[Alpha 22] Balance considerations

[Grugnas]

Let's start with saying that i was reluctant to open another balance discussion because that topic is basically discussed daily by lobby players and forum readers (and mostly because my english isn't that great),  but who cares, it is always fun to talk with / complain at people  about the game content.

Personally speaking, despite the game is still in alpha state, having a clear idea of how effective are the units and what are the strengths and weaknesses of a civ is crucial for further features implementation and strategies available, thus simply comparing units each other and introducing a counter system with multipliers in order to be more effective against other units  is quite odd.

A player shouldn't be forced to counter a strategy with 1 and only 1 strategy (basically imitating enemy strategy).

Summary:

I'll explain the key points of units (mostly imbalanced op peculiarities). Those wants only to be suggestions in order to improve the game experience with the low effort from the development point of view.

N.B:   my considerations are based on starting LOW resources game and Mainland map, anyway the starting resources shouldn't influence the available strategies.

Phase I:

It is a matter of fact that training skirmisher cavalry at start is the best strategy in terms of cost / effectiveness in order to get advantage in the game.

Melee Cavalry:

• both swords and spear cavalry lose on a direct fight with skirmish cavalry.
• Spear Cavalry has hard times while hunting elephants which are the best food source in the game.
• Spear Cavalry move too fast considering that a spear is more cumbersome than a sword.
• Spear Cavalry haven't a specific role if not killing women.
• Blocking them with palisades or houses wall is really hard

Issue:  

• Spear cavalry is harmless against skirmish cavalry
• Sword cavalry works better in ANY situation

Solution:

• decrease melee cavalry hp  from  160 to 150
• spear cavalry gains   1.25x bonus  against cavalry units
• decrease spear cavalry walk speed from 22 to 20
• increase sword cavalry walk speed from 20 to 21
• increase cavalry train time from 12 to 15

Ranged Cavalry:

• is a better version of the infantry skirmishers, other type of cavalry, spearmen and sentry towers should be the way to defend own economy from raids
  (since skirmishers are meant to be effective against spearmen, it is reasonable that spearmen represent a mediocre defense against Skirmish cavalry as far as the latter are skirmshers).
• They mainly cost food which is really easy to obtain with women gathering berries bushes (especially with the tech) and from chickens considering the 5x food gathering bonus cavalry has.
• Their hunting performance is outstanding.
• 20 units can make a mess on the wood gather spot because they are able to kill more than 10 citizen soldiers + 10 or more women while under the fire of 2 fully garrisoned sentry towers upgraded with the Sentinel tech which is ridiculously overpriced (usually it is even hard to have 2 sentry towers hitting the same group of enemies at same time since trees prevent a proper towers placement) and barely have loses (we talk about 1 or 2 dead cavalry).

Issue:   Cavalry has way too many healthpoints. A ranged cavalry has 120 hp for 100 food + 40 wood   vs   ranged infantry  50 hp for 50 food + 50 wood  (more than double hp for less than double cost).

Solution:  decrease ranged cavalry hp  from  120 to 100

Sentry Tower:

• They require wood which is essential at starting phase of the game, matter of fact having more than 8 women gathering berries bushes is pointless since the max gatherers limit per bush is 8 and surplus units risk to be idle thus it is immediate that all the remaining trained units have to go gather different resources (wood in particular in order to increase own population).
• They require soldiers garrisoned in order to deal more damage which means economy lose and uncovered women. Garrisoning soldiers whenever the enemy comes to raid would be the best strategy, sadly skirmish cavalry can kill soldiers while they move to such sentry tower (the damage dealt by the tower isn't be worth the effort anyway).
• They can be destroyed with ease by 20 ranged units (especially cavalry) and that shouldn't be allowed.
  Personal opinion:  since defense tower has a minimum attack range, i find interesting that sentry towers would follow the same logic thus being weak to melee attacks.

Issue: the economy sacrifice by garrisoning soldiers + investing wood isn't worth the effort since they are easy to destroy and don't deal much damage.

