Champion cavalry improvements

[real_tabasco_sauce]

i'm going to go ahead and do 3x counter. Anything else to do in the near term?

[Arup]

@real_tabasco_sauce slow down all cavalry. it doesn't make sense to think armored cav is so much faster than human fighter. I am pretty sure the speed difference is not realistic. Look at historical patch for suggestions and specifica

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

i'm going to go ahead and do 3x counter. Anything else to do in the near term?

Speed. I think all cav could use a nerf. Setting their speed an about equal to fanatics seems about right with melee cav being slightly faster and range cav being the same as fana (also, would make fana a better counter, which I think it needs to be)

also, what exactly is the 3x counter? (Just want to make sure everyone is on same page)

kind of related, but melee inf should get a speed boost too. But that’s more of a range vs melee balancing issue. 

Edited Sunday at 21:28 by chrstgtr

[Seleucids]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

i'm going to go ahead and do 3x counter. Anything else to do in the near term?

3x for whom against whom?

Ideally inf spear and inf pike get giant counter against champion cav, like 3x 4x 5x

But spear cav shouldn't counter other cavs at this rate, otherwise you are basically banning all cav strategies as soon as someone makes a few spear cav. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3x spearmen/pikemen against cav.

@chrstgtr @Arup I agree with you both on speed. Im doing the cav counter (2.5x to 3x) since it was widely requested earlier, but I’d like to experiment with some speed balance in the future.

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

3x spearmen/pikemen against cav.

@chrstgtr @Arup I agree with you both on speed. Im doing the cav counter (2.5x to 3x) since it was widely requested earlier, but I’d like to experiment with some speed balance in the future.

Sounds good. 

I'm a little worried the 3x counter will be too much against CS cav. But we will see and adjust, if necessary. 

Edited yesterday at 01:55 by chrstgtr

[Arup]

2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

I'm a little worried the 3x counter will be too much against CS cav. But we will see and adjust, if necessary. 

yes, I think 3x might be overkill too, but we gotta test first haha

[Atrik]

37 minutes ago, Arup said:

yes, I think 3x might be overkill too, but we gotta test first haha

It's x3 from existing x2.5.
x3 inf polearms vs cav and x2 spear cav vs cavs were the a26 values and cavs, especially champ cavs, where still op, just not as much as now.

[Atrik]

Basically I think what would be nice is to have cavs used for their mobility, and not a unit that will always be the best suited in all situations as main core troop. To keep melee cav skirmishing still possible they need to have mobility, but being less effective then infantry to fight as front-lines. Restoring x2 spear cav vs cav would also make them a good choice when needing to counter ranged cavs.
Strong counters is a easy way to make units more balanced overall because one player can... counter... any unit "abused" by it's opponent.

[Arup]

okay then, why was it reduced in the first place from 3x?

[Atrik]

52 minutes ago, Arup said:

okay then, why was it reduced in the first place from 3x?

Because after melee re-balance, melees were killing other melees faster. For spear inf vs cav, this is even more visible because of this damage multiplier. But note :

• The melee re-balance didn't change relative strengths* of inf spears vs cavs, it just made fights happens faster
• So the following reduction of inf counter was a net nerf, which tipped off the balance in favor of melee cav

* However in army with mixed compositions, inf spears became more impactful as they were before since the % of dps dealt by them was increased.

 

 

Now that we identified the above, we can discuss if units dying faster is desirable, and if not, how to mitigate it without inadvertently breaking unit balance.

     About that my take on this is that it's not bad to have faster paced slaughters when a player miss-micro cavalry, as cavalry are already pretty hard to catch:

•  It seems preferable to keep cavalry stats and mobility high but not too fail safe
• Then the opposite : make cavalry more normalized with infantry (slower movement, lower stats...)

Edited yesterday at 10:14 by Atrik

[Seleucids]

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

 It seems preferable to keep cavalry stats and mobility high but not too fail safe

I prefer this. We make cav because we want speed. Otherwise, who would do cav when inf is cheaper and more useful as workers?

