I want to adress something which is known but, as far as I perceive it, no seen as a problem by many. I think we are used to it and "play around it" but still, I guess that the game would be much better if this problem was solved:
Infantry is not viable.
[Talking about pikes and much more swords here, eagles are different and they equal cavalry rather.]
So, you have three categories of units. One category is close to useless. That seems wrong.
I think the initial idea once was that Cav counters Archers, Archers counter Infantry, Infantry counters Cav. Reality: Cav and Archers are kinda even, Infantry gets destroyed by both (except when you make a full defensive counter-unit in Pikes).
Please realise that this circumstance takes a whole dimension of complexity out of the game! Instead of paper-stone-scissors, we're playing paper-paper-stone.
In Hera's recent tier list, the two worst civs are the two civs that are most clearly infantry civs. The fact that Goths are bottom tier makes it plainly clear how ****ed up infantry units are. So, you can:
- make them around 30% cheaper (!)
- make them being produced faster
- add an anti-archer unit, so they can counter everything
and they are STILL ****.
That tells us a lot about how big the problem is with infantry. It's so bad, that even with three buffs, it's still bottom. The food cost of Swordsmen got reduced by 25% for all civ's, they're still almost unused. (Even when playing Civs that have additional bonuses like Malians, Burmese and Slavs.)
These are the reasons for this debacle:
- They will be destroyed by their counters while they can't use their strength bc of mobility.
- They don't even trade all too good versus the units they're supposed to counter.
- You need tons of upgrades. Swordmen are the only castle age unit that needs two upgrades PLUS they need supplies AND squires to be at least close to useful. (Archers and Cav have also two additional upgrades like that but you don't need to do them in the first place, you can add them later) And realistically, to trade efficiently you need to add pikes, so you need another expensive upgrade.
While all they have going for them is:
- You can make the production building in Dark Age. (Which makes them viable for those 2-4 minutes around the transition to Feudal).
- They're good versus buildings (which means, they're viable if you won already).
+ Both strengthes can be covered as well by other things, namely towers (quickly available) and siege (destroy buildings).
So, the ways to make them real options are
(highlighting my favorite ideas):
- Make them faster, so they can flee from archers.
(Squires in Feudal (free?), another +10% speed upgrade in Castle?)
- Make them stronger, so they perform really well versus Cav and maybe less titanic versus archers.
(Just better stats? Quicker attack? Maybe a slight cav-bonus for swordmen too? )
- Make them more easily affordable.
(Cheaper and/or faster upgrades? Only one upgrade that give you Pikemen AND Swordmen in Castle? Much faster production for Swordmen, so you can create quick support if you're flooding res?)
- Create an additional strength.
(Even higher bonus against walls and towers or area-damage to hit double-walls? Additional defense value when set on defensive stance (shield use!), so you can micro them? (Would be great when fighting Skirms.) Bonus damage versus villagers? Very fast recovery when garrisoned?)
+ Pathfinding must be improved obviously. In this case, it would probably improve everything a lot if you give them basically 0,3 tiles of range and/or make them hit faster, so they can hit while units are running away.
That these things can make them actually good without being op is quite well demonstrated by Woadraiders (faster), Berzerks (faster + anti-cav-bonus) or Kamayuks (better combating due to ranger + anti-cav-bonus).
I think, if we managed to make Infantry and Swordmen in particular kind of viable, it'd add another layer to the game which would result in several good improvements:
- Teamgames would be less one-dimensional (Archer+Cav, let's go), it would add a useful opportunity to go 3v1 or 3v2 instead of being 2v2/2v1 all the time.
- More variety between civs as the infantry civs would be actually good and you could use infantry-bonuses to balance.
- More complex mindgames when it comes to civ-picking in tournaments.
- More complex meta, harder to anticipate the opponent's matchplan.
- More need to adapt to the game state, more lively, strategical gameplay.
PS: Maybe it would be needed then to make Cav slightly better vs Archers then (bonus pierce armor for light cav??) as Archers would be more prominent as an Infantry-Counter and Cav more prone to being countered by Infantry-strats.
PPS: Yes, I know that Tatoh beat Viper in NAC by using Malian Swordmen, please don't act like you don't know how useless the unit is in general. It's used in like 2% of the games while Archers and Knights are there in 90% of games.
