I once made a completely overhaul of the Mayans where one of the changes was that instead of cheaper archers they got 5%, 10%, 15% additional speed in the feudal castle and imperial age respectively. It was a really fun bonus to play with.
It might be silly, but I'd love to see some sort of archer bonus that would look absurdly strong on paper but the civ doesn't have access to even crossbowmen. So they just have base archers keeping pace with arbalestors in imperial age.
There's some precedent for this, too. Turks can't upgrade their Spearmen or Skirmishers, but have full blacksmith upgrades allowing them to be viable. Then there's the various civs with Knight-line bonuses but no Paladin. And we can't forget the Kamandaran tech, which would be pretty OP if Persians could upgrade Trashbows to Garbalesters.
Yeah it helps in a few ways - it's technically more accurate, and in some cases your arrow will kill the enemy before they can attack (where a normal arrow wouldn't), on top of what you mentioned.
What devs should do is bring feudal age units to dark age and castle age units to feudal age. There are too many units upgrades in imp age so dividing these upgrades properly between these ages would be a great move. Btw cumans already have rams in feudal age as well as Armenians have access to pikemen and longswordsman and it isn’t somehow overpowered.
A castle age tech giving 0 attack delay, 5% movement speed and fire 5% caster on foot archers. Not huge for low level but at high level it would be quite useful.
I've toyed with archers benefitting from Squires before, was pretty satisfied with the results, although I believe that this bonus on its own is not enough to be all that impactful in Castle Age. I've tried "Squires affects foot archers and can be researched in Feudal Age", which was interesting (it's like getting a less powerful version of the Celt speed bonus packed with archer speed), but my favourite was "Foot archers are affected by Barracks upgrades", where Supplies would decrease their wood cost by 25% (much like it decreases Militia food cost by 25%), and +1 pierce armour was also pretty good.
ageofempires. fandom.com/ wiki/ User_blog:Papermaniac/ Posible_bonuses_for_Age_of_Empires_II_still_not_used_by_any_civilization_part_3:_Infantry,_Archers_and_Cavalry there you can find other bonuses. but yes the karambitized archers is missing
For Faster projectiles Siege can be a good candidate, mostly because Crossbows and Skirmishers already have a projectile speed of 7, while Mangonels and Scorpions projectile speed are 3.5 and 6, where giving Siege units faster projectiles can be quite deadly though for now I think Scorpions can get the bonus as it's one of the bonus of my own Fantasy World Building Civ who have +2 Scorpion projectile speed.
I kind of like the idea of splitting it (faster arrows for one civ, faster siege projectile for another), but they could be combined. Faster scorp projectiles is a very solid bonus that should be pretty balanced.
All civs could benefit from +0.5 or +1 Scorpion projectile speed. Towers could also have faster projectiles as without Ballistics they tend to hardly hit moving/escaping target unit and when they do they have low damage anyways imho.
In the heart of the forest, where shadows dance, archers are gathered, their bows in a trance. These archers however are a different affair, they run too fast! These fleet-footed lads, they're chasing the wind, defying all chance. Their quivers rattle, their eyes ablaze, leaving trails of dust in their hasty race. 🎤
Missed shots do 100% damage. All archer have 100% accuracy without thumb ring. Chemistry can be researched twice. Archers can build towers. Archers if stationary for a short time gain extra pierce armour. Archers can convert to villagers with UT. (Convert like a ratha, only one way, not back to archers) Archers slow enemy units they hit for a short time. Archers get +5 attack against units with less then 20 remaining health. Archers get +2 range when near a relic. Archers are healed by monks 2* faster. Civ has no crossbowmen but upgrades to arbalest for normal cost. (skipping an upgrade) Archers can pay the difference in cost to a cavalry archer to upgrade (same way as a ratha but takes longer to switch) the archer can then convert back to "dismounted cavalry archer" with identical stats to foot archer and remount for no cost. For the sake of graphical consistency the civ would need to upgrade to mounted crossbowmen or have a replacement foot archer unique unit. Archers available at the castle and cost 75% Archery ranges increase the speed of nearby archery ranges Archers can be created at the town centre and take three times longer to produce but spawn in a group of five. Free archer for each tower built Archers can fire from inside rams but have only three range
I must say the civ that would have feudal archers, just blacksmith upgrades in castle age and then arbalest upgrade in imperial age seems very interesting somehow. Also liked this - Missed shots do 100% damage!
