Some civs are under/overpowered

[serveurix]

I wanted to start a thread called "General thoughts about civilisation's designs" but I realize that what I'm writing is becoming very long, so here is a post about the balance only. I'll dedicate an other thread to civ's differentiation (note that this thread already contains some proposals for Celt's differentiation).

So, with the current game engine's state, some civs are underpowered. See the Celts, for example :

• They need a lot of wood, early in the game, which gives them a malus on desertic maps (this is logical)
  
• The special buildings/techs which could give them a big economical bonus are unimplemented yet (Update : rotary mill is implemented now, see below)
  
• Their walls are passive (this is logical too, for historical accuracy)
  
• The units that usually give them advantage in combat are the slingers and the champion units, eventually the cavalry units when they are numerous
  
• Brythonic special units don't give them a big bonus :
  
  • Chariots are pretty useless for the moment, as trampling, charge and turrets are not implemented yet (they're just fast, resistant, expensive and large cavalry archers)
    
  • Dogs are rapid and cheap but, they are weaker than a human citizen-soldier and can't perform economic tasks. Currently no one would want to spend his food and population points in a few packs of dogs. Dogs don't really give any advantage for now.
    
  • Longswordsmen are very good, but slow. They're good in battle, they're good at taking down buildings, but basing yourself solely on them to take down a fortified enemy base is risky.
    

  [*]Gallic special units are a bit better :

  • They have longswordsmen, like Britons, expensive and powerful infantry units
    
  • They have a champion cavalry which is quite cheap (needs food and wood only)
    

In my opinion, Celts are underpowered in the early game. At the beginning you will need food and wood, so you will focus your economy essentially on these two resources. So you'll train either spearmen or javelinists to gather resources and prepare to defend your city. Javelinists are cheap in wood, but as they're not very precise, they are pointless if they're not numerous and grouped. So you'll need to train a lot of them and perhaps build outposts to be able to gather your troops before the enemy reaches our city. The best choice is probably to train spearmen mostly, and women each time you are out of wood. Even when not numerous, the spearmen can perform good enough in battle. But, contrary to the greek hoplites, for example, they're rarely able to maintain a gapless frontline to protect ranged units, so the only ranged units I train in the early game are cavarly javelinists, who can runaway when the frontline is breached. The other reason for training cavalry javelinists is that I base my food production on sheep and not on farms, in order to spare wood, and cavalry is very good for this.

But the problem is that you'll consume a lot of wood anyway, and your workers will quickly move away from your city, as you're deforesting fast. As a result it will take more time to call them back when your city is attacked.

And this is when you choose the option of taking the time to develop your city, equally sharing the resources between your economy (buildings, sheep, techs, phases) and your soldiers, trying to maintain an army able to defend you when the time comes. You can also choose the option to put all your resources on economy and buildings in order to rush to the 3rd phase as fast as possible. And once you've reached the third phase, you can build walls, fortresses, and a couple of very strong units capable to face any attack from your enemy. From my own experience, the second option seems to be the best. When I played "Savannah Ravine" with the Celts (it was with the alpha 12, now with the barracks available in early game it might be a little bit different), rushing through the phases was the only thing that worked.

So, as a consequence, it appears that Celts have a great interest in skipping early phases, have an accelerated development, put their wood and stone in buildings and spare the rest of the resources to build an expensive, aristocratic army while protected behind their walls. This looks unrealistic to me.

Celts should be able to sustain in the early stages of development, and be able to have a big army of cheap, disorganised, non-professional soldiers and be able to waste some units to defend their territory. Here is what I propose :

• Citizen-soldiers should be a little bit cheaper than other civs citizen-soldiers, and maybe train faster.
  
• Houses should be a bit cheaper.
  
• Briton's female citizen should fight like men, and should be as reliable as them to defend the city. One possibility is to give them the same hack and pierce points as the average soldier, but less crush points, an other is not to differentiate Briton's infantry citizen-soldiers and female citizen at all and simply make one unit, good in economical tasks and average in combat, costing something like ~50 food and ~10 or ~20 wood, and make the models randomly male and female.
  
• War dogs should be used to disconcert the enemy by flooding the battleground rapidly. But for that, they need to be numerous, and to be numerous, they need to be cheap. The cost of a dog should be lowered, maybe inferior or equal to the cost of a sheep. Maybe dogs should take 0 population, like the sheep, with a cost that increases with the number of dogs trained. Or maybe they should take 1 population point every ten dogs (I don't know if it's possible) to simulate the fact that you have one dog trainer per group of ten dogs. Or maybe we should create a "dog's population limit" which will allow the celts to train a limited amount of dogs that would not count in the main population.
  
