Fabius

Eg if i wanted to play Rome, what are my options in P2 to defeat my opponent? Do I try and raid him silly with horses? Gauls at least have fanatics which are rather fun though honestly I think to expensive to really be useful. Britains have wardogs in P1 which lends some interesting flexibility into P2. Sparta has skiritai which are cool. And other factions have mercs which as we are all know are quite strong though only Ptolemies, Carthage and Seleucids can pull that off well. That leaves Athens which has nothing, Iberians has nothing, Maurya and Persia also. Kush has macemen but thats it and they rather gimmicky.

Not really sure how a more expensive blacksmith is going to help. Forcing people to have a slower P2 does not solve the problem that P2 is literally irrelevant unless you plan on goin full merc and killing your opponent. The base issue is there are very few useful options in P2.

Sounds like a reasonable idea

Match limit as in only 5 per match? I was thinking more 5 on the field at any one time rather, much like you have in DE with merc limits.

Interesting idea, but that would basically just be fire cav, also I think they did it for just one battle which failed spectacularly and after that tried other things. Roman Elephants can be justified far more than chariots from my perspective.

So I have an idea to put forward. And I did a little research prior to ensure this would be historically reasonable, which it seems to be. So the idea is for a Roman unique tech that references the spoils of the Punic Wars and allows them to train a very limited number of war elephants, roughly 5 I am thinking, maybe more if you deem it fit. My brief research brought up their use in the Grecian conquests and the use of captured Carthaginian elephants after the Punic wars, so I think this is reasonable overall

One could use smaller catapult stats as well, with how much damage catapults are now throwing out there is a lot of leeway to work with.

Ah cool. Yes I remember rams being able to fight units rather well lol. Merge upgrade sounds interesting

Awesome. I would love to see catapult turrets as an option in the near future.

There is already a fair bit going in P1, we need some more things in P2. Also P1 rams may be a bridge to far in my opinion. The only way I would accept that is if we got P2 catapults.

The Roman dream

I don't remember A24 being that immobile, I just remember annoying archer blocks and having to use consular guard as that was the only thing capable of blunting them effectively. I will also point out that catapults have far higher crush damage now, which I will say I am looking forward to as I believe they are now strong enough to kill a ram in one hit if upgraded. So perhaps it is best left until A27 since I think that the new potential for active defense may negate any need for a wall upgrade

Its a trade off, and you would not turn all your pikes into rams anyhow, that would be a grave error in judgment

Ideally it would be good to see some kind of wall buff for A26 already rather than A27.

Definitely agree.

A sensible player would work with that and try to channel the opponent into crossfire and other disadvantageous situations. If you want to encourage players to think beyond P3 = Ram= victory then you need to give them more options and better ones. That is reasonable

A fair point, but towers are only ever as useful as whats in front of them. I never build towers in game anymore as they serve no purpose beyond being a vaguely annoying distraction to the opponent and me if they get captured, whats more they cost resources that are better used elsewhere. That being said I would prefer stronger walls over towers at this stage, after all there is a garrison bonus on walls, and I would like to have incentive to investing stone into passive fortifications.

Gaps in walls while problematic aren't a big issue when you can quite literally go through walls with little effort. I am against deleting trees because this can be abused by Rome to delete an opponents forests. Also forests are good impediments to rams and elephants which is why forests in front of walls are good. Yes and that is largely because walls lack meaningful impact to the battlefield.

I would suggest 25% or even 30% as a start, if that is found to be to much we can drop it down. We need better passive and active defenses overall

At this stage we need better defenses not more ways to destroy stuff. Gates will die easily enough to siege, the point is to give the defender more control over his position than he currently has by giving him better tools. The workman is only ever as good as his tools or so they say.

To clarify on the gate weakness I mean that the weakness of gates be further emphasized than they currently are.

So I have been thinking, and I am going to suggest raising the health of stone walls. Right now they are useless except to deter raiding. However I also think gates should be kept at a weak level. This way you leave the obvious weaknesses of walls open while also allowing defending players to better control the flow of an assault on their town. I do not think the stone cost should be altered or the build time.

Ah I see, so essentially a button that merges a couple units into a ram? Or a single unit into a ram? And then a button with that unit to turn it into a better ram?

So basically just a stat upgrade? For rams?

I like wild ideas I do How hard would it be to code, what about art and how practical would it be game play wise?