Fanatics Are Broken Beyond Repair — The Real Spam Nightmare After Champ Cavs

[king reza the great]

Besides the champion cavaliers, Fanatics are by far the most broken units in the game. Seriously, these units are insanely overpowered and hard to counter. Can anyone name a unit that can reliably stop Fanatics? I bet you can’t.

They run fast, deal massive damage, and don’t even require metal to produce, which makes spamming them nonstop super easy. The only thing the developers could have done to stop the spamming of this unit was to add metal as a required resource. Unfortunately, they didn’t do that

There are players abusing this by spamming Fanatics in P2, and it’s ruining the game for everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if some ecobot or clever Celt player designed this unit to exploit the game by spamming them relentlessly for an unfair advantage.

What do you guys think? Any ideas on how to properly nerf or counter these broken units? I believe adding metal as a required resource to build them would be an effective way to balance this unit. Moreover all cav champs should be nerfed for sure.
We’ve already banned Champion Cavaliers from our games, and Fanatics definitely need to be banned as well. If the developers don’t nerf these units in the next alpha update and keep introducing unfair, broken units, we’ll have no choice but to keep banning them from our matches to maintain fair gameplay.

Edited 6 hours ago by king reza the great

[Deicide4u]

I have a different suggestion.

How about the 20-30 top-rated "competitive" players agree on a "multiplayer balance" mod, and y'all start using this mod in your games?

Leave the "broken" units alone. Every single RTS has them.

[ffm2]

I think in games where champ cav are banned, the civs with the cav mercinaries in mass have the same dynamic as the champ cav previously had. Only available to some civs which are the ones that usually didn't had champ cav.

Last time camels worked great against the fanatics. Just back them up in time. Use 2 groups supporting each other. Occasionally use citizen soldiers when they are nearby - but don't chase.

As the game progresses one should move away from only citizen soldiers. Elephant archers or siege towers in mass are good too. Just because a tactic can be applied successfully doesn't mean it's OP.

One could make some game specific balance like here, but I don't think it's that bad. I would even include champ cav in games.

[Deicide4u]

11 minutes ago, ffm2 said:

Only available to some civs which are the ones that usually didn't had champ cav.

Except Carthage, which has both

But yeah, 100% of the above. There will always be some strong unit that will carry the game, no matter how many OP units you ban.

[guerringuerrin]

27 minutes ago, ffm2 said:

As the game progresses one should move away from only citizen soldiers.

Totally agree on this. But I'd say that every unit should have a counter unit to make the game more dinamically. If a unit doesnt have a counter at least from a good number of civs, then the game just turns into a champcav race. And thats make some kind of boring gameplays

[Dakara]

5 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

Totally agree on this. But I'd say that every unit should have a counter unit to make the game more dinamically. If a unit doesnt have a counter at least from a good number of civs, then the game just turns into a champcav race. And thats make some kind of boring gameplays

Hi, i don't like age of empire for this reason, too much counter of counter. 0ad fight are cool,you don't need too much knowledge. 

 

Yes, fanatics are strong. You have to know how to reduce their strength (remove their armor and shield?) or reduce their spam (increase the resource cost). We can even imagine the downgrade to a "mercenary" unit, I mean not champion but not citizen. So it would be a rank 2 unit that costs wood and food. They keep their strength against the cav and can harass a little but less. But above all, their control capacity with the high capture attack is removed.

Banning units is not the solution so we have to find a solution, what do the people on the balance team think?

 

Spoiler

If you ban a unit, there's always another META that comes along with a unit or civ that stands out. I'd even go further and say that basic citizen units should be equal between civs. Athens and Sparta are too strong in basic infantry with their health and promotion bonuses. If their opponent plays a basic infantry army, they have low chance to win. 

 

[king reza the great]

I mention and emphasize again,fanatics and champ cavs have no counter. Some nave people say you can counter champs with champs. But its not that true. For example for sele/persian/gaul cav champs, there is 0 counter units ( or champs) in Maury civ.

Other units like citizens or mercs ( even cav mercs) have counter in all civs, then they are ok.

Edited 4 hours ago by king reza the great

[Deicide4u]

27 minutes ago, king reza the great said:

For example for sele/persian/gaul cav champs, there is 0 counter units ( or champs) in Maury civ.

