If both units are fighting then yes. Problem is vills usually run away so it does matter. For the exact same reason a rhino is far more dangerous to lure then a boar. They only start moving after their attack animation has finished.@@BelialTnTn
shorter Animation is a very good idea (Rhinos = Dangerous vill killer, Boar = only dangerous if you dont pay attention) +1 Melee Armor and +1 Damage against Buildings for M@A could be a good steps as well. I mean they bear a huuuge shield with them and still cannot block a swing of villager?
Kinda sorta; it could be in a better place. During the dark ages infantry was predominantly spear/pikemen because the cost of weapons/armor/training was almost nothing. Even in the middle ages this was a common practice for leavies. Really it took professional training for swordsmen to counter pikes/spears. But point taken that swordsmen should be the fraction of the cost of a knight if designed off historical precedent.
You get Knights in Castle age literally from thin air and yet somehow you need to upgrade twice to get longswords... I believe it's nonsense for 24 years already.
@@sportsfreak33393 well for historical precedent swordsmen should be a fraction of the cost of a knight but also get completly destroyed by any kind of mounted units.
Militia being the only military available in Dark Age, they really should just become Men-at-Arms in Feudal automatically. Give Bulgarians a new bonus. The same logic is already used with Serjeants. Since they'd be too strong in Feudal, their stats get automatically buffed in Castle Age. To further reduce the tech switch problem, you could just give Champion civs the upgrade Longsword->Champion directly, while other civs go Longsword->Two-Handed, same as how the Legionnaire upgrade works, just up the price a bit for the Champion upgrade.
From a pure competitive standpoint that makes sense. But a lot of people don't play AoE2 competitively, or even multiplayer at all. And clicking upgrades is a satisfying part of the game that it always sucks to lose. I even miss researching gunpowder units individually.
@@CaptainFalcoyd That's fair. I can see that for two-handed swordsmen since a lot of casual players prefer their look over the champion. But for militia I personally never made them as a kid before men-at-arms as I thought dudes with clubs was lame. So it would be doing casual players a favor too in this case. 😉
@@CaptainFalcoyd with all due respect I don't think this is reasonable argument in balancing discussion. Also there is gambesson as new tech that people can click. ;-)
Nah, free MaA would make, MaA openings into skirms/archers too good. There would be little point of going scouts for most civs if you can get MaA pressure much earlier. It's a tight balance with these things. I would reduce MaA tech a little, like from 100/40 to something like 50/40. Then buff movement speed from 2HS and champions a little. Would make sense as they drop the shield.
We don't see MaA openings at all anymore though, that's the problem. It's all scouts and/or ranges, or FC. Bulgarians also aren't oppressive in any way with instant MaA. I would argue it would just make MaA viable as an option again and cut down the tech switch time later on. I can see how something like a Mongols fast feudal instant MaA rush could be OP though, but that's what preview builds are for. Movement speed buffs are far riskier for balance as it changes all sorts of unit dynamics. I don't think the usefulness of infantry should hinge on their speed.
Infantry should get a formation bonus, or something. Reduced damage from piercing when massed, like a shield wall effect. Then it would be harder to micro against them with massed archers.
@@elementallyyt1517Then nothing counters them except massed siege or hand cannoners. They're slower and weaker to archers because their niche is an anti-melee heavy infantry just as how the Huskarl is a fast anti-ranged specialist that's weak to melee damage
My Militia-Line buff suggestions: -5 gold cost, speed to .93, +1 more bonus damage to buildings. I'd also like to see Arson increased to +3 instead of +2, or maybe reduce its research cost.
That's sort of perfect. 1.35-1.4 is the speed difference between knights and cav archers and by percentage thats 4%. Militia .93 is exactly matching this, and with squires these stay just a little faster so the dynamic could be really good with that speed. The anti trash unit that likes being cheaper being legit less gold intensive seems like a no brainer (3/1 ratio after supplies). I'm ok with their anti-building as they are solid at it already, but yea this seems nuanced and yet impactful.
Problem with rss discountd is thry increase the gap insanely on lower elos. You don't want low eloto be simply who spams more longswords. In mid to high elos 5 gold discount is justified though, even moving cost from gold to food by 10 in higher eloes where hussars dominate, would make sense for champs. But, all of that won't solve the problem by it self. You did touch on the concept i believe in most though. Militia-line building damage should be balanced around villagers repair, so that villagers repair feels unsustainable over a long time, so that milita-line are not 100% ignored while archers visit their base cuz milita line are not doing anything. One other mechanic would be, militia line gets a stacking buff vs buildings the longer they attack it, say 0.25 dmg per hit per stack. Maxed at some specific stack number for balance reasons.
I reckon that'd be a great change except for the extra +2 against buildings. That'd scale enormously with massed units especially with great infantry civs like Japanese and Goths
-increase damage to buildings for militia and men at arms (two militia should equal or slightly out damage one villager repairing) -increase damage to villagers -slight increase to speed say 0.92 -slight decrease in cost of some techs I feel like this will give them a clear identity in the early game as economy destroyers and if you choose to use them you can force more fights as the opponent will have to defend instead of letting them whale on the buildings and completely ignore them.
Sad how you need 2 attack upgrades to 4 shot vils with swordsman, while you only need forging to 4 shot with knights who are faster and even more armoured.
