BreakfastBurrito_007

Well truthfully, this is the simplest advice. If they are 100-150 pop and you are max pop, you will be able to get all full ugprades and op everything and smash. If you were trololololol you could go for a ludicrous amount of slingers and simply crush all his buildings from range XD.

Early in phase two, the turtler has only sentry towers which are easy to capture. If these players prepare for a rush every time, then you could just boom to p2, quickly get the first military upgrades and attack with as many units as you can. Another thing you could do is build a forward base in p2 and build scout towers so that you can see most of his territory. Then, when you both reach p3, you will see where he places his first fort, and you send all men to deny it. This is a big problem for the turtler, because they want to get the fort up, but also not lose all of their troops who are building it.

That would make sense to me, as when units climb hills, they do not slow down in horizontal velocity components, which indicates that the vertical dimension does not affect the pathfinders. This results in a greater overall velocity when climbing the hill. This is not a problem, it looks weird but it is in almost every game.

Double mauryans on the left side made it very hard lol. Also, a mod should be made where the eles say "hey guyssss" when they attack.

no. Mercenary strategies often use women because even if they are 60% as efficient as men, it is easy to have 60% more of them. I am not sure, but I would assume a large, flowing garment to be harder to animate for mining/chopping animations than other garments.

We did not reach a conclusion in that discussion, but the current patch after some more discussion for them is https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP26667 The changes were reducing pierce damage, and reducing their accuracy. There will be more opportunities to beat them if this change is put through. I was one of the people who was against a plain damage nerf. But after I saw players using firecav as infantry hiding behind walls of spearmen, I knew that the damage simply had to be reduced. Damage went from 30 to 25, which is not horrible, and with their great inaccuracy, they will have a harder time versus other cavalry, or even slingers/archers who could snipe them with proper micro.

@SevdaI think they would still be op as infantry units due to the targeting behavior of ranged units (melee first). I agree that that would be a nerf, and that being cavalry is the main way they are able to be so easily massed. There is an older and more involved thread on balancing the unit, and I think it will remain a cavalry unit in a26.

If you opponent is not iberians, I suggest making a few of your own cav and raiding farmers instead of engaging enemy cavalry (you will be outnumbered). Killing farmers does 2 things: reduces food income, and increases food expense because they need to train new women for farms. Any food that your enemy does not have is food they can't spend on cavalry. If your opponent is distracted, then even just 12-20 cav are enough to wipe out food economy. A hero can be used the same way because they usually kill women in 1 hit. After this you force your enemy to make infantry by attacking him with your own infantry, and if he has only stables and just 1-2 barracks he will lose for sure. I know cav is a bit op this alpha, and acceleration hopefully can be leveraged to make them less survivable. I also think melee cav should have a debuff versus palisades, but this is separate discussion.

Cavalry can carry fuel.

Trickle from the beginning sounds good too. It could go to upgrades or mercs. What is interesting to me is how much metal rate would be balanced compared to ptol bonus?

Maybe it could be combined with allowing the civs mercs to be trained from the market if their ally is mace.

Yea that’s pretty mean of Trashy. It of course is no problem that you don’t play perfectly, this can be adjusted for in balancing and can make for perfectly fun games. For Trashy himself, I would say that he should give advice, and communicate early and not be a jerk if things go poorly.

Macedonians are very powerful this alpha, they get great skirmcav mercenaries and skirm+pike infantry which is great. They have a hero that buffs siege, and their crossbow champions can be very useful to counter pikemen's meat shield effect. It is actually not that common to use the market exploit because (in my experience) it is not consistent, sometimes I turned 1000 stone into 1700 metal and other times I turned 5000 of each into 7000 of each.

If you trade back and forth between the same resources, the rate behavior increases, so it is pretty easy to generate resources.

There’s no way that’s not a bug tho right? Surely we can come up with a more creative and more balanced hero aura than -10 hp/second. This will either be too little range—> useless or too much range—> game-breaking. What is the historical context for the hero? Wei Qing was a leader who remarkably rose from poverty to take on his roles. Perhaps this can “inspire” his troops and they rank up 1.5x as fast as normal. I think this is way more balanced and has implications for the units you select for his armies.

Perhaps at 2/3 the rate of ptol food bonus since it “wood” be more OP in early game. ^weirdjoke for you lol I definitely think we need competitive and creative economic team bonuses. Britons Persians Carthage Athens

Good point. Sometimes, the power of particular units is hidden by trends in gameplay. Before fall 2021 few players did "merc rushes" with cav or inf and at the same time there were lots of complaints about consular bodyguard. I think after all the merc-cav proliferation, Romans are less able than ever to get their champions because they need to fight earlier in defense or offense because of extra p2 activity that is caused by mercenary attacks. I would argue that consular bodyguard are still OP (too much armor), its just we don't see them very often due to mercs. I am not saying that merc rushes should not exist (they are very exciting/fun), just that it obscures other balance issues.

For TGs at least ( I am a bing bong who does not play 1v1), Mace is stronger overall because the merc is more OP in general, in terms of counter-pike, mace have a great option with the crossbows, while seles best one I think is mercenary archer. Macedonians biggest downside I think is their lack of antiram, which can make for situations that are very unfortunate. I like the seleucid cavalry especially with hero, but they have no "bread" to spread their melee cav champions over, like mace and romans do. I have a lot of fun with seles but mace win more I think.

+minimap OP

I can't take that much hate XD. iber players get used to walls so it does not slow them down.

I liked firecav in a24. It was not as easy as it is now since you had to trade to get them and also navigate a sea of fortresses and towers with overlapping ranges, as well as being blocked by enemy units. Back and forth would go on for 20-30 minutes without a real attack, then ddos XD.

What if the woman and spartan go in at the same time? Maybe just keep track of your units and beware of the value/cost of entering the walls if you sneak in. I have never seen anyone get this heated about iber walls. In my opinion, the only OP thing about iber walls is that you can keep all your farms inside there and you are safe from raiding in late game which happens in about 80% of TGs. If cav become less survivable in a26, then this will be less important. Firecav need nerf, we already know. I have played some iberians with firecav banned and I can say it is great fun. + I love trapping people in walls and it 1000% is a good mechanic.

@Yekaterinawolollwow, the player, was named after this Monk conversion sound feature from AoE. It became a meme.

If chariots are slower than most cav it would probably be ok.

Is there any way to limit the degree range of the "turret" function of those chariots. I was thinking front 180 degrees would be nice, since that way they would not win running directly away. Making them from siege workshop would be interesting, and I think if they are stationary, the guy driving the chariot could also be a javelineer or archer. I am interested in this topic and I think it would be nice to do it for Axemen too, (or are they already their own class?) Right now axemen are basically swords with a little crush dmg. Axe is easier to learn than sword, so maybe less xp to rank?