A18 Gameplay and Balance Suggestions

[Alekusu]

Hey guys, It might seems very early for suggestions but actually I already played a lot Alpha 18 (or SVN before release), all my suggestions are based on real games and not just testing 10 units A vs 10 units B. And because these are not trivial suggestions, I thought the sooner the better.

Ranged units:

Ranged units are dealing too much damage and are the core of every army in Alpha 18. The core of an army should be melee infantry for more realism.

Therefore I suggest a diminution of damage for all the ranged units. (Maybe not for skirmisher)

Archers (infantry or cavalry):

Archers shouldn’t outrange towers and CC. Even if I know that they do only a few damage to buildings, I can assure you that in game, these outreaching archers are too strong.

Mauryans Sword Infantry Champions:

These guys are just OP ^^, both damage and armor are too high.

Sword cavalry:

In Alpha 17, they dealt too much damage on building, on Alpha 18, they don’t do enough.

Flanking an unprotected village/city with sword cavalry should be part of the gameplay. In Alpha 17, even with a good defense you couldn’t deal with a good sword cavalry harass but on Alpha 18, we have no way to flank cities (sneaky elephants are not working, I tried ).

It is also realistic to have an unprotected village destroyed by a cavalry attack. However we need to find a balance, if a city is well protected, these sword cavalry should get wrecked fast (so probably a very weak pierce armor should do the trick).

In Alpha 18, expansion became very important, that mean that you soon have two cities to protect. But because sword cavalry are not a threat, you can go all the game with an unprotected main city and be fine. In this current “metagame” where expansions are the key, adding the possibility to flank the main city would be awesome for the gameplay.

Mario’s suggestion: We kind of disagree on that point but I’ll explain his suggestion:
#Sword cav should be like slingers, they should have a bonus to buildings but still be able to deal with units and therefore should have a good pierce armor.#

So we both agree on the fact that sword cav should deal damage to building but we disagree on the armor (I suggest a low pierce armor)

So I’m gonna try to explain why I don’t agree with my buddy Mario.

Let’s take an example, your enemy expands middle map, invest his stone in towers near his expand leaving his main base not protected with towers. You decide to harass his main base with 15 sword cavalry and found a dropsite with a few houses around with 15 women gathering wood. This is an unprotected area, your sword cav should be able to kill the women + the dropsite + the houses around if no reaction from your opponent. For this Mario and I agree I think.

Now, same situation but your enemy didn’t use all his stone to protect his expand but also put a tower with archers inside near the dropsite, and 3 spearman gathering wood with the women. This is, imo a well-protected area against harass. So if sword cavalry have low pierce armor they get wrecked by the tower and this is good imo. If they have a good pierce armor, they can out micro the spearman, take down the tower (I still consider that sword cav have decent damage vs buildings) and still be OK

I think the thing is, Mario wants Sword cav to be able to kill archers on the ground, I want sword cav to be killed by a tower and because towers and archers on the ground deals the same kind of damage, we can’t have both. It’s up to you Scythe

Spear cavalry:

Imo, Sword cavalry should be the “city flanking” unit.

Spear cavalry however should be the “army flanking” unit. After diminution of ranged damage, they might become OK. If not I think the 3.5s rate of attack is too slow.
The Spear cav should have a good pierce armor.

Melee Infantry:

A “charge” feature in order to chase ranged units would be awesome.

Catapult:

They should deal more damage or have a better armour.

Fortress:

The limit should be 3 or 5 (Basically, one for offense, one for expanding territory, one for defense). With this, the positioning becomes really important. This is a very personal opinion though.

About Rushing win vs booming win vs turtling win vs rushing: Awesome job there Scythe
Mario’s suggestion: We could push this further by having women training time lowered but weaker women; then countering booming with a rush would be really efficient but letting someone booming without any harass would make you fall behind quickly.

The gameplay in Alpha 18 is really really good but I think we can improve it by having a core of armies made of melee infantry, ranged units who will support the core, a way to flank an unprotected city (with sword cavalry) and a good flanking unit during battle (spear cavalry).

