A23 balance done?

[mapkoc]

rev. 21571

Is the balance ready? Skirm cav still feels op or the AI got dumber.

skirms.zip

Unrelated:

- what AI skill matches best a22?

- Kushite heros were moved to fort but they appear after champs in tech tree unlike rest of civs

[Feldfeld]

balance still being discussed, but skirm cav definitely not op.

Ai is just bad dealing with rushes, i can get kd 50/0 against it with any kind of rush.

[causative]

I think mass cavalry archers might still be OP in a23.  The HP and cost nerfs are significant but once you have 100 horse archers or camels I think you can still kill anything else.  Except maybe mass spear cavalry.  Or of course siege towers/bolt shooters/rams.

[Feldfeld]

They will be difficult to mass. But if they are massed, you could still deal with them. Beside what you listed, there are also champions, including spear inf/cav who would be efficient against them, or simply a lot of ranged infantry with meat shield (who can also harvest ressources which compensates a bit of strength difference) can do reasonably well. Still, it is true that they should be quite strong and 2 days ago i voiced the idea to give them an accuracy bit lower than their infantry counterpart.

By the way, with archers being the unit with the lowest attack in the ranged units, on paper if i understand well, any unit with something like 7-8 base pierce armor or more should take very little damage since armor compensates attack. They would die very slowly. However i never tested it, not sure it works that way.

[causative]

They might actually be easier to mass in a23 because the main practical counter to mass cavalry archers in a22, is mass cavalry skirmishers, and cavalry skirmishers have the accuracy nerf.

Armor is a percentage decrease in damage, 10% per point. 100 hp with 8 pierce armor is the same as 100 / (.9)^8 = 232 hp with 0 pierce armor.

[Feldfeld]

They should be harder to mass due to train time incrase. If skirmisher cavalry was an obstacle for their massing in a22 (which i don't remember), then other units such as spear cav would replace them for this job. Infantry should be massed way faster than archer cav.

But that's true i focused my testing on spear cav rush and strats with slingers recently, because i feared it more. Next weekend i'll try to test archer cav mass.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Feldfeld

[l2edVipel2]

Will battering rams be nerfed in the A23 release? Any other balance changes besides those listed on the change log?

[mapkoc]

I think they are more resilient in a23 because elephants and swords have a harder time trying to destroy them.

[Feldfeld]

I don't see why would elephants and swords have a harder time trying to destroy them, the stats about that didn't change (as far as i know).

I think that rams will be overall easier to deal with, because in a23 you can ungarrison precisely where you want around the building, so you could ungarrison swords just near the ram to "snipe" it even if there are men protecting it, and if it attack a fortress, you could ungarrison a ram yourself and would be garranted a first hit. 

[elexis]

3 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

I think that rams will be overall easier to deal with, because in a23 you can ungarrison precisely where you want around the building, so you could ungarrison swords just near the ram to "snipe" it even if there are men protecting it, and if it attack a fortress, you could ungarrison a ram yourself and would be garranted a first hit.  

That's true, I've used that trick on Jebel Barkal often when I had only a dozen of units in the CC that could kill an attacking elephant but not the soldiers around it.

[JC (naval supremacist)]

the balance of the game is getting better for sure.  I just notice that Champions are missing in the battle field.   P2's Spartans and Athenians champs are never made , neither skirtais anymore : early P3 is too important

[elexis]

1 hour ago, PhyZik said:

-> Ptols. is the new OP civ. What makes them OP is the skirm. spam. If you have an Iberian and a Roman ally in your team, it makes you basically unstoppable in P3

Isn't it a team aura too powerful then instead? Also consider that the nr of bonuses may increase further if the max number of players possible would be 16 or more eventually. We can observe a similar phenomenon if the gamesettings are set to 13 relics.

[soshanko]

Civ s with ranged Siege( bolt, Catapult) are far better than those civs that does not have ranged Siege. If a ranged siege player create a wall defence then 20 catapult/bolt and support them with 50/60 archer than its the end game for the civ that does not have any counter range siege. Balance must be done bc it gives a 100% superiority to the range siege civ player.

I would like to suggest something that can be take into consideration.

 1. there can be applied some kind of attrition. it can be applied considering the food stock and food gather rate in comparison with the unit number. units can consume food.

2. a refill system could be applied to all kind of range units. suppose after throwing a number of weapons they would need a refill. refill means res of that kind.

as for now I just can think upto these two points .  thanks.

Edited November 29, 2018 by soshanko
adding an extra line

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Perhaps catapults could lose a little bit of health for every shot.

[nani]

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Perhaps catapults could lose a little bit of health for every shot.

How about catapults  each projectile costs 10 stone ?

For bolts could be 10 wood 5 metal.

