LetswaveaBook

@Lion.Kanzen, your request has been heard, buy I would first like to know which maps are consider bad and need to be filtered out.

True, but a mercenary rush might be a good option to diversify civs. Civilizations have different units and that inherently makes that some rushes are available to some civilizations while others are not. I think the aim should be to create different rush options and the mercenary rush can be one of them. I also played a game against Yekaterina, who played just as if it was a normal game (also thanks to Yekaterina for trying the mod). I had a very good starting berries, with two fruit trees close to them. I was playing Seleucids against Ptolemies and at minute 10:30 I had allready a military colony at her door and 25 advanced mercenary archers were getting their first kills. On the flip side, she collected 16815 resources while I had 14000 at that point. The game ended in p2 with a successful mercenary rush. 2021-05-30_0005.zip @BreakfastBurrito_007, I understand that I am moving the conversation towards a p2 mercenary rush. If you prefer to stick to the p1 mercenary idea, I would be able to move the p2 mercenary rush to a different topic, such that your ideas of a p1 mercenary rush can be heard. My main question is why not make the required tech be p2?

The main reason why I am not in favor of a tech is the following. Suppose you get to p2 and there is such a tech, you are still limited by the tech. So they are only viable if you make the tech. If you limit them to p2, then it gets useful for nearly everyone, since everyone gets to p2. The second thing I wanted to point out is that I did not aim mercenaries to be viable in p1. I wanted to make them a good option in p2. I think by making them faster to train and cheaper expertise in war, they should be viable as a CS replacement. Only testing can really show if they are viable under these conditions.

High metal cost means spam in p1. If a cavalry merc cost 80 metal and 40 food. Then you mine 20 metal and get 4 cavalry mercenaries for 160 food. If you add some citizen cavalry to that, you will be able to get a very good army. When your opponent only has a few citizen soldiers, 4 extra mercenaries can really make a difference. You did not invest anything substantial. You mined some metal. That is all. Also, advance rank is probably more powerful than you think. I like the advanced rank being locked behind a slight cost. If the embassy trains mercenaries very fast, then why bother training them from barracks?

Thanks for your observations. I think we misunderstood each other. There are a few things I want to highlight. •Mercenaires need 48seconds to train in p1 for infantry and 64 for cavalry. In p2 these times get reduced to 2 seconds and 2.66. So that means once you reach p2, you can train them very fast. In p1, you can train some of them and because of their low numbers, they are only useful for scouting or finding unprotected women or building foundations. I dislike the idea of an upgrade to enable them. I think such an upgrade would be counter productive. First we want to make them more useful and after that we limit them by introducing a technology. I think it is better to put them in p2. Here p2 is the technology required to train them fast. For your final observation I have to notice that the barracks can´t train mercenaries in p1. They are available in the stable(Macedonians), Iberian Embassy and the blemmye camp. The strategy I wanted to enable is the following: A strategy where you only start with 1 barracks and aim click p2 when you have 80 to 110 units. Once you are in p2, you can produce a lot of mercenaries very fast. Then you research expertise in war. Which gives you an army of advanced mercenaries ready to attack.

@Stan` are minor balance changes still possible after the feature freeze?

I would prefer another method. 1. someone has an idea. 2. someone transfers those ideas into a mod. 3. we playtest these mods. 4 We judge it pros can cons. 5. we compare the different aspect of different mods. 6. We optimize on what we have learnt. 7. A patch needs to be made. I think this method has some charm. The biggest issue seems to me that we need to find people who want to do some player vs. player testing.

