chrstgtr

This. Before the decay rate of walls was unified with other buildings, iber used to be annoying even after killing it because you would get "trapped" in walls of a city you already destroyed/captured. I lost so many games because walls and pathfinding of a defeated iber player made be useless for 2 minutes while I moved to the next player and the other side of my team died.

The point other people are making is that they see automation as a cheat and your opinion on whether it is (or isn't) cheating doesn't matter. Both opinions are obviously reasonable. But only the person in favor of automation actually gets a choice on whether it is used--you get to decide whether to "cheat" and your enemy, who believe automation is cheating, can't do anything to stop you.

This actually makes a ton of sense and something that I would like to see in vanilla. It decreases the incentive to snipe (good because that is just micro intensive) and allows for actual strategy (as opposed to just automation) because ideal armies will have varying stance composition. This is also especially useful when fighting under towers/forts/CCs

Feels like a false choice. If the features are actually good then they should be in EA. To be honest, I don't see a need for a "sequel" when everything worthwhile can just be integrated into EA (yeah, I know the timeframe restriction exists for EA, but that is false construction that doesn't need to exist).

Yeah, I'm not entirely opposed to it. I would like just something that gives more control to the player. I also wouldn't want the max number to be set so low that it effectively automates the games. But that automating effect begins to take pretty quickly if it is intended to do anything like avoid having an entire army focus on a dancing hero.

Sure, but one of the insights from @real_tabasco_sauce is that this isn't necessarily "bad" behavior and the "problem" we are trying to solve doesn't really exist. I agree with him on both points. I'm just pointing out that there is potentially a better solution out there.

Agree--it hasn't been for a couple of years now. Agree. This would only take away control from the player. At best, it runs the risk of automating the game. Seems like the better solution is to revisit an "attack area" feature that would provide all the same, and more, benefits to the player without automating the game.

Can't you just make it shaded like the way queued units are now? That introduced nothing new

I see zero downside to this.

I think what you say is fine and is an obvious next step (at least for some civs), but another option remains: modify current values of CS units and women. Women could be made cheaper or produce more quickly. Women gather rates could increase and/or men rates could decrease. Etc. Personally, I would prefer this approach for all (or at least most) civs and then giving a few select civs, like Sparta, laborers/slaves as a civ differentiator.

I agree that in the future the community mod should do as you suggest. As for immediately doing what you suggest, there are adoption hurdles associated with a changing mods, and I think there is a general desire to not do too many updates unless we have to (because of adoption fatigue issues). Doing as you request would require all players to download a new version of the community mod, which may or may not happen, and would cause confusion within the playing base as to what is new in the new version of the mod. A lot of people have a lot of ideas they want to launch in the next iteration of the community mod. Given timing, however, it's probably easier to just wait until "coming soon" comes.

Bolts aren’t impacted here. They’re different from units as are buildings. Even if everything you say is true, then it still wouldn’t apply to something like an ele. Also, there’s a reason why bolts were banned in a22 in MP games and were changed in a23. You’re missing the point in that everything changes whenever you change unit stats. It’s absurd to suggest that somehow range unit dps is an exception to that rule

That's what I thought, but just wanted to make sure. Anyways, the values look about right to me--I probably would've done .5 m/s more for melee inf and done slightly different stuff for cav, but it looks directionally correct and good enough for community mod.

ttk? Also, this looks like it could make sense to me. Will be good in community mod to do real tests with

You could also just increase health of all units. Still need to worry about units destroying siege/buildings, though. Personally, I would decrease attack, but it's something to consider

Who said anything about range’s ability to destroy buildings, siege, etc. Buildings/siege will become relatively stronger because range units will no longer be able to clear the field. That tower that used to just be a pest before you could kill surrounding enemy units and then capture it could now be able to turn a battle because battles will last as much as twice as long. Remember how you used to be able to counter bolt shooters by killing enemy units that were guarding the bolt shooter and then attacking the bolt shooter with melee? Guess what, now you can’t quickly kill the smaller army that is defending the bolt shooter, so you can’t approach the bolt shooter with your melee, and the bolt shooter now has no counter and is OP. You can’t change a stat and think it will have no side effect. Especially when you acknowledge that inverse of the same stat does have a side effect. It’s why @real_tabasco_sauce modified attack dmg and armor in opposite directions instead of just increasing attack dmg.

It introduces a ton side effects--units vs builds, units vs siege, units vs units, etc. Basically the same you see by doing the opposite with melee.

Agree. I generally prefer healing range during fights because they’re easier to level up. Generally prefer healing melee in between fights.

This is a fair reply. My response, though, is that you are still thinking within the current confines which requires lines of units fighting straight up. My whole point is that it doesn't need to be that way. That there can (and should be) other strategic positioning and maneuvering. How you move your units should matter. How you position your units should matter. And we know that those strategic considerations are possible because they regularly happen with cav I'll be on later to talk live/test if you want. But I think the two paragraphs above finally crystalize what we've been discussing and I imagine we are at an impasse

Because I very quickly and easily showed you why this doesn't have to be the case. You can't just disregard math and practical function of units. We also know from actual experience that healing heroes are some of the least impactful units in actual fights, especially on melee units.

Because no one is describing how fights actually look different. I get it--the mechanics within a fight will be different because melee will be dealing more dmg. But that doesn't actually change the meta, which is: masses of armies with just enough spammed melee to absorb dmg in the middle. In other words, the fights will still look the same with a steady stream of melee units walking into the middle to die Generally speaking, I agree these sorts of things are a problem. I am reasonably convinced that melee need a rebalance along the lines that you propose. But I don't see how your proposal actually addresses the meat shield problem. And if the meat shield meta isn't addressed then the units will just need rebalancing again once the meat shield issue is addressed, and each time there is a rebalancing it causes huge problems. In other words, I don't think doing what you propose will fix the big meat shield problem and your idea will need to be re-fixed as soon as the meat shield problem is actually addressed. That is why I say I think you are putting the cart before the horse here.

This isn't mathematically true. For example, if a unit has 100 health and gets healed at a rate of 5 hp/s but gets damaged at a rate of -30 hp/s. After 4 seconds the unit will die with or without a healer. I'm just asking why you say these things. Good idea.

What basis do you have for this? One of the problems is that fights are spam based now--melee go to the center to die and as a result melee units don't live for a long time. And melee units that need healing are those that are already targeted by enemy (i.e., units that need healing are already scheduled to die soon). Just not sure that an incremental 10h or whatever to a front line melee unit will actually extend their life. Happy to hear that you've tested and proven me wrong, thouhg

No, this doesn't change anything. It just creates an incentive to spam just as many melee units as your enemy and then snipe. That doesn't change the meta. The middle is still a spam pit of death. While the real work that will decide the battle is sniping of range units. That's still a meat shield. Edit: the point is to introduce a tactic where units don't just exist to die while range units in the back do the decisive work.

Again, how does increasing melee's dps and decreasing melee's armor change the meat shield meta instead of just changing how quickly the meat shield dies? How does it change the incentive to have just enough melee units in the middle to absorb damage if melee cannot reach range units, which are dealing dmg. How can melee win fights if players will just spam enough, so that a fight cannot be won in the middle melee? But you aren't changing that! Melee will become more fragile and range will kill melee units quicker. The middle will still be dominated by a spam of units that just exist to die. You can't get to this effect unless you can make the fight something other than spamming units to their death in the middle. Spamming units to their death is just another way to describe a meat shield. Right now, we're rearranging numbers without saying how that changes actual play/tactics.