BreakfastBurrito_007

People have been trying to bridge the gap between champions and CS for a long time. I think this is necessary because not all civs will have a champion counter to an enemy champion unit. If a player is able to "invest" in their CS, then there is more room for military unit improvement beyond the robotic purchase of all the blacksmith upgrades. I liked @wowgetoffyourcellphone's idea because of the way you could choose a unit to upgrade and because of its ability to help differentiate civs. Also, if you wanted to go back to training rank 1 units for eco, you could not. I must say that I like this idea more, because it is a more direct player choice that "adds" training onto units after they come out of production building. There is much less abusability with this mechanism than with purchasing a rank 2 or rank 3 upgrade that then affects the unit cost. A player could get all the units and then purchase the upgrades, so they would then have a powerful army without having to pay very much of the rank 2-altered unit cost. I have a few issues with barracks/stable unit training. It is a slow mechanic that has no extra cost and makes players lazy with how they upgrade their units. It is rarely used, and it is also hard to tell how much xp/rank the units inside have gained. Some ideas of mine about the training building: 3 facilities: cavalry training, ranged infantry training, melee infantry training. 300 stone 300 wood cost and footprint size of military colony. All civs should have access to these but they should have different amounts of available rank limits for different units. garrison limit of 20, garrisoned units train rank 3 limit should be allowed in phase 3 unless it could become unique ability of some civ(s) rate food cost per unit they gotta eat more while training) flat metal cost for operating whole facility (paying the instructors). rank 1-->2 food rate per unit:0.25 food/s. rank 2-->3: 0.5 food/s. instructor cost for rank 1-->2 and 2-->3 5 metal per second (cavalry have double the food rate cost) rank 0 to rank 1 in 45s, rank 2 to 3 in 1.5 minute (half-upgraded units stop early, but do not effect cost rates) garrison units (all of 1 type) click train button, they go to next rank (some kind of applause sound when they are done training) healers and elephants would garrison in their own training buildings (maybe change garrison limit for ele stable) and require 10 metal cost per second per facility as well as 2 food per second per unit cost. ideas for civ bonuses: reduced time to train, buildable in phase 1, some civ has 1.5x garrison space per training building I feel this would be a great macro element to add to the game and give players a lot of opportunities to use this for a variety of strategies. It would also help bridge the power divide between champions and CS. @RadiotrainingTo be fair, I don't see the need to have special building animations per unit. The artwork could just mean taking a stable or barracks, enlarging it, and adding some key distinguishing features.

At this point, I like the way towers work. You can build them strategically to deny resources and you can prevent an enemy from having a long term presence underneath it. The towers do not function to deny entry to the area that they can shoot because they don’t kill units fast enough.

@Dizaka That seems like a great idea, especially if it is based off of their proximity rather than a particular formation, since formations are not always the best way to move around in game. This would add some element of skill in the positioning of pikemen, especially if you bring attack-ground into the equation. With both features, a player using pikemen needs to decide between the compactness of their pikes versus the volume of ranged units they protect from attack-ground, as well as how far to advance forward.

This is a healthy environment right? How does it take less skill to do what @LetswaveaBook did? I think it is worth noting how successful @LetswaveaBook's rush was and also how even it was despite the advantage he gained from it. Also, his civ choice (seles) is perhaps the best civ to counter the carth rush, because its military colonies are quite cheap, and the combination of spearmen/pikemen/javlineers is much better to counter merc swordcav than spearmen and archers will counter merc spearcav, so in each fight where he included CS infantry, he had an advantage from that. @hyperion have you personally tried playing against this in a TG or 1v1?

@alre this is true, it is possible to lose once training those mercs. However, any strategy to counter them requires way more resources, way more skill just to stay alive, rather than turn over the fight. In a TG, it will make you disadvantaged compared to the carth players' allies.

I actually really like this idea of his, because it gives an extra way for players to respond to changes in enemy unit composition. A player would want to be careful with the units they select for rank 2 or rank 3, because they would want to leave some at home for eco. I have not heard many people talk about it in opposition or support, so if you are interested go to "all civs are my favorite" and see how you like it.

@ValihrAnt is leading a thread for coming up with civilization economic bonuses. For example, one idea for kushite eco bonus is farms and corrals are 50% cheaper.

