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I'm not sure about the idea of softening the counter system as I believe it might make some units "simply" better than others. Either way, we'll see what comes out. If they keep a hard counter system then it skirmcav needs some sorta nerf or a ranged unit that hard counters it.

I think that skirms, being a cost-efficient ranged infantry unit that isn't countered by skirmcav, is probably your best bet vs skirmcav indeed. but it's a soft-counter at best and even then, if the skirmcav player is smart he uses the mobility of skirmcav to hit anything he wants. he also mixes in whatever counters skirms. you get the idea ^^ skirmcav need a true hard counter. buildings work, i can see why, but that isn't good enough. buildings can be used as anti-skirmcav-raids but they don't let you push your opponent's base. so yeh idk, give skirms a true damage multiplier vs skirm cav or something. but atm skirmcav too stronk

it's all fine bros let's just get along it's our love for strategy games that brought us together on these boards after all ^^ i'm..REALLY stoked for this game

I'm a firm believer that the game has yet to be figured out. Cav rush, infantry boom.... I say it's all viable right now, except perhaps elephant rushing.

Wow... there's a lot of stuff I want to look over here. I'll be seeing you people on ladder! here's my take: i have much to learn E:yeah I have a few FPVODs of some ggs i played on ladder, i'll be uploading them.

Yeah just looking at these stats it's clear to me that it's easier to boom with females, infantry is something I see giving a big early game boost to the economy but once you start looking for a standard army you needa rely on farming and trading to generate resources. Totally agree with this.

I also read the post and then replied with my own thoughts. He raises some fair points, but as I said in that thread, women are twice as cheap to produce as men and cost only food, which is the resource women are good at getting at. On top of that, even if you try to boom with your infantry, you won't be able to gather with them during a sustained attack. There's also the fact that map control is big in this game. So at this point it's all theory-crafting and you have to wait for actual competitive play to happen before making calls, at least in my opinion.

What kind of choices? Can you give more precise examples or something because I just can't see what it adds to the game.

I think this is an issue which deserves its own thread really. Basically ranged cavalry skirmishers (the javelin throwers) are too strong. They can't really be countered, that's the big issue. I won't pretend to have played the game as much as a lot of others here; in fact I don't even know if cavalry archers and cavalry skirmishers are the same unit type. Either way, it's pretty straightforward. Cav skirms hard counter archers and swordscav, on paper. So that's all fine. The thing is, they're only countered by Spearmen and elephants... To put thing simply, you're taking a fast, mobile and ranged unit and you're making it so that the only unit which counters this fast, mobile unit is a slow, melee unit. I'm not going to consider elephants here since I'm talking early game, when you can make skirmcav right off the bat. skirmcav soft-counter anything melee and that unfortunately includes spearmen, the unit which is supposed to counter skirmcav. So this is a pretty big issue. I've won games by making ONLY skirmcav and just using micro to hit and run with them. I can straight up attack anything else ranged. The arguably best unit to take out skirmcav would be skirmishers (high attack, low range, no?), yet skirmishers don't have the multiplier against skirmcav and skirmcav have the inherit speed advantage. Basically skirmcavs have the punch to take on anything ranged and the mobility to harass anything melee to death. I think giving skirmishers a bonus vs skirmcav might help. But as of right now skirmcav is ridiculous.

YO JOLLYMAN; I recognize you from RTSS. I quite agree with Jollyman about the pairing of techs, I find it doesn't add anything to the game. Actually, no. I find that the -10% training time/ -10 health is an interesting upgrade to pair between Cav and infantry. "oh I feel like making lots of cav during the game" etc. However in terms of economic upgrades I don't think this is a good idea. For example, there's almost no reason to get the wood chopping upgrade over the wheelbarrow.

I've played quite a lot of SC2, this isn't a problem for me and it's exactly what I do. 5 for civ centers 6 for military barracks More important than building selection is building building. E.g. hitting "e" with a villager selected selects you a house to build.

oh wow thanks for this

I agree with this. Just thinking about it, if Skirmirshers and Archers had the same role, then you could definitely see both being used. For example, a large group of archers will be able to do massive damage over time on another army. However they're going to need the mobility to be able to use that range as well, to the point where you could see people facing archers being forced into one of two situations: -going back to their base under the protection of buildings -using fast cavalry that archers won't be able to hit and run So it becomes a VERY interesting positional fight. If the archer player remains out of range of the other army and is careful enough with his anti-cav to keep cavalry off the archers, he can retain an advantage and do damage over time. The moment the cavalry breaks the anti-cav lines and gets to the archers, the archer army is forced to fight, which allows the cav-based army to catch up and engage. So the archer army has to be careful to never really be caught out in the open or else they won't be able to disengage due to cav's mobility. I'm very excited to see what's going on here. E: Stamina looks very interesting, I can't stop repeating it. Does Stamina affect Attack speed and movement speed? I'm guessing that defensive stances are less taxing on stamina than aggressive stances?