• Maybe we could also make dogs able to scatter enemy troops, by making enemy fleeing a certain distance when bit or chased by a dog (like female citizen flee when attacked). That would make them worthwhile as "champion units" (there's no need for a unit who can't perform economic tasks if it doesn't give a significant advantage in battle). Update : As an afterthought, I don't think it's a good idea. Players would just try to force the units to attack the dogs instead of fleeing. It would just give them the impression of being forced to micromanage and that would annoy them more than anything else. What about the opposite ? Dogs on the battlefield would rather target the archers, forcing them to strike back with a melee weapon, making them unable to use their ranged attack support their melee companions.
  
• Rams are the only celtic siege unit. They should be cheaper than the rams of other civs (especially if they have less hitpoints), in resource or in population points.
  

On the artistic side, I would suggest that the celtic houses are randomly turned when you place them. I agree the rectangle greek, carthaginian and roman houses should be parallel to each other, but I think it would look better if the round celtic houses were all turned in a different direction.

It's a little bit early to speak about this but currently the formations are not implemented, and the Celts struggle against other civs like Romans and Carthaginians. It should be the complete opposite : the average celt warrior was stronger and better armed than the average roman soldier. Romans should have no other option than using formations to win against Celts. But as I said, maybe it's a bit early to brainstorm on this.

Currently the player's experience is pretty much the same with Britons and Gauls, and Mythos_Ruler proposed to differentiate them a bit more on civ design and art : http://www.wildfireg...pic=17554&st=20

This is a very good idea, I already like the modifications made to the towers and the houses. Great job !

Mythos_Ruler proposes to make the Briton's civ center buildable on the shore, and act as a crannog. I like the idea, but what would be the benefits of this ?

• more room on the map to build civ centers
  
• possibility to extend your territory from the shore (good if you're close to a river, and want to forbid the enemy building on the opposite shore)
  
• civ center less vulnerable to attacks from the ground (less room for melee soldiers) but vulnerable to ships (triremes' ramming, iberian fire ships)
  
• have a superstrong port, able to shoot arrows on enemy ships (but shouldn't we give this kind of bonus to the carthaginians first ?)
  
• have a civ center able to train ships (that would be good if the CC-crannog can be the starting CC)
  
• Britons were not know to be good at sea warfare, so maybe the CC-crannog could give economical advantages rather than military ones ? For example : speeds up gathering of all fish resources in the range of the CC.
  
• more ideas ?
  

Apart from that, there are all the proposals I've made above about war dogs and citizen-soldiers (maybe those would tend to give an advantage to Britons, the Gauls having only the advantage of their cavalry, so maybe we should find a few other cool things for the Gauls).

Update 1 : I've played alpha14 with the Gauls, and the possibility to make barracks in phase 1 and to train champions in the barracks helps *a lot*. The rotating mill technology is a little bit useless, as it is only available in late game, when your economy is supposed to be stable already (it would be better to have a food boost in the end of phase 1 (with an expensive phase 1 building) or the beginning of phase 2). It still looks like Celts are screwed if they don't build walls. I haven't played a14 with the Britons yet. Update 2 : Ok, I've played the Britons a bit. They're still underpowered, the barracks stuff doesn't help much.

Some civs look overpowered, like the Persians. This is a little bit more difficult to advocate, as the Persians and the Mauryas look very strong in the hands of the AI, but not so strong when I play them. So maybe there's something I don't take properly advantage of, but I'm pretty sure the AI develops very quicker when playing the Persians and the Mauryas than when playing other factions. Maybe it's because of the population bonus ?

On the other hand, the Greeks look very strong in my hands (I don't need to build walls, I just keep training hoplites, they are basically a moving wall \o/ ), but very average when played by the AI.

The Persians are probably the more bonused, their cavalry is almost invincible, and their fast-trained immortals and cheap archers support them very efficiently. What would you think of having a different way of handling pop cap bonus for the Mauryas and the Persians, that would lower the advantage of the persians in the early game ?

For the moment the current population cap is always inflated of 10% during all game, right ?

So, what about keeping this rule for the Mauryas (they keep having 10% more population every time) and have a 10% population bonus only for the maximum population for the Persians ? So Persians have a bonus only in late game, and they need to build a few houses more.

Edited September 12, 2013 by serveurix

[sanderd17]

First some little mistakes in your report, and things that are in the pipeling:

On dogs, I'd want a dog specific limit, that's determined by the number of kennels (like you get 10 dogs per kennel). This is doable (I have a patch), but I don't know if the rest of the team wants that.