Solution:  +5 pierce armor.    Considering the cavalry hp reduction, there isn't any damage increase needed.

Palisades:

• building palisades means sacrifice wood for houses and soldiers
• they are hard to place around the civic center because the metal and stone mines are too close to the civic center (at least on most of the random maps)
• they aren't worth to be built in late game.  Houses are supposed to be built around grainfields as replacement of palisades in order to protect women and this reduces the usage of palisades.

Issue: palisades can't be built without sacrificing economy. They are even less valuable in late game.

Solution:

• reduce build time from 7 seconds to 5 seconds
• reduce wood cost from 5 wood to 3 wood

Experience gain compromises match ups:

(this may need more testing)

On 8/19/2017 at 0:18 PM, Grugnas said:

cmpPromotion.IncreaseXp(cmpLoot.GetXp() * -targetState.change / cmpHealth.GetMaxHitpoints());

an unit gains experience equal to the damage it deals and not equal to its attack strength ( pierce damage + hack damage + crush damage) thus the experience gained is equal to the damage filtrated by the target armor

if swordsmen beat spearmen,  the    battle  compposed by 40 spearmen + 40 skirmishers vs 40 swordsmen + 40 skirmishers  is won by  spearmen team  because their skirmishers gain promtion faster.

• Phase II:

Building the market as first structure is the most valuable strategy because, unless few workers on stone in case of slingers (which training cost let the player save wood anyway), there is possible to barter any resource for another one.

f.e. desert biome, where the wood is more harsh to gather, usually comes with huntable animals, elephants in particular which provides insane amount of food (even too much to spend in units training), which can be bartered with wood erasing in that way the biome particularity.  In terms to be clear, some games with groups of elephants can provide (8000 food which can be used to barter more than needed wood).

Market:

• bartering ruins the particularity of desert biome which is supposed to be  "Expand if you want wood" and perhaps incentive the surplus gathering of faster gathered resources in order to barter them with rare ones.
• Traders, when all the traders affecting technologies are researched, can yield up to almost 2 resources per second with a linear route (the most recent measure was 89 resources in 67 seconds with a NON linear route and 105 resources in 69 seconds with a linear route excluding the extra resources the player gains from the international trading whenever allied traders use such a market).
• it is too easy to defend and replace considering walls.

issue: trading is too convenient and outnumbering enemies in a fight doesn't give the expected advantage thus having a solid trade route is always more beneficial

solution:

• include bartering fees even when the player barters resources in batches
• reduce trade income by 1/3 of the current gain
• remove the international trade bonus whenever the allied traders use your market as destination/origin and keep only own traders benefit from such a feature.

Phase III:

One of the most valuable tactics is to unlock all the economy technologies (wood has the top priority) then build structures able to train sieges and attack the enemy with most of own units.

Champions:

• they train too slowly when compared to sieges. While a couple of sieges can destroy buildings while being covered by other units, a couple of champions aren't enough to influence a game.
• Perhaps having civs able to train champions from barrack and ones from fortress only is quite unfair.

solution:

• reduce infantry Champion training time from 30 to 20  and Champion cavalry from 40 to 30

Edited August 23, 2017 by Grugnas

[WhiteTreePaladin]

2 hours ago, Grugnas said:

Palisades:

• building palisades means sacrifice wood for houses and soldiers
• they are hard to place around the civic center because the metal and stone mines are too close to the civic center (at least on most of the random maps)
• they aren't worth to be built in late game.  Houses are supposed to be built around grainfields as replacement of palisades in order to protect women and this reduces the usage of palisades.

Issue: palisades can't be built without sacrificing economy. They are even less valuable in late game.

This is definitely true.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Make the sentry tower made by stucco or other material. Or simply by stone.

but stucco is better don't cost nothing , only time.

[av93]

Maybe a rps system of spearmen>tower>skirm cav>spearman for phase 1

[fatherbushido]

(Isn't a discussion about some numbers - 20 or 21 or 20.5 - a bit premature just after a release?)

