Thorfinn the Shallow Minded
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Posts posted by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded
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3 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:
My naïve suggestion would thus be to rename perioikoi hoplites to neodamodes hoplites. Is there any reason to use the term perioikoi hoplites?
It is fairly well established that perioikoi served in the military. I'd recommend browsing through JSTOR to see. Over time perioikoi, initially meant to supplement Spartan numbers, increasingly made up the military and even integrated into Spartan units. Neodamodeis were in all likelihood far less common as they represented a route for social advancement for helots, something that Spartans feared. If Neodamodeis were to be introduced to Sparta, it would be reasonable to allow them to be trained through Brasidas.
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5 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
So what would the gameplay role of siege towers be?
would they kill infantry from 90 m, with bolt shooters?
would they be stronger than rams in health, or in melee damage vs buildings?
would they be able to destroy buildings from a distance?
would they still need to be garrisoned by inf?
From your description of their actual historical characteristics it seems like they would be a merge of all the siege engines available.
Valid questions. They would be in my mind be more or less what you said in the last section. Their function should not be anti-archer as a general rule and their projectiles should be anti-building, with a shorter range but higher attack probably. More siege could perhaps be garrisoned within them to increase the projectile count. The ram could then be an optional add on, maybe an upgrade for individual units. They probably would be quite resilient at the cost of being more expensive to categorise them as the ancient equivalent of a super-weapon. Of course to unlock their full potential, a player would need to train a few ballistae.
1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:If we go completely accurate according to history, then it will upset all of the balancing advisors, so let's find a compromise:
Allow siege weapon to garrison 1 bolt shooter and fire at most 1 bolt.
Probably this won't change for alpha 25. That all said, any changes will have the inevitable effect of disrupting balance. Merely being conservative to maintain the fragile gamestate stifle innovation. That all said, I could go with that approach over the current iteration, but it doesn't change the fact that at the moment the game makes siege towers like machine-gun mounted troop carriers.
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4 hours ago, alre said:
mmmh true but helepolis was a general term, the one at Rhodes is just the antonomasia. Also STs are accessible to various other civs, so the discussions here are about the general unit.
I'd recommend citing a source for that. Helepolis is literally what Demetrius called it, and this kind of design was not just for a single siege. Two ancient sources refer to contraptions of this sort being specifically ones designed to mount artillery and ram down structures. Since the siege tower to my knowledge is only used by successor state kingdoms in game, I would say that that this version would work well enough generally.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Vitr.%2010.15&lang=original
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/20C*.html#48
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2 hours ago, alre said:
STs in game don't look such as the one used at Rhodes, they look like ordinary, much more modest STs that throw arrows, or darts at best. Their projectiles have that appearance too.
And yet the name given to a siege tower is 'helepolis.' Clearly the artistic direction needs to be changed for them to better reflect its historical usage.
10 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:Well I don't know if we want to have bolt shooters be that mobile.
That's what the Rhodians said.
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2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
I mean, it wouldn't be a huge deal to just remove 3 ai names per civ. They have plenty others.
In the case of Persia that is three out of twelve, not a small fraction. Of course provided that other names are supplied to bring the AI names to a more acceptable number, I would have no issue with that proposal, but the immediate problem is that the game needs more, not less variety in some AI names.
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Generally speaking siege towers such as the one used at Rhodes were more designed to house catapults and ballistas, which makes the concept of them launching arrows at all somewhat odd.
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2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
Better take this one out, since it's already the name of a hero.
That leads to a bigger question by and large since a number of heroes are represented in AI names already (See Persians). I personally don't have a problem with that.
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3 hours ago, Yekaterina said:
6 metres?
If wikipedia is correct, 3-4 m would be more accurate.
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8 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
it is no a small thing. That must hurt a lot.
I think that while looking at a lance this size it is easy to assume that it would be of a similar nature to a jousting stick, but it is important to remember that cavalry at this time often lacked saddles, stirrups, and other equipment to make them effectual in charges. Going at full gallop would in all probability dismount the rider as well. The 'shock' factor was more a matter of the simple fact that horsemen engaging in melee was a rare occurrence and its success was probably more due to Persians breaking at the sight of these riders. The Alexander Sarcophagus gives a bit better of an idea of equipment (or lack thereof) horses had. The key takeaway to me at least would be that the lance was employed for the extra reach more than anything else, and as such, I would recommend giving cavalry equipped with this kind of weapon appropriate range to represent that fact.
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Mardonius is a notable general who is not included in the Persian list. Cyrus the Younger is also not represented. Tissaphernes, a prominent satrap could also be a leader.
