Yekaterina

Friendly fire is disabled. I can enable it if you want.

What is Padawan Designer? OK. Slingers are cheap troops who do a lot of damage to units, but are poorly armoured and very inaccurate. The only exception is Roman Legions who also know how to use a sling. Thanks for the inspiration. I got some ideas: Very cheap cost: 10 wood, 10 stone, 40 food. Low accuracy: spread > 4.0 High damage: 5.5 < pierce < 14 (must be less than skirmishers though) Walks at the same speed as any other ranged units.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I gave slingers 5.5 pierce and 2.5 crush. 21 of them did not manage to smash an empty Roman CC. It had almost half health left when all 21 were dead. But I see your point, crush is too OP for them. Suggestion: 1 hack, 5.5 pierce, 0.5 crush.

You are correct. I shall increase their pierce damage instead, or increase their rate of fire. What do you think about giving them hack damage? This saves buildings but allows them to damage siege weapons slightly.

Ranged infantry is afraid of crush damage. Stones hurled by slingers can crush stuff.

What do you think about slingers? I personally would recommend low accuracy but high damage. You can't aim that well with a swinging sling but it surely packs a ton of damage. I will give it a high spread but also high pierce and crush.

If I remember correctly the archers had 5.7 pierce back in A23, which equates to 3.8 damage per second. Speed nerf is a good idea. I also gave archers and slingers minimum ranges because they cannot be used as a melee weapon. You can't really bash someone in the head with a bow nor whip your enemy with a a sling. Archers are really vulnerable to my modified spearmen. I made it such that in close quarter, sword >= spear > skrimisher > sling > archer. However archers have greater range than skirmishers so that is their advantage. I can also make them fire more frequently but dealing less damage per hit. This would make micromanaging your troops important and can really distinguish the pros from nubs.

archer vs archer.webm

I have increased the spread of archer projectile to 2.5 and changed the damage per second to 4.34 as opposed to the previous 4.46. The archers fire more frequently but each arrow does less damage. Greater spread means open order formation is more important; if an enemy archer misses your unit they are less likely to injure your unit standing next to their target. Can the balancing advisors discuss whether this is nerfed enough or do we need more nerf? XML file content: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Entity parent="template_unit_infantry_ranged"> <Attack> <Ranged> <AttackName>Bow</AttackName> <Damage> <Hack>0</Hack> <Pierce>4.34</Pierce> <Crush>0</Crush> </Damage> <MaxRange>65</MaxRange> <MinRange>0</MinRange> <PrepareTime>1000</PrepareTime> <RepeatTime>1000</RepeatTime> <Delay>0</Delay> <Projectile> <Speed>100.0</Speed> <Spread>2.5</Spread> <Gravity>9.81</Gravity> <FriendlyFire>false</FriendlyFire> <LaunchPoint y="3"/> </Projectile> <PreferredClasses datatype="tokens">Human</PreferredClasses> </Ranged> </Attack> <Cost> <Resources> <food>50</food> <wood>50</wood> </Resources> </Cost> <Identity> <VisibleClasses datatype="tokens">Archer</VisibleClasses> <GenericName>Archer</GenericName> </Identity> <Loot> <wood>5</wood> </Loot> <Resistance> <Entity> <Damage> <Hack>1</Hack> <Pierce>1</Pierce> <Crush>0</Crush> </Damage> </Entity> </Resistance> <Sound> <SoundGroups> <attack_impact_ranged>attack/impact/arrow_impact.xml</attack_impact_ranged> <attack_ranged>attack/weapon/bow_attack.xml</attack_ranged> </SoundGroups> </Sound> <UnitMotion> <WalkSpeed op="mul">1.2</WalkSpeed> </UnitMotion> </Entity>

elef vs spear.webm Spears counter 3x elephant Elephant armour has been dropped to 5 pierce 5 hack 10 crush We can also give all non-elephant civs spearmen 5x bonus and restore the elephant armour. @LetswaveaBook

tower vs archer.webm This one is 1 fully loaded tower vs 50 archers.

elef vs tower.webm This is a demonstration of modified elephants vs modified towers. The elephant does 100 crush and 100 pierce damage. The tower lost all crush and hack armour but has its health boosted to 800.

I am beginning to think that we should keep the worker ele. Reducing the total population of Mauryans would be a good nerf and they won't be too OP. If we can also nerf the elephants then that would really balance out. I am experimenting with tweaking the XML files to find an optimum.

I will post a video demonstration very shortly

OK, seems like you are fine with elephant attack, we should just change the price. From your comparison to champions it seems that we should at least triple their price. This will prevent players from spamming elephants and give siege weapons a chance. I have tweaked the stat to make siege towers travel at 4.5m/s instead of the original 7.2m/s. I completely removed their crush and hack armour but increased their health slightly to balance. Right now they shoot many arrows but each arrow does very tiny damage. The range is 75 meters because of the additional height bonus.

I am not sure about formations, but I can tweak the stats from the XML files and test it out locally. To be honest the only formation I use is close order

Siege towers are already vulnerable to sword cavalry. To take it further we can give them no hack and crush armour. Slingers do 5.5 pierce and no crush. This is not great against siege. We should change it to 3 crush and 1 pierce, so that they are better against siege. I also noticed that ranged infantry do not have a crush resistance but spearmen have a crush resistance of 5. Perhaps we should give ranged infantry some crush resistance as well? If slingers can take on siege towers then Celts and Athens are sorted. To stop the Mauryan archers we can use a mixture of pikemen and skirmishers. The archers will be bulldozed by pikemen syntagma. The only catch is if Mauryan player mixes some spear and sword into their formation. In this case pikes die instantly and the strategy fails. The solution is to give pikemen more hack and crush armour, not just pierce. We can boost the spear and pikes just for Hellenic civs and Celts, excluding archer civs from the bonus. I can edit the XML files to make it so. The Mauryan elephants are harder to deal with. If we give spear, pike and skirmishers bonus against elephants then that would be smooth. We can also limit it to non-elephant civs. I also noticed something interesting: all archer civs are elephant civs...

@Lion.Kanzen @Stan` I have tripled the attack speed of the spearman but also decreased its damage by two-thirds (1 hack, 1 pierce). The damage per second is the same but he has faster reaction, which is reasonable in battle. ele vs 3 spear.webm

elef vs spear.webm This is a demonstration of 1 spearman vs 1 Mauryan elephant. I had healers to prevent it from dying. The attack rate of the spearman was 1500ms, I can't remember the default attack rate. I would imaging they can attack quite quickly because they have been training to stab people for their whole professional career I suggest maybe 500ms? But to balance that we decrease the damage.

@Lion.Kanzen should this apply to just Greeks or all spearmen?

Yes, I will send you a video

I edited the xml file for infantry spearman to give it 5x bonus against elephants. I changed the pierce to 5 and hack to 3, because I think spearmen should be pretty decent at melee. Also very low prepare time because the dudes should be ready for battle. Hope this will help: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Entity parent="template_unit_infantry_melee"> <Attack> <Melee> <AttackName>Spear</AttackName> <Damage> <Hack>3</Hack> <Pierce>5</Pierce> <Crush>0</Crush> </Damage> <MaxRange>4</MaxRange> <PrepareTime>50</PrepareTime> <RepeatTime>1500</RepeatTime> <Bonuses> <BonusCavMelee> <Classes>Cavalry</Classes> <Multiplier>3.0</Multiplier> <Classes>Elephant</Classes> <Multiplier>5.0</Multiplier> </BonusCavMelee> </Bonuses> <PreferredClasses datatype="tokens">Human</PreferredClasses> </Melee> </Attack> <Cost> <Resources> <wood>50</wood> </Resources> </Cost> <Identity> <GenericName>Spearman</GenericName> <Tooltip>Counters: 3× vs Cavalry.</Tooltip> <VisibleClasses datatype="tokens">Spearman</VisibleClasses> </Identity> <Loot> <wood>5</wood> </Loot> <Resistance> <Entity> <Damage> <Hack>5</Hack> <Pierce>5</Pierce> <Crush>5</Crush> </Damage> </Entity> </Resistance> <Sound> <SoundGroups> <attack_melee>attack/weapon/spear_attack.xml</attack_melee> </SoundGroups> </Sound> </Entity>

Very nice idea. This would boost the Greeks a lot. Do you think the Chinese need something like this? They have neither rams nor elephants. What about Romans? I guess they can do pretty well at defending against elephants it's just they lack a bit of attacking options now considering catapults are nerfed.

OP!2021-04-27 17-45-36.mkv

That is basically Delenda Est... 300 stone for barracks is too expensive for 300 starting resource. Most players in A24 build more than 2 barracks. I think current cost for barracks is great. Moving champions back to fortress is great, but I would still like siege workshops. It would be a disaster to train both of them from the same building. Will archery range be in A25? Stable cost is nice either way Not sure what you mean by wooden tower. If it can count as a town phase structure, that would be very good news.