Infantry is not viable.
[Talking about pikes and much more swords here, eagles are different and they equal cavalry rather.]
So, you have three categories of units. One category is close to useless. That seems wrong.
I think the initial idea once was that Cav counters Archers, Archers counter Infantry, Infantry counters Cav. Reality: Cav and Archers are kinda even, Infantry gets destroyed by both (except when you make a full defensive counter-unit in Pikes).
Please realise that this circumstance takes a whole dimension of complexity out of the game! Instead of paper-stone-scissors, we're playing paper-paper-stone.
In Hera's recent tier list, the two worst civs are the two civs that are most clearly infantry civs. The fact that Goths are bottom tier makes it plainly clear how ****ed up infantry units are. So, you can:
- make them around 30% cheaper (!)
- make them being produced faster
- add an anti-archer unit, so they can counter everything
and they are STILL ****.
That tells us a lot about how big the problem is with infantry. It's so bad, that even with three buffs, it's still bottom. The food cost of Swordsmen got reduced by 25% for all civ's, they're still almost unused. (Even when playing Civs that have additional bonuses like Malians, Burmese and Slavs.)
These are the reasons for this debacle:
- They will be destroyed by their counters while they can't use their strength bc of mobility.
- They don't even trade all too good versus the units they're supposed to counter.
- You need tons of upgrades. Swordmen are the only castle age unit that needs two upgrades PLUS they need supplies AND squires to be at least close to useful. (Archers and Cav have also two additional upgrades like that but you don't need to do them in the first place, you can add them later) And realistically, to trade efficiently you need to add pikes, so you need another expensive upgrade.
While all they have going for them is:
- You can make the production building in Dark Age. (Which makes them viable for those 2-4 minutes around the transition to Feudal).
- They're good versus buildings (which means, they're viable if you won already).
+ Both strengthes can be covered as well by other things, namely towers (quickly available) and siege (destroy buildings).
So, the ways to make them real options are
(highlighting my favorite ideas):
- Make them faster, so they can flee from archers.
(Squires in Feudal (free?), another +10% speed upgrade in Castle?)
- Make them stronger, so they perform really well versus Cav and maybe less titanic versus archers.
(Just better stats? Quicker attack? Maybe a slight cav-bonus for swordmen too? )
- Make them more easily affordable.
(Cheaper and/or faster upgrades? Only one upgrade that give you Pikemen AND Swordmen in Castle? Much faster production for Swordmen, so you can create quick support if you're flooding res?)
- Create an additional strength.
(Even higher bonus against walls and towers or area-damage to hit double-walls? Additional defense value when set on defensive stance (shield use!), so you can micro them? (Would be great when fighting Skirms.) Bonus damage versus villagers? Very fast recovery when garrisoned?)
+ Pathfinding must be improved obviously. In this case, it would probably improve everything a lot if you give them basically 0,3 tiles of range and/or make them hit faster, so they can hit while units are running away.
That these things can make them actually good without being op is quite well demonstrated by Woadraiders (faster), Berzerks (faster + anti-cav-bonus) or Kamayuks (better combating due to ranger + anti-cav-bonus).
I think, if we managed to make Infantry and Swordmen in particular kind of viable, it'd add another layer to the game which would result in several good improvements:
- Teamgames would be less one-dimensional (Archer+Cav, let's go), it would add a useful opportunity to go 3v1 or 3v2 instead of being 2v2/2v1 all the time.
- More variety between civs as the infantry civs would be actually good and you could use infantry-bonuses to balance.
- More complex mindgames when it comes to civ-picking in tournaments.
- More complex meta, harder to anticipate the opponent's matchplan.
- More need to adapt to the game state, more lively, strategical gameplay.
PS: Maybe it would be needed then to make Cav slightly better vs Archers then (bonus pierce armor for light cav??) as Archers would be more prominent as an Infantry-Counter and Cav more prone to being countered by Infantry-strats.
PPS: Yes, I know that Tatoh beat Viper in NAC by using Malian Swordmen, please don't act like you don't know how useless the unit is in general. It's used in like 2% of the games while Archers and Knights are there in 90% of games.
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