 

[Grugnas]

2 hours ago, fatherbushido said:

(Isn't a discussion about some numbers - 20 or 21 or 20.5 - a bit premature just after a release?)

 

the number are indicative ( i simply swapped spear cavalry walk speed and swords cavalry walk speed) in order to define the role of the 2 type of cavalry and give to the countered one (swords cavalry in this case) a chance to escape / bait.

I guess that having a type of unit being able to counter another one and being better under any aspect would  kinda be an about-turn.

 

4 hours ago, av93 said:

Maybe a rps system of spearmen>tower>skirm cav>spearman for phase 1

this is the intent. Managing the resources is as important as choosing the type of unit.

Actually cavalry role is to raid for a sure advantage more than scouting which could lead to later advantage (f.e.  knowing that the enemy is training the unit X, i will train and eventually upgrade the unit Y which beats the unit X as long as the enemy doesn't know. Otherwise, by scouting, he could train the unit Z which counters my units Y).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

It seems like to me in these balance discussions that people keep piling on more tweaks upon all previous tweaks which just creates a giant stack of tweaks which like Jenga is prone to continue to fall over if the base is not solid. Create a solid conception of the roles of each unit and the web of counters in which they reside. Something that makes sense. Build the stats upon that. 

[fatherbushido]

(Also not at the final release, not even at beta, but at 'alpha'.)

[Grugnas]

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It seems like to me in these balance discussions that people keep piling on more tweaks upon all previous tweaks which just creates a giant stack of tweaks which like Jenga is prone to continue to fall over if the base is not solid. Create a solid conception of the roles of each unit and the web of counters in which they reside. Something that makes sense. Build the stats upon that. 

I don't like to criticize devs work but It is quite obvious that in the last 3 alphas the best strategies were all based on the race to train the most OP units of the moment.

f.e. Alpha 20 was about training champions as fast as possible, in particular Britons since they build faster and save wood with slingers. the other units weren't even used in depth since buildings arrows were lethal against citizen soldiers and prevented any kind of rush.

Alpha 21 was about spamming slingers because they are cheap and incredible fast workers in any case. Matter of fact having the stone near the cc facilitate their training and keep workers safe from any kind of rush. The overall buildings arrows damage was nerfed by 20% and this allowed people to rush. Rushes that brought up the strength of the spear cavalry since they can ruin food production and totally block a player and their weakness since thats the only situation where they are worth to train. What does it means?  that the buildings are effective against infantry but cavalry, thats why cavalry needs an hp nerf instead of tweaking buildings.

Alpha 22 is all about cavalry rush and keep women safe from the raiders which is really hard since they die fast and there is no space to garrison them all, plus any kind of building is useless against 10+ cavalry because the more units the building hits the less chance it has to kill an unit and low the attacker DPS (this has been the issue with slingers able to totally absorb the damage of a fortress with cunobelin hero).

Indeed I can't know what boil under the pot but i assume that the various balancing tweaks over the alpha versions have been done to make more valuable some unused units and keep people interest at least in multiplayer games since it looks like AI, despite its complexity, is  easy to beat once a player plays a couple of multiplayer games where the mechanics are pushed to their limit (like a pilot on a racing car).

Since the bases are been given already, the easiest and perhaps the most coherent way to move would be to use the bases and make them deeper through new technologies and perhaps tweaks to units and formations (which would make the game even deeper with their strengths and weaknesses). F.e.   since infantry skirmishers are really strong into hunt, wouldn't make sense to have them to be able to hunt and make closer the gap with civs using skirmish cavalry? you have a new way to use them. The difference between civs is already on their buildings build time and perhaps it could kept deeper from the economy growth point of view while the role of units are already defined in the game.

[fatherbushido]

I can't agree with a so closed view of the developement of the game.

[temple]

I think the general problem is that it seems impossible to have the same unit weak vs women in village phase but also decent against champs in city phase.

Currently citizen-soldiers get +20% hp in town and +10% hp in city. I think we should we should make that more like the veteran upgrade, i.e. have phases give increases in health, armor, attack, accuracy, range, vision, and speed. If citizen-soldiers are weaker, then women and towers are stronger. (We could even make the cavalry bonuses bigger than the infantry ones, if that was necessary to further weaken early raiding.)