I'm also partial to the first and third solution you listed here. The first one in particular I feel like will address the issue of making the militia line more useful in higher elos while not making them too strong in lower elos. Higher elos wall like crazy and the bonus building damage will help against that, while lower elos tend to be more exposed or not do a good job of walling or repairing and so will likely be less affected by the increase. Speed of .92 would make militia same as villager speed, and I get the feeling they were made slower to go easy in the dark age, but maybe being the same speed is good compromise rather than boosting so they're faster than villagers. I don't even know what to think about the techs for militia line anymore, there's so many of them.
@@Koborakaiwe could roll some of the techs into the line upgrade maybe? I think they should definitely be cheaper/faster to come in like supplies should cost the same as on militia at most. The point of infantry is to be massable.
we had so many changes in DE but the key problems stayed, they are to slow and and are not even cost efficient against knights, its the weakest gold unit and even great infantry civs more often use theyre okayish cavalry instead
Someone mathed out that it takes 88 Champions to combat 40 Paladins and barely win. So that makes infantry less pop efficient, less mobile, and *equally* resource efficient to Paladins. Pretty much the only upside to Champions is 'not weak to spear-line'. That's it, they don't take anti-cavalry damage, that's the only major benefit unless you're a civ with a specific strong infantry boost.
@@khatack They were also comparatively rare. Melee Infantry should be the most common unit on the field in a medieval strategy game. Not just the cheapest, the most common.
@@billfarce2723 They were the main tactical force of most militaries, NOT rare. Infantry was way more numerous obviously, you're correct about that, but cavalry was NOT rare, Cavalry was THE thing in military technology in the medieval period.
Advice: you can visually display the resources (with their icon - gold/wood/food/stone and) with numbers when you are talking about them, helps a lot for not-perfect-english-speakers like myself. Anyway great video, cheers!
I wish the devs would just experiment with buffing infantry for a month and see what happens - they can always roll things back if they get too oppressive. Maybe give MAA another +2 against buildings and see if they end up punishing full wall plays in an interesting way, or make Supplies free for everyone. There are a bunch of civs with sick infantry bonuses (Bulgarian free upgrades, Japanese attack speed, Armenian earlier upgrades, Roman double upgrades) yet those civs still don't make infantry regularly, so IMO a minor buff won't be enough to make a big difference.
I think MAA are the closest thing we have to siege before castle age. The arson tech makes me think that line is intended as an anti-building unit, to a degree higher than most other units but less than actual siege units. Wouldn't it make it a fun on-the-fly tactical decision to scout your opponents base and think "is he playing open where I can freely use other units, or do I need to make MAA to bust through his walls"? But if MAA are countered by a villager or two, then this probably isn't viable most of the time.
dont think making supplies free is a good idea, but you could reduce its cost and make it available in dark age. That way you can research it and thén make the militia. Just make it like 50 food 50 gold so it pays off fast as well.
I really like the idea of giving them extra bonus damage against buildings, but not against walls. (Increase MAA from +2 to +6?) This has a few neat effects: - they have a reason to force fights. They're too slow to effectively kill vils, so they need another way to do economic damage. - base building becomes more strategic. Do you risk putting your buildings as part of the wall thinking the opponent won't go MAA, or do you hide important buildings behind walls? Right now you get lots of "free" walls with buildings you have to build anyways. Make players have to decide to spend resources on actual walls if they want safety. - small walls become more difficult. Without being able to use the lumber camp effectively as part of the wall, players have to plan more for attacks and naked FC becomes riskier. -they have an identity. Buffing speed or attack just makes them a worse version of a knight, this makes them unique in the way you use them, and affects how the opponent has to prepare and counter them. - makes their use more common. Bringing a few MAA info a fight to clear up buildings means it's more likely to make the upgrade in feudal, if the upgrade is already in, the transition in later ages is also "cheaper" and more appealing. -buildings actually need support. Right now it's not economic to destroy buildings in feudal (even forwards tend to just wall in the building rather than attacking it). Force players to be more deliberate about where they place buildings, and how they defend them. Would be interested in your thoughts! The goal is to have more pros and cons they have to weigh for each action, to being even more strategy and interesting facets to the game.
Agree with you especially on the "bringing a small MAA squad" part. Buffing them in order to make them, if not the backbone of the army, good enough to bring a few in a fight to open a way or pressure some points. Either way it doesn't feel right that a couple hundreds resources can just be dealt with with simcity or by garrisoning villagers.
Yeah, clearing houses takes forever and messes with pathing, and rams I want them taking arrowfire from more important targets, so I'd gladly make infantry to speed this process up.
I agree, assuming that by walls you only mean the stone kind and not palisades. Those things are so annoying when quickwalled and I would love if I could just destroy them with a few MAAs without allowing the vill to infinitely repair them.
@@flydrop8822 +6 lol. That would make everyone just open m@a and everything would get deleted from the field if its not in tc range, you guys are crazy.
The common theme in your analysis seems to be the high cost of upgrades relative to the state of the game they become available and with it the availability of better alternatives. An idea I haven't found discussed yet is to move the upgrades down by one age: Dark Age: Men-at-arms upgrade available Feudal Age: Longsword upgrade available Castle Age: Two-handed Swordsmen upgrade available Imperial Age: Champion upgrade available It is entirely clear that a fully upgraded Longswordsman is a broken unit in Feudal Age. The same is true for Men-at-arms in Dark Age. However, this idea adresses some of the mentioned issues with the unit line: 1) The somewhat viable Men-at-arms Feudal Rush becomes a bit faster and thus more attractive, giving the Militia line more chances to find a headstart into the game. 2) If the players are staying longer in Feudal Age means leaning more into the most powerful Feudal Age unit which would be the Longswordsmen. 3) In Imperial Age it does not require 145 seconds for Champions to kick in, making a strategy based on Champion more of an active strategy and less of a reactive move. Another idea is to make Squires (+10 movement speed) a Feudal Age Technology and reduce the time to research from 40 to 20 seconds. At that point, you don't have a second barracks and 40 seconds not producing units is a bit of a burden. Of course, with this, a few civ boni should be reconfigured, such as the Bulgarians automated Militia upgrades (should only apply in Caste and Imperial Age and include the Champion as well).
