Grugnas
-
Posts
324 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
2
Posts posted by Grugnas
-
-
1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
uh, guys, it does look stupid. It's telling that you have to come up with 500 word essay to justify it not looking stupid.
When I went to school my math teacher teached me that 3,5 (spear attack rate) / 0.75 (sword attack rate) = 4,6 and that 4,6 x 6,5 (sword cavalry damage) = 30,3 (damage of the sword cavalry in 3,5 sec) which is bigger than 19 if ( total spear cavalry damage) i remember right.
-
2
-
-
15 hours ago, av93 said:
Well my suggestion would be something like this:
HEAVY INFANTRY
Spearman: Bonus against both cavalry.
Role: Basic unit available to every civilization. Main unit and useful to protect other units from cavalry. MeatshieldSwordsman: Higher base attack than spearman, bonus against heavy infantry.
Role: Break melee infantry fronts, kill unprotected units (light infantry, support or siege)Pikeman: High HP and Armor, low attack (if no formations are implemented, every unit gets a bonus attack aura for other pikes). Bonus against cavalry. Slow movement.
Role: Protect ranged infantry, capture or when massed act like a powerful slow spearhead.-LIGHT INFANTRY:
Skirmisher: Shortest range. Higher base attack
Role: Basic ranged unit. Useful against everything, but with low range it's the most vulnerable unit. The best ranged unit to deal against both cavalry typesSlinger: Medium range. Bonus against heavy infantry
Role: Better than skirmishers against heavy infantry. Should win skirmishers by range, but they damage between them could be on pair.
Archer: Long range. Low attack and bonus against Light Infantry.
Role: Kill skirmishers and slingers and support long range attack.
All light infantry get a bonus against Light Cavalry.-HEAVY CAVALRY
Sword cav: Fast. Bonus against light infantry
Role: Kill light infantry (altough spear cav should be better), raid, and maybe catch light cavalrySpear cavalry: Tankier armour, HP, Good attack. Slower
Role: Better frontline cavalry than swordman cavalry.-LIGHT CAVALRY
Skirmisher cavalry: Good damage. Low range
Role: Hit and Run, effective against everything, but could be killed if get caught or by ranged units (so it would be mainly anti heavy infantry)Archer cavalry: Low damage, Long range. Bonus against light units (both infantry and light cavalry). Less HP than skirmisher cavalry
Role: Hit and Run from distance, but worst DPS against heavy. Loose against ranged infantry if gets caught in range (specially against archer, with same range)All defensive buildings get bonus against Light Cavalry
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then, I would make Spearman and Skirmisher infantry, Swordman and Skirmisher cavalry costing only food and wood (Trash unit). More uncommon units could cost food/wood and metal (no stone for siege or slingers, only for buildings).I would change hacking/pierce/crush to Melee/Ranged/Siege. (I think it could be easier to balance and to think, although hybrid damage could be special feature for some units)
*I know that there's some historical things... some slinger could out range archers, and the spear cavalry role resembles more a medieval knight-like... but I think that is somewhat cohesive system.
isn't the game already structured in that way? I mean.. Ranged units have the advantage to stay in range while melee units have to reach them, thats why Archers for example have advantage over swordmen btw they die easly vs cavalry
-
1
-
-
I agree with the fact that a slow attack speed and a high damage is more realistic because spear cavalry is meant to hit and run and, supposing that spear cavalry is attacking a group of enemies and those enemies are infantry units, spear cavalry should be able to hit and retreat in order to avoid the enemy fire, and attack again. However increasing attack damage instead of attack speed will result in being more effective in women raids, expecially if a new change is coming as I heard (units close to the buildings won't be hitted by the buildings anymore unless a specific tech research) unless they'd have have an "anti-cavalry" damage multiplier which would work only vs other cavalry types resulting that Spear Cavalry will actually counter any kind of cavalry letting Sword Cavalry still be more effective vs infantry. However tests are needed
-
2
-
-
This thread wants to get together all your considerations about spear cavalry. Personally I think that this unit is kinda tricky because actually Spear Cavalry doesn't really can't out damage Sword Cavalry despite its high mixed pierce and hack damage since the spear horseman has a 3,5 sec Attack Rate which is really slow if compared to the 0,75 Attack Rate of the Swordman resulting with an higher Damage Per Second for the Sword Cavalry. However the spear cavalry has its role even if not so morally correct
.. women persecution. This only role of this unit in the whole part of the game, is it early game at minute 5 or late game min 40, is killing women.
