Diversifying Champions

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

At the moment, aside from upgrades that exist for some civilisations, tests that I have made with champion units has revealed that they are for the most part completely identical.  This means that in a one on one fight, an un-upgraded spartan fighting an immortal will always result in a tie.  I am not criticising this vein of logic; it makes balancing easier by having identical stats for different classes, yet at the same time it seems like a lost opportunity.  Champions should have defining features to them that flesh out the culture they came from.  As such, I thought up a few potential changes to how some (not all) champions could be altered to better reflect this.

Immortal: capable of swapping to archer mode at the cost of lower armour.

Spartan Hoplite: free but extremely long training time and two population, can be trained in the Village Phase through a the Mess Hall, which has a building cap of one in the Village phase, 2 in the Town Phase, and 3 in the City Phase.  They cannot be batch trained.

Consular Bodyguard: buffed when by a hero.

Sacred Band: buffs citizen soldiers within a small aura at the cost of taking up two population.

British Chariot: incorporate transport aspect (see Geneva’s thread.).

Naked Fanatic: ignores armour.

Scythian Archer: buffed when fighting in friendly territory.  Is trained at the Civic Centre.

Marine: small movement buff to ships it is garrisoned within.

Cataphract: Higher armour but slower speed.

Hetairoi: Faster movement and bonus against infantry at the cost of a smaller bonus against cavalry.

Skiritae: faster movement speed and starts trained at advanced rank instead of elite.

These are just a few things I thought up that may not be practical to implement at the moment, but I think that a line of thinking like this would greatly help in characterising defining part of each civilisation.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

kataphracts: more armor

hetairoi/agema: +speed, +small bonus vs infantry and reduced bonus vs cav.

 

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

At the moment, aside from upgrades that exist for some civilisations, tests that I have made with champion units has revealed that they are for the most part completely identical.  This means that in a one on one fight, an un-upgraded spartan fighting an immortal will always result in a tie.  I am not criticising this vein of logic; it makes balancing easier by having identical stats for different classes, yet at the same time it seems like a lost opportunity.  Champions should have defining features to them that flesh out the culture they came from.  As such, I thought up a few potential changes to how some (not all) champions could be altered to better reflect this.

Immortal: capable of swapping to archer mode at the cost of lower armour.

Spartan Hoplite: free but extremely long training time and two population, can be trained in the Village Phase through a the Mess Hall, which has a building cap of one in the Village phase, 2 in the Town Phase, and 3 in the City Phase.

Consular Bodyguard: buffed when by a hero.

Sacred Band: buffs citizen soldiers within a small aura at the cost of taking up two population.

British Chariot: incorporate transport aspect (see Geneva’s thread.).

Naked Fanatic: ignores armour.

Scythian Archer: buffed when fighting in friendly territory.

Marine: small movement buff to ships it is garrisoned within.

These are just a few things I thought up that may not be practical to implement at the moment, but I think that a line of thinking like this would greatly help in characterising defining part of each civilisation.

I like most of these. Balancing gets tough. But this makes them closer to somewhere between a hero and a CS instead of just being a stronger CS. 

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

13 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

I like most of these. Balancing gets tough. But this makes them closer to somewhere between a hero and a CS instead of just being a stronger CS. 

Glad you do; giving any suggestions for changes or additions is obviously welcome.  As a clarifier, Spartan Hoplites would never be able to be batch trained.  That could quite obviously abuse their lack of any cost.  

14 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

kataphracts: more armor

hetairoi/agema: +speed, +small bonus vs infantry and reduced bonus vs cav.

One of the things I tried to do when writing up a list of examples was to go beyond the mere defined role.  Think about Age of Empires II.  A berserk was like a champion but also regenerated.  Cataphracts were like knights but with a bonus versus infantry.  

Kataphracts having more armour could maybe work if they have a speed reduction as well.

Hetairoi having more speed and a bonus versus infantry could work as viable trade off for not performing as well against cavalry.  That said, I can't think of a historical justification for it, but not everything needs that.

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

 

Hetairoi having more speed and a bonus versus infantry could work as viable trade off for not performing as well against cavalry.  That said, I can't think of a historical justification for it, but not everything needs that.

I suggested that in order to encourage people to use them more against more types of infantry other than ranged infantry, to try and simulate the hammer and anvil of the Argeads .

[chrstgtr]

5 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

Glad you do; giving any suggestions for changes or additions is obviously welcome.  As a clarifier, Spartan Hoplites would never be able to be batch trained.  That could quite obviously abuse their lack of any cost.  