Another idea is ballistics, to make it a technology to have ranged units aim at moving targets just as accurately as stationary ones. Since fleeing women are moving while hunted animals are largely stationary, this would allow skirm cavalry to be effective hunters while at the same time being ineffective raiders (unless the opponent's not paying attention). It would also making fighting more micro-intensive. This would need testing and maybe some tweaks to projectile speeds.

I agree with the need to distinguish sword and spear cavalry, for gameplay reasons. Although I think others have said that actually sword cav should be the counter unit?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Why pile your balancing hopes onto one tech, the phases?

[Grugnas]

On 8/20/2017 at 5:23 PM, temple said:

I agree with the need to distinguish sword and spear cavalry, for gameplay reasons. Although I think others have said that actually sword cav should be the counter unit?

is there a non woman unit which is countered by spear cavalry with more effectiveness than a sword cavalry?

 

On 8/20/2017 at 8:13 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Why pile your balancing hopes onto one tech, the phases?

I try to separates phases in order to see things under stretegies point of views.  e.g. :

is there a strategy in phase 1 that allows me to defend from skirmish cavalry (same for spear cavalry)  without stay too much behind my opponent?

expanding is possible from phase 2 only, but is it worth the effort and resources or is it better to wait phase 3 and use market traders + bartering for an instant resources income?

is there a strategy that allows me to train champions fast enough to not risk to lose my fortress (in case of champions trained from fortress) without being able to defend myself from rams? (e.g.   Seleucid, ptolemies, macedonians, perhaps britons).

[Servo]

In multiplayer games it's very obvious the best strategy to counter skirm cavs rush is to defend with skirm cavs too. The faster to train more than the other the advantage in skirmishes is noticeable in a 1v1 with almost same skill. But the rush has to be executed very well in order to regain the disadvantage of being the attacker(assuming both protagonists have skirm cavs). Mostly a 2:1 ratio result in a success but a minimum number(>10 cavs) of cavs is needed to inflict substantial damage to the opponent.

In team games the results of rushes are varied. The team who executes a better teamwork and coordination wins mostly even if their team is weaker than the other. 

Some will say that the game has no strategy other than just spamming effective units, imo it's false. I didn't play much multiplayer in A21 but it's almost the same except that the tweaking favor other units to be more effective. The game is in alpha and these results are being noted and resolves should be in place as new alphas are introduced. 

Nowadays some players especially on team games make some progress in countering rushes. Romans and Macedonians can survive or shall we say quite safer on the pockets. The only problem is they are the targets of the rush and they will be embrayon if help doesn't arrive sooner. In addition since the diplomacy button shows who has these civs they will be in danger especially on plains and land maps. 

So many ideas are being presented and imo there are many ways to resolve the issue. But this so called OPness of skirmisher cavalry needs to be changed (nerf) is imo not the best solution. They are performing really well and there are more civs that have them. Why not just tweak the melee cavalry coz they have more defects. Somehow Romans and Macedonians require metal to train skirm cavs in P2? If I'm not mistaken they have better HP maybe. 

[temple]

9 hours ago, Grugnas said:

is there a non woman unit which is countered by spear cavalry with more effectiveness than a sword cavalry?

I can't parse this. My point was that historically it might be that sword cav > spear cav, so the bonus should go the other way. I found the comment, it was in your spear cav thread.

On 5/30/2017 at 6:37 PM, causative said:

The spear/sword cavalry distinction in a21 is backwards compared to history.  Cavalry spears and lances were very powerful against armored targets because they have the weight of the horse and rider behind a focused point.  In contrast, swords were effective against unarmored targets; you can easily slice through flesh with a sword, doing a huge amount of damage, but a cut from a sword does not penetrate armor well.  If one cavalry type should have a role of harassing peasants and unarmored targets, it should be the sword cavalry, and the spear cavalry should be more powerful in armored confrontations.