By this you mean that skirmishers can beat either pikes or spears 1 to 1? I agree this is a problem that won't be addressed by attack-ground. Would you prefer just reducing the damage of skirmishers? (I guess we could also reduce skirm cav damage too since they beat spearcav in 1 to 1 also)

The main thing making archers underpowered in a25 is their inability to target ranged units like skirmishers because the skirms are behind some melee units. This effectively means their range advantage is nearly useless. Since they do so much less damage, they would be unable to kill melee inf as fast as skirms can, so skirms are a better unit. If you add attack-ground into the equation, it could be possible to begin killing enemy skirms before they can even attack your melee units. This adds variability and balancing to gameplay without even changing unit stats. @alre the main reason champions are massed (champion cavalry) is because there is no way to beat them with CS units, even spearmen. I would be in support of adding back champion training to forts with no unlock upgrade, and adding 500 food 500 wood and 500 metal to the barracks or stable training upgrades. If this were the case, you would usually see a few champions added to mostly CS or merc armies, and would see massed champions only after a long game. Also I recommend should go to the "all civs are my favorite" page and share their thoughts on @wowgetoffyourcellphone's ideas for civ differentiation there. I am particularly interested in the new kinds of military upgrades that would raise the cost and gather rate of the unit they affect (buy rank 2 for spearmen), these upgrades could be offered in different amounts to different units per civilization.

Hmm, perhaps 100 hp in p1 and +50 per phase

Another example of a possible mechanic that boosts immersion, and improves gameplay all in one: attack-ground for ranged units Also melee unit charging (much further from implementable I think)

I would say this is pretty similar to both what @Dizaka had brought up for ideas and agrees with how civs behave in-game.

The only way I could see this happening would be to give the sparta the option to train hoplites 1 at a time for 30 seconds each from the cc to prevent them from booming women while making hoplites for free, this way the 0 cost of hoplites would also be an opportunity cost of the CS and women that could not be trained in the meantime. This feature is one that would be either not strong enough and no one would ever use or too strong and it would be OP.

I feel a26 could be a great improvement if we are able to add and then balance out some good civ differentiation options like those from @Dizaka and an attack-ground feature for ranged units. Bringing AOE catapults back alongside attack-ground feature would be awesome.

I feel this might go to far for sparta, but I like the "make him ride a horse" upgrade idea for some civs. Could you please elaborate on this one? Is this a new merc? @Dizaka I think these are great ideas overall, and I like the vision for each civ. There are a couple things here and there that seem a little op.

We have swordcav, which are considered slightly op by many people. If we buff spearcav rather than nerf swordcav, more cavalry units become more powerful, which by weighted average makes cavalry as a class of unit more powerful. What problems would arise? In my opinion, buffing the counter to other cav would make them annoyingly effective at stopping other cavalry during early game, and leave them simply worse than swordcavalry for everything else. I think -1 armor for swordcavalry would be fine.

I know that we are all looking to diversify civilizations, and I think it is great to focus the civilization on what they do best. However, I think we should avoid narrowing the options available to that civ. Britons, for example: The problem with this is it would make player behavior predictable. I prefer giving britons a great early game, and an average late game. If I can sum up my views on civs in one sentence it is: civilisations should not have playstyles, civilizations should have options, players should make the playstyles. Does this make sense? I think it is good to give each civ a few things they are great at, but not limit player choices because they feel the need to do what is "best" for that civ. I give an example of a bad civ for uniqueness/options balance in a25: Carthaginians. Carthage has one strategy that is "the best", it is almost impossible to counter. Uniqueness should come from unique options and not entire unique strategies.

35 years is nothing compared to the time wasted by hosting a game that will then be ddosed XD.

Assuming those cavalry are fixed from their current state right? Right now they are needing a -2 reduction in hack/pierce armor types, and probably also a small reduction in damage. Right now they don't need a bonus XD.

@Dizaka I like this idea as well, since it could break the usual boom or rush continuum. However, we need to be careful with starting resoures and starting buidlings. I would advocate for an upgrade unlocking champions in p1 to have a substantial food and wood cost as well as metal, since this would mean you need to have a food/ wood economic presence before taking metal and spamming champions. This reduces the effectiveness of the earliest merc rushes. Units that I could forsee as mercs in p1, skirmisher from ptol, slinger from carthage, and maybe macemen from kush in p1; javelin cavalry are a lot more problematic in p1 in my opinion. As for p2 champions, I think they should be the same stats as they are in p3, since the player is probably already making economic sacrifices in p2 to make those champs, he/she should be able to get the value they purchased. That being written, I don't think any cavalry champions should be available in p2, given that p2 is so transitional, it would be game ending to lose 20 women on food at that time because of the loss of population growth momentum, especially if it costs your enemy only 5-6 champions, which would not slow down the economy greatly.