Note: My consideration is based on an hypothetical Persian player because Persia has the privilege to choice any kind of Cavalry type (sword, spear, javelin, bow).
Weak Points:
Really slow attack rate
they can't kill any kind of cavalry
Despite spear 3x bonus on cavalry, spear cavalry doesn't benefit from that bonus at all
After a couple of tests I found on that Sword Cavalry out damage Spear cavalry indipendently from the enemy pierce / hack armor, infact Sword Cavalry isn't countered by Spear Cavalry despite the sword cavalry pierce armor which is slightly lower than spear cavalry due the out damage that sword has over its counterpart and the same number of sword cavalry can defeat enemy infantry ranged units while spear cavalry can't despite this last one higher pierce armor.
Strong Points:
Phase I unit of choice for a coupe of civs (Macedonians and Romans)
Their phase I rush is uncounterable
As I said above, the only spear cavalry role is to kill women, and it is really effective if not really uncounterable during the first phase of the game. Why that? for a couple of reasons:
Houses give more population than you can actually garrison into, resulting that women will be really vulnerable.
Since spear infantry is too slow for chasing cavalry and there is more chance in phase 2 for the enemy to cumulate an army big enough to repel spear cavalry from the wood gathering spot, at least.
The only tactic that most players do is just to cumulate an adeguate number of spear cavalry since the beginning thanks to the food boost that fruit provides and the lower amount of wood needed for training cavalry, going to mine the food production of the enemy, totally avoiding open fights.
This tactic requires a sacrifice in Population growing since the cavalry requires much more time than infantry soldiers or women to train and it consists into slow down the enemy so much to completly erase the economy advantage that the enemy surely had in choosing women / workers for gathering resources and constantly raid his food production to force the enemy to train women only (since the houses can garrison less women than the population bonus houses give, you can imagine that the raid scene will bring the game into a loop until the enemy resigns).
In my opinion there is a too big gap between Spear Cavalry OverPower and their Worthless train delimited by their high pierce armor, high enough to facilitate raids minimizing any damage(civic center and phase 1 sentry towers are harmless against cavalry), and their low attack rate that makes them not the best melee cavalry choice in any fight.
Sper Cavalry deserves less pierce armor:
Civic Center and Sentry Towers are not much helpful against this kind of cavalry and, since their food cost is high, the result of the game is decided by the amount of animals a player has around its own base. What I mean is that considering the randomness of resources on the map, would be really nice to build/train something that can counter those cavalry raids indipendently from the amount of food aviable around allowing me to train more cavalry than the enemy.
They deserve to attack faster:
Despite the spear cavalry pierce armor, sword cavalry is much more effective due their higher DPS. It can be reasonable if spear cavalry doesn't have more damage on impact, in that way the enemy can still retreat, by the way the low attack rate of spear cavalry let them harmless while standing in a battle.
-
1
-
-
Map: Oasis
Players: Grugnas, Hannibal_Barca, Vercingetorix_, imrobbyg, Valerianis, Cesar, elexis4, philosopher
Summary: The game was a diplomacy LMS where, as usual, peace reigns and we are all friends
. One by one we changed our alliances till the end where I had to face 2 players, Britons and Romans. As you can imagine, all the players had the time to set up a profitable trade route and cumulate resources in order to train champions before an alliance change.
I played for Athene, a civ that i particulary like due its versatility and the wide choice of champions aviable. Despite its strong infantry, Athene lack on siege choice since they can only use Bolt Shooter and Catapults.
Valerianis played for britons, civ known for its deadly slinger mass train from phase 1 and their synergy with Cunobelin which makes them really strong in the battlefield.
Hannibal_Barca played for Romans, civ with imho the best cavalry champion in the game because they use sword and can crush buildings and enemy armies.