On 5/31/2017 at 0:16 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This is generally how I use melee cav in DE. Spear Cavalry are "line" cavalry, with smaller attack but more armor so they stand up better in a melee, while Sword Cavalry are faster and have larger attack, but are easier to kill with lower armor. This mirrors the Spear Infantry and Sword Infantry stats, proportionately.

And things could get interesting with trample damage and charge attack, or even secondary attacks (cavalry could carry spears + swords, or javelin + swords, etc.).

I'm not a big student of history, so I can't really say what a realistic countering system should be.

[sphyrth]

All this discussion about OP units has inclined me to support the "Soft Capping" concept: No unit should be spammable... not even the ones considered as "trash"... women and farm animals are not exempted.

[Servo]

With too many this and that shows that 0AD gameplay lacks depth. They want it like AoE or AoM or whatever Ao gameplay style (imo has lots of gamers but too messy and lacking depth too). The only difference 0AD has is the nice units, most buildings, and promotions with a possibility of being more realistic. 

Rebalancing  is not the biggest issue here, it's the game mechanics. The developers lack the vision to make a better gameplay. They succumb to the pressure from the so called pros. They complain this OP skirmisher cavalry and thinking that they need to be nerfed again which imo is a stupid move. It's doing really well. They complain about the game resulting in rushes and did not tailor to their liking and trying to blame on units OP this and that. In late game they complain about too much resources coming from caravan/merchants but what's the culprit? Some people say ah I don't want limit to what I produce, build or train which is real stupidity. Now I'm reverting back to playing single player because most of these so called pros are just playing a boring game like no cavalry and this and that. 

Most modders have better mindset and their mods are really promising (as I can only imagine). They try to fix what is broken. They give attention to game mechanics (like no cavalry production from CC). Some would even suggest that citizen soldiers are a mess(I agree). These citizen soldiers look really good but they mostly gather heavily. I don't mind them gathering but their gathering is very OP. Resource production should be done by skilled tradesmen. Look at cavalries doing back and forth buchering animals from corrals, is that nice?! Players are taking advantage of the game mechanics defects.

 

 

 

[Grugnas]

17 minutes ago, Servo said:

With too many this and that shows that 0AD gameplay lacks depth. They want it like AoE or AoM or whatever Ao gameplay style (imo has lots of gamers but too messy and lacking depth too). The only difference 0AD has is the nice units, most buildings, and promotions with a possibility of being more realistic. 

Rebalancing  is not the biggest issue here, it's the game mechanics. The developers lack the vision to make a better gameplay. They succumb to the pressure from the so called pros. They complain this OP skirmisher cavalry and thinking that they need to be nerfed again which imo is a stupid move. It's doing really well. They complain about the game resulting in rushes and did not tailor to their liking and trying to blame on units OP this and that. In late game they complain about too much resources coming from caravan/merchants but what's the culprit? Some people say ah I don't want limit to what I produce, build or train which is real stupidity. Now I'm reverting back to playing single player because most of these so called pros are just playing a boring game like no cavalry and this and that.

Most modders have better mindset and their mods are really promising (as I can only imagine). They try to fix what is broken. They give attention to game mechanics (like no cavalry production from CC). Some would even suggest that citizen soldiers are a mess(I agree). These citizen soldiers look really good but they mostly gather heavily. I don't mind them gathering but their gathering is very OP. Resource production should be done by skilled tradesmen. Look at cavalries doing back and forth buchering animals from corrals, is that nice?! Players are taking advantage of the game mechanics defects.

I can't understand what do you mean with "depth". A game where training 1 unit only yield you the win is broken for sure and this is a feature in common with previous alpha because the games brings up all the difference between the civs (e.g. celtics an mauryans  can train civs faster than others).

As fan of the game and not modder, I think that adding more features doesn't make the game deeper as far as there is a valuable strategy that makes you totally ignore content of the game. That's what the balancing is about.   It is like buying a car with full optional and not even using the air conditioning as long as your intent is just to reach home.

e.g. in no cavalry games there is always a mix of units to train and towers become more valuable. Even if you mind to train champions only they won't give you the win as long as you don't have ranged units to use which can be skirmishers archers or slingers depending on the opponent strategy.