 

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

units dying faster is desirable

Definitely not. Units die too fast now and we just see people getting vapourised. 2v1 or bad fight = instant death -> more demanding on good ally and pocket -> less tolerance and more toxicity -> more DoctorOrgans behaviour + exclusion of newer players

 

@real_tabasco_sauce please reconsider the bonus on spear cav against other cavs. The issue is, most civs don't have spear cav. So as soon as someone makes a dozen spear cav, these civs Gaul, Brits, Athen, Maury, Sele are banned from using cav (unless they spam spear champs in P3). Is this what we want? 

Suggestion: due to the special nature of spear cav, we should give every civ a counter unit, e.g. fanatic, or just give every civ a spear cav option. 

[Deicide4u]

I believe the best way to balance cavalry is to eliminate the "blending in" or stacking of units on top of each other. In other words, make the unit collision work as it should.

This would make it impossible to have a 30 spear cavalry death ball in just one tile. It will also nerf the range advantage that some champion spear cavalry currently has.

[BeTe]

Quote

we can discuss if units dying faster is desirable, and if not, how to mitigate it without inadvertently breaking unit balance.

 

I like this strategical discussion. It's important to clarify what "we" want before you/we do any changes.

Regarding this, my opinion is that more durable and fewer units on the battlefield what makes good RTS. More micro abilities not just Attack move and few target-fire clicks... It seems 0AD is too spamy now.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, Seleucids said:

@real_tabasco_sauce please reconsider the bonus on spear cav against other cavs.

I’ve left it alone so far. Or are you saying it should be lowered?

everyone chill out, these aren’t final! I’m setting up some stuff in the community mod. If we spend some time testing seriously, we can figure out what works and what doesn’t.

[Atrik]

40 minutes ago, BeTe said:

It's important to clarify what "we" want

As you can see from this thread, a consensus will never happen as for the solutions  

 

47 minutes ago, BeTe said:

you/we do any changes.

@real_tabasco_sauce makes the all the balancing PRs that get approved by the team atm. So rly it's almost about convincing him.

 

49 minutes ago, BeTe said:

It seems 0AD is too spamy now.

With current production stats (cost, prod time..) more durable units actually makes the game feel more spamy.
This because there are much more situation where both sides can sustain sending troops on the front-line, replacing dying units by new one for a long while. Since melee re-balance, this happens more rarely, as battles tend to play out slightly faster. I'll maintain that it did have a positive impact on the gameplay, also because it put less importance on sniping making other things matter more.

[TheCJ]

5 hours ago, Seleucids said:

We make cav because we want speed.

but do they have to be twice as fast?

wouldnt 1.5× or even 1.3× as fast be fast enough?

5 hours ago, Seleucids said:

due to the special nature of spear cav, we should give every civ a counter unit, e.g. fanatic, or just give every civ a spear cav option. 

I feel like this would be an unnecessary "unification" of playstyles across different civs.

A civ with good defensive options could (if walls, forts, towers werent so bad) secure their eco without needing to keep troops at home and force the enemy cav to take a fight by attacking the enemy base. Then the cav die to normal spearman and no "quick" counter unit is necessary.

[Deicide4u]

13 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

A civ with good defensive options could (if walls, forts, towers werent so bad) secure their eco without needing to keep troops at home and force the enemy cav to take a fight by attacking the enemy base. Then the cav die to normal spearman and no "quick" counter unit is necessary.

Yes, this is what is needed. Options. Cavalry can raid well, but it should 100% die to spears. At least, it shouldn't be cost-effective at killing it's supposed counter unit.

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, TheCJ said:

wouldnt 1.5× or even 1.3× as fast be fast enough?

Ranged cavalry are already within that range (x1.3-x1.6 of inf equivalent) melee cavalry have more and I feel it is smart gameplay-wise as melee cav intuitively can be used to:

1. engage backlines
2. be able to counter ranged cavs
3. raid with comparable effectiveness as skirmisher cavs. 

All 3 scenarios require melee cavalry to have this additional speed.

Edited 21 hours ago by Atrik

[TheCJ]

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

All 3 scenarios require melee cavalry to have this additional speed.

I agree. Melee cavalry needs to be faster than ranged cavalry if its supposed to be a counter. And if ranged cav already falls in that range, thats also good.

But it might be better to equalize the speed of all ranged cav to a greater degree (so its not 1.3× to 1.6× but instead maybe 1.3× to 1.4×), then we could reduce the speed of melee cav while still having melee cav quicker than ranged cav (maybe at 1.5× to 1.6×)?

