chrstgtr

It’s also fixed to this specific alpha. Snowballing has been around for a long time. This thread is evidence of that. There are underlying factors that contribute to that, which have nothing to do with cav/champs being too strong. It would be wise to listen to some of the old heads that have been around for a longer time that have learned the (often painful) lessons of previous alphas

There's clearly something between the game being a miserable turtle system and feeble defensive buildings that do little to secure a base and render many siege units superfluous. In fact, that system has previously existed.

Defensive buildings aren't meant to just get kills. Defensive buildings are primarily meant to protect you from losing your base to an invading army. Defensive buildings perform very poorly in this aspect. Siege is rarely built because defensive buildings are so poor at their primary purpose. The game hasn't always been this way. Something is clearly wrong.

Couple thoughts: Other factors contributing to snowballing: Promotion feature--this makes it very hard to fight back even if you have equal numbers. This is especially true if there are healers, which aren't much a factor in this alpha but have been in the past. Weak defensive building--I think this is the biggest factor in the current alpha. The current alpha has weak defensive buildings. As a result, players have a more difficult time going back to their safe space to regain strength. Cav dominance--cav are the dominate meta for a lot of reasons. But it's difficult to repop with cav because of cost, slow train times, and the likelihood of continued harassment. I would focus efforts on mitigating the factors that contribute to snowballing. You're right that it has a snowball effect but I don't find it to be problematic. This seems to be one of things where the advantage is earned. It is also most pronounced in early/mid game, which I am fine with since it is hard to kill a CC before p3. I don't find this a problem at all. It's relatively low numbers. (I actually think loot should be a bigger part of the game) Agree. Without commenting on the merits of these two, I think these are entirely separate proposals that may or may not have some impact on snowballing. You should also consider that, while these will be available to defending players, they will also be available to attacking players, so the snowball effect may become greater with them too.

The funny thing about forums is that they keep a written record of every user’s actions. The sad part is that you post at more than 13x the rate of the people you mock for posting too much.

Shocker. Although I agree it’s a waste of time I could care less how this function works

Understood. But someone else suggested they were weak relative to cost and Dakara, I think, was responding from a balance perspective. Siege Towers are weird because they were important historically, so they’re in the game, but it’s difficult to accurately portray that historical usage in the current game. Personally, I think siege towers should be revamped to provide special building capturing capabilities, which would be a nod to their historical usage. Anyways, I think what you suggested has been suggested before. I don’t recall why it didn’t go anywhere, though.

Siege towers are decent right now. Their main downside is that they are slow and the current meta is cav. that’s not to say they’re perfect—I don’t think anyone love the way they work now—but being “weak” isn’t a real reason to change them unless you want to change every other “slow” unit.

I don't like this tech. It lacks originality and is OP. I would prefer it to be replaced with something entirely different. I don't get this either. Basically the nerf is to make them slower and lower their special health tech? That's fine, i guess, relative to other cav. But all melee champ cav remains OP vs inf.

You’re arguing against a straw man. Very few people want to eliminate things the way you’re saying and most that do get ignored (for good reason). The loudest the multiplayer community ever was was right after a24 got released and a lot of that was because features got eliminated. Note, when that happened a lot of SPs and devs initially dismissed the complaints before coming around later. The most you hear now from the MP community now is that champ cav is OP, which no one has really found solution to. The other recent thing I’ve heard is reza saying fana is OP to which most people told him he was wrong. MPs will regularly say things like certain techs like “spies”are useless but even there it’s not like the SP is saying how great they are.

I like the way you have it now. (I generally don’t like techs that have a negative effect on something else but I recognize that’s mostly a personal pet peeve)

100% agree. I actually suggested something similar the other day in another thread for how we could improve Ptol’s library. I don’t think it has to be a paired tech per se but it makes a lot of sense for it to be one. Maybe these meta techs are places where paired techs work well in general. Nice to see you implemented something similar.