If you take the effort to watch the replay, you will notice that near the end game I had to play against 2 players forcing me to mix my forces in order to be efficient against Champion Swordmen and Champion Cavalry. Impossibilitate to set a trade route and to use catapults (because slingers can destroy them easly from distance), I sneaked into the roman territory with a bunch of champion spearmen in order to get rid of the market avoiding the trade between the 2 players. You can notice that, despite the full garrisoned Civic Center shooting at me and champions from both the players, I managed to win the fight because Spear wins over the Sword (despite their metal cost) and the cavalry then the game finished, for me at least, because i left the game because it was kinda draw for me since Champion spearmen beat swordmen and they win cavalry too, so the game was just waiting until set a profitable trade route (like other 20 - 30 min of game just waiting for infinite resources by trading) for the enemy "team" between a capture raid by cavalry and another.
What I'd like to focus is the last part:
QuoteI managed to win the fight because Spear wins over the Sword and the cavalry then the game finished, for me at least, because i left the game because it was kinda draw for me.
This mean that spearmen wins over swordmen and cavalry too resulting that there is no way to counter spearmen with swordmen or cavalry. Actually the cavalry role in EVERY long game is just to run around the enemy base and capturing buildings since 20 cavalry capture + suicide a building in less time that a ram needs to destroy it . There is not a cure for all the curses by the way the cavalry deserve less Capture Points than infantry since they already have 2 techs aviable from stable that increases their movement speed which makes spearmen totally useless against any kind of cavalry and, since in low population cap games expanding is really risky, that cavalry trick of just sneak and suicide buildings becomes uncounterable and just annoying since the cavalry will never fight spearmen (as it should be). Anyway using spear infantry is risky because they are slow and they retreat slowly and having a dislevel between infantry and cavalry would be reasonably considering their movement speed.
-
1
-
-
Would be great to have such feature. Training mercenaries coming from other culture from a neutral building would be nice.
-
Quote
making them outrange towers
This isn't necessary if catapults have higher hp or amor, the tower damage on the catapults would be less significant on a higher amount of hp and losing workers in the act to repair it will make the action more interesting.
Quotemaking them so tanky that they are not easily destroyed by sword units anymore
increasing movement speed or reducing patch time would make them easier to defend. However that has to be tested.
Quoteincreasing their accuracy in particular, since all units should receive a higher accuracy
catapults could gain more accuracity by unlocking the tech aviable from the fortress just like happens with bolt shooters.
-
A) I disagree on this. d Don't think it could be fair due heroes aura are too different for training them only oncr, for example elephant heroes are the most risky to attack with, however it could be a fun alternative to regicide
B ) I agree on the cooldown increase because some heroes have powerful aura in battlefield (all 20% attack damage increase, persia and maurya "train-o-matic" heroes) and the fact that cavalry heroes have the advantage to poke and ruin expecially food eco while your army is elsewhere and, since towers can't really kill a hero and walls are not so popular, a longer cooldown can come in handy to prevent this kind of use.
Heroes on elephant are used as sieges and they are the most like to die and an increase of resources would influence them too much since they expensive already.
-
1
-
-
Would be nice to have such information, expecially knowing how many unit of a determinate class you have. for example knowing how many skirmishers I own, and how many total workers are gathering a resource. This feature comes in handy while checking, for example, how many women are gathering food in the grainfields. Maybe That information could be displayed, for example, the number of workers on wood could be displayed by selecting the storehouse where they actually are delivering the resource in order to know how many workers are delivering resources to that storehouse. The total soldiers trained, divided by class, could be displayed in the relative building or in a panel a part just like happens for the trade, diplomacy and objective in order to not keep the ui clean without invasive infos.
-
2
-
-
As I wrote above, catapults are hard to defend due their low range. Towers will easly attack champions protecting the catapult and enemy can skip my covering units anyway and destroy it with few hits. Catapults are really hardly valuable due their weakness, the cosf / performance ratio is really low. You need more than 1 catapult in order to deal significant damage, by the way you can't train a lot of catapults because they cost too much stone and they will be destroyed easly.
-
1
-
-
The subject of this thread are the Catapults, a ranged siege able to attack enemy buildings from distance. I'd like to discuss about their usability in games, arguing about some weak spots of this siege obviously showed in the replay attached to this post.
