New elephant stats proposal

[azayrahmad]

How about adding Death Damage effect to elephant? Surely fallen elephant would hurt nearby infantry. Make it non friendly fire as well.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I don't remember how the elephants worked, what were the units that counter them?

A number of times light troops such as skirmishers were cited in primary and secondary sources as able to pepper enemy elephants with enough missiles to drive them to rout and run amok, so I think I give javelineers a 1.5x bonus vs. Elephants in DE. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

46 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

A number of times light troops such as skirmishers were cited in primary and secondary sources as able to pepper enemy elephants with enough missiles to drive them to rout and run amok, so I think I give javelineers a 1.5x bonus vs. Elephants in DE. 

Yes I agree.

[alre]

indian elephants are a strong counter for siege towers, that's true, but they also are the only counter siege towers have. please don't turn the meta in a series of clustered siege towers destroying everything on their path.

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

A number of times light troops such as skirmishers were cited in primary and secondary sources as able to pepper enemy elephants with enough missiles to drive them to rout and run amok, so I think I give javelineers a 1.5x bonus vs. Elephants in DE. 

ranged units, and skitmishers in particular, are already the best counter for elephants at now. I don't think there's need for a hard bonus. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 minutes ago, alre said:

indian elephants are a strong counter for siege towers, that's true, but they also are the only counter siege towers have. please don't turn the meta in a series of clustered siege towers destroying everything on their path.

ranged units, and skitmishers in particular, are already the best counter for elephants at now. I don't think there's need for a hard bonus. 

I am not asking for hard counters, only looking for a logical way to stop the Mauryas.

 

How should the Greeks work with their hoplites and pikemen?

Maybe the mechanics should be a mix of spear and projectile (javelins)

-------

Siege towers should be stopped with cavalry and slingers or with catapults(ballista).

[Yekaterina]

15 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Siege towers should be stopped with cavalry and slingers or with catapults(ballista).

Siege towers are already vulnerable to sword cavalry. To take it further we can give them no hack and crush armour. 

Slingers do 5.5 pierce and no crush. This is not great against siege. We should change it to 3 crush and 1 pierce, so that they are better against siege. I also noticed that ranged infantry do not have a crush resistance but spearmen have a crush resistance of 5. Perhaps we should give ranged infantry some crush resistance as well? If slingers can take on siege towers then Celts and Athens are sorted. 

31 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I am not asking for hard counters, only looking for a logical way to stop the Mauryas.

 

How should the Greeks work with their hoplites and pikemen?

To stop the Mauryan archers we can use a mixture of pikemen and skirmishers. The archers will be bulldozed by pikemen syntagma. The only catch is if Mauryan player mixes some spear and sword into their formation. In this case pikes die instantly and the strategy fails. The solution is to give pikemen more hack and crush armour, not just pierce. We can boost the spear and pikes just for Hellenic civs and Celts, excluding archer civs from the bonus. I can edit the XML files to make it so. 

The Mauryan elephants are harder to deal with. If we give spear, pike and skirmishers bonus against elephants then that would be smooth. We can also limit it to non-elephant civs. I also noticed something interesting: all archer civs are elephant civs...

[alre]

31 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I am not asking for hard counters, only looking for a logical way to stop the Mauryas.

 

How should the Greeks work with their hoplites and pikemen?

Maybe the mechanics should be a mix of spear and projectile (javelins)

Archers are being nerfed in A25. So maurya will be very much stoppable, for archers are their main weapon. Elephant archers are being reworked too.

31 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Siege towers should be stopped with cavalry and slingers or with catapults(ballista).

Siege towers, especially if garrisoned with pikemen, are very effective against cavalry, and even more so they are against slingers. Not sure about catapults, but many civs don't have them.

If we are talking about how units should be in a more realistic gameplay, elephants shouldn't be effective against siege towers, but siege towers should have very little mobility (little more of actual towers, in fact early siege towers were just towers, sitting still). For this to be playable, siege towers and rams should be buildable directly on the field by soldiers.

3 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Slingers do 5.5 pierce and no crush. This is not great against siege. We should change it to 3 crush and 1 pierce, so that they are better against siege. I also noticed that ranged infantry do not have a crush resistance but spearmen have a crush resistance of 5. Perhaps we should give ranged infantry some crush resistance as well? If slingers can take on siege towers then Celts and Athens are sorted. 

Slingers used to be like that. They could be used to tear down towers and walls, which is grossly unrealistic. Also slingers being particularly effective against siege towers is quite unrealistic actually.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Maybe formation is necessary bonus.

[Lion.Kanzen]

49 minutes ago, alre said:

Slingers used to be like that. They could be used to tear down towers and walls, which is grossly unrealistic. Also slingers being particularly effective against siege towers is quite unrealistic actually.

Ideally, they should be annoying, not efficient.

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

Siege towers are already vulnerable to sword cavalry. To take it further we can give them no hack and crush armour. 

Slingers do 5.5 pierce and no crush. This is not great against siege. We should change it to 3 crush and 1 pierce, so that they are better against siege. I also noticed that ranged infantry do not have a crush resistance but spearmen have a crush resistance of 5. Perhaps we should give ranged infantry some crush resistance as well? If slingers can take on siege towers then Celts and Athens are sorted. 

