BreakfastBurrito_007

Perhaps, this is the best way to do those "anti building" units. Since you gave swordsmen a speed boost in your run-down, perhaps clubs/axes would not get that speed and instead be the same speed as other melee inf. I like these ideas and would be happy to participate in testing for them if it were a mod. Although I am a bit concerned about the extensive use of counters. Counters are great for particular unit roles, but I am not sure about creating particular roles out of originally multipurpose units, few civs get all of those basic units, so the problems of not having a counter would be very frequent. I also like the idea of champions not being massively powerful but closer to the skiritai cost/power proportion. Not sure how I feel about the population amounts, if it were implemented we would probably want to adjust house occupancy size and start using a bigger pop size in games. I do think pop capacity is an under-utilized balancing tool though. I also think a 1 population size for women and traders compared to 2 for inf would cause them to dominate eco in all games, turning matches into raid-offs. kiting effect sounds OP and/or artificial. I think people cause enough frustration with manual control of those.

Its a lot easier to understand why slingers have crush damage if you understood or had any appreciation for the gameplay role they play with their unique ability to take out light structures from a range. You can't just come in to a game and say everything is wrong because you have an idea about what is "common", as if that is some great merit. While I like the current damage system, I would not be opposed to counters for particular situations. For example: palisades can hardly be used to slow down melee cavalry to stop raids, therefore give 0.3x counter for melee cav vs palisades.

This is something I have suggested before. 0.3x multiplier versus melee cavalry damage to palisade walls. I think it is currently too easy to raid with cavalry and the counter play is usually to make your own cavalry. Players often build palisade walls to restrict movement of raiding javelin cavalry, and this works fairly well. The issue is that sword cavalry can take down palisades so quickly that infantry can hardly catch up to deal any damage. Making palisades able to slow down all varieties of cavalry within the base would allow palisades to be genuinely useful. The counter would not make palisades OP of course and it would not make them frustrating in late game (a24+pathfinders). Melee infantry would be a better choice to break palisades in rushes and so it could give some value to infantry rushes (they have been bad in a25).

Units that have crush damage as part of their attack are quite weak due to their overall dps being reduced versus regular units. What if we reconsidered the crush armor values of some units rather than them all being 20?

What is your least favorite balance thing in Aoe2? I saw a video from Spirit of the Law where he talked about how attack-move might be a bit op. He said it gives so much extra speed to archers while they move and shoot that it makes it too hard for them to be targeted by melee pathfinding.

Yea. I agree the similarities are definitely not enough to argue ripoff, especially considering these things have been discussed as concepts in probably a few games. Seeing a few of these things in the same expansion was pretty interesting though.

Forgot. lol. Its in there now.

Some interesting similarities to 0ad things. In the video there are: buildings to build along trade routes, which heal and speed up traders. Garrisoning livestock in mills to generate food at a slow rate. Rath Chariots (can switch weapons from archer to swordsmen) elephants that are used more as rams than general battle units. Hmmmm. Tell me what you think.

I agree with @faction02 that the citizen soldier system makes this a much more complicated thing to balance. There is still plenty of unfinished business with this next alpha like CS skirmcav. @AIEND I would be fine with such a system and would test a mod if one was made. I just think it is very important to consider the current anti-building units and the overall balance of strategies.

The system in aoe3 and 4 is primarily to satisfy people who care a lot about realism in the game, it does not add very much gameplay value. As far as designing one for 0ad I would say be careful not to displace the roles of units such as slingers, club men,hyrcanian cavalry, and axemen and firecav. These units take on buildings in unique situations and adding a basic arson capability to most units would render these specialties useless. Another issue is different units resistance to cc arrows. Obviously skirmishers will die in a fraction of the time it takes a pikeman to die from cc arrows. If the arson mechanic is balanced for spearmen, then it will be OP for pikemen who won’t take losses while burning the building.

The whole world known to themselves? so basically the whole world is territory they control.

Excuse me, did you just say:

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.