Just OP

[Grugnas]

I have no words to describe this replay, really.

 

2017-09-09_0010.zip

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Please give a summary. Which part do you find overpowered

[av93]

Looking into the replay, it's clear: ranged cav rush, this time with ptolo camels.

 

Towers didn't work cause the ranged cav have the mobility. As you know, ptolomies are the only civ that have mounted archers by the start. All others have them in phase 2. And they only cost wood and food (and ptolomies have the no-wood bonus for building, although I didn't the math)

The only counters that ranged cav have are either,

1. Towers, but they don't work at all, as seen on the video (if you have a lot of space to cover, they will hit you when you can't defend)
2. Far superior numbers of ranged infantry, but most civs have skirmishers with less range.
3. Similar numbers of skirmisher cav, but the camels probably will hit and run you.

Two solutions: Nerf or Buff. Keeping in mind that ranged cav rush are the main strategy.

• Nerf: It's nice to have variety and have ptolomies the only civ with cav archers in the start. Also if they are nerfed, we have to keep in mind that the unit have to be useful in mid and late game also.
• Buff: Buffing the others civs and units should be done with the other ranged cav in mind.

Edit: Didn't wanted to press enter, I didn't finished.

 

Some propositions:

-First, make the cavalry only able to gather wild animals. The point of cavalry gathering, was make them hunters, no herders, right? This would make the corral/cav economy not so viable.

-Second, cav swordmen (their designed counter?) and cav skirmishers should be available at the same time. Maybe this mean remove them for CC, and be only able to build them at barracks. Hoping with this changes, harassing should be viable, but not so OP. Thoughts?

If I know to make patches, I would make one for testing.

Edited September 10, 2017 by av93

[Grugnas]

8 hours ago, av93 said:

Looking into the replay, it's clear: ranged cav rush, this time with ptolo camels.

 

Towers didn't work cause the ranged cav have the mobility. As you know, ptolomies are the only civ that have mounted archers by the start. All others have them in phase 2. And they only cost wood and food (and ptolomies have the no-wood bonus for building, although I didn't the math)

The only counters that ranged cav have are either,

1. Towers, but they don't work at all, as seen on the video (if you have a lot of space to cover, they will hit you when you can't defend)
2. Far superior numbers of ranged infantry, but most civs have skirmishers with less range.
3. Similar numbers of skirmisher cav, but the camels probably will hit and run you.

Two solutions: Nerf or Buff. Keeping in mind that ranged cav rush are the main strategy.

• Nerf: It's nice to have variety and have ptolomies the only civ with cav archers in the start. Also if they are nerfed, we have to keep in mind that the unit have to be useful in mid and late game also.
• Buff: Buffing the others civs and units should be done with the other ranged cav in mind.

Edit: Didn't wanted to press enter, I didn't finished.

 

Some propositions:

-First, make the cavalry only able to gather wild animals. The point of cavalry gathering, was make them hunters, no herders, right? This would make the corral/cav economy not so viable.

-Second, cav swordmen (their designed counter?) and cav skirmishers should be available at the same time. Maybe this mean remove them for CC, and be only able to build them at barracks. Hoping with this changes, harassing should be viable, but not so OP. Thoughts?

If I know to make patches, I would make one for testing.

There are some balance mod out there, but it is difficult to play multiplayer.

As stated many times, cavalry has too many healthpoints because they can stand at shooting buildings without lose any unit since the structures hit random targets and there is a minimum distance between towers. Indeed if structures would hit 1 target at time, they would decrease attacker dps, but this isn't the only solution.

While infantry units need 10 sec to train, cavalry requires 12 only rushing is clearly convenient as long as they cost 1.4x more than infantry, train in 1.5x time more than infantry and have more than 2.0x hp than infantry.

Also another thing that doesn't help at all is tower attack range which is higher than its actual vision range. Anyway, as you can see from the replay, camels can destroy and deny buildings despite the towering.

As you can see from the replay, spearmen can't even get close to camels because cavalry is really mobile but personally I am ok with their movement speed ( not increased by techs ) while i think that reducing overall ranged units attack max range and scale their accuracy as is it now but calculated for the new shortened range would at least give some more advantage to melee units at engaging.

While ranged cavalry ( which used to have lower accuracy than infantry in previous alphas while now they share same accuracy of archers ) clearly shows the range advantage, this happens with infantry ranged units too. Infact in previous alpha slingers used to decide the place where to fight because of their mobility and high attack range.