We can discuss the matter, but the only real way to test how things balance the meta is to test it out with a mod. So I made a mod. I think the tech should cost 500 food and 500 wood, if you can´t guess its name, you can check the mod below. I do consider the starting metal as a problem for p1 mercenaries, so therefore they should be limited by some tech. I agree with you on the fact that a tech to unlock mercenaries could be useful. I added some things to the mod to support aggression. Features of the mod: •wood gather rate reduced by 0.10, food gather rate reduced by 0.10 (This means women/cavalry get ¨cheaper¨ and citizen soldiers stay at about the same ¨cost¨, which should encourage people to make more women/cavalry and that would favor aggression). •speed upgrade for cavalry is reduced in cost to 200f,100m. This might be useful for cavalry rushes. From an economic viewpoint it means that 10% speed is about +10% gather rates at long distances. The 100m is left over after doing the p1 wood/food techs. So the speed upgrade tech seems to be worth it if you have around 15 cavalry. •I like the concept of age of empires 2, where you getting to the next phase means a significant step in military power. Therefore I added +10%attack/health to all soldiers once p2 is reached. •Mercenaires need 48seconds to train in p1 for infantry and 64 for cavalry. In p2 these times get reduced to 2 seconds and 2.66. • Infantry mercenaries cost 35 food and 45 metal and cavalry mercenaires cost 60 metal and 60 food. •Expertise in war costs 250 metal and need 20 seconds to research. It now triples the train time (This means that you can train mercenaries very fast, until you decide you want to scarify train rate for military power). • civ specific changes about mercenaries(Athens: +10% metal gather rate in p2, Carthage: can build an Iberian embassy and mercenaries in p1&expertise in war, Kush: can build an Blemmye camp and mercenaries in p1, Macedon: Suited for cavalry rushed and can train mercenary cavalry in p1, Ptolemies: Fantastic eco and Ptolemy 1, Seleucids: start now with an extra mercenary swordsmen and military colony is as fast at producing mercenaries 2 times and researching expertise in war). •Misc: archers have 2.5 spread and Persian axe cavalry in p1. I also reduced the metal cost of p2/p3 eco and blacksmith techs to make them more accessible and to provide more metal to the players. I did test the mod in 1v1s and it seems that for Carthage and Kush, you can get about 20 mercenaries out before minute 10. From my tests, I tend to conclude that these changes allow you to get sufficient numbers of mercenaries to deal a really good blow as at this point the opponent seems to have 40-50 citizen soldier scatter around his base. What I tested was a strategy where you only produce 1 barracks and aim click p2 when you have 80 to 110 units. Once you are in p2, you can produce a lot of mercenaries very fast. Then you research expertise in war, which gives coupled with the +10% attack/health bonus some very strong units. I suppose it really allows for a deadly early p2 attack when you opponent is late to p2. (Also I played a 4v4 last night from the pocket position as Britons. I rushed the opposing flank with cavalry and 12 slingers which was effective and it seems show that passive pockets could get to see their allies destroyed. I have to remark that one player was 1700+ and the receiving end was mid 1300s) Each of these modded mercenary civilizations will affect the meta in different ways. I would like if there would be some players that try these features in player vs player. Any test results would be appreciated. mercenary_mod.zip

and still people use Cleopatra a lot. I think getting p3 early and then using ptolemy I to get a lot of advanced mercenaries is a valid strategy.

I was talking about Ptolemy 1, which can be trained from the CC for extra comfort. Ptolemy 1 still has that bonus and it also affects food cost. The only downside is that those mercenary cavalry can only be trained from the military colony.

The best cavalry hero is the one that makes them 35% cheaper

If I may do a suggestion, such a tech might also allow military colonies, Carthagian embassies, temples to heal your wounded units, blacksmiths, a market to trade some extra metal, melee citizen cavalry and some extra upgrades. It would be good that after this tech you could train mercenaries very fast, like in 4 seconds and overwhelm an unsuspecting opponent. If we only could think of a name and cost for such a tech...

That is at least which I would say. I don´t see any reason for a particular mercenary to be trainable in p1. If you could name a concrete example I could give my thoughts on it, but if you don´t specify (give the type of mercenary, its stats and its costs) the proposal, it will be impossible to discuss it in detail. We need to keep in mind that giving players an extra option is only impactful if there is good incentive to go for that option, on the other hand I would prefer to restrict the real goodies to p2. Those are two conflicting desires and without knowing the details, it is impossible to judge these desires against each other. Also I feel like if you are able to use the 300 starting metal for your rush, then your rush would be to difficult to stop if your opponent does not have access to his own mercenaries (especially if the rusher gets a free healer). Also we need to consider if mercenaries in p1 deliver continuous action to p1 or whether they just cause you to spend 300 metal at the start. I suspect it will only cause some action at the start where you spend 300 metal for mercenaries and after that do not bother with making more of them.

I think each civ should have it strengths in 1v1s and each civ should have a strategy they excel in. There always will be civs that a considered better than others, but each one should have its charms and a fair chance.