Let's begin with the range:
Catapults are ranged units and, as all ranged units, they are supposed to attack from distance going to detriement of their health(they only have 100 hp) / armor and accuracy. Towers with range increase tech (expecially if supported by an outpost) are able to attack them in particular iberian towers that inflict higher damage than regular towers due garrison capacity. Since towers are able to attack them, soldiers trying to repair catapults will be damaged aswell making the repair even harder. There is a Seleucid Hero who decreases building health by 20%, by the way, since the aura range of that hero cover 70mt, such hero is forced to be under enemy fire in order to attack with catapults and benefit of the aura effect.
Cost:
They cost 350 stone each which is actually the highest cost of resources for a siege.
Weakness:
Rams, elephants, champions can easly destroy catapults (we are talking about few hits) due the patch/dispatch time and their slow movement speed. Sword champions expecially destroy catapults in 2 - 3 hits.
Slow Movement:
Infantry can reach catapults too easly due their slow patch time giving time to enemy infantry reach it and destroy it and for reaching i mean that, expecially without outpost vision range increase, it is really hard to move catapult before the enemy reach it, expecially talking about cavalry. The catapult would not move fast enough for escaping anyway..
Accuracy:
As any ranged units, they are exposed to an accuracy factor which reduces the siege effectiveness if compared to close-quarter sieges. There could be a tech that increases catapults accuracy, there is one in the fortress for Bolt Shooter only.
Summing all those points, i think that catapults aren't worth to train due their high cost and weakness. My experience is that the catapults can be rescued only if they are attacking close to the own fortress and garrisoning them into it when the enemy appears from the fog of war. However in the most of cases champions of fast units destroy them anyway giving no chance to save them. For their population / resources cost, they are really not worth to train, unless playing naval maps. A player should be able to retreat catapult without risk to lose it unless the enemy uses cavalry in order to reach it so fast to don't give no time for a patch, in this way catapult could have more "survivability".
Replay attached to the post will show some of the points i listed above.
-
4
-
-
Map: can't remember
Players: too sleepy to write a list
Description: Game lasted almost 5 hours(game timer) and i was pretty busy with an iberian player. I learnt that catapults can almost be destroyed by iberian towers. the gran finale is epic.
-
1
-
-
Map: Mainland
Players: Defenderbenny, Grugnas
Effective slinger attack made most of damage, no control of the iron mines made me lose
-
1
-
-
Mercenaries were experienced warriors hired in times of war, not intended be hired gathering resources, so they could start from rank 2 (or maybe at rank 3 with an extra malus on gathering resources and more training time) and inspire nearby units to get +15% experience in battle. They could be trained starting from phase 2, as most civs, avoiding confusion granting a melee and ranged defence in phase 1 without relying on a rare resource.
-
5 hours ago, elexis said:
r19055 reduces the +25% aura to +20%, uses lower case everywhere and fixes the Armor levels string.
Modifying auras from integer to percent can be a nice solution to keep differences between Champions and Warrior Citizen
-
Actually i did few test with champions trying to reduce champion infantry spearmen's attack speed and they are still effective even the modify. The reason why spearmen deserve a nerf is because if you do a 1 v 1 between sword and spear champions, they spearmen will always survive with around 20 hp most of the times, dispite the fact that ordinary warrior citizen swordmen will survive with that amount of hp in a fight vs warrior-citizen spearmen. My intent is to give more chances to sword relaied civilities such Celtics, Mauryans, Seleucids. What's the a21 problems in my thuoghts:
Macedonians vs Spartans:
Actually in a single unit fight, despite the Sparta historical fame and data in game, a Spartan champion infantry spearmen would survive with 1 or 2 hp.
In a group fight Sparta will win the fight with no problem since their 50 bonus hp are slightly more helpful than the +1 armor and +20 hp of macedonians Silver Shield.
- Training Comparison:
Where is the problem, then? The problem insight those 2 techs is that actually Spartan "The Agoge" tech increases the train time for spear infantry of 10% for a total of 33 seconds per champion to be trained in a special building that costs 200 stone and 200 iron per building and if, for example, you would be able to fast train spartan champions from 5 buildings you could just spend 1000 stone + 1000 iron for 5 special buildings that is equal to the cost of macedonian fortress + the Silver Shield tech. And they will still train slower than macedonians considering the macedonians techs Agema + Conscription!