About your statistics, it looks like celtic rams have more hp than Roman or Iberian ones, while the same armour and attack values. And celtic spearmen have about the same statistics as hoplites.

For the random rotation, this isn't really possible, as the obstruction is still square. So rotation does matter.

I disagree about the celts being better armed though. In the early timeframe of the game, armies were mainly composed out of elite troops (the swordmen you see), while in the later age, armies were bigger, and mainly consisted out of lightly armoured spearmen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_warfare

That said, I like to see statistical results from lobby rankings to see which civs lose against other. Instead of just guessing. Of course, it all depends on the play style. IMO, every civ should have its weak spot (like the celts are very weak against to Romans, but quite good against the Iberians), but every civ should also have its equal.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I only see, is defense, give more tower capacity for them. They don't have turrets.

....A lot of wood yeah, but Romans need a lot of gold XD to do armies.

All civs need a lot of wood and food at first phase, and barrack costs wood more than others civs.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[serveurix]

On dogs, I'd want a dog specific limit, that's determined by the number of kennels (like you get 10 dogs per kennel).

Yes, but the question is : should they be included in the main population or have a separated population limit ? I would rather have them not being counted in the main population, because otherwise there's no point training them, unless you're completely out of resources, and even in this case, they wouldn't help you if you don't have packs of them.

About your statistics, it looks like celtic rams have more hp than Roman or Iberian ones, while the same armour and attack values.

Ok, I wasn't sure (I don't have the game at hand right now, I based myself on the design document in the wiki).

And celtic spearmen have about the same statistics as hoplites.

I'm surprised. Hoplites look really strong in the game compared to other civ's spearmen. I'll check again.

For the random rotation, this isn't really possible, as the obstruction is still square. So rotation does matter.

You're right, I forgot. I suppose there is a technical reason for that ? Is it possible to have at least a 45 degree rotation then ?

I disagree about the celts being better armed though. In the early timeframe of the game, armies were mainly composed out of elite troops (the swordmen you see), while in the later age, armies were bigger, and mainly consisted out of lightly armoured spearmen. http://en.wikipedia..../Celtic_warfare

I've always learned that the average celt soldier had better weapons than the average roman soldier (I suppose that people are speaking about blades when they say that, not about the armor of course), and that good tactics and organization was the only thing that made Cesar win against the celts.

That said, I like to see statistical results from lobby rankings to see which civs lose against other. Instead of just guessing. Of course, it all depends on the play style. IMO, every civ should have its weak spot (like the celts are very weak against to Romans, but quite good against the Iberians), but every civ should also have its equal.

Agreed. Except that I think unorganized Celt should win against unorganized Romans in almost every case, and that Romans should use their special abilities (tactics, formations, testudo...) to have a chance to win against the celts. But as I said, as formations are not implemented yet, it's maybe a bit early to speak about this kind of balance.

[serveurix]

I only see, is defense, give more tower capacity for them. They don't have turrets.

Celts didn't rely much on towers, so I'm not shocked that they have little power on this side. I guess anyone playing the celts should learn to send his slingers and cavalry javelinists when he sees the enemy massing at his doors, or send his melee units for a sortie.

A lot of wood yeah, but Romans need a lot of gold XD to do armies.

Yes, but they need it only in the middle and late game, so they can spare it in the early game. Celts must rush for wood very quickly, and rushing for a resource that is scattered all over the map is tricky (unless you have a mobile storehouse, like the mauryans).

Edited September 11, 2013 by serveurix

[sanderd17]

I'm surprised. Hoplites look really strong in the game compared to other civ's spearmen. I'll check again.

Well, it's just easier to start balancing when you start with everything the same, and then bring in the differences. Though I think the ram health isn't meant to be higher. I thought all rams would have the same health for now.

[Lion.Kanzen]

That not underpowered, if they lack of wood, I proposed three levels of woodcutting. And try to train more females than civ soldiers or train the soldier thst don't consume wood in stockpile.

The begging of game if hard, if you play AEO kings, happens same things. 75% of your workers must be woodcutting the forest even in Anatolian plateu. Other recollecting food. Don't try to build farm before you hunt and collect bushes.

[alpha123]

I'm surprised. Hoplites look really strong in the game compared to other civ's spearmen. I'll check again.

As of Alpha 14 all spearmen are the same. Eventually there will be a lot of techs for Hoplites to make them considerably stronger than other spearmen.