First I would like to share my view of capturable mercenary camps: In 1v1, there are two options. The first is that both players get access to different mercenary camps with different mercenaries, which seems unfair. If players have different civilizations and get the same mercenary camps with the same mercenaries, it is also unfair. In the second case it is because if both players get the same mercenaries, one civilization might get mercenaries that his civilization all ready has or does not have any use for, while the other might have great benefit of the type of mercenaries provided. This problem is exaggerated by mounted archers being imbalanced in p1 (especially if they are affected by archery tradition). I am thus not a big fan of capturable mercenary camps, but if it is optional there are no problems. I would like to ① make aggressive play more rewarding, also I would like to ② make going to p2 more rewarding. Moving mercenaries to p1 does not align well with ②. I think there are solution to making aggressive play more rewarding without moving mercenaries to p1. Also I would like to add that in current 1v1 balance it can be useful to make 2 or 3 extra cavalry super early and try to find exposed women before your opponent mass trains citizen soldiers. Similarly, I think advanced rank mercenaries are powerful, but it is mainly the lack of metal availability and the expense of expertise in war that stops them from being competitive. So I don´t think we are far away from a good balance, these strategies just need a tiny little extra. I would prefer a solution of the type that gives p2 good options to be aggressive. Good p2 mercenary balance would be a useful tool for that, so I would prefer to use our improved mercenary balance to enhance p2.

First of all, it is a very good way to dump excess food. Secondly, women should in some sense be the preferred booming units, as they are cheaper. Thirdly, building a barracks requires 150 seconds to build, which should be added to the cost. In P1, the metal cost can be disregarded as you start with 300 metal and there are few other options to use it anyway in p1(exceptions are Rome/Iberia). There is no reason to bank up that 100 metal till p2.

A CC needs 33 seconds or so to train 5 women. 5 houses need 30 seconds to train 5 women. So in that sense, the tech gives as much production as a CC if you have at least 5 houses.

I agree that booming with women from houses does give a significant better eco, however the lead in eco isn´t overly decisive if my memory serves me well. It is not like booming gives a huge advantage over turtling.

That is just a sign of a stable mind! I think this is a fair point.

This situation seems to be natural state of the citizen concept. If you attack your opponent, the opponent will tend to have more units at his base than those in your attacking force. Sometimes players make some cavalry very early and rush, hoping that you can find a group of women that are ill protected. However as the game progresses, there will be less unprotected women. However there is something we could do to help rushing and encouraging people to make more women. There are 3 strategies: -booming with women: Only food is needed for the units. -cavalry rush-- Mainly food is needed for the units. -turtling with citizen soldiers and sentry towers: requires as much wood as food for the units. So if we would want to make turtling less common, we could increase food gathering rates and reduce wood gathering rates. So I would be in favor of such changes.

@BreakfastBurrito_007 This might be off topic, but did you try to make a mod where stone piles contain less stone and maps are bigger? Because it is unclear to me if endless 4v4s are caused by a result of wrong settings or whether they are caused by unit/structure imbalance. If you wanted to, I could try to make a mod where stone piles contains less stone and try if I can make the map bigger.

I would like to give some results on the balance and it seems like ranged units still have a major role. I played a game against warfaze(persians) as Spartans. It showed that ranged units can still do good damage. The deciding factor did not seem military might of either archers or skiritai but rather that my boom was more efficient almost from the start. With equal economies, I think Spartans vs. Persians will be a very fun match under these conditions. Archers have the range advantage, but a vulnerable to being overrun. I think that gives a fun balance. Also here is the game so you can see it yourself. 2021-05-23_0006.zip

The amount of damage take seems to be 0.9^A, where A is the armor value. If it is indeed that exact formula, then negative values won´t be a problem.

Champion Cavalry can be trained in p2. The upgrade is in p3, but the upgrade is no requirement for training the units.

I played in the game mention by StarAtt and I did get errors too. As macedonians, I was unable to create siege. There is a more generic issue with the mod. Even though you can train some champions in p2, I am not entirely convinced you would actually want to do so. Also there seems to be an unlock champion cavalry upgrade for macedonians in p3, even though you do not need the upgrade. 2021-05-23_0002.zip