- Heroes:
Leonidas has a nice potential since he is supposed the most famous spartan hero, by the way in the game he isn't that powerful at all.
Why? Leonida has a +20% attack damage for his Champion soldiers that is too low if compared to other heroes like Marcellus(Rome +5 attack damage for ALL units) Boudicca and Philip II of Macedon who grants +5 Attack Damage to his champions. Since the Leonidas aura gets stronger the more techs you unlock for your infantry units but it will grant less than +5 attack damage with both blacksmiths upgrades since 25% of 15.8 lower than 5 (it is 3,95)! it will be useful only if you take the fortress tech that is hard with a lower number of workers in late game, really late game.
- Conclusion:
The spartan civility
bonusof -10% maximum population isn't really worth it due the fact that Macedonians can do the same Sparta's job without a population penaltySparta is supposed to have the strongest infantry in the game because they were a warborn civility, they only rely on infantry to win games. Macedonians can count on an arsenal of sieges and still have the second, if not the best, infantry champion spearmen in the game.
Sword Champion based civilities (Celtics in particular):
Usually people points at Britons as an Aggressive civility, by the way i really don't know why since they have swordmen champions who are weaker than champion infantry spearmen. They build faster because their buildings have lower health and they have slingers, by the way mass champion trains require the same time as any other civility as result that in a scenario where britons and another civility fight with only spearmen champions, britons would lose.
- They cost more iron than spearmen:
+25 iron than spearmen and they are weaker. Spearmen cost +25 wood than swordmen by the way the wood is a common exchanged resource in the market.
- They are not effective against cavalry:
Spearmen have 3x damage to cavalry units while swordmen have not.
Actually i tried to modify some files nerfing the champion spearmen attack speed from 0.75 down to 0.90 attack per second and it works great because spartans will still win against sword champions such mauryan champions with their +2 attack damage tech, and it will give higher chance to Sword Champion relied civilities to win fights.
Also is to notice that champion spearmen with this attack speed reduction are still effective, following logic they should perform 1 attack per second being able to win fights with hero auras benefits, by the way not all civlities with spear infantry champions have heroes with useful auras in battles, so 0.90 would be better.
Pikemen:
Actually pikemen are too slow in movement compared to other units. A movement speed increase would be nice for civilities that rely on ranged units to grow eco as Macedonians and Ptolemaics.
Pikemen Champions move slower than normal units. Actually pikemen movement speed is 6 and pikemen champions movement speed is 7. Chasing cavalry, growing economy or getting in to the battlefield with the rest of the army requires more time than any other unit.
Attached to the post are the modified files. thanks for your time.
Thanks for reading and have fun.
EDIT: Persian spearmen champions will be weaker than actually they already are and it is a side effect. I'll think a solution about that.
-
2
-
-
2 star units means that skirtai would lose their peculiarity. I'd prefer a slightly higher iron cost to a rank downgrade since skirtai aren't a must to train units, you can grow your eco without them anyway. Skirtai are useful in battles, so i'd train them when i need strong units to defend/attack. Downgrading them to 2 stars would be a big disadvantage
-
1
-
-
Hello, I opened a thread to discuss about units balancement and other changes that could change the tactic choice of units during the games.
Archers lack of accuracy in this alpha (21), and this issue change the strategic position of your units when you are facing the enemy in a battlefield because the accuracy increases as the distance is lower. Moving your units on a hill is more a malus than an advantage due the fact that accuracy would be even worst, considering that arrows have a chance to miss when enemy troops move (and this is an ok feature, far different from accuracy lack). This would solve the archer weakness and the strength of elephants over the rams. It seems that buildings accuracy is not affacted by distance, they never miss a hit.
Champion swordmen are the ultimate forces to use in battle, they are supposed to be the strongest infantry at your service when you have to defend a siege or a building from the enemy infantry. Ordinary swordmen are way stronger than an ordinary spearmen because they have 0.25 attack speed and 0.5 hack damage more than their counterpart while champion swordmen and champion spearmen share the same identical stats (in terms of numbers, it is clear that spearmen damage is divided in hack and pierce damage) and thats not good because it makes champion spearmen a far better option due their 3x damage vs cavalry. A solution would be an attack speed nerf for spearmen from 0.75 to 1 sec per attack, granting the superiority to swordmen in the battlefield when you face infantry.
