Champion cavalry improvements

[Atrik]

34 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I see the point, but i'd argue that the ideal balance here is if spearmen are a resource counter to champ cav. They are champions after all. As a resource counter, they might lose with equal numbers or even outnumbering the champ cav slightly, they win decisively when resources are matched.

As chrstgr said, they get slaughtered even when you have a big number's advantage. In some cases where i had a bunch of spears champs from sparta or athen (note that they require special, costly buildings to make compared to champ cav), they merly counter the champ cav. They deal x2.5 but champ cav have x2 hp (when they have the buff hp), it's just not fair counter. Spears should slaughter cavs, not the other way around. They already have mobility they can use at their advantage.

Edited yesterday at 21:39 by Atrik

[Lion.Kanzen]

All this explains why they destroyed my spearman and swordman + range units armies and then I trained a sword cav battalion and destroyed the opposing army, even with Astharthe cav+ hoplites(Carthaginian champ cav).

[AInur]

A limit on the numbers will be effective. Reading older forum posts, it seems that every version had some OP units that messed up the balancing, but the issue is never the unit itself but rather spam champions in large quantities.

What we really need is not adjustment of stats but anti-spam!

@Atrik @real_tabasco_sauce

Edited 23 hours ago by AInur

[Lion.Kanzen]

3 minutes ago, AInur said:

What we really need is not adjustment of stats but anti-spam!

Spamming happens due to many circumstances, a snowball effect of CS, a product of citizens being soldiers and collecting resources.

Therefore they can also build barracks, therefore they can create more CS to collect more resources.

Another problem in my opinion is the population cost of the units, a horseman = a foot soldier, what changes is the resources, but when you reach the middle is pointless.At that stage, 10-20k of wood and food are already reached. It's easy to spam anything that costs wood and food, as well as getting metal through bartering(In case of not having metal mines).

[AInur]

10 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Spamming happens due to many circumstances, a snowball effect of CS, a product of citizens being soldiers and collecting resources.

Therefore they can also build barracks, therefore they can create more CS to collect more resources.

Another problem in my opinion is the population cost of the units, a horseman = a foot soldier, what changes is the resources, but when you reach the middle is pointless.At that stage, 10-20k of wood and food are already reached. It's easy to spam anything that costs wood and food, as well as getting metal through bartering(In case of not having metal mines).

I meant we should stop spamming champions. It's okay to spam citizen infantry.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Another thing worth discussing is the effectiveness of palisades and walls vs cavalry. There are some things that can be done to make walling more playable: walls snapping to buildings, destroying trees upon completion, increase overlap tolerance for better sealing. 

In addition to this, wall rebalancing can be done to make palisades and walls more effective against cavalry. This would also give infantry a relative improvement. For example melee cav could be given a 0.3x vs palisades.

[Atrik]

34 minutes ago, AInur said:

A limit on the numbers will be effective. Reading older forum posts, it seems that every version had some OP units that messed up the balancing, but the issue is never the unit itself but rather spam champions in large quantities.

Besides the hurdle of having to find the good limit to population of allowed units, I don't think it is fun to make a limit on any unit. Champs are a great way to 'coil up' and invest some economic advantage. The problem is the lack of counter options and their efficiency against specifically: melee champ cavs spam. As I said above, even champ spears are meh... not that good of a counter. In short, investing in champ cav is too safe, because of the lack of counters and the amazing versatility of cavalry. Hence the suggestions to nerf capture rate, and increase counters.

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I see the point, but i'd argue that the ideal balance here is if spearmen are a resource counter to champ cav. They are champions after all. As a resource counter, they might lose with equal numbers or even outnumbering the champ cav slightly, they win decisively when resources are matched.

But that isn’t how any else of the cav-inf balance works. Less resources win on CS-CS and champ-champ balance. 
 

Needing a 6:1 (or whatever the exact number is) numerical advantage of what are supposed to be COUNTER units is silly. Add on top of that cav can easily just to run away from a massive army and you effectively have no counter system 

[Lion.Kanzen]

37 minutes ago, AInur said:

I meant we should stop spamming champions. It's okay to spam citizen infantry.

That is why the other alternative is to regulate it with population capacity.

In many games the cav usually costs 2 capacity.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

That is why the other alternative is to regulate it with population capacity.

In many games the cav usually costs 2 capacity.

In Delenda Est, all civilians are 1 pop, infantry 2 pop, and cavalry 3 pop, etc.

[TheCJ]

My two cents to this would be:

Melee champion cavalry is over-performing, therefore it should either

A) be weaker (deal less damage, have less hp, get countered more by spearman)

B ) be more expensive (my favorite idea personally; put all champions of all civilisations in an extra building like the spartans/athenians/han already have, which discourages spam. One could also imagine just increasing the training time by 1.5x or the cost to 300f 100w 150m)

C) be countered together with all cavalry, by making defensive structures actually relevant (why cant I build 5 Towers next to each other? Seems like a silly restraint considering how expensive and underwhelming each tower is.) 

Edited 20 hours ago by TheCJ

[Lion.Kanzen]

35 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

) be countered together with all cavalry, by making defensive structures actually relevant (why cant I build 5 Towers next to each other? Seems like a silly restraint considering how expensive and underwhelming each tower is.) 

That balance was introduced before A15 when there was a counter system.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, TheCJ said:

B ) be more expensive (my favorite idea personally; put all champions of all civilisations in an extra building like the spartans/athenians/han already have, which discourages spam. One could also imagine just increasing the training time by 1.5x or the cost to 300f 100w 150m)

 

I want this, honestly. Call it the "Academy" class building. It trains Champions, while Fortresses train heroes (and a new Spy unit). 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, TheCJ said:

C) be countered together with all cavalry, by making defensive structures actually relevant (why cant I build 5 Towers next to each other? Seems like a silly restraint considering how expensive and underwhelming each tower is.) 

The current build distance for defense towers was to prevent spam back when towers were OP. So, a minimum distance was implemented, but since then the relative strength of towers has decrease making the minimum distance a little suspect. @real_tabasco_sauce I think this should be looked into. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

12 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The current build distance for defense towers was to prevent spam back when towers were OP. So, a minimum distance was implemented, but since then the relative strength of towers has decrease making the minimum distance a little suspect. @real_tabasco_sauce I think this should be looked into. 

The capture system had not been implemented.

[AInur]

Seems like we have consensus: put champions into special buildings, remove them from barracks

[Emacz]

Ive addressed some of these things in my mod, if anyone is interested.  Ive actually decreased everyones capture rate, infantry and cav, champ and regular.  Also Champ cavs cost slighly more and take a little more train time so its a little harder to spam them   All sorts of other changes too.  Similar to com mod, and would like to get more imput for more players!

[Lion.Kanzen]

Multiple ideas can be used at once to stop spam. It also needs to be nerfed a bit.

The cost is not going to take away the unfair power over their own counter unit; the spear infantry (Hoplites, pikemen, spearmen).

 

[Atrik]

15 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

The cost is not going to take away the unfair power over their own counter unit; the spear infantry (Hoplites, pikemen, spearmen).

I also think that champ cav shouldn't be nerfed too much, just having more viable counters is needed.

[Lion.Kanzen]

18 minutes ago, Atrik said:

I also think that champ cav shouldn't be nerfed too much, just having more viable counters is needed.

Yes, but it should be less effective against its counter.

If not, the strategy to win will be to use champion melee cavalry.