 50 hp, 7 base damage, 0.95 movement speed, get +5 vs walls and gates armor class, take -1 damage from scout line. This will make it more difficult for stable opening to clear the early 3-4 maa and maa opening won’t be that weak even at pro level at least with civs that get some bonus on them.
Or you could keep the stats and supplies cost as they are but remove the maa upgrade, militia get 45 hp by default and get +2 attack like scouts upon hitting feudal age. Along with this some benefit for towers+maa play. This way you create the potential to break the meta with alternate strategy that’s almost equally effective.

Agree with you on making all the ridiculously expensive infantry unique techs cheaper. Even Wootz steel and Garland wars should become cheaper.

In general its good to be cautious and make small incremental changes but this militia line has undergone plenty of changes since the OG game. And they’re still in a worse spot. So maybe its ok to try bigger changes.

7

Militia fix have to consider;

  1. Win by militia spam have lower skill than other unit spam and this is no fun

  2. Too much buff will make not only infantry civ but every civ to spam militia and therefore overnerf.

  3. Pure stat buff is probably not going to help survive in cavalry archer meta, unless the stat buff is huge but this lead to every civ spamming.

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Honestly i think crossbowmen are way too easy to mass, they’re too cheap. It’s way too easy to spam a group of 30 crossbowmen and one shot everything that comes at it. That basically gives a deadgame experience for people who play melee units. Even with knights.
I’d rather propose to make crossbowmen cost 20 wood and 10 gold more and slower train time.

1 Like
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I think you should have added upgrade costs and attack bonuses.

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Current crossbowmen: 25W/45G, 27s tt
New crossbowmen: 45W/55G, 27s or more tt

Current cavalry archer: 40W/60G, 34s tt

Cavalry archer players

4477b4c6978864389ddc702552b7cf2b

2 Likes
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Never enough

Why? In practice I made the line cost +10F more to get +10HP (and +1 Attack for the LS). There is no need to touch the other UUs. The Samurai and Jaguars should be fixed regardless of this thread.

Absolutely, which is why all buffs without increasing the base cost are dangerous.

Good idea

The Teutons are like the Franks, once the gold is gone they are irrelevant. Either they win by some power play or gg.

EDIT. Fixed a typo.

12

Seeing these stats…

I would suggest to re-establish Supplies, but giving a different effect: + 15 HP

Possibly even available in Dark Age as suggested here:

Kinda like the idea to potentially enable mass militia rushes in dark age (ofc not available to goths).

But mostly ofc to smoothen the gap between MAA and LS, also as counterpart to the bloodlines tech for cav.

13

You caught the spirit of my message.

It is not so much to reduce the cost even more, but rather to say, let’s leave the cost the same or similar (in the range of the 60F), but rather make the unit stronger and less spam and whatever.

Specifically, I would go more for +10 HP and +1/0 armour to leave the 100 HP charm for the Armenians, but it’s basically the same thing.

EDIT. It could be called Training, or something like that. Available in the feudal age, even with the cost of 75F 50G would be fine.

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This is a good one but I would like to have it effecting other unitlines too. Not just Swordsman line. Gambeson and Supplies has this problem is why Infantry line went to the condition it is today.

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I agree it should possibly affect other Infantry units aswell. But to a minor degree.

I think like 5-10 HP would be definitely enough - and in case of the spearman line the halb upgrade would probably also need some compensation.

it could be definitely nice for some Infantry UUs that are underused rn such as TK.

I mean, I would then ofc reduce the base HP of LS + accordingly, like by 10 HP.

In general I support the idea to try make the militia line just a bit more “beefy”. It won’t break anything - and will synergize with almost all conceptional ideas to make the line more “enjoyable” to play with. Atm it still lacks a feature you can utilize to get an advantage. Doesn’t has to be something as broad as range for archers or speed for cavalry. But it needs at least something.

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The only solution not to go crazy to rebalance everything is to write as for Fereters, ‘Infantry units (except the Spearman line) +30 hit points’. Which is something absolutely feasible in reality.

As usual, I start with the Champion because it is easier then to go back, but the point is that these 3 units perform roughly the same in battles with equal investment 100F = 100 W = 75 G (Gold is worth 33% more than F & W).

Stats Champion Champion Champion
Now Solution 1 Solution 2
Cost 45F 20G 55F 20G 60F 20G
HP 70 80 80
Melee attack 17 17 17
Reload time 2 2 1.8
Melee armor 4 4 5
Pierce armor 6 6 6
Speed 0.99 0.99 0.99

post-imperial

The problem is that this is difficult for this to happen, because it is being a slow and clumsy unit it is easy to deceive it in a favourable way as has been discussed by us many times. I had thought of reducing the space or giving 0.1 of range but this makes it even more vulnerable to siege weapons.

However, yes, it is an interesting idea. I will definitely add it to the initial post.

17

Solution 2 is good. But how stagger them across ages through researching tech is something needs to be discussed. We have serious late Feudal, Castle Age problem still to make it worthwhile.

18

Militia-line should be a walking shield, meaning they are still slow but incredibly durable. I thought about tying attributes to formations (+ PA in a box formation, + speed in a line formation) so that it would depend on the player, but I don’t know if that’s possible.

Another idea is the one you suggested in another thread, of having the damage taken be shared between the units in the formation. And/or PA could also be added to the formation for each unit added to it.

2 Likes
19

Form experience and Analysis of the current effective playouts for me any kind of “stat monster” solution would only make the unit feel either unfair to play against (especially on lower elos) or useless if it’s not dealing enough eco damage.
So far the implemented “protection” mechanics just don’t work. Probably also partially intended - as on higher elo with targeting these will be circumvent anyways.

I still think this could make sense for the line, as it would indeed allow to make bigger Groups of them. They would still be vulnerable for area damage, which then ofc would be the main weapon against them.

Needs to be thought through, because it’s obviously very dependent on the practical implementation.
I would like to see something which scales up to like 40-50 units in a group - and there should be a radius in which it applies, so it’s not possible to “swarm” your opponent goth spam like and still get the full effect.
I will probably think about that and make a proposal at some point.
BTW: Very good impression, which made me think about my former concept which I now see had some flaws in it.

1 Like
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Recently-avid players of AOEIII will be no stranger with this idea, for they understood this feature from Habsburg Line Infantries :grin::grin::grin: