[Community mod] Melee rebalance

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I was thinking something around .75, but different ones can be tested fairly easily.

[Yekaterina]

Just now, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I was thinking something around .75, but different ones can be tested fairly easily.

Won't change anything; Hamdich's melee army will still pulverise anyone almost instantly. We need some significant slowing down. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

8 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

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

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.

[chrstgtr]

2 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think I will stick to the plan I wrote above.

You could also just increase health of all units. Still need to worry about units destroying siege/buildings, though. Personally, I would decrease attack, but it's something to consider 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

maybe the easiest way to do it is combine .75 x damage with adding a little armor to everything, or perhaps hp.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

"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.

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I quickly tested and the overall ttk is actually similar to a26 vanilla.

ttk?

Also, this looks like it could make sense to me. Will be good in community mod to do real tests with

Edited March 31, 2023 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

23 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

ttk?

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

[chrstgtr]

13 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

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

That's what I thought, but just wanted to make sure.

Anyways, the values look about right to me--I probably would've done .5 m/s more for melee inf and done slightly different stuff for cav, but it looks directionally correct and good enough for community mod. 

[hyperion]

On 30/03/2023 at 11:51 AM, chrstgtr said:

Buildings/siege will become relatively stronger because range units will no longer be able to clear the field.

Which is as intended, ranged units shouldn't matter much in straight up fights but having to make use of obstructions like natural chockpoints or walls to be really useful. If a micro god can get value from ranged units that's fine too.

 

On 30/03/2023 at 11:51 AM, chrstgtr said:

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. 

Bolt shooters also do ranged damage, so also affected by half dps. Btw, a couple alphas back you didn't even need a small army to defend a small mass of bolt shooters for them to be invulnerable.

[chrstgtr]

25 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Which is as intended, ranged units shouldn't matter much in straight up fights but having to make use of obstructions like natural chockpoints or walls to be really useful. If a micro god can get value from ranged units that's fine too.

 

25 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Bolt shooters also do ranged damage, so also affected by half dps. Btw, a couple alphas back you didn't even need a small army to defend a small mass of bolt shooters for them to be invulnerable.

Bolts aren’t impacted here. They’re different from units as are buildings. Even if everything you say is true, then it still wouldn’t apply to something like an ele. Also, there’s a reason why bolts were banned in a22 in MP games and were changed in a23. 
 

You’re missing the point in that everything changes whenever you change unit stats. It’s absurd to suggest that somehow range unit dps is an exception to that rule 

Edited March 31, 2023 by chrstgtr

[LetswaveaBook]

20 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

maybe the easiest way to do it is combine .75 x damage with adding a little armor to everything, or perhaps hp.

The easiest solution to try out multiple damage values is adding an autoresearch tech to the mod as @hyperionsuggested. Then you only need to change a few numbers in 1 single file to test some different values.

On 30/03/2023 at 10:13 AM, hyperion said:

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.

[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.

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

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.

You should prepare changes to diff: Horse archer from , Elephant archer and Chariots

[Lion.Kanzen]

 

units are now better maneuvered.

 

I have to use a better map, for the AI.

Without a doubt, the ai no longer has an advantage if it is allowed to grow.You probably have to make it stronger and with more resources.

Now the micromanagement is better.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

 

units are now better maneuvered.

 

I have to use a better map, for the AI.

Without a doubt, the ai no longer has an advantage if it is allowed to grow.You probably have to make it stronger and with more resources.

Now the micromanagement is better.

I tried another map with maximum difficulty and it continues well, the maneuverability is fine.

[hyperion]

On 31/03/2023 at 6:24 PM, chrstgtr said:

Bolts aren’t impacted here. They’re different from units as are buildings. Even if everything you say is true, then it still wouldn’t apply to something like an ele. Also, there’s a reason why bolts were banned in a22 in MP games and were changed in a23. 

The tech I posted impacts bolt, structures, ships and ele archers all the same, whether this is as it should be is up for debate.

 

On 31/03/2023 at 6:24 PM, chrstgtr said:

You’re missing the point in that everything changes whenever you change unit stats. It’s absurd to suggest that somehow range unit dps is an exception to that rule 

I never claimed zero side effects, but there is a difference between a few and many all over the place. One possible side effect of the half dps change might be better performance of the game for example.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, hyperion said:

One possible side effect of the half dps change might be better performance of the game for example.

By the way, I did a mod a while ago (50% slower fire rate, iirc) to test that and I really didn't see an improvement.

[hyperion]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

By the way, I did a mod a while ago (50% slower fire rate, iirc) to test that and I really didn't see an improvement.

Don't know how you tested, anyway simply setting it to 10% to make the effect more pronounced and running combat demo huge I see quite the difference (actually more than predicted). Given that this change also has an effect on unit composition I'd expect an even more favorable result for regular game play.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

11 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Don't know how you tested, anyway simply setting it to 10% to make the effect more pronounced and running combat demo huge I see quite the difference (actually more than predicted).

a26 or svn?

I tested a singleplayer stress test and we also did a multiplayer test with quite minor improvements.

10% the current ttk would be disastrous for gameplay.

In any case, we are on kind of a tangent, and I think there are other discussions for performance related concerns.

Edited April 2, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

3 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Don't know how you tested, anyway simply setting it to 10%

Is this 10% slower or 10% of the original fire rate? I sure hope it is neither

[hyperion]

52 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

a26 or svn?

svn

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

9 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

disastrous

Edited April 3, 2023 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[real_tabasco_sauce]

27 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Edited 24 minutes ago by wowgetoffyourcellphone

^accurate depiction of my laptop giving up after micro-ing a 30 minute battle (no units have died yet).

[Nobbi]

Thank you for all your effort. The changes to armies were melee units are the core troops will be more historical than it is right now. However, in my opinion this change will not bring more strategical deep into the game. At least I cannot see that right now. Players will adept to the changes and will make different army compositions. Still the faster boomer and earlier attacker has the highest chance to win the game.

Did raiding with JAV CAV still work in your tests? It would be bad if not, than we would go back to a game were all players just boom.

To make the game strategical more interesting we could work on bonuses for formations/better working formations, no ranged attack for range units in close combat (e.g. adding a weak melee attack to ranged units), melee units charging for enemy ranged units when no enemy melee unit is around, less armour when units get attacked from behind and so on ...