A while ago I was theory crafting a new mesoamerican civ for the Chichimecas. They relied on raiding and ambush tactics so one of their bonuses was that archer range units benefited from squires, gambeson and arson. They also had a castle age bonus of 10% faster foot archers, so would move at a speed of 1.16. To balance this they lost ring archer armour and arbalest. They were a pretty cool civ, they didn't have the mangonel line but had a castle unit of a War Shaman that did long range damage to enemy units instead of conversion like a monk, that when elite could do aoe. After their imperial tech they could train hand cannoneers, with their speedy bonus, and also had a unique cavalry scout instead of eagles. This has been my slam poetry
@@AdmiralWololo They're super interesting, they managed to fight the spanish to a truce and became a partner, hence why they get access to hand cannons. Also they would make great use of captured horses too
Uh pretty sure Chichimeca is a derogative term the Mexica (aztecs) used to describe the "less civilized" peoples inhabiting the areas north of their territory (which is funny to me considering the aztecs themselves are assumed to have migrated southwards before settling down in the valley of Mexico). As such it's an umbrella term that doesn't really apply to any particular historical civilization very accurately, you might as well have a civ called the "barbaric non-aztecs" :D. I'd rather just take the biggest or most distinctive (more developed perhaps) among those groups and have them as a civilization. The Otomi for example, would have been catalogued as "chichimecas" if they hadn't joined the triple alliance, and some of their related groups probably were classified as such. :shrug:
@@afz902k Yeh I saw that it could be use as a pejorative, but it really depends on the pronunciation. I read on wikipedia that it could mean "dog" or "inhabitants of the milk region". They were a confederation of a number of smaller nations, with the Zacatecos and Guachichiles being the most war like. I think it would be better to refer to the larger grouping than break them down into their states, I don't think they're large enough require the RobbyLAVA treatment. I think there are worse offenders currently in game for naming conventions. Not that I take issue with it, but the Aztecs themselves were only called Aztecs in posterity, same with the Byzantines. The Saracens are even more problematic. At some point we just gotta pick a contemporary term that people understand now.
Really depends how it's done. We already have Regenerating Cav Archers with Georgians (for free), and Regen Camel Archers after their UT, which is more powerful because those are mounted units. But I agree that regen isn't an essential future archer bonus, which is why I avoided it here.
Armenian composite bowman has armor ignoring innately, but armor destroying is a possibility (although I prefer that for siege as I made a video about).
Would be hard to balance, but definitely interesting. Maybe missing BL/Husbandry and Bracer or even HCA upgrade. Might be worth a video to see what the options for balancing that would be.
I've been toying with the idea of archers having splash damage around their unit (not on point of impact) to simulate how the English archers would drive stakes into the ground to defend against cavalry
If it would be passive ability, that could be done visually pretty easily by just adding the stakes around the archer to the standing animation. Mechanically it should probably work only when non-moving anyways.
I like the tower one, but everything else sounds like hell to play against, especally mid elo were everyone and their grandma harrases you non stop with archers. If they get even better nothing else will be viable. Don´t know about pros but for the avarage dude. And personally i thing archers and skrirms aren´t exactly the most exiting units. Or maybe i play too much boheminas idk
IMO it's mostly a matter of finding the right numbers (and/or locking the effects with a Unique Tech). Pretty much all of these I'd consider less powerful than the Britons or Ethiopian bonuses unless you use higher numbers than I did in the video. Like lower attack delay helps, but it doesn't change the fundamental counter dynamic, and the same is true for most of the others. Even the extra armor one is pretty similar to the Vietnamese HP bonus - a little better in some cases, but with no effect vs. pierce damage.
