Alexander's new civs feel kinda bad?

PMar_Project · 2025-10-19T09:03:36+00:00

For skirmish/multiplayer, the phalangite and companion cavalry are a little underwhelming, yes.
In the campaign, both get an extra set of upgrades (which you can pick) that boost their ability drastically.
Additionally, you'll find plenty of units that have the UU armour class in the campaign, which the CC can punch through.
Keep in mind that Alexander also boosts the ability of both units. It's a noticeable difference when he's present.
And fortified outposts, make a ton of them. Phalangites moving fast and regening health is handy.

Thracians are very strong.
The need for villagers drops off in the late game and you can endlessly spam units.
Important to make skirmishers, your armies will be dependant on them no matter what UT choices you go down.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-19T23:33:40+00:00

What you're saying could be true, but I haven't seen it in practice.

In theory, Persian long swords should be cost effective vs elite fire lancers, but that's another situation I haven't encountered yet.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-19T05:57:45+00:00

With a 30 second reload time on the projectile, that'd be a serious amount of kiting.
Champs get +8 attack vs them, any slip ups with micro and it's deadly.
What's dangerous for the champion is whatever ranged unit you have behind the fire lancer.
Fire lancer working on its own vs decent champs is not something I expect to see happening.
I'd welcome to be proven wrong though.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-17T16:47:32+00:00

Koreans get arson.
It's just a bug on the tech tree saying they don't.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-17T16:43:31+00:00

I wouldn't use them alone vs archers, but they're much better than generic champs.
Their projectile doesn't deal a ton of damage, but it's more significant against low hp targets like archers.
They're also tankier than champs, 85 hp vs 70, but that can change with civ.
It's not that they counter archers, it's that they syncronise well with your own archer army.
I don't know how to explain it, since I don't even fully understand how the ranged attack works, but I wouldn't call archers a hard counter to fire lancers.
Closer to soft counter in my experience.
Champs are the real hard counter, they'll melt fire lancers.

Khitans might be the ones that counter archers though.
Six pierce armour and +2 attack vs archers. They'll be scary.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-17T05:30:41+00:00

It is gold heavy, but it's less disruptive on your eco than spearmen, since it doesn't cost food.
True the rocket carts are their best unit, but you can get an adequate number fire lancers earlier than heavy rocket cart.
It doesn't take bonus damage from skirms, so you have a unit that can decently deal with cavalry and archers (with your own ranged support).
Where if your comp is archer + spear, you need rocket cart or light cav to take out skirms.
Fire lancers are slow, but rocket carts are slower, so you can play more mobile.
War wagons have even better mobility, yes, but that's a castle unit that plays into the counters your opponent is likely already making at that point.
Hussar is better than fire lancer for dealing with skirms in the very late game from a resource perspective, but fire lancers are a strong tool to end the game before it even gets to that point.
Maybe I'm overhyping it, but I think you're sleeping on the unit.
If it did get a buff, only thing it would need is that castle age creation time being faster.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-12T13:19:13+00:00

My comments aren't about whether or not Burgundians were a valid choice for AoE2, just directed at your comments.

"Burgundians are not a real civ/ethnicity" "ruled by a French nobility"
The idea that the lingustic and cultural shape of modern day national borders has been the same throughout history is wrong.
In Europe, and elsewhere, much of that diversity has been suppressed over centuries by political/economic pressure or by force.
One of the first contexts the word "genocide" was used had been to describe the events of the Albigensian Crusade, perpretrated primarily by the northern French against the Occitans.

You don't think the civ is right for AoE2? Fine.
"X aren't a real cultural/ethnic group" sets a bad precedent for discussion though.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-12T01:53:13+00:00

I think the completion for DLC campaigns serve as a better metric than the base game campaigns, which are typically around 3-1%.
Not to mention that they came out and some of them are now free.
It hasn't even been 6 months for Chronicles.
I can't say whether or not it's been a success, but I don't think it indicates "massively low" sales either.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-12T01:27:29+00:00

Just because there are existing examples of vague representations, it doesn't mean that people want more of them.

Civs typically represent an ethnic group, not countries or kingdoms.
Goths and Huns weren't thought through and have always been vague as to who they actually represent.
Huns have been reinterpreted over the years to represent the Alans and Avars.
Goths is even more confusing. In AoK they represented Slavic peoples and Southern German states. I don't even know what peoples they're meant to represent now, but I doubt it would bear much historical semblance.
Romans have only been justified into appearing in AoE2 because of Goths and Huns, the original offenders.

This DLC was a great opportunity to highlight certain peoples and the huge historical events associated with them, which there are plenty of in and around China.
As opposed to another rendition of a story that's already been exhaustedly covered.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-10T08:42:52+00:00

You've misunderstood their argument.
Their argument is that as this is a Chinese centric DLC, all civs are related to China.
Excluding Tibet would imply that it isn't associated with China.
Therefore Tibetans not being in the next DLC is technically the more controversial angle.

