chrstgtr

I’ve been saying this for awhile. It’s logically consistent with what we have (farther range units move slowest) and should also help balance by slowing melee to engage

I took the post to mean that you could do some sort of upgrades once at level 2. Kind of like centurions are at level 3. Not sure what upgrade there should be, though Agree with the second part. I took the post to mean that you could do some sort of upgrades once at level 2. Kind of like centurions are at level 3. Not sure what upgrade there should be, though Agree with the second part. Edit: I also question whether experiment where mercs producing at rank 2 has failed. It's caused huge balance issues and isn't particularly interesting (see @wowgetoffyourcellphone above). I wonder if we should try a different route. Maybe making merc produce super quickly. I've also thought that since mercs fight for the highest bidder that maybe they should be convertible (i.e., you can bribe a portion of the opposing army to change sides and fight for you. I'm not sure if the game even supports that, though. Convertible units would prevent pure spam strategies if mercs get trained super quickly.

Why not decrease the range? I agree crossbows are very good at sniping, but they're pretty bad otherwise. They are very weak against melee in straight up fights, move slowly, and have lower dps than javs/slings. Decreasing range slightly would mean that sniping is less effective because units won't be able to just stand in one place and won't be able to (as effectively) out range other units. Decreasing range also won't greatly harm the players that don't micro (i.e., it won't make an otherwise weak (no-sniping) unit worse). China feels like a civ that should have a lot of pop. I would rather get crossbow sniping problem fixed than take away the pop bonus. Also, as I previously said, crossbows are only actually good when used for sniping, so a pop nerf would hurt the non-sniping players. I otherwise mostly agree with your analysis.

Good point. I kind of like the uniqueness of it. But it makes it easier to concentrate your army focus. I would suggest keeping separate, but raising the cost of each.

Hear, hear!

Yeah, my larger point is that beyond a rough inspiration, the game does a lot of historical cherry picking and inconsistently introduces arbitrary restrictions. With the above said, Mayans??? Or, for me, anyone but another Hellenistic civ

But why? Caesar’s contemporaries exist. There is Vercin. There is Cleopatra. Other civs include a wider date range—Ptol includes their first ruler and their last ruler, which begins earlier and ends later than Rome’s Punic Wars depiction. Why restrict Rome only to the Punic Wars period? To me, 0AD civs should depict the greatest period of those civilizations. For a civ like Rome, that extends up through Caesar. Without Caesar, without Augustus, without Marcus Aurelius Rome just feels incomplete. Yeah, maybe some of that should be built out in a separate Roman Empire civ, but even if that happens, where does Caesar exist? Would Rome’s depiction really need to be that different if it included Caesar?

champ cav are quite common (and I would say too strong). For infantry, I completely agree. I would add a fourth choice and make them more accessible via shorter train times and/or eliminating the research required to unlock them

it’s also somewhat date range As I’ve said before, though, I don’t care much for that restriction. But it would be way after anything we currently have

For me, the first Scythians & Xiongnu and Suebians/Germans sound interesting. I’m a little tired of all the greek civs (not to mention the Alex the Great successors). Others may disagree. EDIT: I know it wasn’t mentioned, but I think it would be cool to get some post 1AD civs in the game. The game is currently lacking a lot (completely?) in that area despite being intended as a game that captures 500 BC to 500 AD. Roman Empire seems like an obvious candidate. Barbarian civs like the Vandals also seem obvious. A little outside that range, but I think some early Islamic conquests would be cool too. Showing content like the Islamic empire (or early mesoamerican) stuff might also help expand the player the base.

I would like some totally fresh content. We should be able to round Han out in the next alpha or two. Are any of the new options already built out? (Haven’t looked at DE in forever) Your thought on the options?

I can confirm it also happens to apple tres.

I have nothing to add here, but I just wanted to say welcome back and congrats.

Agree. I find the rice paddies super annoying

I just haven't seen them, which makes me concerned that they are virtually unattainable. But you're right that barrack garrisoning may be a way to do it. I wouldn't mind an xp trickle, which would help make centurions more attainable. To be honest, I miss how camps used to also heal garrisoned units, but I already think that camps are very strong as p2 buildings.

I don’t know the answer, but something like centurions will amplify any underlying imbalances. As a way forward, we shouldn’t carve those imbalances out. Instead we should just fix whatever issues exist underneath. Otherwise, it gets really complicated and logically inconsistent. With that said, I welcome changes to champ Roman cav, which, in my opinion, is the best unit in the game

Do we have any place to actually discuss whether the items from the community mod should be implemented into a27? I think everything should get in. I would be in favor of slight tweaks to the CC radius expansion to make it smaller and making centurions more available somehow (still haven't seen one used).

+1 There are a lot of maps I don't like to place solely because of placement. This could really help address

I can see how that might be the case. But I can also see how the opposite would be true too. Have you run any tests?

