real_tabasco_sauce

I forgot to change ele archers I'll need to change that, probably just for the community mod. No sense to confuse anyone with a quick v3.

sorry. Time to kill. So not as fast as in melee mod v1.

"melee" mod v2: 25% less damage for all units champ spearcav -1 hack armor CS swordcav -0.5 pierce armor melee infantry + 0.5 m/s walkspeed VERSION 2 **************** melee.zip ** **************** I quickly tested and the overall ttk is actually similar to a26 vanilla.

right, so archers deal 2 pierce damage, and take 13 hits to kill 1 25hp woman. Nice idea. I would think the ensuing 8 minute long battles would be more taxing because barracks can retrain faster than units die. If fighting is what makes the game the most laggy, then 300 units fighting a 1v1 for 8 minutes would be pretty bad. I think I will stick to the plan I wrote above.

edit: U NEED VERSION 1 to watch these replays. Here is version 1:melee.zip melee_mod_replays.zip for @chrstgtr and @real_tabasco_sauce unit testing, we also did one in a26 vanilla for comparison: chrst_sauce_test_vanilla.zip

The problem is that melee units are highly armored and do little damage, this results in a lot of different gameplay issues as I previously mentioned. Just reducing ranged damage would help, but it would mean that fights would take forever, especially if melee armor is unchanged. From gameplay and testing the melee mod, its pretty clear to me that the ratio of effectiveness between melee units and ranged units is pretty good. An example result is that there are now cases where sniping enemy ranged units is less effective than the default behavior, which is a good variable. @borg-, reducing all unit damage by 25% should produce a "middle ground" of sorts, so this will be interesting to test.

So you would say its fine that melee units are mainly valued for armor and not for damage? Side note, do ppl want me to post some replays from unit testing and playtesting?

all units, so ranged as well.

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.