Regarding other stuff, you're pretty much spot-on with Celts being underpowered. They are incredibly wood dependent, although this isn't too much of an issue on most maps. More importantly, they're extremely vulnerable to certain unit combinations. Massing up swordsmen is an easy way to win against Celts, as the main units for both Gauls and Britons, spearmen and skirmishers, are both countered by swordsmen. Additionally, lots of archers beat slingers and skirmishers fairly easily, and the various Celtic cavalry are too expensive to be useful versus large numbers of archers (even though cavalry are bonused versus archers, 80 archers will still easily beat 30 cavalry, and archer production is just so much faster).

I disagree about Persians being overpowered, although they're definitely on the more powerful side. Really all they have going for them is good archers, and while massed archer is extremely good currently (better than it should be) they have trouble late game since they only have a weak ram for siege. However, since they have a variety of above-average cavalry, and since Immortals are quite good, I'd still stick them as being solidly on the more powerful side.

I strongly disagree about Mauryans being overpowered, on the contrary I consider them underpowered, only slightly better than the Celts. They lack any siege equipment and elephants are slow, expensive, and are very easy to take down. Elephants can't even breach a few garrisoned fortresses and towers, as the arrows alone from the garrisoned buildings can kill the elephants. Mauryan archers are extremely good though, and since archers are such a flexible and strong unit right now it gives the Mauryans an edge in the early and middle game, but they're at a large disadvantage late game.

[Lion.Kanzen]

not, play Gauls (Ai)vs Mauryans(player) Deccan Plateu(?), the Gaul Soldiers are bit better.

[serveurix]

As of Alpha 14 all spearmen are the same. Eventually there will be a lot of techs for Hoplites to make them considerably stronger than other spearmen.

Is it possible that the greek hoplites have a slightly longer spear than other spearmen ? Or are all the spears the same length ?

I disagree about Persians being overpowered, although they're definitely on the more powerful side. Really all they have going for them is good archers, and while massed archer is extremely good currently (better than it should be) they have trouble late game since they only have a weak ram for siege. However, since they have a variety of above-average cavalry, and since Immortals are quite good, I'd still stick them as being solidly on the more powerful side.

I strongly disagree about Mauryans being overpowered, on the contrary I consider them underpowered, only slightly better than the Celts. They lack any siege equipment and elephants are slow, expensive, and are very easy to take down. Elephants can't even breach a few garrisoned fortresses and towers, as the arrows alone from the garrisoned buildings can kill the elephants. Mauryan archers are extremely good though, and since archers are such a flexible and strong unit right now it gives the Mauryans an edge in the early and middle game, but they're at a large disadvantage late game.

I agree, in fact I didn't think much about the late game in my criticism. In the late game I generally don't worry, as my economy is stable, my civ centres are numerous, and my main city is fortified, I'm not too much under pressure for raising an army (I play against the AI for now). But in the beginning of the game, both have the advantage of cheap, powerful and rapidly trained base citizen-soldiers (archers).

Note two things about the Mauryans late-game warfare though :

• You can use war elephants (expensive) and elephant archers (cheaper) in pair : just send your elephant archers first, and make the fortress/tower/archers focus on them. They wont make much damage, but they will serve as "lightning rods" for your war elephants. Then send your war elephants destroy the fortress while your elephant archers take the arrows. If you have enough elephants (you need a big army, 15 elephants of each kind is a minimum), the fortress won't have the time to damage your elephant archers too much before it gets destroyed.
  
• The AI can't use it, but Mauryans have one of the best units of the game currently : Chandragupta Maurya. He's good in melee and at taking down buildings and he can train maiden guards at the same time, which are also very good in melee and against buildings.
  

Edited September 12, 2013 by serveurix

[Lion.Kanzen]

Mauryan is a faction that needs a tons of gold to be effective, all best units can train with gold. But the Elephant Worker is the best XD.

And if you use Mauryan Archer against Gauls they have Sword Cavalry. And if you uses elephant they have a lot of spearman and skirmisher.

[alpha123]

Is it possible that the greek hoplites have a slightly longer spear than other spearmen ? Or are all the spears the same length ?

I think Macedonian ones have possibly slightly longer range, but the Athenian and Spartan ones are the same as other spearmen, I think.

I agree, in fact I didn't think much about the late game in my criticism. In the late game I generally don't worry, as my economy is stable, my civ centres are numerous, and my main city is fortified, I'm not too much under pressure for raising an army (I play against the AI for now). But in the beginning of the game, both have the advantage of cheap, powerful and rapidly trained base citizen-soldiers (archers).

Note two things about the Mauryans late-game warfare though :

...