But why? You can do crush that adjusts still. Doing it by armor here makes a problem where one doesn't exist. Yeah, I'm more concerned about range units taking them out first, though. I thought you said you wanted to keep melee/range balance? How does this keep it?

Let's have a vote. Do people prefer "strong hitting, incredible targeting" or "amazingly strong strikes"?

Ok that makes more sense. Thanks for bearing with me. I think it's a valid goal and one that makes sense for the community mod. I, however, see three main pitfalls right now. For the first one, I think you can make a slight adjustment to get rid of it before testing. For the second and third issues, I think you just have to test it. It should be a health nerf instead of an armor nerf. Otherwise units that rely on crush for damage, such as slingers, clubs, axes, and cata, will get relatively weaker (esp. clubs and axes, which are already so rarely used). Also, while changing armor for spear/sword is easy (because they have the same armor) it is hard for pike (because they have different pierce/hack armor values relative to their armor counterpart and relative to other melee units). Health is also just easier to deal with because it will make even changes across the board (instead of doing calculations for pike armor changes and possible crush armor changes). This will impact melee units' strength relative to defensive buildings because they will not be able to stand under buildings as long. I don't feel great about this, but I'm on board for testing it. You can't really adjust for this because any adjustment will also impact range units' survivability under defensive buildings. This will impact impact infantry's strength relative to cav. Right now, spear should be the counter to cav (query on whether that is actually true...). Making spear die faster will exacerbate any imbalances that exist for inf relative to cav. It also will outright make melee cav stronger relative to melee inf. This could be dealt with by adjusting cav health, but we've already seen proposals on that fail. Whatever you do to melee infantry I think has to be done to melee cav too because otherwise melee inf will get too big of a nerf relative to melee cav. Even if you do that, I think there might be some problems because of already existing imbalances. I don't feel great about this, but it's just something that has to be tested. What values are you thinking? I would want to keep the decreases in line with the increases so we can test if change actually adjusts the meta in a desirable way. Something like a 10% decrease to survivability and a 10% increase in attack? Maybe a 20%-20%? I wouldn't go as far as making melee dps equal to range dps because that would require like a 50% reduction in survivability, which would make them die really fast. Unlike everything included in previous community mods, I have no idea whether this will succeed. This is exactly the type of thing that I think should be tested in the mod, though.

So is the goal to keep melee's balance relative to other melee and keep melee's balance relative to range by decreasing survivability and increasing attack by corresponding amount? And to do this you propose to decrease pierce and hack armor by the same amount? I'm just trying to figure out your goals and why you are messing with armor instead of health. Edit:typo

I don't understand what your goal is. Is it to change melee's relative strength versus range, versus melee, or versus melee and range? If you just want melee to do be a glass cannon without changing the overall balance relative to other melee or range then you should just decrease health and leave armor unchanged. Messing with armor changes melee's strength relative to other unit classes and uses two variables to do what one cold do. Also, note that if you are going to make melee die faster then that will inevitably shift more strength to cav (unless there is a correspond change there--which already failed by vote).

You're starting to lose me. Some of this is inconsistent. I'm with you for a hack armor decrease (and a possible speed buff), but I don't understand the pierce armor decrease. And an attack damage increase seems like extra noise on top of armor changes, which will do the same thing in a more targeted manner. The same is true of players not getting melee attack, though, and the same thing happens when players do get upgrades. Melee units are just strong versus range units when the units actually engage. Getting them to engage has always been a problem. I'm not sure this is true. Running away still means you will lose a lot of units. But even if this is true, increasing attack damage won't change this--units will still run away. If this is true, isn't the fix then to also add melee speed buff (in addition to whatever else happens)? So, currently, is melee is fine versus range or not? This is inconsistent with the above. Isn't this the case now? If this wasn't true then why would there be any need for a change? Players could walk past meat shields now, but don't because it is too damaging. This already exists. Sniping is a response to "over-killing," where more units target an enemy than necessary to kill it. Over-killing will continue to exist with your proposal. Without micro, your proposal will make over-killing more common because units will have less armor. -------- I'm having trouble understanding why you think think pierce armor should change. It's difficult to follow what you are actually trying to respond to with respect to melee versus range. At once, you seem to be saying that melee is too weak versus range but also too strong versus range and then proposing to change everything. By changing multiple variables in opposite directions it makes the outcomes unpredictable. Either melee should be stronger versus range or it should be weaker versus range, but you seem to be saying it should be both stronger and weaker and the actual net outcome of proposed changes will be unknown. I'm also having difficult understanding by attack damage should increase. Decreasing armor effectively increases attack damage effectiveness, but can be more targeted (i.e., you can make attacks more effective versus melee or versus range). I don't understand why you want to change attack damage's effectiveness versus melee (via a decrease in hack armor), versus range (via a decrease in pierce armor), and versus both melee/range (via an increase melee attack). Why not just change the armor (of hack or pierce--which will let you more efficiently target effectiveness)?