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Some feedback - Cavalry have been made weaker to pierce damage, but more resilient against hack Aren't spearmen and spear cavalry supposed to counter horsemen? Since they are a problem shouldn't they have less hack to highlight the weakness? - Healers now cost only food since metal is quite rare. I think they should have another resource added to the cost. - Female Citizens train much faster. I think this is the wrong approach. From what I can gather people feel there is not enough to do during the early phases of the game? Most of thats due to batch training being available from the beginning. Although a more difficult way to fix this, I think making batch training a technology available in phase2 would be a better way to solve this. - Swordsmen cost less metal, but cost a little wood. I dislike that they have three materials needed to make.

I consider your last paragraph the most interesting. It seems to me that it's not that multipliers are inherently bad, it's more that multipliers and balance in general isn't in the best shape. The way I'm reading it you're saying multipliers should be used far less. That's not to say that every unit should retain a multiplier. I agree with Hephaestion/Radagast that multipliers in this game ought to be used as a balancing mechanism for when other parameters can not be taken into account. On another note, theres mention of Alpha123 changing design direction. Is there any more information on this so I'm not completely out of context.

Good job. There is a very noticeable performance improvement. Its hasn't reached an unplayable point at all.

The reason that you wouldn't do the same for food is because food is primarily from farms which is infinite. So its the rate not the amount available thats the is the important gating factor. If the rate is too low there is the safer option to build another farm near your original CC without the significant investment. You wouldn't build a CC just for the terrain bonus unless it was an OP bonus that made food more redundant (because the rate is so high you're never in need) and allowed food to be traded for the other resources. If it just so happened to be at a place that there was a mine or forrest that needed to be secured, then you have even more of an advantage than you would normally get. It wouldn't make food more map dependent again because is food is primarily gained from farms which can be built anywhere. You only need to a achieve a certain rate of food. Once thats gained theres no reason to have a higher rate. You yourself said that you build farms and forget about them. You forget about them because there is no need to keep them in mind. You've reached a rate that allows you to progress without constant attention. Essentially farms are designed to be non map dependent, so to try and force them to be map dependent is basically trying to smash together two opposing designs. The other variables are irrelevant. They assume that the design is solid, which I contest. None of those address any of the things I've brought up. Let's rephrase the question. What is the purpose that this change aims to achieve? Do we even want these changes? E.g. Is it to make food less one dimensional?

I assumed the concern was that during the town phase building towers near resources like metal and stone so it became too expensive to contest. That was my take on it at least. Its also not THAT risky since buildings foundations refund all the resources upon death. ( I feel the risk would be more proportional to the reward if buildings didn't refund everything, but thats another story.) Other than that, I half agree half disagree with your sentiments. I agree that towers ought to be most powerful in the town phase. Relatively, at least, and I think this is where we slightly disagree. I think towers should continue to grow in absolute strength throughout, but they should be relative weaker as the game continues to progress. That's why I think technologies are a good solution. It allows us to change how strong they are at each point of the game instead of needing to be overbearing to still hold relevance in the later stages. I'd also like to say that I am in agreement with you that there should be some very weak tower in the village phase. Personally, I would like it if the outpost fired an arrow (If built in your own territory) and if the outposts could be upgraded into stronger towers in later phases. Preferably on a tower-by-tower basis.

You missed my point. I don't think it is in the interest of the game to introduce this mechanic. In the event that there is not a game winning advantage I do not believe the feedback loops will be strong enough to motivate people to take on the increased risk associated. A more than slight advantage needs to be gained to provide enough incentive. There are a few primary reasons why I think this. There is a lower risk of having farm fields by initial CC. Building a new CC and new farm fields has a massive cost associated with it. Farms give infinite food (metal is highly contested over because it's limited) So either the bonus provides enough incentive to change peoples behaviour and the bonus is quite large. You have after all invested a huge amount of time and resources in securing a bonus. Additionally, thats a huge amount of resources not invested in gaining a finite resources, which, being the more gating resource type, is more tactically important. Alternatively, the terrain bonus is not enough to change peoples behaviour. In which case it's pointless. I do not see it as something that can be fixed by changing the values of the terrain bonus. The discrepancy between the bonus needed to make it seem worth and a bonus that does not change behaviour is too big.

I'm against the terrain specific bonuses. It seems like something that would have to be over tuned to give the perception of being worth it and feel good to use. To that end if it does induce people to fight over the area, i suspect it will be to much of an advantage to the one who eventually secures it. I do agree that there isn't a sufficient motivator for map control, I just don't think that this is the right avenue.

Last time I looked the effective HP of all buildings is asinine for all buildings in this game. IMO towers ought to be more durable than most buildings, so unless all buildings are all being rescaled or towers are outliers I wouldn't target the durability significantly (at least when fully upgraded) If they need to be reduced in effectiveness, decreasing tower stats and having tower upgrades to bring them up. That in itself decreases the cost effectiveness. Most importantly though, it allows for towers to be potentially weaker in phase 2 by having upgrades in the last phase. That reduces towers effectiveness for the specific time period when siege weapons are not prevalent, whilst still giving them presence later. Additionally, having technologies gate towers means ants that the technologies become another balancing lever if they become egregious again.

I meant have more differences between the village, town and city phase. I feel like it should be more of a hard transition from economy -> map expansion -> conquest. I feel like its a bit more a continuum rather than discrete steps. I think it would create a better cadence and have improved clarity for the aim of each phase.

The one macro balance design I would like is to have each phase more discrete from each other.

I'm not arguing that all should be paired. I agree that there should be some expensive techs, but again I suspect it will be a while before there are enough techs to support both expensive strategic and cheap tactical techs. (I assume that's the goal with techs ). I would disagree that opening all techs up would increase depth. If there were a pair of techs (not ones that locked the other out) one that increases speed by X and decreases Y HP and the other increases HP by X and decreases speed by Y then, Instead of having a hoplite that had X%hp and -Y%speed, I imagine most people would get both and end up with an increase in hp and speed. It's not making as much of a trade off, and opening it up to weaknesses. If it's such that the stats cancel out, then they should lock the other one out so then its not possible to buy both, waste a bunch of resources and gain nothing. So you run into one of several problems. People buy both techs and there is no statistical downside.People buy both and the techs cancel each other out - player is basically punished via loss of recourses for what appears to be the good action of researchingPeople only buy one and it acts the same as pair -if there is one superior tech in a pair it will retain its superiority when it's not a pair. If it is too expensive to buy both then people buy the superior one, same as before. i.e. its a problem in balancing not the pairing.

If they are in pairs then presumably one is the inverse of the other, in which case it would be better to strictly gain one stat and the trade of is that you lock yourself out of the other tech.

The only thing I don't like in techs is when there is a gain and a loss in the same tech. e.g. Train 10% faster lose 10hp. Generally I think they would be better either putting them into a paired tech or removing the negative stat aspect and increasing the cost.

Ah don't worry. I get what he meant now. I only skimmed through the first time. I wasn't sure if he wanted to have the trainable units static or dynamic for the duration of the each game. I'll edit the question out of my first post.

Its a much better option than being able to train from captured buildings of other civs simply because that would cause way to much homogeneity. I wouldn't implement mercs not receiving loot. Loot is already in a really bad sport in terms of communication. Having them not yield loot adds more burden of knowledge and complication with no real benefit.