Dunno maybe make them even better against buildings, maybe siege too? Like, it's easier to demolish stuff when you're not sitting on a horse. Dunno if such specialization will really work well in AoE2, but other solutions seem to make them faster.... So pretty would end up just being bit worse, bit slower, bit cheaper cavalry in the end
I'm a firm believer that, even if something has a "fundamental issue", once you jack the stats high enough, it can be overcome. Stick an extra 20 health to Man at Arms and up. Still kited by archers, still can't catch villagers, still can't chase cavalry, all the 'fundamental issues' are still there, but now they're resource efficient in direct fights, can tank for skirm backups, need way less to threaten a TC, and potentially terrifying as part of a Feudal rush.
@@BlueShellshockthat's broken, it'd be stronger than a fully upgraded scout cav. The solution is a modest boost to the hp in Imperial and faster training time. All civs have viable unit combos in Feudal which is an essential part of the game
I think the Militia line needs a split, besides the just excessive number of upgrades the unit has other two fundamental flaws: 1: the time to transition into it is too long due to the main line upgrades (Most unit lines need 1/2 unit specific upgrades, Militia needs 7 besides everything else) 2: their stats try to do too much, is like a generalist unit that is cheap but also slow (Knights for example are an expensive generalist that is really good at it and forces engagements) because is tied all the way to a unit designed for Dark Age. My idea is: Split the lines into the Swordsman line and the Longsword line (Or Mercenary line? Call it how you want), the former having the first three upgrades capping in Castle and the latter comes in from the get go in Castle and can be upgraded in Imp. We remove Supplies and Gambesons, make the unit's speed 0.96 so is on par with skirms and archers, and make it cost 35f and 15g (We could even make the upgrades themselves slightly more expensive to balance it, like MaA upgrade could be 140f 40g and would still be cheaper than before), repurposing them fully as a swarm mass unit good vs low eco pushes like monk rushes etc. Longsword line can now be more robust (like 1/2 armor and 75 HP in Castle, 2/2 and 90 HP in Imp) and much faster (Like 1.10) but more expensive (Say like 40f 40g), to make them a proper quality unit now that is not attached to the stats of a Dark Age Militia. It can chase down archers, is a decent opening vs Knight civs, and can scale well in lategame. What are your thoughts about this?
I think it would be logical to split the Militia line to a Swordsman with Shield and to Two-handed Swordsman. The first one should do better against archers, more hp and more armor. The Two-handed swordsman (actually Long-Swordsman should also be "two-handed" as the long swords were usually used by both hands) could be faster, lower pierce armor but higher dmg.
I suggest that infantry should have either faster or stronger attack. Cheaper as well. All armies have majority infantry after all. Maybe reduce the gold cost.
Perhaps +1 pierce armor to the entire militia line (or even a whole +1/+1) and remove the gambeson tech, with a base cost of 50f and 15g and removing the supplies tech too. Infantry requires too much up front investment in terms of techs to be viable currently I think. I'm also a big advocate for the return of the logistics upgrade in AoE1 that halved the pop-space usage of infantry, essentially allowing infantry focused players to field larger armies.
@@khatackdoing that would make some longswords (Romans, Malians) overpowered as they lack Gambesons. Aoe1 Infantry was only viable if you had the legionary, all other barracks units were obsolete and the legionary was very easily countered by the Hoplite line, Priests, Elephants, Siege, Archers, Heavy cavalry + chariots. 1/2 population infantry in Aoe2 would be totally broken, imagine hundreds of Huskarls, Japanese/Armenian/Aztec/Burmese/Slav infantry being churned out like sausages...
I've said it once, I'll say it again: make Infantry dirt cheap, like militia line should be 50/20 without supplies, 35/20 with supplies. Xbow can still micro against them, which I find good, but they'll smash knights in similar resources. (still not pop efficient!) More movement speed etc. just makes them stay the same: a worse knight, in almost all ways. Oh, now MaA is actually amazing vs scouts? Good. They have no mobility. If you just make them faster or whatever, that makes the difference between units smaller, which is kinda boring. Give me a really cheap, powerful, but slower melee fighter. Maybe we get more exciting early feudal play, with lots of militia in late dark on the age up, and suddenly rushing feudal can be punished once in a blue moon. And yeah maybe they smash at lower elos, but then lower elos can use infantry against each other. Just cause they can't use Xbow or HC or mobility, doesn't mean the game should have poor balancing at higher elos (like really, even really mid elo players at like 1k can micro xbow quite well). If we're balancing for low elos, nerf stone walls or something 11
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Totally reasonable, they probably will be a bit too strong in lower brackets, though I think it‘s more sub-1000 elo to be worried about. You have probably got more experience than I in sub-1000 elo games from your coaching, but my mates are mostly 950-1200 elo, and we do Teamgames together all the time. They are all good at finding counters and have decent enough micro, to the point I think this change would only serve to make militia viable, and not overpowered. Also, goths are so strong cause lower brackets struggle against strong infantry they can‘t counter with archers, which wouldn‘t be affected by this change. Goths are actually a great example as to why this should not make them too busted, since it‘s the huscarl carrying them at lower elos. Why isn‘t Inca MaA spam a problem? Cause they‘re countered by arch. It‘s actually eagles which are hard to fight! Jap, teuton, viking and celt all same deal. But Goths have huscarl *and* cheap infantry, so they can smash due to having „no counter“. I mean I dunno, if anyone reading this is struggling against militia line spam in sub-1.2k elo, let me know.