While both of those are true, it's not enough to counteract their lack of regular siege, since a large number of ranged units, particularly skirmishers, will take down any elephants including Chandragupta Maurya pretty easily. If you're going to talk about balance, you need to be playing multiplayer. Balancing the game by playing against the AI just doesn't work too well.

Mauryan is a faction that needs a tons of gold to be effective, all best units can train with gold.

As an aside, all Mauryan units require food. They have no non-food units, and as Lion says above their top-tier units require a lot of metal. So basically Mauryan late-game economy is almost totally food and metal-centric, which turns out very odd and given the limited amount of metal on most maps, typically doesn't work so well for them.

[Lion.Kanzen]

but food with infinite farm is easy. for me of course. i have 4 farms workings, for me the food is not a big deal.

[alpha123]

but food with infinite farm is easy. for me of course. i have 4 farms workings, for me the food is not a big deal.

4 farms is going to get you about nowhere as Mauryans. I typically do 8-12 farms as non-Mauryan civs....

It's true that food isn't as big a problem as metal, since food is much easier to produce, it still hinders Mauryans slightly that all their units require food.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Team that my point XD . Thats why im to favor of respawn Minerals

[alpha123]

Team that my point XD . Thats why im to favor of respawn Minerals

I strongly dislike that idea. It's good to have resources be worth different amounts. I like that metal is more difficult to obtain than food, because it helps balance more powerful units which typically cost metal.

Also, we want 1v1 games to last about 20-30 minutes on average. In that time frame respawning minerals (which doesn't make sense from a realism perspective anyway) wouldn't serve much purpose, other than cheapen the value of metal considerably.

[Lion.Kanzen]

im know myself are divided with that matter. may be in game modes we can give the user the power to choose, preferible in multiplayer, is like deathmatch but the diferrecing is this resorces are if you can collecting not at starting of each map.

[Lion.Kanzen]

for me is not resources is Tactical, for example in Deep Forest, i can win close because i use Athenian Elite Pikeman/Spearman, because use food and wood. against Iberian Swordmen, the difference Iberians they were depended on limited metal. on a map with high wood and devoid of minerals.

they send a lot of Swordman and destroy every single units in my faction. but i never stop to train soldiers, they stop, because the metal.

was tactical, i produce a lot of wood and food, and change in market for metal xD.

sorry for double post. i lost my mind sometimes.

Edited September 16, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[greenknight32]

I strongly dislike that idea. It's good to have resources be worth different amounts. I like that metal is more difficult to obtain than food, because it helps balance more powerful units which typically cost metal.

Also, we want 1v1 games to last about 20-30 minutes on average. In that time frame respawning minerals (which doesn't make sense from a realism perspective anyway) wouldn't serve much purpose, other than cheapen the value of metal considerably.

It would be more realistic if mines didn't suddenly run out, but the labor to extract increased as you had to dig deeper, improved technology is required as well. Metal would become more expensive as surface outcroppings were exhausted.

Don't know if this would be worth doing, but I can imagine how it could be implemented - mines could progress from surface mines to tunnel mines, maybe a deep mine phase after that.

[Lion.Kanzen]

That is nice feature, create a mine.

Edited September 16, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[alpha123]

It would be more realistic if mines didn't suddenly run out, but the labor to extract increased as you had to dig deeper, improved technology is required as well. Metal would become more expensive as surface outcroppings were exhausted.

Don't know if this would be worth doing, but I can imagine how it could be implemented - mines could progress from surface mines to tunnel mines, maybe a deep mine phase after that.

That would actually be pretty cool, and not too hard. Hm. I'll have to think about this a bit. There would be a fair amount of new art required though, and the art team is pretty busy.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I like the idea of mines being "exhausted", like Vespene Gas mines in Starcraft, but still gatherable just in a diminished capacity. In fact, if we ever have time, I'd like to make large open-pit metal mines for the game where the player can build a Storehouse on a slot and claim it just like Vespene Gas mines in Starcraft. IMHO, it makes it more interesting to making metal mining different from stone mining.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Same concept. The mine can be Advanced Building. phase II or III. Advanced economic. Create. Civic center into Military Colonial Center(fortified) or Economic? With Terran is similar.

Attached buildings to research and give bonus. Attached lumberjack. Attached mine. Etc.

[greenknight32]

@ Michael - I was thinking more like the metal mines would use shaft mining, and require a tech upgrade, while stone would be open-pit mining, just take more labor. But I'm just throwing ideas out there, take it whichever way you want.

@ Lion - Nice picture you found, what was that from?

[Lion.Kanzen]

I game that try to do mix AoE with Starcraft Spartan Ancient Wars. But is not was good. Too buggy.