Philip the Swaggerless

This is true. If the units were changed such that archers became more effective relative to other units, clearly kushites (and other archer civs) would all of a sudden be much better off. I still stand by my suggestions about build time and neutral territory.

Hi. How about instead of the Nomad Camp and Nuba Village being like barracks with limited unit variety that have low HP/capture points and that take a L O N G time to build, you make them be like barracks with limited unit variety that have low HP/capture points and that take a short time to build. I mean come on, the Nomad camp appears to be a few tents. If I practiced I might be able to set that up in 200 seconds in real life. And while were at it, since its a Nomad camp, why not allow it to be built in neutral territory, requiring garrison to not turn into gaia? Just a suggestion to give Kushites some needed help to be a tiny bit more competitive in multiplayer.

I agree that they are overplayed and I think the main bonus is the non-house building pop bonus. However, a skilled player using the Ptolemies can hold their own against them in 1v1. Also, they lack ranged siege units which can be tough in some late-game situations. Nevertheless, I suggest some or all of these nerfs: Reduce non-house building population bonus to +1 instead of +2 Remove barracks +5 pop bonus, or conversely give all civs +5 pop bonus for each barracks built. I've also wondered if slingers ought to be nerfed by not allowing them to benefit from ranged unit upgrades at the blacksmith. Or if that's too harsh just make the last upgrade not apply to them.

I agree that ShuttleSpeed is the best place to start with this. The elegance of it is that it addresses the economic issue across all soldier types. Then combat balancing issues can be addressed separately. To clarify, when you say ShuttleSpeed, do you mean that units travel at the same speed while carrying resources? Or would the unit also travel at ShuttleSpeed as soon as you command them to gather a resource? Either option would be an improvement from what he have now. The first option is a no-brainer and should definitely be included. However, it would only partially address the economic issue because it be active for one way of the trip, and not from when the unit leaves the CC/Barracks. The second option would even things out better for different unit types, but could be circumvented by players micromanaging (you could shift+click near the resource and then shift+click on the resource). Such micromanagement could become obligatory for high-skill level games and feel cumbersome. It would have the effect of widening the gap between expert and non-expert players which might not be desirable. I guess we'd have to think about whether or not it's worth it. But I can think of no gameplay/balance objection to having ShuttleSpeed active while units are carrying resources.

Assuming the information in the in-game civ structure trees is accurate, the only soldier that does not have 0.6 Food 0.8 Wood 0.5 Stone 0.5 Metal gathering rates are the Skritiai Commandos which I personally am okay with because their combat ability makes up for it. And then also each soldier type has slower rates as they rank up. I did an experiment hoping to show how much the movement speeds affects wood gathering. The results were less drastic than I expected. I created a scenario where you start with a CC, a storehouse next to an oak woodline (28 trees - total 5,600 wood), some houses, 2 soldiers, and enough resources to build 20 additional soldiers. To make it somewhat realistic I created soldiers in batches of 5. I set the gathering point for all to the same initial tree and did not micromanage which trees they cut. I then recorded how long it took for the last soldier to drop the final piece of wood for each unit type (except Skiritai Commandos and Clubmen). I repeated each unit type twice and got the same results. Here they are: Skirmishers (12.6 Walk) - 09:39 Slingers (10.8 Walk) - 09:51 Archers (9.9 Walk) - 10:01 Swordsmen (9.4 Walk) - 10:19 Spearmen (8.5 Walk) - 10:20 Pikeman (7.2 Walk) - 10:53 Women (9 Walk, 0.7 gather rate) - 10:13* I got 10:13 the first time, the next two times were 10:23-ish but the final woman kept walking back and forth and wouldn't go around the women in front of the storehouse. Here is a minute by minute breakdown of how much they gathered. The last number in parentheses for each unit type is the time at which they had deposited all 5,600 wood. Minutes 1min 2min 3min 4min 5min 6min 7min 8min 9min 10min 11min Skirmishers 80 410 1,030 1,800 2,550 3,280 3,970 4,650 5,270 (9:39) ~ Slingers 60 390 980 1,720 2,470 3,190 3,850 4,520 5,140 (9:51) ~ Archers 70 370 970 1,710 2,480 3,180 3,820 4,450 5,060 5,593 (10:01) Swordsmen 60 390 1,000 1,720 2,420 3,100 3,750 4,380 4,970 5,478 (10:19) Spearmen 50 370 940 1,680 2,400 3,070 3,690 4,310 4,900 5,440 (10:20) Pikemen 30 350 910 1,570 2,240 2,900 3,530 4,110 4,680 5,220 (10:53) Women1 110 520 1,210 1,900 2,610 3,280 3,890 4,530 5,100 5,532 (10:13) Women2 110 520 1,210 1,880 2,620 3,260 3,900 4,510 5,080 5,541 (10:23) As expected, it is the case that the faster the walk speed the faster the wood collection. (The women are an exception because they are created faster.) However, much of the difference occurs towards the end of the woodline when more walking is required. So for the first 5 minutes the difference is at most 80w among the ranged units. Pikemen, though, even in the first 5 minutes pikemen are at least 160w behind other melee units. As the game goes on though the effect does become more pronounced. The end times in the data are important as they show how long it takes to catch up. It takes longer to catch up as the game goes on. For example, at minute 1, skirmishers are ahead of slingers by 20, but the slingers actually make up the 20 within 1-2 seconds. Real game factors - Due to path-finding, the workers move in unpredictable ways that can be inefficient. So faster units can randomly under-perform (as can slower units). - These results do not take into consideration soldiers moving from gathering to defend from a rush or to go on a rush and go back to gathering. On the one hand, if defending with archers instead of skirmishers the archers have longer range and would not have to walk as far from the resource to attack the invader. So theoretically they can get back to gathering faster. On the other hand they deal damage slower and may have to fight longer, especially against spear cav. In fact, the enemy rush could force the weak archers to garrison in the CC. It is not obvious to me if archers or skirmishers would get back to wood gathering sooner. Seems like it would depend on the enemy unit composition. I bet defending with slingers would turn out the best. Obviously melee units that have to chase the enemy down while walking slower would lose the most gathering time. If you go on a rush units with faster walk speeds will get back to gather faster. - Also, it is important to keep in mind that the faster you have resources, the faster you can produce more units, the faster you can gather more resources, and so on. This means that in a real game where you are continually producing units the advantage will increase non-linearly if you have faster workers. So you get more workers sooner, and the new workers you get are again faster moving than the opponent's new workers when he gets them. So how big of a deal is it? Does it matter if archers cutting wood for 10 minutes are 22 seconds behind skirmishers cutting wood for 10 minutes? It doesn't seem that bad looking at the data on the chart but it would feel bad if you were trying to build a ram and had to wait 22 seconds for the wood. Entering a battle with a hero or a siege unit can have a big impact on the outcome. And again, because of what's discussed above in real game factors, the advantage/handicap will be more than just 22 seconds worth of gathering. And if for some crazy reason instead of archers you made mostly melee units you'd be worse off yet economically. At the end of all of this I ask: Do we really want a game where you are both economically and militarily incentivized to produce mostly ranged units instead of melee? If archers must be worst of the ranged units economically, shouldn't archers have some other advantage to make them viable?