Absolutely agree. Infantry needs a buff. Would love to see men at arms movement speed go at least to .96 or even .97 but not 1. Think that would help the militia line be more relevant.
off of what you said i would suggest a giving the man at arms line a bigger anti-building bonus starting in dark so 1 or 2 villagers can't out repair 3-5 man at arms. i would also give an auto upgrade in feudal age just like scouts.
Archers historically were lower class and could only afford basic armour and were usually out of harm's way so there was no reason for them to be clad heel to toe in heavy armour like infantry who are facing other footmen, cavalry charges and enemy missiles
Probably unpopular opinion, I believe that the Militia-Line is supposed to be weak vs ranged units, they shouldnt get a lot tankier or move a lot faster against/evading ranged units, on the other hand, they should be cheaper to produce (reduce upgrade cost and unit cost, and reduce time to train), make them easier to mass, and demolish everything if they get close enough, having higher base attack and bigger attack bonus against buildings, and more melee armor would be nice, when they come in larger pack, hit like a truck, they would be feared of, they should be a slow, but cheap melee unit good at close range, and excel at demolishing buildings and fortifications.
I think almost the opposite... Ranged units should be weak vs almost everything if you send them alone. A good addition to the game could be a slow, tanky but low dps infantry trash unit that works as a meatshield. This always falls into the hands of light cav line no matter the civ, and somehow is counter-intuitive.
@@martinalejandroarguelloira7627but they are weak, the only time they're really really strong is early castle when you can mass them faster than their usual counters. Ranged units are already vulnerable to skirmishers, knights and siege so there's more than ample counters without roiding up the militia line
They're supposed to be weak to archers going off of their description (from what I remember in the game manual at least, archers specifically though, not skirmishers), and I think that has mostly been maintained throughout the years. Militia line's core traits I always hear are "weak to archers" and "counters trash". Makes it a bit awkward with skirmishers though. I don't even think some of the anti-archer techs for militia line are necessarily against the design of counters in the game because the game has sort of an arms race thing going on with the techs. As an example skirms counter archers really well, but ONLY if they're keeping up at about the same tech level. Unupgraded skirms aren't so good against crossbow and beyond so much. Or a civ might not have the usual good counters for archers so they get some additional archer resistance in other areas (like gambesons) to make up for it and not get so hard-countered by a civ that has decent archers. With that said, I think they're weakness to archers is such an obvious staple that I think they should focus more on making them good at some more other stuff, like the building damage you mentioned.
Same, the two things they need is a reduction in techs and a reduction in gold cost. So maybe make the MAA upgrade free on hitting Feudal and Longsword on hitting Castle. Maybe make supplies also reduce gold cost by the same amount as food isn't the problem with using infantry. You could make a small speed buff alongside MAA so they can chase down vils but avoiding that in Dark Age where it would be too oppressive.
I'm assuming everyone here means the militia line when saying infantry (spears are infantry too). But either way, I don't think any of the proposed slight changes to their speeds put them anywhere near to being like cavalry. It's just changing the nuances between units in the same speed "class" (like the militia, spear, bow, and skirmisher all seen compared in the video, along with villagers). Even if you did make them similar to cavalry speed but slightly worse, they still don't have all the same strengths and weaknesses.
I think shortening the barracks techs could be a big help, also making cheeper could very helpful to make a really big mass and harder to kill at a safe distance
Looking at other medieval strategy games such as Total War Medieval 2, archers only counter infantry to a degree. Bow and arrow archers stop being useful when plate armor and shields become more present, and that leads to crossbows becoming the only choice. They could add some play with that giving all infantry units a set value of pierce armor
You could try giving infantry a hamstring effect, where (non-infantry) units who are hit by them have their movement speed reduced by some amount for a short period of time, making it more difficult to disengage from a melee.
1. Bonus damage vs Villagers maybe +2/3/4 should make them a meaningful threat. 2. Garrisoned infantry should add the same amount of arrows as a villager. Change the Crenellations bonus to double the arrow bonus for infantry. 3. Arson should also give bonus damage against siege units, trade units and ships. 4. Slight increase to conversion resistance?
Being slow make sense for this unit, imo. It is a armored military unit on foot. It has to be slower than the other light-amored foot units. But maybe they could get some upgrades for free. Not sure which ones, though.
I'd say to increase their mov spd to 1 and make maa upgrade either get automatically researched upon going feudal or make it cost no resource but still take time to research, then let players get used to it to see how well it does and what would need adjustment
What about a better attack animation. By the time m@a are done swinging the vill has walked 5tiles away. Give them a micro ability with quick attack animation. Makes higher elo better and lower elo doesnt get a huge buff cuz of the micro
The militia-line need a better identity. They usually serve as trash-killer, but in feudal age they are too slow to kill anything. Even skirms counter them. Imo, militia line should be faster base movement speed than skirms before squires. It can be done by either making militia-line faster or making skirms slower. Another identity of militia-line is taking down building efficiently. Right now M@A have +2 against building, up to champ +4 against building. I think they should received more bonus attack, maybe +4 for militia and +8 for champ. It will make them a slow but unignorable force, since they can trigger snowball effect if you let them burn your production building freely.
