The Debate on Gambesons Technology vs. Boosting Pierce Armor for Long Swordsmen or 2-Handed Swordsmen and Up
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I haven’t heard much discussion on this topic.
Is there a specific reason that this new technology was necessary?
Would simply giving long swordsmen +1 PA be too overpowered?
In my opinion, the best value for gambesons would be if it applied to more than one type of unit, such as militia-line and unique infantry units.
The militia line already has many upgrades, including supplies and gambesons, but these only affect that specific unit.
I’m not looking to start an argument, I’m just wondering why so many people are praising this technology for making infantry more viable when it only provides a small benefit to a single type of infantry unit.
As a side note, would it be overpowered if every civilization had access to gambesons?
It’s unclear to me why it was only given to civs that have access to supplies.
Which civilization do you think will benefit the most from this new technology?
You touched on the reason in your Tangent: They didn’t want to give it to all civs.
If it’s part of the base unit stat, then it can’t be given/removed to different civs.
Minimally, they didn’t want to give +1 PA to goth Champions, and Malian civ bonus would need a rework or else their 2HS would just have absurd pierce armor.
More importantly perhaps for long term sustainability of the change: if a civ ends up being unexpectedly problematic with Gambesons that was in a fine spot before the change, they can easily remove it from just that civ instead of being stuck in an “all or nothing” state where they either revert +1 to base PA or leave it for everyone.
As for “why every single civ that gets access to supplies, no more, no less”, well that seems like a pretty good starting point for a tech that’s supposed to make infantry more viable.
In general, the civs who already have supplies are the ones who are supposed to have viable militia-line, the ones who don’t, aren’t supposed to.
I’m sure we’ll see tweaks and tuning down the road, but for a starting point it’s a pretty good one.
The question is obviously answered by the fact that the devs don’t want to give it to everyone, on purpose
There seems to be a definite trend when it comes to who gets it and who doesn’t
Civs with an actual Archer bonus don’t get it.
Examples are Britons, Ethiopians, Italians & Vietnamese.
Turks don’t get it because of their focus on Archer-class gunpowder units.
Similarly Bohemians don’t get it as they have both Castle Age Chemistry Xbows as well as Hand Cannoneers.
Gambeson Champions, crucially, take only 1 damage from Elite Skirmishers, instead of 2.
So I guess the devs don’t want such ranged civs to run down enemy Skirms with Swordsmen of their own.
I’m honestly a little sad to see Britons not get standard FU infantry any more, as they always did that since AoK.
The only exception to this seems to be Portuguese whose signature gunpowder unit isn’t countered by Skirms
The civs that benefit from the most from this are the civs who have otherwise FU Archers, along with an infantry bonus.
So the Japanese, Malay and such.
The second in line are the pure infantry civs like Bulgarians, Slavs etc.
Then come Saracens who now have both FU Archers and Infantry.
The hangers-on are the civs like Byzantines and Koreans who still miss other important techs
I didn’t find any civ that lacks Supplies, but should have Gambesons.
Most of them fall either in the strong Archer (Chinese & Mayans), Cavalry Archer (Huns, Mongols & Tatars), or Cavalry (Burgundians, Cumans, Khmer & Lithuanians) category, to justify not getting Gambesons.
If they add a civ like that in the future, Supplies and Gambesons could be decoupled, with the Barracks techs re-arranged to look like this – https://www.mediafire.com/view/kxqt1fu80lbegja/AoE2_Gambesons.jpg/file
They already answered your question but yeah TLDR it’s a tech so they can decide which civs get the buff and which dont, Goths being the clearest example of a civ being OP if this was a unit buff instead
Whenever the question is about infantry changes, the answer is always Goths.
Not eveyr civ with supplies was given gambesons.
Berbers are missing it for some reason (RIP having FU champs).
You can give it to the civ that should receive it.
Same reason Franks don’t get bloodlines
Persians needed the fully upgraded Longswords
Other civs don’t.
So Gambesons let’s you live the Persian Longsword dream.
Kappa
In general terms, the Militia line currently gets hard countered by archers.
Now it doesn’t.
Nobody cares about pokey boys because those are a hard counter to the stable units and you can sort out other ways to protect them or just feed them into the mulcher when required.
It’s just a missing piece of the counter unit setup in AoE2, and it’ll make them situationally very viable moving forward.
As for who gets the tech and why, no ideas there.
Tbh it is disappointing that it didn’t come with a decrease in upgrade cost, at least to compensate for the increased cost of the new upgrade.
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