Sorry for the long post,

Thanks for reading,

Alex

Edited March 18, 2015 by Alekusu

[auron2401]

Sword cav is fine, IMO.

No, it's BEYOND Fine. It's job, is to chase down skirmcav. though..

If you CAN manage to get 50 sword cav chopping at your enemies civ center, you deserve to kill it.

Also, women ALREADY TRAIN FASTER. they are at 8 seconds, to most infantries 10.

Edited March 18, 2015 by auron2401

[Alekusu]

In Alpha 18 you can't destroy a CC with 50 sword cav (non champions unit of course) except if your opponent is AFK

Mario suggestion is even faster than 8 seconds for women

Edited March 18, 2015 by Alekusu

[auron2401]

That would be ridiculously OP.

Mario obviously doesn't train women with houses.

Also, Yes you can. It's called diversions, use them.

Edited March 18, 2015 by auron2401

[Alekusu]

OP against what Auron? Against rush ? that's why we want to make women weaker.

Mario is probably the best active player right now on 0AD btw

About sword cav... Try to sneak 50 sword cav against me or Mario, if you succeed I'll agree with you.

[Zezil]

That would be ridiculously OP.

Mario obviously doesn't train women with houses.

Also, Yes you can. It's called diversions, use them.

1_ how can something be OP if accessible to all civs in the same manner?

2_ i dont train women with houses, becouse from houses a woman takes 30 seconds to train (versus 8 seconds in the cc). I prefer investing the resources of the tech in better things, and i dont usually spam women age 2, i spam men. i dont personally understand this comment.

Recruiting time for women should imo be the lowest possible (wich doesnt need to be much lower than 8 seconds maybe) in terms of playability.

Their training time has already been lowered to 8 seconds, result being a more varied approach to early game you can have, you can chose a safe approach to early game, with early men and less women, and hit 130 pop at min 10 with 50 women. Or you can do more women( wich is risky, but still too hard to punish imo), hitting 160 pop at 10 min with about 80 women( you start spawning men very late with this approach, so a rush at about 7 mins would be deadly)

Now, if women and men have same training time, the choice is easy, make men.

The more the gap between women and men training time, the funnier, varied and important the early game, the more the strategies and also the harder the macro wich is very important too, increasing the learning curve might result in highlight creativity and create more and more playstyles.

Lowering women health goes hand in hand with this idea.

This is something that could be also easily tested in the balance branch too i think, and i'd be personally happy to do it.

[zzippy]

..i dont train women with houses, becouse from houses a woman takes 30 seconds to train (versus 8 seconds in the cc).

yeah, but usually you train from all houses simultanously, means at least 20 (in a 10_pop_house_civ), which is a train time of 1.5 s/woman ...

[Zezil]

yeah, but usually you train from all houses simultanously, means at least 20 (in a 10_pop_house_civ), which is a train time of 1.5 s/woman

I see that but i dont understand why this is a cons to lowering training time of women.

I mean, calling it a downside of lowering time of women recruitiment means not understanding the point of why lowering it.

[zzippy]

...I just wanted to relativize your argument of houses longer train time, thats all.

Edited March 18, 2015 by zzippy

[Zezil]

...I just wanted to relativize your argument of houses longer train time, thats all.

Yeah z, dont get me wrong, i was talking about auron, your intervent was right on spot and necessary.

I was inaccurate on the first post, and i meant to specify on that regard.

Sorry if i sounded unpolite, but i was kind of irritated at Auron arrogance.

The meaning of this thread is to contribute to the game with our ideas knowledge and opinions, dont discredit other people ideas just becouse at a first read they sound "weird" or wrong to you, rather ask for further explaination, or enrich the topic with your own reasoning around the subject.

Word comunication is not something perfect (how z misunerstood me is an example) so be cautious on your intervents and maybe read twice before giving your take.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Zezil

[scythetwirler]

Merged ideas into http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19736