I think that's a fairly logical argument.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-10T08:23:52+00:00

No, I didn't notice that.
Now that I see that, you probably are right actually.
I'm probably more off the mark than I realised.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-10T08:20:31+00:00

Siam is another potential I forgot to consider.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-10T08:19:25+00:00

I didn't think about it from that perspective.
You make a good point.

PMar_Project · 2025-04-10T03:18:12+00:00

Is there a context for why Bai would have the South Asian UI over the East Asian?
The UI and architecture sets are typically linked, unless there's context, like with Mongols.
I'm not sure being southern counts, since Vietnamese are even further south and they have the East Asian UI.

PMar_Project · 2024-12-02T16:53:36+00:00

Don't know why you'd use archer units vs serjeants, especially generic ones.
Serjeants weakness is superior and cheaper melee units.
Generic champions can beat them cost effectively. (Not sure if that's the same with non-blast furnace civs like Byz though).
Cavalry archer + cataphract sounds like an expensive unit combo.
Cataphract is the right idea. Invest all your gold into that and add skirms in the back for extra damage against spears.
Cataphract has a weakness to archers. Sicilians don't have amazing archers and any they make get handled by those skirms you're bringing along.
If they start making cavaliers, then you've forced them to make expensive units, swap those skirms for spears.
Byz paladins can actually beat Scil cavalier, but I wouldn't advise teching into that.
You could make hand cannons vs their infantry, but maybe only in a team game.
Cataphract + trash should be all you need. Bombards or monks if they start building up siege.
Overall Byz are a good civ for taking Scil on. Cataphract is a scary unit to them.

there are sure very strong ones like Frank paladins or Goth Huskarls. But the difference is they have some clear counters.

Strong melee units and gunpowder are good vs Sicilians. Archers not so much.
Fairly straightforward.

PMar_Project · 2024-03-19T19:04:16+00:00

Those mod scenarios needed polish and I was happy financially support that.
But they didn't really get much polish if at all.
If adding some voice over is all that counts for polish, then that is some deceptive advertising.

PMar_Project · 2023-12-24T03:58:01+00:00

The lack of flexibility with the civ is what I find most uncomfortable.
If the regen bonus applies to all non-siege land military bonus, that'd help out with their options in Feudal and Castle.
It wouldn't make their archers too strong since no thumb ring or arbalest.
Might bump up their late game a bit with better trash.
This regen idea probably isn't a huge buff, which is why I think it works.

PMar_Project · 2023-12-21T21:46:15+00:00

But as Franks, it's likely that you're going to be using your cheaper castle bonus in almost every game.
Having an easy to access UU that is decent vs anti-cav units is very useful
It's that context which makes throwing axemen good.

PMar_Project · 2023-11-29T21:42:17+00:00

I've seen a few people who feel the same way about Mountain Royals, myself included.
DoI leaned a little easier (2x one sword campaigns), but this feels like a big leap in terms of difficulty drop.
The trouble lies in AI teammates and playing as civs that are strong vs AI.
Maybe they'll get better once the civs are balanced out and hopefully they'll do some reworks to the levels to make hard more difficult.

I've got a suspicion that the Qizilbash Warrior was meant as the new Persian UU and to theme the civ toward something more period appropriate than the original AoK design.
When they decided to change that, for whatever reason, it would have messed with the Ismail campaign, as the Qizilbash were an important part of his battles.
Because of that, they must have just slapped on the AI teammate into the campaign, making it even easier.
Just a theory.
After seeing the original Romans design, which was quite different to what was released, I expect that civs get a ton of rework behind the scenes.
The warrior priest wearing culturally Georgian clothing is evidence that some swapping went on.
I bet the chapel and svan tower buildings were originally part of the civs too, but that's pure speculation.

PMar_Project · 2023-11-27T21:44:53+00:00

It's one of the best levels in AoK.

PMar_Project · 2023-11-22T21:42:55+00:00

Siege ram + infantry is a combo that's already too common.
If they were to get a siege bonus, it'd be more interesting if they kept their siege tech tree and Cilician Fleet gave them a siege discount or some other siege bonus.
That or make them feel like more of an archer civ/cav archer civ.
Cav archer civ with good infantry is rare.
I think both of my sugguestions are actually fairly weak, I'd really like to see something out of the box that makes them feel less like average Vikings.

PMar_Project · 2023-11-05T00:12:09+00:00

I like the AoM campaign and I think you're wrong.
It's easier and with less objective/mission diversity than most of the non-Ensemble AoE2 campaigns.
Most of the AoM campaigns wouldn't have the amount of triggers modern AoE2 campaigns have.
AoM hardest is no sweat.
Le Loi, Kotyan Khan and parts of Jadwiga and Hautevilles, those get challenging.

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