Balancing champion units

[xfs]

This may be unpopular among Britons players, but for the sake of diversity in strategy, I believe the champion units right now can use some balancing.

Right now there is a dominant strategy, that is to use Britons and build sword champions spam. Britons' economy is quite advantageous for quick mass producing of champions starting in mid-game 15 minutes, and in late game once the market trade route is set up, the macro advantage is almost unstoppable.

There are several factors that contribute to this optimization situation, and can be considered for potential balancing measures.

• Sword champions can be trained in barracks, and Britons' barracks are very cheap (300 wood, no stone) for mass training champions. Other civilizations can only train champions from fortresses or champion buildings, with severely limited production capacity. Possible balancing measure: increase the training time for champions from barracks.
• Swords champions have questionable unit roles. They have deus ex machina level stats, with highest attack, highest armor, highest capture power, fastest walking speed among melee infantry. They are the best at everything and tactically superior to any combinations of other units of equal costs, and they are extremely strategically maneuverable because of their fast walk speed. There is almost no point in making any other units. If the unit roles are properly designed, they should have weaknesses. What is the weakness of sword champions? The consequence of a single unit beating an army composition is greatly reduced diversity in economical and tactical strategy.
• To discourage creating an army of only champions and balance against the combat effectiveness of champions, a potential balancing measure is to make champion units cost two population.
• Melee champions should not be both the most combat effective and the most maneuverable at the same time. Their combat effectiveness should cost their maneuverability. This is also realistic, because heavier armor and weapon should make champion infantry move slower than their non-champions counterparts (while they should indeed move a lot faster if under-armored, e.g. Naked Fanatic, or Maiden Guard?). This principle is also represented in the weaker stats of champion cavalries because they have much better maneuverability.
• Melee champions should have a primary unit role of anti-infantry, not anti-building. Right now a bunch of sword champions can hack down a fortress without significant loss, which is not quite realistic. They should either be more vulnerable to defensive buildings' pierce damage with the same attack strength, or defensive buildings should have higher hack armor. Spear champions have half the attack being pierce damage therefore a lot less effective against buildings. If somehow sword champions are considered to be justifiably more effective against buildings, they should at least gain a weakness compared to spear champions.
• Finally, is the capture power of champions too high? 5 or 7 if boosted by hero, compared to 2 of normal units. This makes defense towers totally useless. 3, or 4 for champions seems more appropriate. But if champions gain vulnerability in other areas (slower, or lower pierce armor), this advantage may still be appropriate to their unit roles.

[av93]

Boudica heroe aura has been nerfed in the actual svn version.

[Alekusu]

• Other civilizations can only train champions from fortresses or champion buildings, with severely limited production capacity. Possible balancing measure: increase the training time for champions from barracks.

I really agree with that, I love Seleucid but the fact that their champions cannot be trained in their barracks makes Seleucid hard to play late game.

Why aren't all champs available in barracks for all civ? is there an historical reason?

[Phalanx]

I think it is because most soldier were citizen soldiers, so the barracks would have worked more as an armour supply depot for the citizens. The fortress is a designated military building, so it makes sense that it creates designated military units. But I agree about the Seleucids. My biggest annoyance is the weakness of the Silver Shield Pike, but maybe that is because Syntagma isn't implemented yet....

[Alekusu]

I see.

Then if the developers team wants to keep champs in racks, fortress and other building, as xfs said, the production time needs to be balanced.

If we consider wood = stone (just to start discussion)

10 barracks cost 3000 wood. The equivalent is 3 fortresses.

So if producing time of champs from barrack is X sec, production time in fortress should be about (X*3)/10.

What do you think guys?

[xfs]

I think it is because most soldier were citizen soldiers, so the barracks would have worked more as an armour supply depot for the citizens. The fortress is a designated military building, so it makes sense that it creates designated military units. But I agree about the Seleucids. My biggest annoyance is the weakness of the Silver Shield Pike, but maybe that is because Syntagma isn't implemented yet....

Silver Shield Pike's armor is irrelevant and formation buff will not help with that. Their extremely slow walk speed and low attack make them useless on a macro level. They cannot defend against anything. The enemies simply go around and they will not be able to catch up.