A rush is indeed always a gamble. How should I put this? There are two kinds of rushes, imo. You have the rushes where you cut workers, don't research a single tech and every last drop of your resources is spent in military units and housing. That gets you the highest possible amount of units in the shortest amount of time as possible. This rush would be an all-in rush since if you don't do game-ending damage with this rush, you're essentially REALLY behind, to the point where your opponent has the game won, due to his higher amount of harvesters and upgrades. He survived thanks to defender's advantage. The other kind of rush is more of a pressure rush that does so damage, but if it doesn't that's OK, you're only slightly behind, because during your rush you continued to produce villagers, researched eco techs, etc.. This would be the kind of rush that punishes greedy play, or punishes a player who isn't comfortable in fights where he doesn't have a decisively better army. I completely agree that being able to research every single tech in the game shouldn't be doable in 30 minutes. However it should still be possible to transition from an aggressive play-style to a boom if need be. The players have to retain the ability to switch between being aggressive and booming, that's what allows for comebacks and/or exciting games.

You bring up an interesting point with this post and there are some things I agree with and others that I don't. First off: This choice is a choice that has to be made for nearly every RTS. There's no way you're going to mathematically be able to rush someone while expanding and teching. If you're able to, it means your rush is way less powerful than it could be. If you're rushing, you should be investing every resource at your disposal early game to do damage to your opponent, you don't have any resources or time left over for teching behind it. Arguably though, rushing sucks in this game, you won't be able to outright kill anyone in the first 10 minutes of the game imo, given the strength of the civ center (though I could be wrong on this one). I see early harass builds being quite effective though. This is something I don't agree with. If someone has gone down the "eco" tech route for example, they're going to have a massive advantage when their economic boost kicks in. If someone else went for a "military upgrade" tech route early game, they need to be able to go down the "eco" tech route themselves at a later stage of the game, or else the eco player just outright wins. You have to make sure that any player can research any tech of the game at any point in time. However, as you say, if this means that it's possible to get every upgrade in the game by 30 minutes, then you have a problem, since indeed, stylistic play (aggressive/tech/boom) becomes limited. The obvious solution, and the best one imo, is that full tech-trees should be available through-out the entire game, so if you have the time and resources, you're able to research every tech. However, teching should be considerably more expensive than it is right now. Indeed, don't you see the problem there? In the third situation for example, you're making rushes all-in. If you don't succeed your rush, you have no follow-up and you basically lose. This would be akin to an all-in in SC2 which is somewhat uninteresting to play. Shouldn't someone be able to rush out some military units and try to get something done with them early on? The defending player has to defend well or he'll lose too much and get behind, the rushing player has to harass well to get an advantage to justify the cost of getting out units early (instead of eco techs). However instead of staking the entire game on an early attack, he can take a risk to attempt to get an advantage over his opponent right off the bat. See what I mean?

In any RTS I'm pretty sure that mechanics will be important, but I wholeheartedly agree that strategy should be a huge deciding factor in the outcome of PvP, something which definitely seems to be the case in this game, so that's really exciting to see.

Speaking from a pure 1v1 multiplayer perspective, I wouldn't be so quick to eliminate hard counters. Hard counters ensure that every unit has a specific role and so they remain in the loop, so to speak. If you have a game with units full of hard counters, fights between players become a micro-fest where each player is trying their best to position their units correctly. That's how it was done in Aoe3 and the micro was both very fun to execute and fun to watch. If on top of that you add interesting positional constraints, such as spear infantry being forced to face cavalry to counter them, you just add zest to fights generally speaking. Problem with soft counters is that people will automatically for which unit is really more efficient. e.g. spear cav vs sword cav, if I want to take out a group of ranged infantry (archers or skirmishers), then I'm just going to use whichever one of those two units (spear cav or sword cav) is more efficient generally speaking and not bother making the other one. Soft counters really come down to what units have the better stats imo. Another example would be skirmishers with high attack/low range vs archers with low attack/long range. If I'm fighting durable melee units the skirmisher with some hit and run will be way better than the archer, to the point where there's no point in me making archers at all. ^Those are the kind of problems a system with soft counters face. If early game you get roman swordsman beating spartan hoplites and that's a problem, I think a better solution would be to harden the counter system. you have swordsman beating hoplites, OK. So if I'm spartan what I'm going to do is make my hoplites and mix in some of whatever counters swordsman. so my two unit composition would be better overall than your single, big mass of swordsman. This means that early game (all game actually), people will strive to mix their unit compositions and use each unit properly through proper positioning and micro. this is much more fun to play, imo, than just having a big mass of a single unit. units can still have specialized roles if their stats* are different enough, even with hard counters mixed in *stamina is really interesting to me, how does it work?

I definitely understand that

Actually I've had an idea about abilities in general in RTS. Would it be possible to have units have a "group ability"? e.g. a group of archers could be selected and together they could use an ability called "volley" which blankets an area with damage, kind of like psi storm in starcraft. you could select half your archers at a time and spread damage over a large area, or you could select all your archers and concentrate all your damage on a single area. I think this could be cool. ._. guys i'm more excited now than I was on xmas eve when I was 8.

How I got onto this boat so late is beyond me. I discovered the game this morning and just played a single skirmish. I'm already in love. I have to go to class in less than an hour but that doesn't prevent me from signing up to these boards and saying hi. I've played the game for maybe 13 minutes total so bear with me. What are the stats for a unit? HP, attack, attack frequency, stamina, armor/resistance? Anything else? I'm VERY interested in discussion unit counters (hard counter vs soft counter) and game design in general.