While I think those numbers are too high and would likely scale a bit too well with large army sizes, the anti-building identity makes sense and seems easiest to implement. Buildings are basically the only thing that can't run away from their slow asses. They also seem to be the best candidate for that role during feudal age before rams become available. They could be relevant as a wall buster option that still gets shredded by the TC early game so is mainly for raiding the other parts of the town. For late game I think they should still be worse than siege, but much better than other units at destroying buildings, while still getting mostly shredded by castles, keeping it situational in some ways. I think they could still be anti-trash, but the skirmisher is kind of a confounding factor here. Skirmishers almost kite the militia line by default because of their minimum range. Maybe both? Militia slightly faster, skirmisher slightly slower. Scouts have a similar issue if they just don't engage, but at least they can't attack from a distance.
I think their cost and the afformentioned needed upgrades is a big issue. I hate for example that longswords cant trade costeffectively vs knights. Maybe something like making supplies hitting for free in feudal age and adjusting the civ bonuses of civs like goths to not make it too cheap for them. Supplies is after all a quite expensive upgrade. Personally I'd love that change but I don't know if that would make infantry broken in the lower elos as you mentioned in the video. Also something I saw in another comment here which I liked is buffing their melee armor. That would also help them vs knights while keeping ranged units as a counter option.
What i hate is the fact, that the Champion line doesnt counter anything, apart from eagle warriors. Everything seems to be good against them, Archers, Cav, Siege etc...
I think one of the biggest ways to fix infantry is to cap archers hit chance at 10% (or something just low) but increase their damage by 4x. Just like how it is irl. At range an archer has a low chance of hitting you but when it does hit you it’s gonna kill you most likely. That’s why they had hundreds of them in battles shooting volleys.
i think the biggest problem is: what is its role? trash counter? anti building? tank? best bet would be just give the whole line more attack bonus against buildings, so militia rushes wont get countered by some easy quickwalls and mabye add some tankyness in form of additional armor.
Perhaps have a out of the box solution? Like make two handed update have the stats of champion, remove champion upgrade(essentially skipping 2HS but calling the champion 2HS as the champion upgrade always felt weird). And then adding a new mechanic like a militia line unit with X kills (like 5 kills) gains a huge buff and is called a champion. Changes Militia line into a kill farming unit and provides incentive to keep them alive.
Buff idea: make man at arms upgrade free and automatic in feudal after you have created two feudal buildings. That way you would have to invest something, blacksmith market, to get the upgrade so there is no immediate power spike, but it would not cost anything because you would want to go for two feudal buildings anyway. Just having them be stronger for free in feudal could mean that they see more play later on as when you have some alive and well in early castle is might make sense to make a few more and get some upgrades. If you were going for a scout rush for example and now there are a bunch of pikes on the field, it might make sense to make some man at arms to clean them up as you go up to castle.
My thoughts go along the lines two lines of thought: 1) A small increase to speed, just enough to put them (in the early game) on par or (in the mid-late game) slighlty faster than the archer line, which should drastically reduce kiteing without too much low elo impact. 2) And moving the Two Handed Swordsman upgrade to the Castle Age (with a significant cost decrease to it, and a smaller one to the Champion upgrade), which should also have little impact low elo, but should make them more viable late Castle and early Imperial.
I wonder if it would be possible to just forego a line upgrade (long swordsman or two handed) and adjust the stats of the units. Just taking away one upgrade and have the maa be a bit stronger for example could make the militia line more appealing. To be honest, I almost never use them now.
I actually like this idea. Maybe the shielded line would have more pierce armor to raze tcs (like malians) and the two handed line would be anti-infantry (or just a heavier attack) and have more movespeed to be able to catch ranged units (like the celts).
I'd give it +1 anti-building, and a further +1 anti-building per upgrade (Man-at-Arms, Long Swordsman, Two-Handed Swordsman, Champion) totalling at an extra +5.
My quick fix (as a low elo player) would be making them a bit faster (same speed as archers, maybe?) and give them a faster attack animation... Maybe make Militia automatically upgrade to Man-at-arms (but still charge for the following upgrades) once you hit Feudal Age... Or at least make it cheaper and easier to mass in CA and IA... That's kind of the whole idea behind infantry, anyway.
Infantry suposed to be the same as a Knight without that same hp and same attack(horses could trample) and infantry already doesn't have movement speed to shorten attack distance. ANOTHER thing that could be good for infantry is if they have like 0.1 range attack that could help a lot! THAT SAID I would suggest: - 0.1 or 0.2 range attack to militia line; - squires could give more speed than actual does; - faster attack(same as knight or 0.1 faster than a knight); - same armour as a knight(except Militia); - Militias could move the same speed as archers and skirms since Militias don't have any more armor than those units; - Cut off two handed swordsman(or give them more stats) and go straight to Champions or give to Champions more attack and more armour
One thing to do across the board that I think would help infantry play would be to actually require upgrades for new units that are introduced in a new age. It would put a other barrier to entry but it makes sense. Like why can we suddenly traing spearmen out of nowhere but we have to have an upgrade more men-at-arms. There should also be more military unit options for play at the dark age level
I made a big post about this on the steam forums but I can sum it up as. Increase movement speed to between 0.92 to 0.94. Increase HP of Two-handed Swordsman to 65 and champion to 75. There are a few other small tweaks you could make (bonus damage vs light cavalry). Those are mine to test the water. Also I think Hera forgot about Long Swordsmen getting +1 armour for free during DE and the cost reduction of the tech itself.