“Purists” say that because people often come with assumptions that are just plain wrong. You can see that in this thread. Multiplayers often have this perspective because they naturally see more strategies than any single player can. In one game, a multiplayer can see 8 different strategies while a single player can only see one. Multiplayers also push one another to become better in a way that doesn’t exist with SP. It’s not unreasonable to say learn what already exists instead of crowing for something “new” that already existed and might break the game for others.

I think they theoretically could make sense. For example, if you started out as a base Hellenic civ that you couple develop into Athens or Sparta with unique features then that would be pretty cool. But for simple techs I think it takes away from the cat and mouse game where players adjust their strategies in response to the other because tech pairs, by definition, eliminate future choices. One of the main problems I have is that people want new, novel features and never consider whether those novel features actually make any sense.

Which is actually an appropriate suggestion if the problem he say exists actually existed. I think more expensive eco techs with shorter train times probably make sense at some phase(s). Right now, you get little benefit by forgoing techs to phase faster and that shouldn’t be the case. My big point is that tech pairs are a really awful “fix” to basically any problem.

No, YOU miss the point. Players often oscillate between getting a tech in one game and forging it in the next. You are complaining about a lack of strategies when you don’t use ones that are already available. Literally none of this requires a tech pair instead of just adding more techs. When you research a tech matters. You all both looking at this from a one dimensional view of if it can be researched and ignore all timing dimensions.

Even at baseline gather rate, you would still be much slower if everyone else has an access to a tech to make berries faster. Tech pairs sole purpose is to eliminate this choice, which is why I entirely dislike them. Everyone doesn’t research every technology. Even for the techs that most people do get, they don’t get them at the same time. I suggest you look inward and question whether you are yet to discover other strategies that other players have. And, if the situation you describe did occur (which it hasn’t) then you could just adjust cost/benefits so that it doesn’t happen every time for every player.

It’s also why I dislike how you can only train a hero once. Different heroes might be best at different phases of the game and I shouldn’t lose the ability to adjust back and forth within the game. I can understand if your enemy kills your hero but I am talking about a situation where I voluntarily want to change heroes back and forth.

It isn’t. You have lost the choice to do that and the strategy associated with that. Every civ has the berry tech. It was in the game for many alphas. If I chose the hunting tech, which make berry gathering slow, and you later discover that there are a lot of harvestable berries on the map then you will be much slower than all other players that did the berry tech. Pareto is if you just add a hunting tech that makes hunting faster without eliminating the ability to be berries. As a principle matter, I don’t like anything that hinders your ability to adjust later. Tech pairs by definition do that

But it’s not. It eliminates a road that you can take. For example, the Maurya berry or hunting tech can ruin you. If you pick the berry tech and it turns out the map is super hunt heavy and everyone goes cav hunting then you’re in trouble. Opposite is true too. it’s only Pareto if it doesn’t take away other options. I see little reason to have tech pairs as opposed to bust adding a tech

If you win by min 10 then, yes. You are showing your ignorance in this thread. Again, I suggest you play multiplayer.

I hate these. They make the game rigid so that you only have one way to play and can’t adjust to meet current game situations.

Choice Choice (I also don’t research it at either of these times, most of the time) ——- Just because you always research a tech doesn’t mean that there isn’t a choice involved in when you research it. You have a very simplistic view of the game that doesn’t represent the myriad of other choices out there. You can rush, you can phase up fast, you can skip techs that you don’t need, you can skip eco techs in favor or military techs, you can skip techs in favor or getting more pop, you can skip techs in favor of more buildings If things were as simple as you say everyone would have more or less the same economy, which isn’t obviously true.

Thanks for the explanation. That’s more appealing than how you initially explained it and I could be in favor of something along the lines of what you say above. One suggestion I would have is to add a reduction in research time tech. That could open up some new build orders. For example, a player could choose to build only one blacksmith since the techs will research faster, so more diverse buildings will now be built. Alternatively, a player could build multiple blacksmiths and use them to guarantee that they have the best military techs for a p2 push. I think it probably also makes sense to make the library available in p1. That way players could really dive into the economic vs military strategy in p2. Otherwise p2 remains a transitory phase without a lot of action.