Better Fortress Units

Armory and milestones apply to advisor units

 

I definitely agree and support this suggestion. After level 30, advisor unique units become pretty much useless compared to your normal units. Then, considering that the game actually starts after "level 40", this saddens me so much. I'd love to train armored elephant, for example, and I'd want it to be comparable to classic war elephants that are geared with at least lvl40 epic gear. Even thinking about it brings me joy. Training phalanxes, armored elephants, headhunters, etc. in elite/legendary quests. There must be a way to balance them, other than making them gear-able.

 

It would be cool if the advisor units got buffed. Especially the ones that are more unusual (Gaesatae and Head hunters). In all honesty I kind of wish that one of those units didn't need a advisor to train. It would help give to Celts more variety.

 

Yeah, advisor units such as somatophylax or helepolis seems superior to headhunters or gaesataes. They are so underwhelming.

 

Hi all,

the solution could be to include them in the new legendary quests in champion mode, but not necessarily in epic quality because they could be too strong ?

 

a Way to make advantage of these advisors is with the Fortress consumable

 

After thinking about it I realized that it would be very impractical to buff the advisor units. It's a fact that most of them end up being outclassed by leveled up normal units. Some like the Desert cavalry aren't even that interesting.

That being said I feel like some really cool unit designs are kind of wasted because of they were advisor units. Do you think that some of these unit concepts might end up being reused or built upon in the future?

 

There's both current unit overlap (Armored Elephants and War Elephants, Celtic Longbowman and reg Bowman) as well as a bit of balancing issues (Gaesatae, for instance, are incredibly powerful due to both their high speed and their tremendous poison damage over time, with their range being the only pitfall. If you could gear them and slap +range gear on them, they'd probably become the most powerful damage unit in the game)

This doesn't even mention the huge effort it would take to rebalance 4 civs around the new units and for likely little payout.

Celts - War Chariots and Carpentoms fulfill nearly the same role. Horseman and Headhunters both also fill similar roles, just that Headhunters are more raiding and Horseman are, of course, anti calv. Bowman/Longbowman, again, same role. Leaving just the Gaesatae, and I already mentioned how problematic their poison is.

Egyptian - All 3 Desert units are basically "Anti-Ranged without Ranged bonus" - Swordsman are fast with pierce armor, Calv are beefy with pierc armor, and Bowman have pierce armor. While Egypt DOES lack a 1 cost good ranged unit (Slingers are, well, slingers), Desert Archer aren't what they are looking for. And, of course, Armored Elephants are nearly the same as War Elephant Champions.

Persia - Again tremendous amount of overlap - Bowman/Royal Archer, Scythian Mounted Archer/Mounted Archer, Kardaka/Immortals, Royal Guard/Spearman, and in each of these cases the Advisor unit is just a worst version of the reg unit (Royal Archers have loer ranged, Scythian Mounted Archer has no bonus damage, just pierce armor, Kardaka's don't have the ranged attack, and Royal Guards are slow as fuck). The ONLY interesting unit is the Scythed Chariot, as Persia doesn't have a Chariot option (Fast high damage expensive ranged unit)

Greeks - Actually has the best advisor units with least amount of overlap. Phalynx has the highest range for a melee unit, so they have a use despite their slowness. Soma's are incredibly tanky, which would make them a viable alternative to Hoplites as a frontline tank. Pez are fast raiding infantry that are good against infantry. Hetaroi are basically Hippokons that have bonuses vs Buildings/Siege, and finally Heliopolis are essentially Persian War Wagons but also good vs buildings.

So overall out of 4 civs, only Greeks have interesting units that you would maybe use instead of what you already got. And of course there's the huge rebalancing on the PvP side of things required. It's really just inefficient in terms of development time - Better to just leave the units alone for ppl gearing up, since the epic advisors tend to be cheap, and the Champion version of Headhunters, Kardaka, Armored Elephants, and several of the Greek unit are strong until you hit the late game.

 

First of all I wasn't even thinking about enabling all of the units on their civilizations (especially the Persian units like the Kardaka). It would overload the rosters with units that do the same things as the normal units. I felt like that went without saying. (Though I feel like the Headhunter is pretty distinct from the Horseman because of it's raiding abilities.)

With that In mind I'm glad that you pointed out the problems of adding something like the Gaesatae to the Celtic roster. Even if it started out with nerfed stats It might still end up being too powerful.