LetswaveaBook

@borg- Can you give an explaination why the value of the food tickle for the persian ice house starts at 0.5 food per second? with a gain of 0.5 food per second, the ice house does not seem to me as a good investments. Later in the game, I know there is a technology, but I suppose we would want the ice house to be reasonable investment without the technology.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to the game. I hope you get some good games.

Thanks for the suggestion. I did some test in the A26 scenario editor. In 10v10, the spear cav win convincingly. Over 20 the result vary a lot and position is hugely important. Both sides can win with a third of their army remaining. In practical situation there likely will be some spear cav with pathing problems in a if numbers reach over 50. Not only the spear vs jav cav matchup is curious. Javelin infantry have only 1/2 times the HP of their cavalry javelineer (ignoring the cav health upgrade), but don't suffer from the 2x multiplier. In a 60v60 battle between spear cav and javelin infantry, the spear cavalry have the edge, but sometimes the infantry javelineers win. If we fight with infantry spearman vs. javelin infantry in numbers above 60, the javelineers convincingly win. Some would argue that this is desirable balance where players need a combination of both melee and ranged units. To me, this seems more like an ranged vs. melee problem. For me the game would be better balanced if the player with more ranged units would need more micro to get favourable engagements. I also think that in the early to mid game, javelin cavalry is fairly well balanced. So I would like any changes that affect that. Maybe removing the +10% health upgrade could be something. Rather than removing the health upgrade (which is unique as it is an upgrade in a different building than the blacksmith), I would prefer if the final armor upgrades in the blacksmith did not affect cavalry but they get the +10% health upgrade.

I hold the opinion that to properly test for balance it is better to play a 1v1

I failed to reproduce these result in the RC of a26, but I am not sure if I am on RC2

Depends on the specific buff. For example the auras of theatres stacks.

Camel rushes are mainly viable because the Ptolemaic player has a better economy and can create the camels in unmatched numbers. In the scenario editor I matched an infantry archer against an cavalry archer in a duel and my experience is that the infantry archer won more often than it lost. Cavalry are units with a bigger footprint and are easier to hit. This (partially) offsets their higher HP. If cavalry late game deathballs needed to be nerfed, it would rather suggest to remove the+10% health upgrade. Furthermore the extra vision probably affect cavalry more in the early game than in the late game. Also, the player with the most cavalry might not always be the one benefiting the most from the extra vision. If I had only half as much cavalry as my opponent, I would very much like my cavalry to see the enemy cavalry from a larger range and escape. I don't think that reducing their vision actually solves the problem you are aiming at. However since I haven't tested it I can't say if less vision for the cavalry makes the game better or worse.

I don't think the current values make it useless in competitive play. Currently it seems to me corralling only can be justified if you use the cavalry to collect the food soon. if you spend the food on livestock and you only gather them 2 minutes later, then you probably could have done something more useful than training livestock. With the current values, you can afford not to collect the livestock immediately and store them in the corral as until your cavalry comes around to collect their food. The fun in it is that it could help a well-planed cavalry build and it gives players another option to manage their economy.

@real_tabasco_sauce@BreakfastBurrito_007@Player of 0AD@alre@Dizaka@Philip the Swaggerless@Yekaterina@Micfild@Lion.Kanzen@chrstgtr@ValihrAnt@borg-, you currently have the roles of balancing advisors. Personally, I think the values are a little lower than they could be. However I think they are high enough to be an advantage in some niche builds. So for me the numbers would be acceptable. I would like to hear your thoughts.

@Stan` I would like the values for this patch to be optimized, but most importantly is that it gets accepted. Is there any chance the patch could be adopted in A26?

@Gurken Khan was correct that the upgrade only adds a single arrow to the volley and the upgrades does not do anything else. However this comment is totally of topic.

We could do that. Get some monks, lets wave a book towards those huskarls and sent them back to where they came from.

The assumption that a more aggressive game is uncomfortable to beginners is not valid. For example: Age of Empires 2 is an aggressive game, but it does not mean the game is no fun for newer players. Also aggressive games point beginners quickly to the moment when they fall behind. Whereas a defensive boomy game only tells people after 10 minutes that they did something wrong.

I tend to like the resource availability in small mainland map on the Aegean-Anatolian biome. However other biomes have more wood and they get forests get even bigger when there map size increases. The amount of forest doesn't scale well with the map size. Limiting the size of forest also limits your development speed in some sense. However I would prefer not to divert to much from the original topic.

I agree as the fast style of the game eliminates the middle phase of the game. However there are also other factors that contribute to this.

I believe the game needs more action in p2 instead of being a race to get the benefits of p3 as soon as possible. Therefore I made a mod that moved the tier 2 upgrades in the forge to p2. It is available on mod.io However I isn't easy to convince players in the lobby to play some games with the mod. I think it is sad, as we can't decide if we currently have the best setup or whether improvements are possible.

I don't think it is a conscious decision, but rather it seems a result of the game lacking content in phase 2. For the current meta: In the first 6 minutes you can rush someone. After that most players after some extra infantry which should help for defending. At this point executing any attack is more detrimental for your own development than for your opponents development. There are some factions (with mercenary cavalry) that do not follow this logic. From say minute 6 to 12, the game is misbalanced in the sense that spamming more infantry is better than going to phase 2 early. Once you reach phase 3 as the first player, you can get your siege, upgrades and hero's before your opponent does. If you attack your opponent in the time zone that he does not have the advantages of phase 3 while you have, there is a reason to expect victory and decide to attack. From minute 6 to 12, there is some dead content during which it is better to stay at home rather than attacking (&strategic decisions). For me the reasoning (indirectly) seems that by developing and training units so quickly, the dead content passes by faster.

The same goes for me. What I do have something that anyone could have: curiosity.

Seems like there is has been an 3 week silence on this topic. Lately I played a game against @vinme that I wanted to share. Originally I aimed to upload videos at least biweekly, but I realized that I lack the amount of interesting replays of high level strategical 1v1 games.

The Mauryas have a hero that costs no population space and is twice as strong as a champion elephant, for the rest he seems irelephant.

This is not true. if a champ cav archer fights 4 archers it takes less damage than the chariot in the same situation. The chariot is a bigger unit and is easier to hit.

I think that cavalry crossbowmen were an oddity in the Han army and better be removed. Maybe ask our historians about that.

I think most factions need a considerable buff to be on par with Ptolemies, so I think that balance wouldn't be a problem. The Ptolemies get a food tickle from the start and the Persians only after they spent time and resources for building the ice house. Also, I think it would be nice for a change if the best faction for a change wouldn't be the one with the best eco.

I tend to think that this is because rams can still be very annoying to deal with. For my taste rams should be a little slower. Infantry swordsmen can deal with them if the rams are stationary. But when the rams retreat, they of can get to a safe position before taking to much damage.

I think any reasonable buff is better than the current situation. However, Persia has two types of melee CS cavalry and we could try to do something to make axe cav a little special other than giving it comparable DPS to a sword cavalry.