[Community mod] Melee rebalance

[Lion.Kanzen]

48 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

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

I can try it at night. -6 GTM/UTC 

[Yekaterina]

Units die too quickly. Either lower damage of everything by a scale factor of 3 or increase the health of everything by a factor of 3. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Units die too quickly. Either lower damage of everything by a scale factor of 3 or increase the health of everything by a factor of 3. 

I had already thought of that.
but the only thing that should be done is to increase the range of the skirmishers a bit, they were left without the option to shoot and flee against pikes.

Or add a technology that unlocks more range.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

43 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Units die too quickly. Either lower damage of everything by a scale factor of 3 or increase the health of everything by a factor of 3. 

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.

Edited March 29, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Lion.Kanzen]

12 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

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.

do you want it even slower?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

10 dps to 6.6 scaled for each unit would be nice. Factor of 2/3 damage multiplier. Perhaps you could try 1/2 too to see if that gets something that is maybe too slow.

[Adeimantos]

Maybe instead of raising melee attack lower range attack (especially javelins). Or some of each.

[Lion.Kanzen]

A spam of Iberian swordsmen feels powerful. 

the Han chariots have done a lot of damage to them.

[hyperion]

6 hours ago, Adeimantos said:

Maybe instead of raising melee attack lower range attack (especially javelins). Or some of each.

It's the obvious solution without a dozen side effects. I still feel @Feldfeld suggestion of halving ranged damage as a start the most reasonable approach.

Those willing to test may drop the following into simulation/data/technologies

{
        "autoResearch": true,
        "modifications": [
                { "value": "Attack/Ranged/Damage/Hack", "multiply": 0.5 },
                { "value": "Attack/Ranged/Damage/Pierce", "multiply": 0.5 },
                { "value": "Attack/Ranged/Damage/Crush", "multiply": 0.5 }
        ]
}

Adjust multiplier as you see fit.

[chrstgtr]

1 minute ago, hyperion said:

It's the obvious solution without a dozen side effects

It introduces a ton side effects--units vs builds, units vs siege, units vs units, etc. Basically the same you see by doing the opposite with melee. 

[hyperion]

49 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

It introduces a ton side effects--units vs builds, units vs siege, units vs units

ranged vs buildings, ranged vs sieges isn't meant to be a thing in the first place, ranged vs units is the whole point of this change.

[chrstgtr]

38 minutes ago, hyperion said:

ranged vs buildings, ranged vs sieges isn't meant to be a thing in the first place, ranged vs units is the whole point of this change.

Who said anything about range’s ability to destroy buildings, siege, etc. Buildings/siege will become relatively stronger because range units will no longer be able to clear the field. That tower that used to just be a pest before you could kill surrounding enemy units and then capture it could now be able to turn a battle because battles will last as much as twice as long. Remember how you used to be able to counter bolt shooters by killing enemy units that were guarding the bolt shooter and then attacking the bolt shooter with melee? Guess what, now you can’t quickly kill the smaller army that is defending the bolt shooter, so you can’t approach the bolt shooter with your melee, and the bolt shooter now has no counter and is OP. 

You can’t change a stat and think it will have no side effect. Especially when you acknowledge that inverse of the same stat does have a side effect. It’s why @real_tabasco_sauce modified attack dmg and armor in opposite directions instead of just increasing attack dmg. 

Edited March 30, 2023 by chrstgtr

[Adeimantos]

Anything that changes will have side effects, but reducing range damage will have less effect than increasing melee attack. I propose trying some of each: reduce range attack and increase melee attack each by 20%, reduce melee armor by one level. I also think javelins attack should be reduced more than others, and compensate them by giving them more armor.

[borg-]

It's a lot of changes to be tested at the same time, a lot of side effects to take into account, I think we should do it in parts. In my opinion, we should start with the movement speed of the melee inf units, and then see if the result is positive or not, then we move on to damage, armor, health, etc..

[real_tabasco_sauce]

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.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

7 minutes ago, borg- said:

It's a lot of changes to be tested at the same time, a lot of side effects to take into account, I think we should do it in parts. In my opinion, we should start with the movement speed of the melee inf units, and then see if the result is positive or not, then we move on to damage, armor, health, etc..

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.

Edited March 30, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Lion.Kanzen]

3 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

reduce all unit damage by 25 percent

which units?

The melee? Or ranged as well?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Just now, Lion.Kanzen said:

which units?

The melee? Or ranged as well?

all units, so ranged as well.

[borg-]

My feedback on what I've seen in alpha 26 is that some melee units look ok to me. Cavalry seems to do its thing when they are in large numbers, champion cavalry has also been showing up well. Inf swordman rank 2 and 3 also seem pretty satisfying to me. The changes for me should be one-off and not a massive redesign. Honestly the units that seem to me to need a look are spearman, spearman, and champion infantry (general) infantry.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 minutes ago, borg- said:

My feedback on what I've seen in alpha 26 is that some melee units look ok to me. Cavalry seems to do its thing when they are in large numbers, champion cavalry has also been showing up well. Inf swordman rank 2 and 3 also seem pretty satisfying to me.

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?

Edited March 30, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[borg-]

Let me also propose another view on this. Is the problem a weak melee unit or a very strong ranged unit? Perhaps we should change ranged units instead of melee. It seems much less problematic to me, considering that we don't have to worry as much about damage against buildings and siege.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

4 minutes ago, borg- said:

Is the problem a weak melee unit or a very strong ranged unit? Perhaps we should change ranged units instead of melee.

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.

33 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

• reduce all unit damage by 25 percent.
• increase "base" melee infantry speed from 9.0 to 9.5 m/s

@borg-, reducing all unit damage by 25% should produce a "middle ground" of sorts, so this will be interesting to test.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

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

Edited March 31, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[AIEND]

There should be a clear distinction between the attack types of melee units and the attack types of range units. Then reduce the damage of range units, especially the damage of javelins and slings by at least 2/3, which is roughly the same as the damage of melee units.

[Yekaterina]

Easy solution: multiply the damage of everything by 0.3. Trust me, try it. Battles will be a lot smoother. Dying will invoke a lot of extra script calling which puts more load on the CPU