[Phalanx]

Silver Shield Pike's armor is irrelevant and formation buff will not help with that. Their extremely slow walk speed and low attack make them useless on a macro level. They cannot defend against anything. The enemies simply go around and they will not be able to catch up.

Well, that is true. Realistically that was always the problem with pikes, but the SSPs would be a lot better if their attack was buffed. I think that if there was an overall attack buff once in syntagma, the SSPs and pikes in general would be actually worth it.

[Dade]

Agree with the bretons and others champs nukes problem. By the way, there isn't a data sheet with actual units damage or somewhere we could take it from? It will make things a lot easier to compare and discuss, probably also to devs.

About unit roles, I am posting soon a thread about siege, hope you can find it useful

[bb_]

@Dade: you found the ingame structree?

The percentage after the hack/pierce/ crush armour-value shows how much health is absorbed by the armour. The rest of the attack will be declined as health. The calculation is like: health_decline = attack_type * 0.9 ^ Armour_type, and added up for all types, hack pierce crush.

A sheet of actual damage would be way to complicated since there are too many unit combinations (the number of combinations is 2 ^ (units_number - 1)).

[Phalanx]

Do any other factions have a "super pike" champion? Or is it just the Seleucids?

[Mr.Monkey]

Something that is interesting, is that the Roman skirmishers have the exact same damage output as the Britons due to the fact that their hero does the exact same, they have the same upgrades and the same base attack, HP and armour. However the Romans are not nearly as used as much as Britons.

Furthermore, the Mauryan "Maiden Guards" and the Iberian "Champion Swordsman" are stronger because of the upgrade "steel working" which boosts their attack to 20.1 hack, instead of the Britons which have 18.1 hack. However the Iberians fall back as their heroes currently do not have any effects, and I am not sure just how good the healer hero that the Mauryans have when comparing to the Britons and the Romans.

Even still, the winners are still the Spartans, they are indeed the strongest champ due to the Agoge upgrade, that extra 50HP seems to actually give the champs a HUGE advantage over the Britons, test over test, making it as even as possible, Spartans win every time.

EDIT: regarding the problem on the imbalance between swordsmen and cavalry, it all depends on the way you play, I know some pros which know how to use cavalry champs really effectively. To put it very simply, cavalry is used as a hit and run unit. Its perfect when the enemies army is in the middle or busy, and you can just run into their main civ, past everything, capture something, destroy it, fall back, regain health, and repeat. This way you slowly chip away on the enemies economy without loosing almost any resources, for example, going for the traders and disrupting the trading line is EXTREMELY annoying, and if pulled off correctly, it's very effective. Note, this works well with around 20-30 of them, to make sure that they can push in and fall back as quickly as possible, this gives you space and time to build more sword champs while you distract and set back your enemy. 

What would be nice is to see a bit of variation between cavalry as they are all pretty much the same, and there are no special upgrades for them (only special cavalry are the Iberian, the Roman and the Seleucid ones). Iberian being the best, due to that crazy crush damage output.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Mr.Monkey
Extra info

[Palaxin]

I generally think champions' stats shouldn't be nerfed as it is very nice to have some super powerful units in the game. Mr. Monkey is right, to prevent champion spam we should have something like 3 times higher train time as citizen soldiers and/or increased resource and population costs.

The differences between the civilizations need some adjustments, though. Ideally in a way that all civs become viable to play.
The Spartans might have the strongest spear infantry, but they are quite underpowered in basically all other aspects of the game. -10% total population, no archers, not even slingers (so no good range at all), no walls and a very small pool of different units make them quite useless at the moment. Female bonus is practically useless and Phalanx, too, because there is no Phalanx tech implemented yet.

I once made a small Spartan mod where their champions could level up like citizen soldiers (advanced rank = "Hippeus", elite rank = "Heros") with a fear aura weakening nearby enemies. So if your army was successful you could more than equalize the pop penalty with stronger units. I was compensating the missing walls with a +2 unit armor bonus aura "Wall of Men" around CCs. Ok this makes them probably an OP civ, but it's a fun mod and perhaps I will upload it in the mod section if it still works...

