Fabius

I see. I remember they complained we were using them as impromptu siege workshops and so bypassing the need for a fortress and proceeded to ruin it, which struck me as rather much like punishing the player for being creative with things. I used that as often as I could, not just for siege, when I realised it had veteran spearmen I always made some camps somewhere on my back line so I could make use of those veterans. All in all I would love the old camp with the complete original training roster of hastati, triari and Equites(veteran equites maybe?) with all the siege as well. It wont make the siege workshop a redundancy either as that still can be placed back home.

Why is there a metal cost anyway? fortresses cost wood and stone, so why does this have a metal component? Why not just make it 200 stone and 400 wood?

Cataphracts are line breakers not light infantry hunters, historically they tired extremely quickly so not at all ideal for light infantry hunting. They should be good against melee infantry, so high hack armour, and definitely slower.

Something to be aware off is that if we drop melee cavalry health we should do something about ranged cavalry health, do we want ranged and melee champions both having the same size health pool?

They haven't, they have the usual double sword cav stats plus 1 extra armour on both hack and pierce. the damage is just double the sword cavs, there has been no change except a loss of 1 hack armour and a gain of 1 pierce armour in A24 i think it was. I will also point out that by the same logic champion lancers should have 11 hack armour since regular lancers have 5 and doubled that gives 10 and add 1 for a total of 11. And if that sounds scary it should. likewise the champ lancer damage is just regular lancer damage doubled.

Not at all, you get enough champion cavalry of the consular or heavy lancer variety and you can eradicate a ranged army in less time than it took to make said ranged army, this has and always will be one of the primary functions of cavalry, squishing light infantry into the earth.

This I concur on. the biggest culprits being Persia and Selucia since they can get extra health with the war horses tech. And then after that comes Rome. Perhaps a reduction in health for champion cavalry might be helpful? they already have double the health pool of a full veteran melee cavalry I don't think it would hurt to much to knock of 10%.

well they do have diverse melee options, but their ranged section is anything but diverse

There is only one faction with champion sword cavalry and that's Rome, and is arguably the best thing they have going for them currently. And its not the only strong melee champion cavalry either, Seleucid cataphracts can stop Consular quite well, so can Persian Bactrian lancers, which is reasonable given the anti cav bonus of lancers. Also they can destroy everything else too. That being said, I do think citizen spearmen should have more utility against heavy cavalry, maybe a simple multiplier increase would help, go from 3X to 4X. Or a slower 3.5X. You could make it a blacksmith upgrade as well.

I have some ideas for Rome. The senate house: A unique building that could either give some kind of aura or have some special technologies, maybe some either or technologies, eg pick this or that but not both, like the Seleucid traditional and reform armies. It was suggested to me to have the option to sacrifice a hero in it for a temporary buff, wrath at Caesars assassination essentially. Another use might be as means to gain a second chance at recruiting a hero. The sacred geese of Rome: either a technology similar to sibylline books that gives 10-15% vision range, either just for temples or for civic buildings or just everything. Or a literal war goose like the gallic war dog, geese literally defending Rome is humorous if not historical. Extraordinari being able to swap between sword and javelin.

Resources are not equal in value, metal is not available in large quantities like wood and food, and its required for a lot of important things such as phasing to third, blacksmith upgrades, siege, champions, mercs, heroes.

1. They are throwaway units in that they cost food and the way you used them was to get a bunch and put them on hyper aggressive in your battle line, then you left them to do their thing. 2. Metal is used a great deal and is a "scarce" resource, though I dare say that depends on the maps you play, some maps are more metal rich than others. 3. True, the cost is cheaper on paper, but is it really so in reality? The opportunity cost seems quite significant. 4. That is apparently true, but subject still to the availability of mines. What is more, the number of consistent farmers will almost always exceed your metal gatherers unless you have two or three mines to work at once which would be usually out of the question unless you had massive map control or are playing a variation of gold rush. Going back to opportunity cost, healers will rarely feature late game since why get 6 healers when you can get a ram instead which ultimately has more game ending potential.

Metal is already a necessary resource with high value, is it really helpful to require for something as mundane as a healer? The idea of paying metal for a throwaway unit is not very appealing.

I just noticed that healers now have a metal cost attached, why is that?

The only one on that list that doesn't have a sling option is Sparta. Macedonians have them as mercs, the rest have them as citizens.

if you actually make building arrows damage melee units decently then I am fine with it, but if you going to remove even their vague use against unsupported range hordes, then I am not in favour at all. Defensive buildings are very lacking in utility these days. You get far better mileage out of walls and ranged siege.

Then civic centres/colonies should be P3 as well, they do the same thing except better.

Civic center dropping is way harder than it sounds, I know from bitter experience with trying to build frontier fortresses, if your opponent sees you almost certainly he will rush you and you will likely not get that fortress up and/or lose a lot of troops, especially ranged units.

I don't think you can justify metal cost on veteran Triari as Gauls can make champion spearmen without metal, but more importantly that leaves Rome without any melee unit that doesn't cost metal, also army camps already make rank 2 spearmen. Phase 3 auxiliaries is an interesting idea, I like that it gives the feeling of Rome as a late game power, but since we are trying to dial back the dependency on phase 3 I am not certain that it is helpful to add more features to phase 3. One could add a special auxiliary barracks or something to Rome, and then just to make things interesting you could make it a choice like the Seleucid Traditional and reformed army, only instead its a choice of archers or slingers. Could just skip the unique building and simply have that as a tech choice in the barracks though as a single option doesn't merit a new building.

Numidians though would be another skirmisher cavalry and Rome already has one. Balearics and Cretans would be nice.

Oh, yes I am referring to the army camp not the barracks

Speaking of under used features, what about shifting the Roman castrum to second phase? Perhaps returning more of its siege making capabilities too, the complaint that it was getting used as a cheaper siege workshop is now invalid since everyone has a siege workshop now.

The javelin and sword interchange for legionaries in that Rome at War mod for AOE II is quite a nice thematic feature, can we not borrow the idea and apply to Extraordinari seeing as Immortals now have the spear to bow interchange?

Ok, I will take your advice on that point thankyou

Frankly the whole unlocking thing is just a nuisance. Also certain civs, specifically Rome and Sparta, could use a second longer ranged unit so players have at least some options to consider when making armies, skirmishers are not great for fire fights. I understand the consideration of individual strengths and weaknesses, but every other civilization in the game has two or more different ranged options. For Rome every game is the same, spam the one ranged option you have and your choice of melee infantry. Its quite monotonous and under performs against civs who can field a more diverse army with the longer ranged options, slingers especially still seem to dominate. For Sparta its slightly different as you have superior melee unit options, so the lack of range doesn't hurt as much since you can hammer your way through enemy battle lines. Still a slinger like Athens would be nice, but not as necessary given the strong melee focus already present.