real_tabasco_sauce

I would like to do that, but I think it would take a long time, with more debates along the way. The approach here is to make a big change (which appears to have been partially successful) and then make smaller adjustments to find an ideal balance. Hopefully we can get a good enough set of changes that it can be playtested in community mod for a27.

From general feedback, It seems the proportion of damage/armor is better, but that armies die too fast. Reducing ranged damage to be comparable to melee would mean fights would be extremely long, which is likely worse than too fast. I think i will do the following: reduce swordcav pierce armor from 2.5 to 2 (no more half armor @wowgetoffyourcellphone) reduce spearcav hack armor from 7 to 6 (they beat spearmen too easily) reduce all unit damage by 25 percent. increase "base" melee infantry speed from 9.0 to 9.5 m/s First, I'll do my own unit tests and things so make sure there are no obviously OP units. If all looks good, I will make it a version 2.

Definitely not a factor of 3, but I agree units die too fast now. The main thing is that the armor/damage proportion of melee units is improved, and so far I think we have seen that.

I believe that was a bug and was fixed.

anyone want to set up a couple games on this mod at the moment?

All the changes mentioned here are in the melee mod for a26. The goal is to play test this on a larger scale in the first community mod release for a27.

I mean technically whenever you want, since the mod is posted. Ideally, however, they will get plenty of testing in the community mod for a27. I already did a bunch of tests and concluded that swordcav need -0.5 pierce armor and that champ spearcav need -1 hack armor. Everything else seems pretty well balanced other than those two.

as shown in tests, sniping is not as powerful, because the player has to decide what units if any should be focused. Ie it is not always snipe the ranged units to win.

It can't be fixed by units stats. It is because of unit AI. You could randomly assign unit stats from 1-10000 for damage and armor and it will always be that melee units will die first. there is literally no way around it, we can still improve things.

in a26 this is 6.5 dps, in melee mod, this is 11.6 in a26 this is 9.15, in melee mod, its 11.9. notice they are much more competitive overall, although army A has a lot more armor. Army B wins without a doubt in a26, but army A probably wins in melee mod.

@BreakfastBurrito_007 and I compared sniping scenarios in community mod and "melee" mod. first, we tested the community mod for a sniping scenario of 30 swordsmen +30 archers in the "sniping" army, and 30 swordsmen + 30 archers in the non-sniping army. The sniping army won decisively because swordsmen deal similar damage compared to archers. The non-sniping archers tipped the melee battle in favor of the non-sniping swordsmen. The surviving 10 or so non-sniping swordsmen made it to the 30 sniping archers, but died while only killing about half of them. In the melee mod, the story is quite different. Archers again tip the melee battle in favor of the non-sniping army, and the sniping melee units die quickly to the swordsmen and archers. The remaining swordsmen make it to the sniping archers even while a handful of non-sniping archers still live. The non-sniping swordsmen defeat all the archers quickly, with 8 to 10 remaining. In conclusion, the melee mod introduced a change in the meta, where melee units are valued in army composition.

You keep asking this and I keep saying the following: 1. melee units will always die first in a 1:1 with ranged and melee units. this is due to unit AI. 2. I support increasing melee speed. 3. Lastly, increasing melee DPS gives melee units a significant role in beating the meat shield. It CANNOT magically solve the issue, because of point 1. The point is that melee units should be influential in defeating enemy melee units in melee+range battles. how does this not make sense? Clearly I am not explaining well, so now lets forget the meat shield, forget unit speeds, forget everything: is it not problematic that all melee units do less damage than all ranged units? Is it not problematic that nobody prioritizes melee upgrades? Is it not a problem that melee units never rank up? Is it not problematic that pikemen can get 12 pierce armor and up to 15, while taking 5 attacks or 10 seconds to kill a 25 hp woman? In tests, my proposal addresses all of the above without even talking about the meat shield. Have you done any tests to back up any claims here? You are always so critical without even testing. Please at least download and do some unit tests. You should be open minded to adding large changes to the community mod because thats how things are actually playtested.

well said

There, you said it and I didn't even realize. Why should ranged units be fundamentally more important than melee units? The proposal seeks to address exactly that.

The meat shield is quite literally a shield of meat: heavily armored melee units shield weaker ranged units. People complain about massing large range armies because they only need enough melee to form a shield (30 or 40 pikes is more than enough to shield 80 skirms). This is a direct consequence of how much armor the melee units have and how little damage they do. People complain because ranged units are far more impactful in battle outcomes, end of story. if instead melee units are winning fights, players will get more melee units, melee units will rank up (because they are doing damage), and players will get upgrades for them.