So, training 1 unit only would make the game more interesting?  watching replays of people training 1 unit only to win the game or to play the multiplayer game for the first time and to see own eco being killed by a bunch of skirmisher cavalry then resign after 5 min (this is happening quite often in this alpha)? What a game! I can't blame you to prefer single player games where you can play sandbox games.

I can't understand why people can't get that tweaking units in respect of which features devs decided to implement in the game can simply bring more strategies or at least could let player use totally unused units like walls and sentry towers. This isn't even a hard or time spending thing to do, perhaps this is one of the main tasks of a game developer. ( i made a balance patch which took my minutes but months of online playing).

Gathering should be the primary income of resources as far as it requires workers, incentive expansion in order to reach further resources, let you control the map which requires multitasking and makes the game more interesting and imho it is the peculiarity of an  RTS game. You have to choose where and how units have on a determinate part on the map for a determinate purpose.

Don't take this phrase like an insult, but one can notice that you don't play online as long as you don't complain for skirmish cavalry rushes. Even the danubius map, which is actually cool, is a frustrating map but it is really enjoyable to watch a game on that map. But sure, you can still use as balance measure playing single player AI petra which doesn't use the right strategies by keeping sending kamikaze soldiers every minute and gain multiplied resources in order to be harder to beat.

[Sundiata]

Here's an idea: Add Stables to the building roster. A prerequisite for training cavalry, for all civ's (except maybe horse-cultures like Iberians who could train some from the CC straight away). Most cavalry related technologies should also be researched there. This is would obviously delay too early rushes, and presents the player with an interesting choice for the early game. Focus on econ and defence, vs rushing.

Balancing is important, and I love the passion you guys put into choosing the right approach, but...:

I kind of agree, that there is a too a great a focus on pleasing the relatively small, but vocal multiplayer community, as opposed to the large mass of relatively quiet single players.

People who play single player, want options, possibilities, variation/diversity, an interesting and engaging AI, grandeur/scale, depth, a certain sense of realism and especially immersiveness and gorgeous aesthetics. Not limitting options, capping things like population or specific units, or restricting play styles. 

Adding stables is a nice addition that benefits both competitive players (delaying rushes), and single player (more eye-candy, immersiveness)   

Edited August 24, 2017 by Sundiata

[av93]

Or make corral a prerequisite for training cavalry, except persians.

Edited August 24, 2017 by av93

[Servo]

@Grugnas it's not about just training or having 1 skirmisher cavalry. The point is you delay the training of this unit en masse so that it will not ruin the game! I hope you understand what I mean here. There are so many ways to do that and changing its current specs is not the best solution imo because it's doing well. The accuracy is improved and I don't thinks it's overwhelming. 

For you info I may have played multiplayer just lately (I started just a couple of weeks before A22). But I've been playing multiplayer player heavily since the A22  release and I considered myself one of the most aggressive raiders using skirmisher cavalry. I posted some games in A22 replays but my performance then is still far from being refined but I think I contributed enough for our team to win. I played so many games with some pros or so called pros but I rather play games alongside or opposite the hated JC than playing with less aggressive players. 

 

Edited August 24, 2017 by Servo

[Servo]

I never complain about skirmisher cavalry rushes because I'm always rushing and had so many victims among very good players. 

Btw off topic I noticed that a Seleucid CC is producing 1food /sec, is it the same for all Civ CC?

[realNoobNoob]

Seleucids CC isnt producing 1 food/second. You most likely had a ally who has Ptolemies as civ, ptol teambonus is all allies gain 1 food per second. All civs have different teambonus. For example Iberians give their allies cheap skirmishers/cav skirmish (-20% skirmish costs).

[Grugnas]

10 minutes ago, Servo said:

I never complain about skirmisher cavalry rushes because I'm always rushing and had so many victims among very good players. 