Some people complain that this game favors army compositions featuring a majority of ranged units and minority of melee units. Well guess what? Ranged units are also better for your eco, so all the more reason to spam them nearly nonstop! Is the fact that Skirmishers have a significant eco bonus factored into the balancing of this game? They dash from the CC to the woodline like it's an olympic race! Whether its moving from an exhausted woodline to the next one or returning from a battle to gather resources again, their speed is a significant economic bonus. As they gather they continue to have an advantage economically because they go back and forth to the drop point faster. Slingers are slower than skirmishers, but at least in early P1 it helps that they don't require as much wood. But archers... Archers lose fights 1v1 to every citizen-soldier in the game. An all-archer army loses to all-skirmisher and all-slinger armies. If it's not bad enough that they're the worst ranged unit in combat, they are also worst ranged unit economically. I understand that if they are faster than the other units they could just kite the enemy all day since they also have more range, and that's undesirable. I've thought of some ideas that might help to mitigate this effect Units carrying resources all move at the same speed. Not a complete fix since it only works for half of the journey between the resource and the drop point. Archer combat buffed ((increased damage or accuracy) or skirmishers/slingers nerfed)) so that even if archers are weaker for eco their superior combat ability makes up for it. Increase gather rates or carrying capacity of slower units. Less wood cost for archers (50 Food + 48 wood) and maybe also some other slower units. Maybe not all but some combination of these things could even the playing field for archer civs.

If the interesting options discussed in this thread are too hard to implement, ranged units could crudely be nerfed by just increasing their production time, reducing their accuracy, or reducing their general dps. If historically a civilization was known to fielding a particular ranged unit as the majority of their army maybe that civilization alone can have a in bonus production speed, accuracy, or general dps for that unit.

I was just thinking about the issue of ranged units being OP (except infantry archers of course, lol) the other night. The problem, as in other RTS games, is that each ranged units is constantly hitting a target whereas melee units have to reach the target first. However, as noted, a mixed army with a strong majority of ranged units will typically defeat an all ranged army. The idea I had to make the game work more favorably for melee units was to decrease accuracy of ranged units based on obstructions. This would mean that other units or buildings in the line of fire (but which are not the target) would cause a big penalty to the firing unit's accuracy. This obstruction accuracy penalty would not happen or be less extreme based on the elevation the unit is firing from. The higher the elevation the lower the penalty. Of course, I'm not a programmer...I don't know how implementable this would be. If the above were implemented, I predict that: Majority Ranged Army defeats All ranged Army Majority Melee Army defeats Majority Ranged Army (unless the Majority Ranged Army has strategic positioning/maneuvers for direct lines of fire to the enemy) Majority Melee Army defeats All Melee Army (because the Majority Melee Army would do damage before the melee starts) All Ranged Army vs All Melee Army... If the All Ranged army gets a surround they eat the All Melee, but not as bad as they do currently. If shield directionality boosted defense vs ranged units and formations gave advantages specific to the formation, I would be happy with that solution. There's already a defense boost for any formation the Athenian hero is in.

Congratulations everyone! It was fun and instructive to watch the games. Thank you for organizing it all PrincessChristmas.

Where are your games vs Nani?

I figured it out. Just had to delete the "1" and the "2" from the "commands1.txt" and "commands2.txt" file names. (and have the mods)

Am I the only one not able to play the replays from Christmas and Romulo? Do we need the metadata.json files?

I'm curious, what gameplay disadvantage have you found pertaining to units costing more than 2 resources? My main RTS background is AoE 2 where everything is 2 resources (or less), so I appreciate the novelty of certain units requiring multiple resources. As far as gameplay goes, if a swordsman was 50 food 50 metal that'd be a waste of metal you need for endgame. But if it were much less than 50 metal they might be too easy to mass early as they have less overall cost. Unless you bumped up the food cost. But what problem do you see with the way it is now?

About the Persians.. I just realized something interesting. When you select the hero Cyrus, (I haven't tried it out with the other heroes) you can spawn Immortals from him like a mobile military production facility.