At the moment Persia basically just uses monarchs as leaders. Satraps, princes, and generals would also be reasonable candidates. I have little to say for the Seleucid and Maurya Empires unfortunately.
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2 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
but how should a classic phalange vs a legion of hastati work?
Good question. I did a bit of atlas editor testing of sword versus spear to check results.
In 1v1 the swordsman won with 20 hp left, which seems close, but increased numbers reveals it becoming increasingly lopsided.
This came to the point where with 20 vs 20, there were 18 swordsmen left with roughly 50% of their hitpoints remaining.
I would say that the 1v1 result should end with the swordsman left with 10% hp left. Maybe that number could be 15%, but the fights should be fairly close.
This might make the swordsman seem comparatively useless, yet with extra pierce armour and movement speed, I would think their utility outside of this situation would be able to be seen. That all said, in the case of hastati specifically, a better situation would be in which the hastati first hurl a volley of pila, which would add yet another variable into the equation.
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5 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:
@Thorfinn the Shallow MindedCan you explain why swordsmen are an all-rounder? It seems like spearmen are in the same way an all-rounder with a bonus against cavalry.
Swordsmen would be faster and have better pierce armour while still trading well against spearmen. Their role would still be slightly anti-cavalry focussed, having the ability to catch them out better than spears. At the same time ranged units could kite them, but those tactics would be less effective and harder to do. Spearmen being hard countered by swordsmen would be bad in my opinion since they lack the ability to properly chase and hence counter the primary unit that they are designed to counter.
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26 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:
I assume you want 1.5x counter by default? You can have it tonight ( or morning of 3rd June in Honduras)
That approach would be haphazard. With their current stats, units are already designed to have a built in counter system, and that would merely put it on steroids.
As a couple critiques of Lion's system (keeping in mind that I do have a heavy amount of bias to my own)
You list sword cavalry and and spear as counters to melee cavalry. I assume that only one of those applies?
Slingers and skirmishers are listed as archer counters. What differences are there between the two?
Pikemen and spearmen are listed as anti cavalry. Is there any other difference between them.
Also, there is no accounting for ranged cavalry, which oftentimes plays a large role in the meta.
I'm not a fan of swordsmen countering spearmen personally as it does not accurately reflect history. Legions were able to beat phalanxes primarily due to a flexible chain of command structure that made for more manoeuvrability; that's why at least in my mind the advantage of swordsmen should be that of an all-rounder, not particularly good against anything but not easily countered either. That all said, it's an understandable abstraction.
If we compare with mine, I tried to consider ways of making the broad categories still simple and working along the rock-paper-scissors idea of infantry beats cavalry which beats ranged. Ranged cavalry make the whole system a bit more complex as there isn't a clear fifth category to try to turn the rock-paper-scissors into rock-paper-scissors-Spock-lizard.
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12 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:
well i think sword cav already performs better than spear cav against ranged units and i am not in favor of this.
Agree to disagree then.
3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:Battalions.
The Godwin's Law of 0 AD: the longer a forum discussion takes place, the more likely it is that wowgetoffyourcellphone will mention battalions. But yeah, that is a fair point all the same.
Battalions or no, flank mechanics would improve the game in my mind.
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A couple things came to mind after looking at the Romans. First of all, having the Triarius be trained at veteran rank again would be good; this could come with a +25-50% training time to make them harder to mass. Also, since there is a building in this mod for training Socii, the Extraordinarius should be available there, not at the regular barracks, since it is a socii unit.
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2 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:
We can compare what i have drawn this situation(although it is a bit extreme) to this video below , just imagine that the janissaries were javelineers, if the lancers didn't have the stats they have like melee resist and bonus vs inf this fight would be a disaster.Even so you can clearly see the problems that i posted before too.
Your concerns are valid, but I never stated that spear cavalry would have no pierce armour, just less than their sword counterparts. The point would be that they would be a decent counter to ranged units but not as efficient. At the end of the day though, just because one cavalryman kills three archers does not mean that ten cavalrymen must defeat thirty.
23 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:Also I think cavalry should counter swordsmen infantry. If you have a sword and a cavalrymen storms at you, what are you gonna do?
The factors you are not considering are formations and the lack of many elements that made knights the effective shock cavalry of the Middle Ages. Provided that the infantry were disciplined enough, a frontal charge was virtually suicidal. Swordsmen could trade efficiently against cavalry yet not incredibly well. If aspects such as flanking were introduced however, cavalry could theoretically be counters for all melee infantry.