Cavalry Spearmen are supposed to be effective when you decide to mine the enemy economy due their charge that can be really good option when you decide to hit and run, by the way, when you decide to face cavalry with swords with cavalry spearmen, it becomes a problem because cavalry swordmen are much more effective due their fast attack speed (0,75 sec vs 3.5 for spears) making them a wiser choice over spearmen for a metal cost. A solution would be to increase cavalry with spear's attack speed avoiding players to only train sword cavalry due their obvious advantage over the other cavalry choices.
those are just little tips I wanted to share with you and I'll be glad to read your thoughts about the topic. I feel sorry for my english grammar massacre, have a nice day
[A21] Sieges
in Gameplay Testing
Posted
Hi again, this time I decided to open a thread that will regroup all sieges discussions in order to keep the subforum clean and avoiding multiple threads that basically could share some stuff into.
I'll start with talking about Siege Tower and Ram garrison/ungarrison possibility. Historically those 2 sieges are meant to transport units by garrisoning them through an entrance in the back of those sieges, letting units protect the engine. In game, the siege will unload units from its front preventing the siege to move and blocking its way to the target. Actually this is very annoying because in order to protect the ram, the units will block the siege, expecially if it is already near to hit an enemy building, making it vulnerable from behind anyway, with the result that the ram can be still be reached and destroyed without the possibility that the ram could actually do any damage at all.
For the siege tower, the main issue is that its damage is low and it is preferable to garrison it with melee units in order to prevent nearby enemy units to hit the siege tower because garrisoning the siege with ranged units wouldn't be effective as using those units when ungarrisoned. So, in order to maximize the damage, since the units garrisoned inside are melee, retiring the tower and ungarrison units when the enemy is close to it seems reasonable, by the way, since the siege tower unload units in its front, the result is that the unloaded units will just block the siege tower.
You can find a replay attached where you can see what I'm talking about. 16:XX min i train the siege towers 18:XX units prevent the retreat, 20:XX this time is even more evedent. Enjoy the video
Siege Tower:
the siege tower is aviable only for Ptolems and Macedonians.
The siege tower is a siege (really??) that should be able to capture buildings or, at least, being able to crush buildings as any siege out there. Where are the issues?
The cost doesn't fit its performance.
Projectile Limit: the tower benefits from 10 garrisoned units only of a 20 units limit, it means that a siege tower is easier to capture if a player wants to optimize the number of units in the battlefield.
It can't capture buildings: it could be able to capture building since it was historically used to open a way into the enemy walls when there were no more Suicidal Uruk'hai Berserker aviable
.
Low Damage: this needs a bit more explaination. The siege tower actually has only 2.5 crush damage per projectile shooted every 2 seconds. There is a tech aviable into the fortress which is supposed to increase the crush damage by 25% for all the sieges, tech that IMHO doesn't give any rilevant advantage to boolt shooters and siege towers (25% of 2,5 isn't really a big deal). 20 slingers can actually outdamage a siege tower, expecially because of the 10 projectiles limit, and they could even capture buildings, eventually.
The only way to use that siege in a very effective way is/was to use the Macedonian hero Demetrios who increases the crush damage of sieges by +10 globally, without any range constraint, Aura that will be changed to +15% crush damage (if i remember right) in the alpha 22 and, as you can imagine, 15% of 2,5 isn't a big deal.
The funny thing is that Demetrios can boost the damage of the siege tower from 2,5 crush damage to 12,5, privilege not aviable for ptolemaics (didn't test siege towers with Cleopatra aura yet).
As you can notice in the attached replay, Catapults have 5 sec attack rate, so slow that a siege tower with Demetrios aura can outdamage them by far (even rams out damage catapults easly) and how a siege tower boosted by that aura are able crush briton buildings really easy, maybe too easy, if compared to their base damage.
Ram:
[blank]
Catapult: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21631-a21-catapults/Boolt Shooter:
[blank]
2017-01-30_0011.rar