Counter

A counter system utilizes the concept of a rock-paper-scissor-mechanic to make various units viable while also remove dominant strategies from the game. Besides handling economy, producing military units and micro-managing them to fight, the counter system allows to trade produced military cost-efficiently. Loosing more resources than your opponent in a fight by loosing more valuable military units leads often to one player being ahead and decides the game.

Rock-Paper-Scissors-Mechanics
The basic Counter-Mechanics presented are the Rock-Paper-Scissor-Mechanics among infantry, archers and cavalry, as well as said mechanics among human soldiers, myth units and heroes. Other appearances would be Arrow Ships, Siege Ships and Hammer Ships, and Siege Weapons, normal units and Buildings.

With infantry being food-based, cavalry being gold-based and archery being wood-based, the counter mechanic could be interpreted into gold-wood-food as well.

Exceptional units among this counter system are ones which revert the mechanic, like the Destroyer and Huskarl Infantry units being resistant or even strong against archers.

Soft Counters and Hard Counters
A standard unit among the counter mechanics is only slightly better than the unit it counters, allowing for beneficial fights or trade-offs in some situations even if the own unit is countered. Such soft counter units are more versatile in other statistics and can be used for various tasks.

Hard counter units on the other hand are highly specialized to fight a specific type of enemy. They are very cost-effective against the unit they counter, but do very poorly against anything else due to very low attack or armor.

Heavy units such as War Elephants and Jarls require hard counter units to be countered efficiently.

Some units like Spearmen and Ulfsarks can be upgraded into becoming hard counters through the mythic upgrade Greatest of Fifty resp. the heroic upgrade Swine Array.

Damage types, armor types, attack range, speed and multipliers
Each Rock-Paper-Scissor-Cycle needs to be closed to fully function and not disturb others while doing that. The tools to do this are damage type, armor type, attack range, speed and attack multipliers.

The easiest cycle concerns siege weapons, units and buildings through mobility and crush damage/armor: With this siege weapons are practically immune to the pierce attack of buildings, while dealing a damage type on which buildings often have little armor. Other units are immune to siege weapons, and while not truly countering buildings they are worse at destroying them.
 * Siege weapons deal crush damage, have a high pierce armor, low hack armor and low speed.
 * Other Units are fast, deal either hack or pierce damage, but are themselves 99% armored against crush damage.
 * Buildings are immobile, deal mostly pierce damage if at all and have only 5% crush armor.

Another cycle concerns infantry, archers and cavalry through range, speed and pierce/hack damage and armor. Due to the use of two damage and armor types every fight could already be decided correctly if it was close combat, assuming that the archers hack armor exceeds the infantries pierce armor. But additionally range and speed come into play. Ranged units can engage in combat from afar, which allows for fighting while the enemy is still approaching, fighting from back rows and micro managing without causing the units to move before being able to fight again, allowing to focus fire dangerous or easy killable opponents. This is a huge bonus and makes them a must in most military compositions already. Here fast cavalry due to their speed can evade the archers projectiles and catch them even if they are running away, while infantry is able to escape archers due to them not being able to attack while moving and sometimes slightly higher speed. In both cases of attempted evasions the archers loose, which limits their job to holding ground, but makes fast archers like Centaurs and Chariot Archers more deadly.
 * Infantry is slow, deals hack damage and has very little pierce armor.
 * Archery is slow, deals ranged pierce damage and has little hack and pierce armor.
 * Cavalry is fast, deals hack damage and has little hack, but good pierce armor.

The cycle of human soldiers, myth units and heroes is easily resolved. Compared to human soldiers myth units are more cost-effective and their upgrades more substantial, being effective for a little amount of units already. Heroes on the other hand, while strong units themselves, are not cost effective compared to human soldiers. To close the cycle heroes are given high damage multipliers against myth units allowing to defeat the most cost effective unit with the otherwise least cost effective one.

Ships utilize pierce, hack and siege-damage as well as pierce, hack and siege armor. This is combined with hammer ships being fast melee units attacking slow ranged siege units, copying the cycle of infantry, archers and cavalry.