for the early game problem, I could see a quick and dirty fix in giving the militia line an ungodly amount of bonus damage against palisade walls and houses, specifically. now they force the opponent to actually defend against them, just as scouts, archers, and even skirm + spears can. on the other hand, stone defenses and TCs still need siege or massed infantry to destroy. maybe even a bonus against towers, too, to give them a defensive niche as well. that would probably even work reasonably well with all the prerequisite techs, in that your opponent may still do a lot of damage with a tower rush if you can't scout it and have no infantry upgrades, but if you do manage to scout the villagers on their way, you're golden with a couple MAA to destroy villagers, towers and anything they might use to quickwall. for the late game, I would suggest to change the champion upgrade such that champions now only require 1/2 a pop space, like karambit warriors. I think their respective niches are different enough that that wouldn't infringe on the "specialty" of the karambit warrior. but maybe that buff would make goths too broken again? idk, I haven't played AoE2 in years.
I'd echo the very common thing here of 'bonus damage to buildings' but also perhaps add 'reduced damage from buildings' (Not all pierce, just buildings. We have some effects that already do that). So infantry can take towers and castles more easily (Not full siege weapon easily but longswordsmen in groups can stay behind the shields and march up to the front gate of a castle).
I think militia line should do more damage to villagers and/or be even more faster than them, it doesn't make sense for vills to be able to walk away consistently from them once they are on top of them whacking them with a sword. I think they should also be significantly cheaper, whether that be the base cost or also the tech costs. Atm man at arm rush is just too expensive of a commitment for most situations when it should be on par with the other opening strategies.
Weird idea I just had. What if after aging up all new units were trained as upgraded, but you still had to research it to upgrade your old units. Say you had 5 militia and went to feudal, all new units would be trained as men at arms without any extra cost, but you'd have to purchase the upgrade to affect your existing 5 militia. Same would apply for long swords in castle, and two handed in imperial.
IMO, the problem of the Militia line is that you need 8 (!) techs to fully upgrade it, and it's not counting Blacksmith techs. Essential techs should be made cheaper, some of them probably even free (like Man-at-Arms or Arson). Like, to have OK knights in the Castle age, you need only 300 food and 100 gold (Bloodlines and Husbandry), and they're good to go. To have viable Long Swordsmen, you need 545 food and 265 gold for 6 separate techs! Its just too much.
Infantry (militia line) should have a stagger effect when attacking, slowing down enemy units when hit. It would reward positioning and strategizing with the army!
This is why Celts is the best infantry civ. How to buff infantry: Increase infantry movement speed +1 or +2 bonus damage vs buildings +1 bonus dammage against cavalry Nerf archers, their microability is a massive issue, archers should be able to stand and shoot to counter infantry but their sheer microability shuts down infantry so hard there's no reason to play infantry over knights, Age of Mythology did archers correctly. Decrease Archer movement speed Increase the frame delay between attacks, so they are less oppressive with micro And this is a personal one, but give back infantry movement speed back to Celts in Dark Age I will never forgive Hoang for getting my favorite civ nerfed
Great video! I was really sad to see infantry in a weak spot when AOE4 came out as well. If you read this, what would you think about changing ranged units so they can’t focus fire? I think this would be far to big a change but how do you think it would effect the game of ranged units fire was spread over a large chunk of enemies (with possible damage buffs to compensate).
ive always wondered how one of the following options would affect them a) make them slightly cheaper and generate slightly faster, to make them mainly a strength in numbers option b) have them auto-upgrade for free to MAA upon feudal, LS upon castle, 2HS upon imp, and leave everything else alone
I would only think B is good if it stopped after feudal, ie only was free for militia to MAA - the free militia line upgrade is already a civ bonus of Bulgarians. (Although I still generally rush scouts with their cheaper/faster blacksmithing)
It's tough to give them a free buff that applies to all civs without breaking a civ like the goths for example. I think that's why they have supplies and gambesons as tech buffs.
Putting squires in feudal and supplies in dark age would help a lot without even changing balance . If you did MAA with more numbers and higher speed, then your barrier to entry in castle and imp is lower too.
No mention to eagles, wow. I would make Two Handed Swordsmen automatic (for civs that have it) when reaching Imperial Age, and then you just go directly into Champions, without needing 2 upgrades. Yeah, and 0.92 or 0.93 movement speed could be decent, we know Celts infantry is not bad due to its speed. Also Skirms should be worse, they actually kill Infantry many times and easily. They need a nerf, maybe in production speed.
I wouldn’t nerf skirm production speed since it needs to keep up with archers but definitely buff infantry creation speed and cost. Infantry should be a glass cannon rabble/cannon fodder situation. Let them mass up and you’re in for damage
Just make the effect of supplies more significant. If instead of 15 food we would get 20-25 food discount it would be so much easier to play longswords. Main problem in the early castle is the lack of food and units that are heavy on the food are not viable for booming. Thats why playing straingt up two stable knights is so much easier than 3-4 barracks longswords play.
