Proposal: Make a tech "peltast tradition" for helenic civs

[Alar1k]

Looking at the balance and differences between archer, slinger and peltast civs there should be something like a peltast "buff" for civilisations Athens/Sparta/Macedonian - so that they could have something like archery tradition but for skirmishers - this doesn't need to buff the strength of the attack but rather make them run faster (or as fast as they did in a23) and lover the training time for 10% - the cost of this could be something like 400 food - and this would differentiate peltast from celtic javelinier 

I wouldn't give this bonus to ptolomies or seleucids to differentiate helenic and post-helenic civs a bit, and also because those civs have horse archers and other units to get techs for

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Maybe "Skirmish Training" or "Skirmishing Tactics"?

[Yekaterina]

Perhaps we can lower the wood cost of skirmishers. In early game any wood saved is critical, so 40 wood cost instead of 50 would really accelerate the boom. 

We can also give skirmishers a speed bonus tech. Faster speed -> faster boom. Macedon really needs this. 

[Alar1k]

12 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Perhaps we can lower the wood cost of skirmishers. In early game any wood saved is critical, so 40 wood cost instead of 50 would really accelerate the boom. 

We can also give skirmishers a speed bonus tech. Faster speed -> faster boom. Macedon really needs this. 

Hmmm this would be best suited for celts/iberians since they are meant to be an early phase dominating civs - and they could have 1 point of hack armour removed to justify the 10 wood lover cost - celts are half naked ingame so this would add up to "realism" - helenic civ boom is fine as it is in my humble opinion, I wouldn't like them to have the upper hand over celts early because they already have better buildings and siege for latter game advantage and the peltast tech could be placed in p2 or p3 for good measurement

EDIT: seems like skirmishers already have only 1 hack/pierce armour point so it wouldn't be fair to remove it, maybe instead remove 2 pierce damage to make them cheaper early and make a tech for late game like "Iron tipped javelins" for 400 metal that adds +4 pierce to buff pierce damage for later game celts


also on peltast note - there would be really nice to give back champion peltasts to spartans because as things are now they only have one champion unit which is not really that great in a meta we have in a24 where champions are viable - macedonians have spear and sword champs and athens have sword, bow and spear infantry champions - peltast champions would really be helpful against other civs like mauryans, kushites, athenians that have champion archers to make a late game sparta better - as things are now sparta tends to fall off when champion archers are on the field - skiritiai comando nerf was ok, they lost pop nerf but still it's hard to play vs champion archers, even elephant archer spam hurts because bolt shooters can now be easily destroyed by ranged units - champion archer cav is a next level nightmare for sparta (persians, seleucid military reform and mauryans)

Edited March 15, 2021 by Alar1k

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Spartans were not known for fielding competent light infantry.  I would recommend alternative routes for buffs.  Spartans were famous for their poetry that often had martial themes (See Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Terpander).  I would advise introducing a technology that gives a movement buff to all infantry through that.

The Athenians could have a later technology for subsequent changes in equipment and tactics that made their peltasts have a more hybrid role by having +1 melee and ranged armour.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

"Tyrtaean Paeans" for Sparta.

@borg-

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 hours ago, Alar1k said:

also on peltast note - there would be really nice to give back champion peltasts to spartans because as things are now they only have one champion unit which is not really that great in a meta we have in a24 where champions are viable - macedonians have spear and sword champs and athens have sword, bow and spear infantry champions - peltast champions would really be helpful against other civs like mauryans, kushites, athenians that have champion archers to make a late game sparta better - as things are now sparta tends to fall off when champion archers are on the field - skiritiai comando nerf was ok, they lost pop nerf but still it's hard to play vs champion archers, even elephant archer spam hurts because bolt shooters can now be easily destroyed by ranged units - champion archer cav is a next level nightmare for sparta (persians, seleucid military reform and mauryans)

I would give Sparta a Mercenary Cretan Archer to duel with the archers of other civs. 

I would also rework the Skiritai and Spartiates. Make the Skiritai into fast hoplites, with greater pierce armor and hack attack (but lower hack armor), while the Spartiates are slower and super super tanky meatshields. 

[Alar1k]

49 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I would give Sparta a Mercenary Cretan Archer to duel with the archers of other civs. 

I would also rework the Skiritai and Spartiates. Make the Skiritai into fast hoplites, with greater pierce armor and hack attack (but lower hack armor), while the Spartiates are slower and super super tanky meatshields. 

Hmm this seems more interesting than my proposition - I would like to add to this "forking" of the skiritai comandos - there could be two types of units - one, weaker, p1 swords that would use xiphos blades that would do small mixed but fast mix of hack and pierce damage like daggers and one elite champion swords, true successor of the current skiritai that would use kopis type of sword - and those kopis champion swords could have an anti-champion bonus like the kushite champions have

[submariner]

As I'm just getting in understanding game mechanics to decide where I could contribute apart from translations.

If I may add on Spartans. I remember playing them and using their most basic civil spear infantry. As unit is shielded with clipeus it has a bit hard time in 1v1 fight against a most basic slinger.

I'm not sure what type of damage slinger does, but I would guess it should be crush and clipeus is really sufficient shield to cover against thrown rocks, but the part where spearman was approaching a slinger was not any special, it was when they got into close quarter combat and spartan hoplites had shortswords and trained for using spear and sword and I'm not talking of the animations, but that slinger seemed a bit too capable in close quarter against spartan close quarter fighter.

So I second "Peltast Tradition" I think it should add resistance against ranged crush attacks (assuming slinger does crush damage)

 

And ofc maybe also Hoplite tradition

Edited March 15, 2021 by submariner

[Silier]

@submariner sadly artistic representation of unit does not reflect its stats, so you can see naked fanatics having defensive stats like armoured champions

[submariner]

5 hours ago, Angen said:

@submariner sadly artistic representation of unit does not reflect its stats, so you can see naked fanatics having defensive stats like armoured champions

That I understand. But Hoplite is Hoplite, not every spearman infantry was shielded.

However I've noticed that slinger does mostly pierce damage, which is also a perfect example of what you mean..

[Silier]

that's because they dealt mostly crush damage and you could take down strucutres with them pretty easily so their damage have been shifted towards units (pierce) 

[av93]

Based on stereotypes, Iberians and Britons should have also that skirmisher tech

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

7 hours ago, submariner said:

That I understand. But Hoplite is Hoplite, not every spearman infantry was shielded.

Actually if you look at most artwork of naked fanatics, they generally always were carrying shields.  Not doing so would be virtually suicide.

[submariner]

11 hours ago, Angen said:

that's because they dealt mostly crush damage and you could take down strucutres with them pretty easily so their damage have been shifted towards units (pierce) 

Yes I got told so on IRC. Only made me think that different damage calculation should be applied vs organic, mechanic, structural targets as depending on terrain, but slingers had different pros and cons in comparison to archers

8 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

Actually if you look at most artwork of naked fanatics, they generally always were carrying shields.  Not doing so would be virtually suicide.

Havent looked into them, but it's a bit hard to mathematically express berserker/fanatic kind of fighters capabilities, they have to be boosted by stats or to have some demoralizing/inspiring aura, but as you're historian and say that they carried shields its then again, shielded infantry should be more capable at defeating slingers yet its a bit different thing about archers because then it depends on shields.

Just to clarify I heard that initially it was aimed that crush would be siege damage, hack would be melee and pierce would be ranged. But it could be at least 9 damage kinds using crush/hack/pierce types. c/h/p melee, c/h/p ranged, c/h/p siege so as defenses which might make it a bit easier to balance without inventing more types.