*Having a starting 10(?) projectiles for each siege unit.

Edited November 29, 2018 by nani

[soshanko]

On ‎11‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 2:32 AM, nani said:

How about catapults  each projectile costs 10 stone ?

For bolts could be 10 wood 5 metal.

*Having a starting 10(?) projectiles for each siege unit. 

great idea.

also slingers can cost 2 stone for each volley, archers can cost 2 wood 1 metal , skirmishers 2 wood, and also 5 food per min, per soldiers,

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, soshanko said:

great idea.

also slingers can cost 2 stone for each volley, archers can cost 2 wood 1 metal , skirmishers 2 wood, and also 5 food per min, per soldiers,

 

Would make ranged infantry pretty useless with the current figures. A slinger takes ~18 shots to kill a basic spearman. Thats 26 stone to kill a single unit.

[soshanko]

may be the amount be reduced?

0.25 stone per sling shot?

2 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

Would make ranged infantry pretty useless with the current figures. A slinger takes ~18 shots to kill a basic spearman. Thats 26 stone to kill a single unit.

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

10 hours ago, soshanko said:

great idea.

also slingers can cost 2 stone for each volley, archers can cost 2 wood 1 metal , skirmishers 2 wood, and also 5 food per min, per soldiers,

 

While I don't think the main game should do this, i think it would be great to have the ability in the engine for mods to do this. The major thing, IMHO, is the UI for it, specifically for things like the negative food trickle for each unit. What you need to show in the UI is some kind of drainage rate from the food stockpile, like what the Rise of Nations UI shows, but currently the UI can't do that. I've experimented with a Food drainage for units and the UI thing is essential, IMHO. You could do something similar with Mercenary units, which would slowly drain your Metal or Coin resource.

Edited December 1, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[soshanko]

a building or research could be added where player can produce weapons. player will create a certain amount of weapon for use. when the amount reduced the units will stop throwing.

Reducing resource per volley could create a problem when a resource type is depleted.

Also there will appear a new problem of units, I mean those units whose resource type is depleted. Then there should be a feature of re arming those units with another type of weapons. something like convert them to mele units with available weapon.

Also good AI for auto fleeing to the safe place where they could be re armed.

As a plus then there can grow up a need for new feature like creating unarmed male units. lol.

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

While I don't think the main game should do this, i think it would be great to have the ability in the engine for mods to do this. The major thing, IMHO, is the UI for it, specifically for things like the negative food trickle for each unit. What you need to show in the UI is some kind of drainage rate from the food stockpile, like what the Rise of Nations UI shows, but currently the UI can't do that. I've experimented with a Food drainage for units and the UI thing is essential, IMHO. You could do something similar with Mercenary units, which would slowly drain your Metal or Coin resource.

 

Edited December 1, 2018 by soshanko
adding new topic.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Another idea would be to treat weapons and armor and other things like ungatherable resources. Using the barter mechanic already in the game, you can convert wood and metal at the Blacksmith to spears, swords, chain mail, etc. "resources" which are then added to the player's stockpile. Hoplites then don't cost "50 food and 50 wood", they cost X amount of spear resource and Y amount of shield resource, etc. and -Z food per minute. 

At the corral, I could see converting the Food resource into the Horse resource, so that cavalry also cost an amount of Horse resource. 

[soshanko]

12 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

At the corral, I could see converting the Food resource into the Horse resource, so that cavalry also cost an amount of Horse resource.

yes this is most logical idea. a building for creating horses will be needed.

soldiers can cost enough food for next 5/8/10 min and these extra min should be use as a stock. Because when the food resource is depleted, soldiers need to fight or work for next atleast 10 min. a research can be added to increase this food stock. also units could cost less regular food when the food stock is in a bad condition. although that can effect the health of units.    

[Servo]

RoN doesn’t deplete food from farms or relics but it has commerce cap not only on food but all resources including knowledge (University or relic produced). 

Edited December 3, 2018 by Servo

[soshanko]

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2018 at 1:39 AM, Servo said:

RoN doesn’t deplete food from farms or relics but it has commerce cap not only on food but all resources including knowledge (University or relic produced). 

I know  that servo. but cutting resources is logical. it will feel like real life thing. mostly the siege will be more meaningful. not just destroying buildings. when you get more and more similarity to real life, you get more real logic to continue playing.

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Hmm, I am a noob and all but I thought about melee infantry only being able to walk up to enemies to kill them, even at similar speed to ranged infantry. From my experience some melee units seem to have difficulty chasing down lone rams, which seems weird. I think infantry should  be able to break into a run when attacking units within a certain distance. This would mean you would need to protect your ranged infantry from melee units and rams could be more easily stopped. I think the run speed for infantry should be made up their current run speed unless it needs balancing.