Swordcavalry would still be better at most other things if spearcav were to have better DPS against swordcav after accounting for the 1.75x. I argue that instead of increasing spear damage, we reduce swordcav armor. If we increase spear damage, it would make cavalry even better overall, which I don't think we need. That way we would still train swordcav for dealing lots of damage to non-spear/pike infantry, and we would train spearcav to try to counter cavalry as well as resist spears/pikes slightly better than swordcav (not by killing them fast like we see with carth merc, but by not dying to them super quickly). I think this leaves a varied and diverse set of possibilities to use each unit, and prevents cavalry from becoming more op. @chrstgtr does this seem like a good compromise?

10 metal has always been pretty trivial, even in a24. It is a great point to raise, @LetswaveaBook Having better armor and better attack is too much, and leaves spearcav to 1) be spammed 2) fail to counter other cavalry (not enough dps) We don't want spearcavalry to have the same total armor and same total attack because that would be boring. I feel swordcavalry should have less armor and more dps, and spearcavalry less dps and more overall armor. A justification could be that sword usage requires more flexibility, and extra armor can impede that. Having different stats help to differentiate their roles as units. Keep in mind that this swordcav vs spearcav power imbalance is also a problem at the champion level, where consular bodyguard are head and shoulders over the rest.

Maybe Naked fanatic but if they costed the same lol. @Dizaka A while ago I had been discussing p1 mercenaries with the hopes to break the usual rush/ boom continuum. I think the (1) and (3) solution would see them to be better earlier and versus smaller groups of units, since they would not have enough time to rank up despite the rank up advantage.

I feel that adding upgrade based unit cost to the blacksmith would lead to the blacksmith losing some of its distinction from the other type of upgrades (the rank ones). There are a multitude of upgrades in the blacksmith, and those upgrades affect multiple units, so the units could get a bit economically unpredictable. If the blacksmith upgrades add cost to the unit, then I predict one of two things will happen: people will swallow the cost and just get all the upgrades anyway. people will be confused as to which upgrades to get to avoid cost increases on particular units. I think the blacksmith should remain an economically safe upgrade tool, if you know what I mean, with the hard choices lying with the (rank techs). The main reason I put those long research times was to prevent those techs from saving people who are in the process of losing. I think it should be a tool of strategy and not a crutch.

I think this (rank upgrades) is a great dimension to add to the game. It can go some lengths to distinguish booming versus military empowerment. I think there should be a longer term economic cost to these upgrades, and it I wonder if you would support the possibility that getting all of these upgrades for all units is actually a strategic failure. rank 2/3 units get worse at gathering, and an enemies rank 2/3 unit composition is beating your rank 2/3 composition, but your units in your base gathering res are also rank 2, so you are losing overall. I have been wondering what these Advanced, and Elite upgrades should cost: Advanced: 300 food 300 wood 200 metal 1:45 research time, adds 5 metal cost (and +25 food for cav) to unit and 10% training time Elite: 500 food 500 wood 500 metal 2:00 research time, adds another 10 metal cost (and +40 food for cav) to unit and further 20% training time This adds the economic question for the player: do I want to get blacksmith upgrades, postpone the choices for advanced/elite upgrades, and maintain my eco, or do I want to get this upgrade that empowers my units, but add an economic liability to them. Getting these upgrades is basically a "bet" on that unit, and since the upgrade has a long time to research, the timing could be complicated, so you could not always get it as an emergency reaction. Should any civs get a p1 advanced rank upgrade, or would this be to easy to do a rush with, despite the large cost and economic situation? My thinking is that champions could stay being trained at barracks, but upgrade to enable it could add some extra food and some metal and stone cost, by default train at fort with no unlock. I certainly agree that in a25 it is too easy to mass champions at a sudden time, but I think there should be a way to go: non-rank-upgraded CS, +champions strategy. @Dizaka @chrstgtr @ValihrAnt @Palaiologos @LetswaveaBook what do you think about @wowgetoffyourcellphone's concept, and my ideas on those upgrades?