How do UU infantry fit into this? Personally, I thought that some of the swordsman line buffs or new techs (like supplies) made it less appealing to train Samurai or Berserks. Do they need buffs as well? (Disclaimer, I don't do multi-player. If I did, I'd be bottom-rung)
A varry minor buff to speed will make a major difference in usability, setting there speed to 1 like the spear line would probably be all that is needed.
A good change would be for the MAA and Longsword upgrades (which are available to all civs) to include an additional movement speed increase of +0.1 each. Also, remove Druzhina and add a new all-civs tech that makes all heavy infantry deal trample damage.
For quite a while I've seen the militia line as the closest thing you have to a siege unit before hitting castle age. None of the other units come anywhere close to filling that role in the first two ages. Wouldn't having them do just a tad more bonus damage to buildings allow them to do their role as an early raiding unit better given all the types of walling people do? With this wouldn't they do better in mid to high elo because they can get through walls more easily, whereas low elo would be less affected (not as much quickwalling and such)? I'd think Town Centers would still shred them pretty well along with any archers, towers, or castles that pop up as the game progresses, so there'd still be limitations on their anti-building abilities that a unit like a ram does not share. My initial thought is that this change makes the most sense. The other two things I've seen mentioned but I think are very closely related are the movement speed issue and the attack animation issue (slow militia line attack animation means running villagers get really far away between hits, as some other comments have described). While I think militia line could benefit from an ever so slight increase to base speed, I think the attack animation duration might be more important and could really help the militia have a chance to hit a villager more than once before they get away. I also haven't seen any discussion about approaching the attack animation duration issue from the opposite side. If militia line is supposed to be anti-trash, could you make skirmisher attack animation take a bit longer so they can't kite the militia line as much? The skirmisher seems like it's supposed to be a bit more clunky unit anyway, and they'd still be good against archers and spears like they're supposed to be. I wonder what other units could have this attribute changed to affect the game balance in a positive way.
The thing about militia line is it takes only a tiny buff for them to be super deadly and make all other units basically unnecessary. If you buffed them against units, you have to nerf their bonus against buildings.
I really think they should increase the movement speed. Increasing it to 1.0 might be too much. But if they just make it slightly faster than archers, that would already be a huge help. I don’t think decreasing archer movement speed is a solution since they aren’t that strong. But it would help the balance between archers and inf. And with squires, they are sightly faster than archers. But it’s too subtle of a difference. I’d say that it would be nice if their base speed would be faster than archers.
Maybe making Squires automatically included, like they did with Tracking a few years ago? They could adjust the Celt bonus to still be the same vs Squires but for other civs it would be fine, and only a slight buff to any of the other non-squires civs.
@@minikawildflowerThat would be nice, but not enough. Because even with squires, the barracks units aren’t viable until gold runs out. I think it would help a lot, especially if you already get it in feudal age. But in that case you might as well just increase the base speed of the unit. And have a tech like squires improve it. But you could argue that squires can be replaced
@@demiserofd paying 100 extra food in feudal on top to the armor just so unit gets not hardcountered is probably still too expensive, archer players will still receive no damage behind their walls and can just get faster to castle while u are overinvesting in feudal maa
@@demiserofd in feudal age yes, but in castle it wouldn’t change anything. Squires is already a thing, and inf isn’t viable. SO moving the tech would help in feudal age, but not in the long run.
What about lowering the cost of Arson a bit and making it available in Feudal? Then in Castle there would be a follow up tech like Plundering which enables Militia line units to generate small amount of gold when they destroy a building
For this reason, because Infantry is the worst, between Cavalry and Archers, I no longer want to play AOE2. The same thing must happen to many of us who like to play with infantry and they stop playing. Giving Squires in Feudal and +1 Range to the line of Spearmen would improve the infantry and would at least serve to beat the cavalry. At this point, the Infantry is useless, Archers and Knights beat them. The infantry is filling. Another thing that would make it more useful to the Infantry is that it is cheaper, the reality is that in the Middle Ages the majority of the army was infantry and this was very inexpensive, something that AOE 2 does not reflect well.
How about make repairing speed halved if a building is being attacked by infantry. Also infantry attacking foundations should get bonus damage. It would add an interesting counter to quick walling.
I would make the infantry line more interactive. Maybe more interaction between buildings and infantry or siege and infantry or monk and infantry. That by combining infantry with certain other units/building they provide high value. Similar that an infantry can garrion inside a ram. Maybe something like, if infantry follows/protects a mangonel it shoots faster.
Funny that knights get all the Hp and 2 PA off the bat and upgrade to 4PA in castle age while you have to get 4 upgrades to get 4PA infantry in CA. There’s a reason sergeants and eagles get more play as infantry and it’s bc they’re faster and tank more arrowfire right out of the box
yeah i like the idea of making them cheaper, tankier and upgrades being less costly. that would replicate how they are irl. they should be easier to throw away and need less micro than other units
i think pierce armor is the wrong aproach cause the whole balance is rock paper sciccors right now in aoe and if infantry can tank archers it will be bad in generall. So for me they should be what they ment to be and thats a Cheap Meele Overwhealming unit for Close Combat. Its a Shame that they nearly cant trade cost effective against Cav when they are worse in terms of move speed/and pierce armor. Buff meele armor or atack damage so they can tear down buildings quicker aswell. It would also creat the scenerio where you can go spears against Cav for cost effectiveness or the Millita line for better offensive usage to push into the base.