To stop the Mauryan archers we can use a mixture of pikemen and skirmishers. The archers will be bulldozed by pikemen syntagma. The only catch is if Mauryan player mixes some spear and sword into their formation. In this case pikes die instantly and the strategy fails. The solution is to give pikemen more hack and crush armour, not just pierce. We can boost the spear and pikes just for Hellenic civs and Celts, excluding archer civs from the bonus. I can edit the XML files to make it so. 

The Mauryan elephants are harder to deal with. If we give spear, pike and skirmishers bonus against elephants then that would be smooth. We can also limit it to non-elephant civs. I also noticed something interesting: all archer civs are elephant civs...

i thought the formations had no effect on unit's stats yet , if they do how can i see the change in-game?

[Yekaterina]

26 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

i thought the formations had no effect on unit's stats yet , if they do how can i see the change in-game?

I am not sure about formations, but I can tweak the stats from the XML files and test it out locally. 

To be honest the only formation I use is close order

 

[Silier]

no, 

formations do not affect stats of units. 

But there are (if were not changed, don't remember) heroes with auras given to units in the same formation.

[LetswaveaBook]

3 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Siege towers should be stopped with cavalry and slingers or with catapults(ballista).

I think siege towers don't need to be stopped. Siege towers often were very slow if not stationary. In game we use siege towers on the battlefield as a mobile archer carrier and I think that is the core of the problem, especially the mobile part. If they were very slow, we could use siege(rams) against them.

However this tread is about elephants.

4 hours ago, alre said:

ranged units, and skitmishers in particular, are already the best counter for elephants at now. I don't think there's need for a hard bonus. 

Even though ranged units are the best option, they are still not great. If we compare an Asian elephant to champion infantry, we see that they elephant has less than 3 times the cost and pop requirement. In return you get 3 times the hack damage and a ton of crush damage. On the defensive side you get over 4 times the hit points and better armor, totaling at about 5 times the durability. I think that the elephant seems to be the better deal in that regard and it should be priced accordingly.

[Grapjas]

21 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Even though ranged units are the best option, they are still not great. If we compare an Asian elephant to champion infantry, we see that they elephant has less than 3 times the cost and pop requirement. In return you get 3 times the hack damage and a ton of crush damage. On the defensive side you get over 4 times the hit points and better armor, totaling at about 5 times the durability. I think that the elephant seems to be the better deal in that regard and it should be priced accordingly.

What you are forgetting though, is that it's easier for ranged infantry to hit 1 big target than several small ones.

[Yekaterina]

49 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I think that the elephant seems to be the better deal in that regard and it should be priced accordingly.

OK, seems like you are fine with elephant attack, we should just change the price. From your comparison to champions it seems that we should at least triple their price. This will prevent players from spamming elephants and give siege weapons a chance. 

I have tweaked the stat to make siege towers travel at 4.5m/s instead of the original 7.2m/s. I completely removed their crush and hack armour but increased their health slightly to balance. Right now they shoot many arrows but each arrow does very tiny damage. The range is 75 meters because of the additional height bonus. 

[Yekaterina]

I will post a video demonstration very shortly

 

[Yekaterina]

This is a demonstration of modified elephants vs modified towers. The elephant does 100 crush and 100 pierce damage. The tower lost all crush and hack armour but has its health boosted to 800. 

[Yekaterina]

This one is 1 fully loaded tower vs 50 archers.

[Yekaterina]

Spears counter 3x elephant

Elephant armour has been dropped to 5 pierce 5 hack 10 crush

We can also give all non-elephant civs spearmen 5x bonus and restore the elephant armour. 

 

@LetswaveaBook

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, Angen said:

no, 

formations do not affect stats of units. 

Forgive me... This not quite accurate. The one stat they can alter is <WalkSpeed>, which I do in DE with column (increase), wedge (greatly increase), phalanx (decrease), syntagma (decrease), and testudo (greatly decrease).

[Silier]

yes, 

I meant they do not affect them now in a24b, not that it is not possible

[alre]

noone liked my proposal of having formations uniform soldiers speed, while they would have randomly different speeds? I thought it was a nice idea. 

For realism, mainly, but with some interesting gameplay implications.

[Hidan]

I would like if will add some elephant techs like body armor -  increase armor but reduce walk and run speed - or tower on back - for standing archers / javelins for feature in future - or elephant bridles for increase rotating speed if will reduce in default. but this techs should be very expensive.

[Lion.Kanzen]

9 minutes ago, Hidan said:

I would like if will add some elephant techs like body armor -  increase armor but reduce walk and run speed - or tower on back - for standing archers / javelins for feature in future - or elephant bridles for increase rotating speed if will reduce in default. but this techs should be very expensive.

The game lacks many technologies for specific classes and units.

[Yekaterina]

Here is a collection of proposals on how to nerf elephants from other forums:

1. Decrease health, to perhaps 500-600?

2. Decrease armour

3. Give melee units hard counter against elephants? Maybe 3x like cavalry

4. Elephants are not affected by tech/upgrades

What do the balancingf advidors think?  @LetswaveaBook @Lion.Kanzen @Player of 0AD