Yeah, this would require a big champ balance overhaul, but that’s ok IMO. Esp since initial reports from a25 seem to indicate that CS balance is good (I.e. nearing a potential final state). 

In terms of balancing, in some places, it might be easier to keep with we have (ie standardized champ units that are basically just stronger CS) and introduce all new units with these types of special characteristics. So for something like Sparta we could do as you suggest and then bring back a standardized sword champ or skirm champ. There are some civs that basically already do this (i.e. fire cav for iber is totally unique while Iber’s sword other sword champ is the standardized 

Doing something like what you describe above would bring back some of the civ differentiation/unique civ play that was lost in a24 and would also introduce some unit differentiation that people have (rightly) complained about without needing to totally restart balancing

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Doing something like what you describe above would bring back some of the civ differentiation/unique civ play that was lost in a24 and would also introduce some unit differentiation that people have (rightly) complained about without needing to totally restart balancing

However one thing that is an issue, is that champions aren't used regularly. There is few reasons to train champions in 1v1s. So I think first we should make champions more viable.

What I would like to see is moving buildings like Gallic assembly of princes, Athenian council hall, and Spartan mess hall to p2 and allow them to train champions in p2. Since the number of these buildings could be limited, it also allows for some but limited champion training.

Also I would like 1 type of champion per faction being selected as the favoured champions, which can be trained in the fortress and does not require any technologies to unlock them.

Edited August 20, 2021 by LetswaveaBook

[soloooy0]

I will keep asking for the champion in phase 2 ibero soliferrum, in the mod it looked good.
for athens and sparta they need a champion in phase 2 
macedonians can use siege in phase 2, one unit, the question is which one without it being op
the argas briton swords that have bonus vs cav and smashing damage 
catafracts to be the heaviest cavalry unit with the highest armor of all the units
finally that the chariots can move to melee in some way ....
 

[chrstgtr]

7 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

However one thing that is an issue, is that champions aren't used regularly. There is few reasons to train champions in 1v1s. So I think first we should make champions more viable.

What I would like to see is moving buildings like Gallic assembly of princes, Athenian council hall, and Spartan mess hall to p2 and allow them to train champions in p2. Since the number of these buildings could be limited, it also allows for some but limited champion training.

Also I would like 1 type of champion per faction being selected as the favoured champions, which can be trained in the fortress and does not require any technologies to unlock them.

Most 1v1 matches I’ve played in that are competitive for more than 15 minutes featured champs. 
 

For me it’s been TGs that are too frantic to wait to build champs 

Edited August 21, 2021 by chrstgtr

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I edited the initial post to include a few suggestions I thought were good ideas along with a few additional thoughts and clarifications I thought of following the post.  Skiritae are kind of weird in that they are regarded as a champion unit but don't actually fulfil that role since they are citizen soldiers.  With this change Spartans would be the only faction with one champion (two if they had access to Spartan pikemen but I digress).  This would be an interesting difference from others.  As for Skiritae, them being super swordsmen is not really a proper approach to them; a more accurate one would be that they were one of the more mobile elements of the army that was generally higher quality than other non-citizens, and doing this would help show that in my opinion.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I would turn Skiritai into the "Eagle Warriors" from AOE2. Essentially really fast spearmen, good for raiding and flanking, but can get massacred by swordsmen and archers if they don't keep on the move.

They could even use the Phalanx formation when in pitched battle.

 

[Marbod]

Even though i like this very much, the most obvious simple thing to diversify would be the ability of champions to gain experience.

I attack you with new "trained" (called, bought) champions but you have still some who already seen 3 battles.

There you go.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

On 22/8/2021 at 10:52 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I would turn Skiritai into the "Eagle Warriors" from AOE2. Essentially really fast spearmen, good for raiding and flanking, but can get massacred by swordsmen and archers if they don't keep on the move.

That I could generally get behind.  It could even open up the divergent upgrades, one that focusses on pierce armour and the other that ups their melee attack so that in one case they could have better survivability in raids or in attacking ranged units, or in the other case being a force to be reckoned with in a pitched battle.

On 28/8/2021 at 9:15 PM, Marbod said:

Even though i like this very much, the most obvious simple thing to diversify would be the ability of champions to gain experience.

I attack you with new "trained" (called, bought) champions but you have still some who already seen 3 battles.

I'm not sure if I would extend an option for champions to gain for all cases, but it could be cool to have one or two do so.  To paraphrase Syndrome, if all champions gain experience, no champions gain experience.  I guess that didn't really make much sense, but the point still stands.