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2 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:
I too have my two cents on Thorfinn's comment ,his proposals for the melee cavalry aren't that great as the game already implements these to an extent. Instead i would see an overlap in the functions of both melee variants: all cav should specialize in dealing with ranged infantry period, then sword cav could soft counter artillery much like their foot counterpart and spear cav could keep being a softcounter to cavalry in general. My reasoning for this is that while sword cav civilizations usually also have spear cav, spear cav civs don't normally have sword cav.
To clarify, I generally was stating that all melee cavalry should counter ranged units. I was being redundant, but in my opinion, it is important to have a clear, wholistic standpoint that represents the interplay of every single unit so that people are better aware of one's vision. I don't necessarily care for categorising spear and sword classes (See a topic I posted a while ago), but since they are an integral part of the game, I simply worked to differentiate between the two. Spear cavalry should according to my post still counter ranged units well due to their faster speed, but their lower pierce armour makes them a bit more of a glass cannon unit than the sword counterpart.
1 hour ago, ChronA said:That still leaves no clear reason to produce foot archers or slinger, but it is better than I thought.
Fair. My reasoning is that producing said units would allow for higher damage output to support heavy infantry, which should be the decisive element of most engagements. Another part could be them acting as a screening force.
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2 hours ago, Yekaterina said:
They cannot catch up with ranged units as easily at the speed of 10.8m/s, because their run speed is still slower than ranged run speed, so you can cheat by forcing a formation. About pierce armour, what value would be appropriate?
Swordsmen in my mind should be able to situationally catch out ranged units much better than other infantry, but they should not be reliably capable of such; that's just my personal preference. As for pierce armour, I would recommend just going with an incremental increase of +1 or 2 and seeing where it goes from there after some testing.
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7 minutes ago, ChronA said:
If melee infantry categorically beat both ranged infantry and cavalry, there really is no gameplay reason to ever build anything except melee infantry. For the sake of gameplay diversity, ranged infantry and cavalry really need to provide some sort of value-added beyond the capabilities of the standard swordsmen, spearmen, & pikemen. In this writeup I don't see that they do, except possibly acting as a superior raiding force (which is easily countered by static defense, and so will only see a little bit of early-game play).
I never said that ranged infantry would be able to beat cavalry. Ranged units could beat swordsmen and might be the best units to do so, but typically they would rely on a unit in front to be able to tank damage. Perhaps swordsmen should not do any better against spearmen if traits such as improved movement speed and pierce armour were introduced. That whole concept seems fairly ahistorical.
11 minutes ago, ChronA said:Giving cav and foot archers minimum range could be a double edged sword. It can make them automatically kite any unit substantially slower than them, which is a pretty huge advantage.
I think that there would be some clear problems, but adjusting turning speed could make it less potent than you might think. There would definitely need to be some fine tuning with that to ensure that the ranged versus melee dichotomy would work in that framework. Definitely that is a liability to my writeup, but I think that it would provide some much needed differentiation. As I had stated, javelin units in this might work best to beat archers, outperforming their damage and not getting into minimum range; the major bottleneck would be giving them the right amount of pierce armour.
16 minutes ago, ChronA said:While I do have any principled objection to providing units intended to counter ranged attack with high pierce resistances, that decision really ought to be reflected in their artwork. An unarmored, tunic-wearing farmer on a horse should not be made an arrow-sponge just because a balance plan dictates that sword cavalry counter ranged.
Fair. That said, most of the time cavalry were equipped with some of the heaviest armour provided that they were fielded to enter melee fights. Peasant farmers rarely rode horses to battle.
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18 hours ago, Yekaterina said:
For speed, let swords be as fast as the current ranged units. (1.2x spearman, 10.8m/s)
I would argue for a more moderate approach of maybe 9.8 or 10. It should not be too easy for them to catch up to ranged units but not impossible. That's why again I argued for a moderate increase to pierce armour. Again as well, they should not be hard counters to other infantry classes, only trading decently against them.
On a slightly different topic, one infantry swordsman in particular I would change would be the skiritae unit. That should be faster than other swordsmen. Changing it to a generic swordsmen speed was a definite downgrade in uniqueness for Sparta. I don't particularly mind if they have a nerf to go alongside that like starting at rank 2.
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Since some people have started adding to this topic, I thought that I might as well share my rambling thoughts. First of all, there are a few key categories: melee infantry, ranged infantry, melee cavalry, ranged cavalry, elephants, and siege.
-Starting with melee infantry, they would always be cost effective against cavalry.
Spearmen would be the most straightforward counter to cavalry provided that they can reach them.
Swordsmen would have the best pierce armour of the infantry and a slightly faster movement speed than other infantry. They would trade favourably against spearmen and could potentially provide a threat to ranged units. Generally speaking this would be a unit that would have no hard counters or be countered very effectively by others.