@@andresperedo1275 They are used situationally and more at lower and medium skill levels. More attack and pierce armour would definitely help out against defenses and defending units which would be cornered. I do agree it's not the best approach though, as the amount of upgrades and their cost is what makes knights and crossbows better aside from obviously being more versatile
Maybe what could save the infantry in a way which doesn't break game balance is by giving it a micro-intensive ability to reward going infantry at high elo, while not being skewing the meta too much at low elo. Something like giving them a very high cooldown ground-targeted ranged attack that still has less range than the archer line at the same tech.
Man-at-Arms and Longswordmen are in a fairly decent spot right now so I think a realistic tiny buff to give would be to have the Two-Handed Swords upgrade also increase the unit's movement speed since they're not using a shield anymore. So immersion-wise it would still make sense. I don't know enough about the game to feel confident with anything more, but I was surprised nobody mentioned that one and were instead suggesting a general speed buff accross the entire line.
Squires affect spearmen too, in feudal age that would make them too op. Just make man at arms more faster and maybe another buffs just focusing at man at arms line
Hi Hera! Backseat driver for this game. Was curious… why don’t we see a standard medieval lineup. Couple lines of archers and a mass of infantry with a small unit of Calvary… just amass a huge army and send it. Lol. Maybe rams to protect units?
There's a simple, clear problem with the Infantry; they're unplayable from middle feudal age until middle castle age. Why? The INSTANT an archer comes out, they can chase you all the way across the map and back into your base. Infantry are USELESS from the time archers come out, until you can get Squires in Castle age and can actually maneuver around Archers. The problem? Infantry don't trade particularly well with knights. They also build quite slowly compared to knights(on a per-cost basis, way easier to make 500res of knights than 500 res of infantry). If you stop producing in early feudal and then try to make up the difference, you're forced to go all-in, and if they just make your counters, you die. But ALL of this could be solved with one simple change: Move Squires to the Feudal Age. Infantry are now *slightly* faster than archers. No, this won't be enough to allow them to outright counter archers; archers will still be able to outmicro them easily, even at lower elos. What it WILL do is allow you to ESCAPE archers. Now, they can't just chase you all the way across the map. Now, you can keep adding a few more infantry to your army. Now, you can get to castle age with an existing mass, and get a power spike from those upgrades. Now, you can trade decently with knights without going all-in. Now, you are in castle age with full upgrades so when you get to imperial age the upgrade cliff is much more accessible. Now, you can get 2HS in early imp, and make a smooth transition into champions in late imp. All of this, just from moving squires to the Feudal Age.
@@Catholicguy97 I'm talking cost-wise. Knights were historically really strong, but also really expensive, and could be unhorsed and beaten by a mob of men at arms. Right now, they more or less trade evenly per-cost, but knights produce a lot faster, again per cost. So if you get to the castle age, you need way more barracks to keep up, which slows you down to the point where it's barely possible. If you started with a mass though, then you could keep up more effectively. And historically, well-coordinated infantry in square could repel even the best of cavalry charges!
Maybe the barracks needs the stable treatment. Have the men at arms line stay as a cheap, lighter, villager/building killer. & also have a heavy infantry line.
That would be interesting but I think it could make civs more generic and less specialised in their respective niches. Tatars for instance have weak infantry and a heavy infantryman would be ahistorical and wouldn't synergise well. Having that for Teutons for instance would be historically sound but undercut the TK's role
I feel like massed infantry are like an alternative siege unit. You don't want to send them out unprotected, just like a ram or trebuchet. Just supplement them with some spears or skirms, depending on what your opponent is doing, and they just automatically go to work destroying everything in their path. But, that's a low elo perspective (900).
Speaking of the high cost to get into the militia line. Wouldn't it be a solution to exactly "swap" that? So making it the cheapest unit to get into with the lowest tech cost? This would solve the issue at low elos, as they aren't prone to abusing powerspikes like at the highest levels.
Yeah compared to other units I always felt like I was getting nickel and dimed the entire way up the range and there are so many techs to research so I stopped doing them, even though I don't play on the ladder, only really against friends and AI.
Rather than extra move speed on a vacuum they should get a formation speed bonus, apply a maim when hitting ranges units that slow them making it worth while to make sacrifices even just for one hit on a archer...or idk bigger balls
How about researching supplies spawns three milita line units, maybe even squires and gamisons as well, 9 free milita line units for teching into them, more resources for blacksmith upgrades and maa upgrade plus quicker rush, could be on a per baracks basis aswell, 2 milita per baracks per upgrade. I watched a video where a OG AoE dev basically said to balance inf you need to make massing them cheaper, especially early on, he suggested first few milita should be free. A different approch could be a new dark age tech, thats spawns some milita for a rush.
As the game progresses, the counters to the militia line increase (going from archers, to archers+ knights, to archer+knights+cannons). A typical AOE2 game across all brackets would see a lot of play in the late feudal and castle age, where xbows and knights and UU shine. To make infantry more viable, the first range, stable and/or castle should be made harder to achieve with additional costs so that the militia line becomes a more viable option.
At 1500 elo, I do constantly go for infantry whenever I have the chance. It works the best in castle age with a surprise flood with pikes while your opponents going for knights. The biggest problem is the transition to infantry is so awkward starting from castle age, and It is only good with all armour upgrades and it takes so long and so much to research all the techs. All those supplies and gamebsons techs are so unnecessary which should be given for free. in fact, it is the knights line that needs to increase the food cost and reduce the pierce armour but introduce supplies and gamebsons techs to reduce the power spike in castle.
