[Alpha 17 Balancing Branch]

Have you guys even attempted playing the game at 1.25x instead of making everything move faster as default?

[Clouds and other particles do not render since Alpha 16]

EDIT. Just heard it's apparently a new bug. Particles seem to be only visible when (0,0,0) (that's one of the dark corners of the map), is inside the current view. So indeed if you zoom out enough.

Yep, this looks like exactly what happens. Thanks for looking into it. Solution before Alpha 17?

[(ROTE) ===[TASK]=== Han Dynasty Temple]

It's not going to have trees around it normally will it?

[Clouds and other particles do not render since Alpha 16]

Edit: ticket #2643

I noticed that sometime near Alpha 16 clouds stopped getting rendered, and some other particles. But you can see them briefly when you zoom out a bit in the map editor.

Anybody else run into this?

[Alpha 17 Balancing Branch]

I think it's a mistake to make spearmen use pierce damage. Now you have to do weird (unnecessary) armor balancing for cavalry.

[[Fixed] The River Styx]

Thank you. I didnt know what was needed.

system_info.txt

[Alpha 17 Balancing Branch]

Swordsmen wood cost could easily be justified as part of their shield materials. Cavalry should be given different roles, some being skirmishers/raiders/anti-ranged while others heavy shock cavalry that can cost effectively break most non-spear troops, not all of them being harassers. And besides the realism aspect of it, I agree that very easy to mass preachers isn't a good idea, so half or something of their cost being metal sounds good. Rams ramming units indeed sounds bad, perhaps if a pushing mechanic is easy to implement to have them slowly make their way through enemy units? It could also work for war elephants and to a lesser extend cavalry or even heavy infantry, pushing back the enemy formation.

I can see ranged cavalry being the major harassers, with melee cav being used for hard hitting cavalry charges into the flank (see the Total War series for example). About the swordsmen wood cost, I just find it odd to make units cost more than 2 different resources, especially a default unit that you train at the beginning of a game. Pushing would be awesomeness for large units.

[[Fixed] The River Styx]

The water in my game now goes black, when just a couple days ago it was fine.

[Alpha 17 Balancing Branch]

It does seem that way in other RTSes, but I'd like to try out a more generic battling system that doesn't revolve around rock-paper-scissors combat. The problem with cavalry countering ranged units (imo) is that they'd be either immensely overpowered (due to their speed, they decide when they want to battle, and thus, usually only when they have an advantage)...

Yeah, but that's how cavalry was used in real life.

Metal, imo, was too precious to spend 200 on each healer. Merely having 25 healers was enough to deplete your entire starting 5000 metal mine. Perhaps they should cost a little metal, but currently I want to increase the usage of healers to see how people use them and go from there.

Yeah, but who trains 25 healers? Do you want players to train 25 healers? Maybe 100 Food and 100 Metal?

Swordsmen were almost never being used beyond early rushing, due to their high metal cost. I'm not sure where wood would be used for a swordsman, but right now, I'm just trying to balance it. If metal cost is decreased too much, they become too strong early game. Thus, I had to add another cost to make them on par with other soldiers.

Could just go 50F 60M and then use blacksmith techs to reduce their cost in late game.

Speaking of techs, I miss the wheelbarrow.

Realistically, you would not stand in front of a ram because you'd be bowled over. Previously, you could just send any unit (healers included) to just block the ram. With its large obstruction size, rams became useless quite often - they couldn't reach a structure to attack.

Sounds more like a pathfinding problem?

Another note: It is still in the experimental phase, many things are subject to change.

Of course. I don't understand why the other guy got mad.

I've done my testings with "making units move faster" and the effect is 100% what I expected: gameplay feels nervous and quick. I had hardcoded into CCmpUnitMotion that all units moved twice as fast, which is a little fast, but I think changing templates so that all walking speed are between 1.5 and 2 times their current values will help the feel of the game greatly.

(Merchants OTOH shouldn't be changed, they were ludicrously fast).

However it also makes training times seem ludicrously long, which is bad. Training a batch of 5 women at the start of the game right now takes about 1:30 (game time), which is just a ton of idle time.

(testing done using svn, not your branch)

Have you tried playing the game at 1.25 or 1.5 speed? In my opinion, using the game speeds is much better than changing a bunch of other stuff to get the same effect.

[Alpha 17 Balancing Branch]

The justification for making horses weaker to Pierce, not just ranged attacks, is because of the current strategy in most multiplayer games. which is to build 3-4 skirmcav (if you have 'em) and rush the enemies resource production. The problem Wasn't that it was powerful. It was Unbeatable. Anyone with a decent micro could kill 50% of your gatherers without losing a single jav-cav. So it's obvious cav needed a counter.

Then nerf the skirmcav. Has that been tried?

[Alpha 17 Balancing Branch]

Long time lurker. First post. First thoughts.

What is the justification for making cavalry weaker against ranged attacks? Aren't cavalry (generally) supposed to counter ranged units?

Priests made to cost only food and not metal, for what reason? Are we supposed to be able to mass Priests? Shouldn't Priests be special support units, hence cost some Metal?

Also, why do swordsmen cost wood? Makes no sense to me. And rams "attacking" soldiers and women sounds pretty weird. Seems like a lot of the changes were made to just make changes? Experiment?

Look forward to some matches though.