Btw off topic I noticed that a Seleucid CC is producing 1food /sec, is it the same for all Civ CC?

The complaining isn't about having victims but as only viable strategy (everything else you do makes you lose). Deadend Strategy.

Ptolemies team bonus grants +1 food/sec to allies.

Quote

. The point is you delay the training of this unit en masse so that it will not ruin the game! I hope you understand what I mean here. There are so many ways to do that and changing its current specs is not the best solution imo because it's doing well. The accuracy is improved and I don't thinks it's overwhelming. 

as said on the first topic, none talked about changing accuracy.
 

Quote

 

Melee Cavalry:

• both swords and spear cavalry lose on a direct fight with skirmish cavalry.
• Spear Cavalry has hard times while hunting elephants which are the best food source in the game.
• Spear Cavalry move too fast considering that a spear is more cumbersome than a sword.
• Spear Cavalry haven't a specific role if not killing women.
• Blocking them with palisades or houses wall is really hard

Issue:  

• Spear cavalry is harmless against skirmish cavalry
• Sword cavalry works better in ANY situation

Solution:

• decrease melee cavalry hp  from  160 to 150
• spear cavalry gains   1.25x bonus  against cavalry units
• decrease spear cavalry walk speed from 22 to 20
• increase sword cavalry walk speed from 20 to 21
• increase cavalry train time from 12 to 15

Ranged Cavalry:

• is a better version of the infantry skirmishers, other type of cavalry, spearmen and sentry towers should be the way to defend own economy from raids
  (since skirmishers are meant to be effective against spearmen, it is reasonable that spearmen represent a mediocre defense against Skirmish cavalry as far as the latter are skirmshers).
• They mainly cost food which is really easy to obtain with women gathering berries bushes (especially with the tech) and from chickens considering the 5x food gathering bonus cavalry has.
• Their hunting performance is outstanding.
• 20 units can make a mess on the wood gather spot because they are able to kill more than 10 citizen soldiers + 10 or more women while under the fire of 2 fully garrisoned sentry towers upgraded with the Sentinel tech which is ridiculously overpriced (usually it is even hard to have 2 sentry towers hitting the same group of enemies at same time since trees prevent a proper towers placement) and barely have loses (we talk about 1 or 2 dead cavalry).

Issue:   Cavalry has way too many healthpoints. A ranged cavalry has 120 hp for 100 food + 40 wood   vs   ranged infantry  50 hp for 50 food + 50 wood  (more than double hp for less than double cost).

Solution:  decrease ranged cavalry hp  from  120 to 100

 

 

25 minutes ago, av93 said:

Or make corral a prerequisite for training cavalry, except persians.

45 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

People who play single player, want options, possibilities, variation/diversity, an interesting and engaging AI, grandeur/scale, depth, a certain sense of realism and especially immersiveness and gorgeous aesthetics. Not limitting options, capping things like population or specific units, or restricting play styles. 

Adding stables is a nice addition that benefits both competitive players (delaying rushes), and single player (more eye-candy, immersiveness)   

unit limits like limited cavalry or anything (perhaps only traders deserve a limit )else will totally kill the play styles.

actually having corrals (or stable for persia) as prerequisite to train horses makes sense as stated in other topics and perhaps even to have mauryan worker elephants only after the elephant stable is built and thus to move it from phase 2 to phase 1. Anyway minimal changes help to keep more focus on things. Having corrals as prerequisite could even explain why you can research cavalry specific technologies from corrals and perhaps add even more (e.g.  nerf cavalry meat gather speed nad increase it with tech in order to get a better food production with corrals).Perhaps having different type of corrals to train with different animals, training time and food capacity would make food production with corrals a bit deeper and perhaps would prevent "sheep walls"

 

[Hannibal_Barca]

58 minutes ago, Servo said:

alongside or opposite the hated JC than playing with less aggressive players. 

 

JC is not hated for his playstyle but for his attitudes. Pausing to tell someone is a noob, insulting other players and way too much ego doesn't make him popular

 

It's nice that he has some friends/fans though