real_tabasco_sauce

Oh I agree, but the primary means of doing this shouldn't be done by capturing it, but with siege. And to be clear, filling the CC with civilians doesn't get you the same defense you used to get with women. They basically grant you some time to get stronger units inside.

The current capture situation is terrible and I'm not sure how you could argue that its fine. It was an unintended consequence of a change to the capture system from a26. Capturing a CC should be a rare move, a hail mary to try and get the ultimate defeat of your enemy, absolutely not the meta. As for walls, palisades, I can tweak those for further improvements. I think palisade crush can go to 0, and palisade pierce armor can go a little lower too (just did this). In late game, even ranged units should contribute substantial damage to palisades, with walls being the more significant obstacle.

I was taking about polls to add stuff to the community mod ala a26, and I thought that’s what you were bringing up. It’s worked pretty well I think to use the com mod as a place to experiment and collect feedback.

Under that approach, managing discussions and polls took almost as much time as writing the changes. I think its generally more time-efficient to deliver changes to the community mod and see what sticks.

Yes, several of these are in the community mod current version. For the walls stuff you will have to go back 1 version if i remember correctly. I only made PRs for things that I thought were moderately to well received when playtesting. For example, I left out the 3x cav counter, which seemed to go poorly.

In the short term, I think we should go with the health nerf for the regular melee champ cav, and for the cataphracts which are so tanky, we can significantly reduce their speed, which will create better differentiation for the cataphracts (possibly also nerf the +100 hp tech for them too).

Yeah that scheme would be super nice. If it can be doable via mod I can certainly put specific techs together in com mod.

For Rome, I feel like the civ is already pretty full of content (compared to the other civs). However, if someone ends up making a "rome expanded" mod or something for the SP community, this would be great. Or maybe it could be campaign only (whenever we are able to make campaigns, they take a ton of work).

I was going to suggest that the romans emblem should just be a pizza! That would be a pretty funny mod to make.

Its an Axeman. I welcome this early balance feedback, it helps to make the playtests more serious when we do them.

its committed Feel free to try it by getting the nightly build, or by building the game.

I think this is a bit myopic. If you have a tech. This tech has been in the game for several alphas now (as most eco techs have been). But in the next release this tech has another tech paired to it, what have you lost? Haven't you now gained an additional choice? Tech pairs are great for certain cases, like some unique techs. But If you make everything a choice of one over the other (like all the eco techs maybe), you are forcing a very black and white strategy on players. In my opinion, picking a path down a specialization tree isn't good strategy, that's why I oppose choosing heroes at game start, aoe4's monument system, and civilization specialization upon phase up.

I don't think developers of any game should be forcing strategies, they should naturally come about given the circumstances of play. Thats the problem i have with overusing tech pairs.

I agree that they are largely researched as soon as reasonably possible, with little variation, but the answer is not to force trade-offs by making them tech pairs. its better to diversify unit costs (we see more priority of the stone tech for slinger civs for example) and maybe reconsider the costs of the eco techs themselves. we can also make techs non-ubiquitous across civs.

This is kind of already the case with certain civs/buildings, like the carth mercs. However, I think it should be made consistent unless there's some huge balance issue (like multiple discounts leading to 10 metal mercs).

I think It could be considered as a unique tech or a unique unit for a civ. It would probably be very strong if the fire damage applies to multiple targets (splash).

Hi @Fabius I see the suggestion. However, in my opinion, the romans' relatively simple unit roster is important. Civs should have different strengths and weaknesses, and part of that is having an incomplete roster. Depending on how unit balance evolves going forward, there may be a need for the romans to get a different ranged unit, but for now I don't think they need it. I worry that adding extra units creates kind of a situation like mace currently, where they are very good at a lot of different strategies. If the range is really crucial, using bolts is a good choice.

What you do before the reforms plays a role. So if you are training spearmen, they don't turn into legionaries, but conscript spearmen. So if you want the reforms to be more of a power spike, you will want to train swordsmen before it, and if you want to retain your eco, train more spears before it.

@Classic-Burger in more high-level multiplayer games, 200 population might be reached by 11-13 minutes. Typically rushes in these games are between 2 and 5 minutes.

Yeah, Its unfortunate that archers need the archery tradition tech to feel at all worthwhile, which leaves carth archers in a terrible spot. At some point I think we need to do more to differentiate ranged units (more than just range+damage).

Hello @ProPlayer thank you for compiling this list of balancing suggestions! I agree with a lot of them. I think I'll go ahead and make the PR for the han changes. They are currently 3 pop, like catapults. Also, ranked up units do have higher capture attack. On clubmen, a lot of their utility is invalidated by the current capture balance, so I'd hesitate to give them so much speed. How do people feel about replacing the building damage increase per age with this? I could go either way.

If/when melee infantry champions become useful, these will need a massive nerf.

That was in the last version, not this one

Because its an infrequently used unit. Typically when people go for the reforms, they will want to use infantry.

Well they are not intended to be as expensive as champcav, plus re-introducing metal cost will make them just like a lot of the other champs, something we want to avoid. Diverse and unique units makes for a more enjoyable game. With that said, one thing to consider would be to reign in the gaul eco a little bit, perhaps by removing the additional farm technology. About the unit itself, I think the general speed balance complicates things. On the one hand, they need to be fast to act like a cavalry counter because cav are so fast, and on the other, they currently retain quite a lot of strength vs infantry. In general, super fast units should not get high damage and high armor, and melee champcav are the prime example of this. By banning champcav, players will understandably go for the next fastest (and strongest) unit.