You appear to be over thinking this. Yes, it changes how quickly melee units die, but you are missing one very important point: What units are doing the damage? Currently, melee units do not determine when the meat shield dies. This is exclusively ranged units, and thats a problem. Melee units and ranged units can have any stats determined randomly from 1 to 10000 and the melee units will always die first. simply because of unitAI. Ok, then consider the proposal option 1.

I have made the core problem clear multiple times: Melee units are a damage sponge, and should instead be a source of damage in a given army composition. Meanwhile, you seem very convinced that the goal of this branch is to improve melee combat against ranged units: It is not. In fact, I sought to keep melee vs ranged fights roughly as balanced as they currently are (hence reducing armor). My point with this statement was that it is not melee units' damage that kills ranged units, but instead their armor. Thus, in the presence of one's own ranged units, the melee units contribute very little damage to both melee units and ranged units alike. That is why you never see melee units ranking up. So the real objective for this branch, as I have mentioned previously, is to change melee's role from a focus of being a damage sponge to more of a damage dealer. I am not talking about a melee vs ranged issue, I am talking a core game design issue and as a result, the meat shield issue. I am not sure why you are hyper focused on this relatively unrelated issue, I have even said multiple times that I support increasing speed of melee units but that is a separate discussion. Furthermore, I have even implemented move speed technologies in unit specific upgrades.

Well, frankly its more like a ground-up redesign. The idea is to make this change on a large level. Big changes will feel complicated. Yeah this is something else to address too. Like I said, probably in a different discussion. With the planned introduction to the community mod, it should become clear what other changes would do. I could mention that there are speed techs for spearmen and swordsmen in unit specific upgrades.

just did some testing with @BreakfastBurrito_007, i'll bring swordcav armor down to 2 from 2.5h and the champ spearcav armor down to 6 hack from 7hack.

For 1 it means ranged units can just disengage before too many have been killed by infantry. In addition, it is this excessively long time to kill melee units that causes the meat shield meta. I agree that melee units could use some speed, but that would probably be a separate branch.

look too strong. They lose vs spears in 1:1, and slightly win 1v1 (50/50 melee/ranged composition) without micro. So in battle outcomes its actually a nerf. This was one of my points of contention. 2 hack or 2.5 pierce armor. Playtests will make this more clear. How would you feel about doubling melee infantry damage and leaving cavalry unchanged? Seems like a bad idea to me. There is a cavalry meat shield although it really only happens when 2 cav armies fight. This is due to their armor, not due to their damage. Basically, they massively outlast ranged units instead of killing them quickly. True, I acknowledge this in my first post. However, the key detail is that this allows melee units to be more influential in fights. The reason they rarely rank up currently is because they contribute little damage to battles, and instead act as damage sponges. Ex. Swordsmen currently deal significantly less damage than an archer. This branch makes melee units more interesting to fight with and upgrade: If melee units are dealing significant damage, this opens up more possibilities for fights. For example, army B has fully teched swordsmen, while army A as fully teched pikemen armor. The highly effective swordsmen from B can kill pikemen much faster than they get killed and thus can break through to enemy ranged units. If this engagement happens in a26, the primary deciding factor on who wins the melee fight is actually the ranged units' damage.

Ive never used the map editor, but a workaround could be using some number of the smaller mines. If you want the metal to supply 3000 metal resources, then you can use a clump of 3x1000 metal mines.

Halve armor, no. Just from 5 to 3 for spearmen, swordsmen. Currently, their high armor and low attack makes melee units in general more effective as a damage sponge, even including swordsmen. Doubling attack makes them more effective and interesting, something you want to invest in via upgrades. You have to decrease armor because this would make them OP. It's good that you don't have to guess about the outcomes though, because I have a download available for you to try out these changes: [see top post for both version 1 and 2]

@Adeimantos The objective of the branch is just to make melee globally more powerful, so the changes have to be similar for all units. Specifically so that they have a greater impact on the outcome of battles than before. Ideally, these global changes can be later refined in community mod updates to improve differentiation as you mention as well as balance.

I think the different repeat times are a minor differentiator and they contribute slightly to the look and feel of different units. The dps calc is trivial: D/R so 5.5*1.25 or 25% more. For 12 damage swordcav, this nicely works out to 16 hack per second.