This is so wrong, Mauryans have the strongest champ unit in the game.

Spoiler

You just destroy his Taverns Temples before he has a chance to mass Fanatics, easy. A23 stats, btw.

Edited 4 hours ago by Deicide4u

[guerringuerrin]

1 hour ago, Dakara said:

Hi, i don't like age of empire for this reason, too much counter of counter. 0ad fight are cool,you don't need too much knowledge. 

I don't support a hard counter style like aoe2 but right now meta is whoever masses champcav first wins (unless he bad micro/noobs ofc) turning almost every game in a champcav race, if you'd have some kind of counter or better soldiers to hold it, player would aim for other strategies. 

but we can disagree on that ofc

[king reza the great]

2 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

This is so wrong, Mauryans have the strongest champ unit in the game.

  Reveal hidden contents

You just destroy his Taverns Temples before he has a chance to mass Fanatics, easy. A23 stats, btw.

Ok tell me with which unit you counter champ spear cavs of persian with hero and 20% more hp bonus?  

Yudha is for destroying buildings. It even cant counter normal units well.

Edited 2 hours ago by king reza the great

[Deicide4u]

6 minutes ago, king reza the great said:

Ok tell me with which unit you counter champ spear cavs of persian with hero and 20% more hp bonus?  

My post was mostly sarcastic...Oh, well 

Champion spearmen. Or mass regular spearmen with upgrades. CS spearmen cost 50 F/ 50 W. Champion cavalry costs a LOT more. Fight for map control and force an engagement. Champion Cavalry can pick fights, but not when you're the one who controls Metal mines on a map.

[king reza the great]

4 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

My post was mostly sarcastic...Oh, well 

Champion spearmen. Or mass regular spearmen with upgrades. CS spearmen cost 50 F/ 50 W. Champion cavalry costs a LOT more. Fight for map control and force an engagement. Champion Cavalry can pick fights, but not when you're the one who controls Metal mines on a map.

Here we are talking about countering units not game play. Any unit in 0ad should have counters.

[Deicide4u]

5 minutes ago, king reza the great said:

Any unit in 0ad should have counters.

Every unit has strengths and weaknesses. Spearmen are basic units. Average speed, low cost and mostly pierce damage in melee but can counter cavalry. Trainable in the Village phase. Useless against rams and buildings, somewhat bad against other infantry.

Champion cavalry are late game power units. Fast, mobile and powerful, but very expensive to mass. Requires City phase to unlock. Also needs upgrades to resist most of the bonus damage from spearmen, so it requires even more metal to work.

Unless metal grows on trees in your games, I don't see how this unit can be considered broken.

[Dakara]

15 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Every unit has strengths and weaknesses. Spearmen are basic units. Average speed, low cost and mostly pierce damage in melee but can counter cavalry. Trainable in the Village phase. Useless against rams and buildings, somewhat bad against other infantry.

Champion cavalry are late game power units. Fast, mobile and powerful, but very expensive to mass. Requires City phase to unlock. Also needs upgrades to resist most of the bonus damage from spearmen, so it requires even more metal to work.

Unless metal grows on trees in your games, I don't see how this unit can be considered broken.

we don't play the same game i guess. You have easy 2 or 3 metal mine in your territory. 

Champ cav are broken and they have absolute no weak point! they are tank, high hp, high attack. They have a big cost effiency combine to mobility. Speciality persians and sélucid

some civ can litterality don't play against them.

we need nerf champ cav by one solution (cost, tankiness, damage, building training change or another idea)

Edited 1 hour ago by Dakara

[king reza the great]

47 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Every unit has strengths and weaknesses. Spearmen are basic units. Average speed, low cost and mostly pierce damage in melee but can counter cavalry. Trainable in the Village phase. Useless against rams and buildings, somewhat bad against other infantry.

Champion cavalry are late game power units. Fast, mobile and powerful, but very expensive to mass. Requires City phase to unlock. Also needs upgrades to resist most of the bonus damage from spearmen, so it requires even more metal to work.

Unless metal grows on trees in your games, I don't see how this unit can be considered broken.

They are broken because spearmen cant counter them

U can get metal easily like how u get wood easily from trees

Also with abit turtling u can spam them