Pikemen would have as much pierce armour as spearmen at the most, and would derive the greatest advantage in fights from numbers. One on one, they would lose to spearmen and swordsmen, but as their range becomes an important component of the fight, they would become increasingly overwhelming.
-Ranged infantry would benefit from the highest range and generally would do well against slow units.
Javelinists would have the highest damage output of all ranged units to compensate for their low range. They would also benefit from the highest pierce armour as well. They would be situationally useful against melee infantry and elephants provided that the player effectively kites with them. Their marginal movement increase compared to their other ranged counterparts would also allow them to potentially close the gap against archers and slingers.
Archers would generally boast the longest range at the cost of a minimum range. In general, having a pure archer army would be suicide if any melee units could close the gap. Their damage output would be nothing incredible.
Slingers would have an intermediate range and have minimal armour, making them the squishiest of the units. With the lead bullets technology researched, however, their range would exceed that of archers, but that would only apply to a handful of civilisations.
-Melee Cavalry would be best against ranged units and always trade poorly against melee infantry.
Sword Cavalry would specialise in killing ranged units.
Spear Cavalry would be a soft counter to sword cavalry and would also be a soft counter to ranged units, but their slightly lower pierce armour would leave them more vulnerable to their attacks. They would also be one of the fastest units in the game.
-Ranged Cavalry would have lower damage output than their infantry counterparts but would also be the best unit when it comes to hit-and-run tactics.
Javelin Cavalry would be perhaps the best ranged counter to archers. With their fast movement rate, reasonable dps, and moderate pierce armour, they could move into minimum range easily enough, let out a volley, and get back into minimum range quickly enough to repeat the cycle.
Cavalry Archers would lack much dps and would have a minimum range, meaning that melee cavalry catching them out would be a massive hazard. Despite that, their range, comparable to slingers, would allow them to operate at a fairly safe distance while their movement rate would make that a fairly unlikely possibility. In fact their best counter would be ranged infantry, which would be able to effectively outperform them in a straight fight.
-Elephants seem fine the way they are to me.
-Siege are anti-building units, but the Bolt Shooter is a bit of mixed bag. It’s speciality should be at targeting clumps of units with its area of effect.
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As I had stated in that topic, swordsmen should have slightly higher pierce armour than their infantry counterparts and move a bit faster; at the moment they have the same movement speed as spearmen. Essentially their role could be a bit of an all-rounder, making efficient trades against cavalry and spearmen, holding their own against pikemen in smaller numbers where the range of the pikes would not come into play, and having the potential to close the gap with ranged units and tank arrows. The only units that should be true counters would be ranged cavalry; ranged infantry could potentially do the same, but as already mentioned, swordsmen pose a decent risk to them.
If we are to contrast them to spearmen, spears would be a bit slower and perform much better against cavalry.
Pikemen would gain most of their advantages in tight formations where their superior range could allow them to beat the others. Alone, however, they would be somewhat vulnerable comparatively speaking.
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On 23/5/2021 at 9:11 AM, StarAtt said:
Also Agis may have 1500 health as he's totally sueless now.
Agis has always been that way. I have several times argued against his inclusion in favour of other more notable Spartan kings.
On 23/5/2021 at 9:11 AM, StarAtt said:40/40 Skirmisher is too cheap. At least 45/45
That also is reasonable. Also, since the slinger is a helot unit, it should probably cost 45/45 as well.
9 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:archers are still very OP. kushites are kind OP.
Actually I'm sure that the Spiffing Brit would argue quite compellingly that in fact 0 AD is perfectly balanced...
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12 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
It is more a gameplay feature than a historical accuracy feature. The point is to give players more lethal options in p1 that enable them to attack/beat enemy eco in more ways than just going after women. I think the feature would combine nicely with the existing ways to rush, including CS, cavalry, building, outpost. If this is implemented alongside the planned mercenary changes and nerfs to building arrows and palisades, and the reduction in rotation speed for units, then a25 could have a great variation in game progression, with each player potentially taking different feasible strategies with different amounts of defenses, mercenaries/cav for offense, and citizen soldiers/women for eco power.
Fair enough. I was generally just saying that only cultures that fielded large amounts of mercenaries historically should be able to do this kind of strategy in most cases. You are very correct in that there should be interesting options for every civilisation in the early game for aggression or defence, whether that consists of mercenaries or not.
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Take crush damage from siege towers
in Gameplay Discussion
Posted
Well that's odd since they had roles in sieges just as much if not more if I am not mistaken.