[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

If Seleucids have sword cav i don't think we will see spear cav after phase 2 anymore . People will just go for sword cav everytime since these outperform  spear cav  by alot , except aginst other cavalry but thse encounters are few and far between as you are way more likely to face archer spam or spear/sword spam with some siege for support. 

[Yekaterina]

9 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

If Seleucids have sword cav i don't think we will see spear cav after phase 2 anymore . People will just go for sword cav everytime since these outperform  spear cav  by alot , except aginst other cavalry but thse encounters are few and far between as you are way more likely to face archer spam or spear/sword spam with some siege for support. 

Seleucids didn't use that many non-champion melee cav in history (I stand corrected). But for balancing purposes I think they deserve a spear cav as such a cavalry-heavy civ. 

[Yekaterina]

I agree with @BreakfastBurrito_007 's idea of slowing down ranged infantry. Although theoretically they could travel faster than melee troops because a bow is lighter than a spear or a sword, for balancing and gameplay they really should be going at the same speed or even slower. 

I don't mind skirmishers running quickly but a pack of archers or slingers chasing you is just a nightmare. 

 

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

19 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Seleucids didn't use that many non-champion melee cav in history (I stand corrected). But for balancing purposes I think they deserve a spear cav as such a cavalry-heavy civ. 

Didn't you mean sword cav?

Anyway i'll  cav balance  for another post.

Edited May 17, 2021 by PyrrhicVictoryGuy

[Grapjas]

13 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Although theoretically they could travel faster than melee troops because a bow is lighter than a spear or a sword,

That's generally not true though. Bows typically fall between the 2-4 pound range, as do spears. Swords average about 2 pounds. It all comes down to which weapons specifically you are comparing. Ranged would carry ammo causing extra weight, melee soldiers heavier equipment.

[alre]

It's not about the weight of a sword, light infantry is understood to have been more mobile than havy infantry in general.

My biggest problem with @BreakfastBurrito_007's idea, however, is about gameplay: slowing down archers would kill their defining tactics, which are hit and run and archer rushes. Those are what make archers so fun to play, and if we slow them down they will be heavily crippled. What BB wants is to reduce their effective range around defensive positions, and that can be achieved in many ways, not only lowering archers speed. I think reducing archers damage at higher distances - either by raising arrows spread (already in SVN I believe), or enforcing a fixed damage dependent on distance - is the best way out of this bog, it would not change archers identity, but would make them just enough less effective in what they do best. It doesn't have any creepy eco implication, and it doesn't push us back in this endless swing where every alpha we reconsider the choices made in the last releases. Light infantry speeds were made equal for good reasons.

And no, archers are not faster than slingers or javeliners, they have the same stats.

[Grapjas]

33 minutes ago, alre said:

It's not about the weight of a sword,

It's literally what his point was about. Also i never said one is faster than the other. Was just making observations.

[alre]

I never said that your observation was wrong or out of place, and I never attributed the statement that archers are faster than other units, that's what @BreakfastBurrito_007 said. There's no need to get offended.

[Grapjas]

I'm not offended. But you are contradicting yourself.

1 hour ago, alre said:

light infantry is understood to have been more mobile than havy infantry in general.

 

41 minutes ago, alre said:

and I never attributed the statement that archers are faster than other units

If you didnt attribute it to my observations then why bring it up? Anyway, just let it be i guess.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Archers are faster because they:

1. run same speed as skirm and sling
2. don't need to run as far to fight.

I don't know if we learned from the infamous camel rush of a23, but archers being able to hit and run (meaning they have greater effective speed) is a capability that will prevent them from being balanced. 

2 hours ago, alre said:

Light infantry speeds were made equal for good reasons

What reasons? can you list them? how was this intended to help gameplay?

Perhaps archers could be most inaccurate in their first shot and then, in order to gain some accuracy they need to shoot 2-3 arrows from the same position. (values can be changed, and maybe champions and horse archers could exhibit this less). [this ought to make the history/realism people happy :D]. Maybe this could be combined with archers having a small minimum range so that they get "routed" by melee inf and melee cav, instead of stretching that bow while they have a spear in their face. This combination would make bigger groups of archers more vulnerable to smaller groups of melee.

This way they would be most vulnerable in mobile situations. 

Idk, I still think that simply differentiating speeds of mobile units would have great implications for large-area turtling, and would result in nicely balanced ranged inf, and is easy to implement.

Edited May 17, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[LetswaveaBook]

2 hours ago, alre said:

light infantry is understood to have been more mobile than havy infantry in general.

I am a fan of youtube channels as scola gladiatoria and metatron and they say that armor or weapons don´t slow you down considerably. I think the main reason why light/heavy infantry is understood to be more/less mobile is their role. A javelineer could run freely and does not require to keep an exact formation. For heavy infantry it is the other way around and I think it is especially this coordination that make the unit seemingly immobile as these soldiers can not act on their own. Armor slows you down, but the tactical part about coordinating a formation should not be ignored.

 

2 hours ago, alre said:

slowing down archers would kill their defining tactics, which are hit and run and archer rushes.

