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.

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.

Damage types, armor types
The damage types are hack, pierce and crush. Units can deal multiple damage types at once, commonly hack and crush or pierce and crush as done by various myth units. The damage type dealt is being reduced by the percentage on armor type before it decreases the victims hit points.

E.g. if one deals 10 crush damage against 90% crush armor, only 1 damage is dealt to the hp.

Damage and armor types are used to establish the counter-system.

Attack Multipliers
Some units deal bonus damage against other units. While soft counter units sometimes get a bonus of 10% or 25% against the unit they are supposed to counter, hard counter units can deal twice or ten times the damage they'd deal against other units. Pharaohs and Priests change their projectile type to show whether they are hitting normal units or myth units, against which they deal a great amount of bonus damage, which can decide battles.

Negative attack multipliers result in reduced damage against the type of enemy. Dealing -1x damage is translated into 50%, -2x damage into 25% damage and so on.

The most common use of attack multipliers is among heroes and myth units. While heroes deal great damage to myth units, they are very resistant against them. Another use would be among myth units. Since they are strong units with a lot of hit points, they usually deal 2x or 3x damage against each other to make the fights last shorter. Other common multipliers are among some hard counter units, which otherwise do little damage overall and are not a threat to anyone else. More unknown multipliers resolve in villagers getting bonus damage against towers and siege weapons, the Myrmidon and Fanatic damage multipliers against great amounts of units, and some multipliers against buildings by various units.

Attack Multipliers are not presented in the game UI, which makes it difficult to evaluate why e.g. the Katapeltes should be used against cavalry when his stats are quite poorly. It is als impossible to compare heroes to each other, since their amount of bonus damage can differ a lot, partly due to their various availability among the civilizations.

Siege Weapons
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 are worse at destroying buildings, which themselves partly can pick of units.
 * 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.

Infantry, Archery, Cavalry
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.

Human Soldiers, Myth Units, Heroes
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, while myth units get a high damage reduction against heroes, allowing to defeat the most cost effective unit with the otherwise least cost effective one.

Ships
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.

Soft 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.

The most basic soft counters are considered standard infantry, archers and cavalry:
 * Soft Counter-Cavalry: Hoplite, Ulfsark, Spearman, Murmillo
 * Soft Counter-Infantry: Toxotes, Chariot Archer, Arcus
 * Soft Counter-Archery: Hippikon, Raiding Cavalry, Contarius

Due to Odins HP-Bonus on Hillfort-Units the Huskarl can be used as basic infantry.

Hard Counters
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.


 * Hard Counter-Cavalry: Prodromos, Swine Array-Ulfsark, Camelry, Greatest of Fifty-Spearman, Katapeltes
 * Hard Counter-Infantry: Hypaspist, Throwing Axeman, Axeman, Cheiroballista
 * Hard Counter-Archery: Peltast, Huskarl, Sons of Sleipnir-Raiding Cavalry, Slinger (Age of Mythology), Turma
 * Hard Counter-Buildings: Siege, Destroyer, Myth-Siege-Units like Behemoth and Scarab, Lance of Stone-Hero Contarius, Bravery-Huskarl, Axe of Venegance-Axeman
 * Hard Counter-Myth: Jarl, Nereid, Heroes

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

Technologies
Line-Upgrades like Medium/Heavy/Champion increase attack and HP for a specific group of human military, while Armory-Upgrades benefit all human soldiers. Especially in the realm of soft counters being technologically more advanced than your opponent might allow to trade units efficiently when they shouldn't by counter-rules.

Some technologies grant attack multipliers and may change the role a unit plays in the counter-system.
 * Some units like the soft counters Spearman and Ulfsarks can be upgraded into becoming hard counters against cavalry through the mythic upgrade Greatest of Fifty resp. the heroic upgrade Swine Array, when the value of their decent stats as soft counters may be reduced by them being classical age units.
 * Alike Raiding Cavalry can be turned into a hard counter against archers with the mythic Sons of Sleipnir.
 * The Axeman and Huskarl, being hard counters against infantry resp. archery already, can be upgraded to be strong against buildings aswell through the mythic technology Axe of Vengeance resp. Bravery. While Huskarls are good at destroying buildings, the Axemens poor pierce armor makes it hard to demolish such which defend themselves shooting arrows.
 * Similarly Contarius-Heroes can become strong against buildings through the Lance of Stone.
 * Another upgrade is increasing the damage multipliers of Priests and Pharaohs against Myth Units through the heroic Funeral Rites.