Why is A27 a broken version?

[king reza the great]

 

Unfortunately, there are serious issues with this version. For example, champions are broken units — they are extremely strong with very high HP. Some players, especially ecobot players, always play as pocket and spam champions nonstop, using the proGUI cheat or even without it. An army of 30–40 champions, especially with hero bonuses, can easily destroy a normal army.

Spearmen and pikemen are supposed to counter cavalry, but they are ineffective against cavalry champions, who are extremely fast and impossible to chase down. In addition, champions can capture a Civic Center (CC) in less than 10 seconds. Once a player loses their CC, all their buildings are lost within a few seconds, often before their allies even have a chance to support them.

Another major problem is that some players rush the enemy base together in phase 1 or 2, capturing the CC in seconds. Again, by the time allies can react, it’s already too late.

Also, the change to left-click attack feels terrible. Left-click capture was much better and more intuitive. Now, having to press C and then left-click to capture is really annoying and clunky.

In A26, a group of players created a community mod to balance the game. It was a good initiative, got a lot of positive feedback from many players, and improved over time. I had hoped the developers would use it to balance A27, but sadly they proved that player feedback isn’t important to them.

Edited 12 hours ago by king reza the great

[Deicide4u]

34 minutes ago, king reza the great said:

For example, champions are broken units — they are extremely strong with very high HP.

Of course they are strong. They are also very expensive to train. Also, your civ has it's own champions.

The players that are left alone to boom will naturally dominate the late game. This booming tactic is also much more reliable in team games. Your team needs to figure out who is the boomer, then harras him. 

 

40 minutes ago, king reza the great said:

Also, the change to left-click attack feels terrible. Left-click capture was much better and more intuitive. Now, having to press C and then left-click to capture is really annoying and clunky.

On the contrary, capture should be restricted to few normal buildings. You first complain how capture is broken (which it is in vanilla), then you complain how it's not intuitive or default in this version. My opinion is that you shouldn't be able to capture certain key buildings like Fortresses and Civic Centers, but that is another discussion. 

 

44 minutes ago, king reza the great said:

In A26, a group of players created a community mod to balance the game.

The Community mod is now available for A27, and it addresses some points you mentioned. 

[Atrik]

23 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Of course they are strong. They are also very expensive to train

They are 4.8x as strong as their cs counterparts but only cost 2.2x. Champs are the cheapest units of the game, relative to their fighting efficiency. Even more so for some special champions, like Pers and Sele champ cavs.... For infantry, its the same ratio but they can't eco, so they don't feel as broken. Also one player in a team game can make them at the expense of letting an ally die but it's much easier for the other team to coordinate and engage a infantry champion army together; while champion cavalry can always pick fights, and ruin the economies of any player very fast.

I don't think it's totally bad to have champions being the most resource efficient (/cheapest) units of the game, as long as they get weaknesses. Currently, melee champ cavs counter everything but themselves have no (serious) counters.

[borg-]

Champions should not be trained in stables or barracks.

Champions should have the status equal to a fourth level, above elite, but cost less than the current cost.

[Deicide4u]

14 minutes ago, borg- said:

Champions should not be trained in stables or barracks.

Strongly agree. Champions should be available only in Fortresses and special civ-specific buildings. Either that or increase the cost of unlock techs.

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

7 hours ago, king reza the great said:

In A26, a group of players created a community mod to balance the game. It was a good initiative, got a lot of positive feedback from many players, and improved over time. I had hoped the developers would use it to balance A27, but sadly they proved that player feedback isn’t important to them.

Hi @king reza the great we do have a community mod version live at the moment. Currently, the focus is on the capture situation and some changes to walls.

We can test changes to spearmen cavalry counter in future versions (which I do not recommend, as the speed difference is the real problem).

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, Atrik said:

For infantry, its the same ratio but they can't eco, so they don't feel as broken.

speed. You can always outnumber infantry champions, surround them, outrun them, or attack somewhere else. You simply cannot do this versus cavalry champions because they can choose the fight in 90% of cases.

I'd like to test some extensive speed rebalancing at some point, but since more people call for spear damage counter changes, I'll do that first.

[TheCJ]

11 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I'd like to test some extensive speed rebalancing at some point, but since more people call for spear damage counter changes, I'll do that first.

@Emacz and I added very significant speed changes to the historical mod, as it seemed somewhat silly/unrealistic how fast cav is compared to infantry.

I know our mod does many other things aswell and any "data" we get might not be useful for the base game, but we are aiming to test those changes a bit over the course of the next month, after which I'm hoping we can release the first mod.io version of our mod (and maybe get even more players to test it out and give some feedback).

[king reza the great]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Hi @king reza the great we do have a community mod version live at the moment. Currently, the focus is on the capture situation and some changes to walls.

We can test changes to spearmen cavalry counter in future versions (which I do not recommend, as the speed difference is the real problem).

Hi What the point when at the end devs dont set it for new version?

Edited 1 hour ago by king reza the great

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Hi @king reza the great some of the changes were not tested in the community mod. Some were made before I made any contributions.

its my own shortcoming that I didn’t look back to try and test some of this, but also community mod players at the time expected near perfection out of the mod, so I suppose my hands were a bit tied.

however, going forward, I would like for the community mod to be treated like a community test environment (CTE) where devs can submit gameplay oriented changes to get some quick feedback from players.

so I encourage players to try it out, give feedback, and then we can try other changes out afterwards.