 

Lastly I wanted to add two more things I think are relevant to the cavalry issue as a whole:

For one the entire game is incredibly quick by the numbers; fast queue times, fast build times, fast gather rates. Thus, it feels like cavalry needs to be even faster to keep "the same advantage" as in other, slower rts.

Additionally most games are played on "standard mainland settings" or even ambush nomad or pizza, all of which are very small. You can see this by looking at how often people build additional ccs to get more map control (it doesnt happen often, atleast not in my games). Small maps also make cav more effective, since the moment you see them coming, they are basically already in your economy, thus you need to be very quick in reacting to defend sufficiently. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, TheCJ said:

Small maps also make cav more effective, since the moment you see them coming, they are basically already in your economy, thus you need to be very quick in reacting to defend sufficiently. 

in my experience, larger maps are stronger for cav because there is more space to exploit the speed difference.

[TheCJ]

6 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

to exploit the speed difference

Well, larger maps are better for hit and run units, like cav archers, since you have more space to micro/run to. But jav cav doesnt really benefit since it cant hit and run (it gets outranged) and neither does melee cav.

For both of those (jav and melee cav), larger maps just mean more time for the enemy to react or build up defenses in preparation. For early rushes, you might get to my base before I have my first additional soldiers out on a small map, but after I got them on a large map; similarly on a large map when approaching lategame, you can scout that your enemy has cav and build palisades/towers before he arrives.

[Dakara]

20 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

I believe the best way to balance cavalry is to eliminate the "blending in" or stacking of units on top of each other. In other words, make the unit collision work as it should.

This would make it impossible to have a 30 spear cavalry death ball in just one tile. It will also nerf the range advantage that some champion spear cavalry currently has.

this is the best idea , specially for cav! chariot champ have already this kind of feature 

[Dakara]

9 hours ago, TheCJ said:

I agree. Melee cavalry needs to be faster than ranged cavalry if its supposed to be a counter. And if ranged cav already falls in that range, thats also good.

But it might be better to equalize the speed of all ranged cav to a greater degree (so its not 1.3× to 1.6× but instead maybe 1.3× to 1.4×), then we could reduce the speed of melee cav while still having melee cav quicker than ranged cav (maybe at 1.5× to 1.6×)?

 

Lastly I wanted to add two more things I think are relevant to the cavalry issue as a whole:

For one the entire game is incredibly quick by the numbers; fast queue times, fast build times, fast gather rates. Thus, it feels like cavalry needs to be even faster to keep "the same advantage" as in other, slower rts.

Additionally most games are played on "standard mainland settings" or even ambush nomad or pizza, all of which are very small. You can see this by looking at how often people build additional ccs to get more map control (it doesnt happen often, atleast not in my games). Small maps also make cav more effective, since the moment you see them coming, they are basically already in your economy, thus you need to be very quick in reacting to defend sufficiently. 

Building a second city center is equivalent to giving it to your opponent! Moreover, with the number of military improvements too high in the forge (I still don't see why there are two technologies at age 3) building a CC puts you behind from this point of view. On the other hand, the cc have a lower cost than before, now it is possible to make them.

[Dakara]

22 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

Well, larger maps are better for hit and run units, like cav archers, since you have more space to micro/run to. But jav cav doesnt really benefit since it cant hit and run (it gets outranged) and neither does melee cav.

For both of those (jav and melee cav), larger maps just mean more time for the enemy to react or build up defenses in preparation. For early rushes, you might get to my base before I have my first additional soldiers out on a small map, but after I got them on a large map; similarly on a large map when approaching lategame, you can scout that your enemy has cav and build palisades/towers before he arrives.

In the current configuration, the catas are powerful. We should not balance the game on this wall hypothesis. Especially when we can lose the allegiance of the walls if the enemy pushes its border.

We should nerf the cavalry by choosing some of the ideas from the thread. It's important to keep in mind that a single Citizen Lancer shouldn't be able to kill a cavalry champion. So this won't be a miracle solution.

We need to focus on the "invisible" strengths of this unit.

Their ability to stack, take up very little space, and move in close quarters isn't really realistic. This way, they decimate enemies. Change this. And their ARMOR!!!! 

I think that if we nerf this unit too much, the cavalry mercenaries will be the new hell of the game so take care