Edited February 3, 2016 by Palaxin

[Mr.Monkey]

I agree with Paladin that the Spartans lack on pretty much everything else, but that health boost is REALLY good, it basically means that your Hoptiles take less damage when capturing things, and killing things, again it all depends on your play style, if you are pro and you can get a fast, and good economy and you know that you are going to be the first to attack, then Spartans is a great civ, probably the best. Just look at players like Phalanx, give him 80 Hoptiles and he will kill at least one person with just that army. If you prefer playing more defensively, then Spartans is a poor choice.

However I like the idea of champions being able to level up, I mean nowadays there are a lot of good players, and building an army of 100 by minute 20 isn't really a challenge. However if this is to be implemented in the game, then it should apply to all civs.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Mr.Monkey

[Phalanx]

Mais, there needs to be a balancing factor. C-S units level are balanced by the fact that they become worse gatherers. Maybe if the base stats of the champs are nerfed, and they gain exp a lot slower than their C-S counterparts.... That might work...

[Palaxin]

On 2/4/2016 at 9:34 PM, SeleucidKing said:

Mais, there needs to be a balancing factor. C-S units level are balanced by the fact that they become worse gatherers. Maybe if the base stats of the champs are nerfed, and they gain exp a lot slower than their C-S counterparts.... That might work...

In my mod the Spartans don't have the 25% hp bonus. Agoge enables higher champion ranks instead. So actually you have weaker champs at first and you need to level at least once to make them stronger than they are now. Of course the lvl 3 champs are very strong then with 280 hp, 12/12 armor and 8.4/7.0 attack just as base stats. I think I made the level upgrade at 200 xp from lvl1 to lvl2 and 400 xp from lvl2 to lvl3. CS need 100 xp for each upgrade. The only balancing factor was a bit less movement speed at higher ranks.

On 2/4/2016 at 7:21 PM, Mr.Monkey said:

I agree with Paladin that the Spartans lack on pretty much everything else, but that health boost is REALLY good, it basically means that your Hoptiles take less damage when capturing things, and killing things, again it all depends on your play style, if you are pro and you can get a fast, and good economy and you know that you are going to be the first to attack, then Spartans is a great civ, probably the best. Just look at players like Phalanx, give him 80 Hoptiles and he will kill at least one person with just that army. If you prefer playing more defensively, then Spartans is a poor choice.

Ok I'm far from being pro and only have used singleplayer mode yet. I believe Spartans are quite strong in some situations but I thought most pros use Britons and spam their champs earlier than every other civ so actually Spartans should get into a defensive rather than offensive position in most cases...

On 2/4/2016 at 7:21 PM, Mr.Monkey said:

However I like the idea of champions being able to level up, I mean nowadays there are a lot of good players, and building an army of 100 by minute 20 isn't really a challenge.

IMO 0 A.D. is too much focused on pop production so early game is quite boring. Then you have one big rush and game is over in most cases... See my other post here.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Palaxin

[Mr.Monkey]

10 hours ago, Palaxin said:

Ok I'm far from being pro and only have used singleplayer mode yet. I believe Spartans are quite strong in some situations but I thought most pros use Britons and spam their champs earlier than every other civ so actually Spartans should get into a defensive rather than offensive position in most cases...

Well historically Spartans were aggressive and had been known to have the best military, so it makes sense for them being offensive. But honestly the top 5 civs (Spartans, Britons, Iberians, Mauryans and Macedonians) are really close when comparing damage/economy etc, really it all comes up to individual skill. Real pros don't stick to one civ, a lot of people go with Britons because it is easy to set up a good economy, doesn't mean they have the best champion (Their champion is actually only the 4th best champ in game at the moment).

Edited February 9, 2016 by Mr.Monkey

[Palaxin]

12 hours ago, Palaxin said:

most pros use Britons and spam their champs earlier than every other civ so actually Spartans should get into a defensive rather than offensive position in most cases...

I meant in most cases they get their army a little bit later than Britons, and therefore have to react. Not that they should be that way by design. You are right, they actually are an offensive civ. Meanwhile I should have a look at some pro games to get a better impression about what I'm saying

Edited February 10, 2016 by Palaxin