I agree. The problem is that in current meta is seems like hit and kill everything from large range. Occasionally you need to run. Once the archers reached a safe fortress, there is hardly a way of combating them.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

6 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I agree. The problem is that in current meta is seems like hit and kill everything from large range. Occasionally you need to run. Once the archers reached a safe fortress, there is hardly a way of combating them.

It is impossible to beat them at a fort, it used to be catapults would stop this fairly well because they can damage archers which stay still AND the fort. The main problem is not them hiding in one place however, the problem with them being the most maneuverable infantry unit lies when you try to avoid attacking the fort, and instead attack a weak place in their base. If you rightly recognize that fighting at the fort vs archers will cause death then you must try to attack somewhere else. The big problem is that archers can just follow you wherever you go without becoming more vulnerable because if you decide to attack once they are away from the fort, you are slower than the archers, so they can just go back to the fort. Archers only face 2 threats: other archers, siege towers, and cavalry. Cavalry and siege towers can be countered fairly well by archer civs and are very expensive endeavors, while archers can just gather resources without worrying about being vulnerable or out of position.

The core problem with archers is that without cavalry:

1. archers can hit you
2. you cannot hit archers
3. you cannot catch archers by chasing them

Is it crazy to say that it should be possible to overextend or get flanked with archers?

and it should not require cavalry to flank archers and beat them in this way?

 

[soloooy0]

I believe that certain units should have their own statistics, which represent more what they were, in their time.
like for example, the cataphracts that were heavily armored = less speed + stamina and a little more damage ...
also the briton longswords that have the same stats as the other champions that use sword and shield -.-
the elephants should have a small area attack not only frontal attack
so that little by little it will be more important to choose each civ, for each phase and that the play styles will be more different per civ and player. 

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

6 minutes ago, soloooy0 said:

I believe that certain units should have their own statistics, which represent more what they were, in their time.
like for example, the cataphracts that were heavily armored = less speed + stamina and a little more damage ...
also the briton longswords that have the same stats as the other champions that use sword and shield -.-
the elephants should have a small area attack not only frontal attack
so that little by little it will be more important to choose each civ, for each phase and that the play styles will be more different per civ and player. 

 

This the right long term idea, we absolutely need civ differentiation and interesting civ based mechanics, but balancing archers and wide-area turtling are big problems that need to be addressed soon

@alre@LetswaveaBook did you guys get to play a23? I see that you joined the forum fairly recently. My hope is that you at least know what I am talking about... how much mobility there was in a24, and how turtling was only good for small areas.

Edited May 17, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[soloooy0]

I have always wondered one thing, can towers or castles be enabled to damage in cone ? 90º or 180º?
so that the defenses are not op or it could not be well controlled.
something similar to total war ...

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

21 minutes ago, soloooy0 said:

I believe that certain units should have their own statistics, which represent more what they were, in their time.
like for example, the cataphracts that were heavily armored = less speed + stamina and a little more damage ...
also the briton longswords that have the same stats as the other champions that use sword and shield -.-
the elephants should have a small area attack not only frontal attack
so that little by little it will be more important to choose each civ, for each phase and that the play styles will be more different per civ and player. 

 

I fully support this and even noted some of my ideas down but as someone already told me , Delenda Est already does some of these

   Melee infantry:

Firstly, melee soldiers should only do hack damage just to make it simple.

·        Pikemen/spearmen:

I want to differentiate between pike civs (Macedon and Successor Kingdoms) and spear civs (Greeks, Carthage). 

#Both should keep their anti cav bonus but note that being more tightly packed to attacking behind one another and their lower pierce armour make their counter pretty obvious.

#Their rate of attack should stay the same.

#Another thing, pike civs shouldn't have access to spearmen except for mercenaries and/or champions, the same applies for spear civs.

#To further differentiate between civs, the Macedonian pike must have slightly better states than those of the successors to simulate the experience Macedonians had in phalanx warfare vs the native levies that the successors trained.

Champions

These for the most part are fine but like their citizen counterparts I propose that we change up champions. Take these 3 civs whose cavalry champions are spearmen: Macedon, Seleucids and Ptolemies and their hetairoi, kataphracktoi , agema cav respectively.  We could make gameplay more interesting and appease the historical accuracy crowd at same time. The hetairoi could be the less armoured of the three but more powerfull attack wise, the kataphraktoi could be exactly the opposite (as their name implies) and the Ptolemaic agema cav could be a middle ground. Of course, this was just an example, all champs could be tweaked in a similar manner.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 hours ago, soloooy0 said:

I have always wondered one thing, can towers or castles be enabled to damage in cone ? 90º or 180º?
so that the defenses are not op or it could not be well controlled.
something similar to total war ...

Como así. Más específico?

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

I fully support this and even noted some of my ideas down but as someone already told me , Delenda Est already does some of these

   Melee infantry:

Firstly, melee soldiers should only do hack damage just to make it simple.

·        Pikemen/spearmen:

I want to differentiate between pike civs (Macedon and Successor Kingdoms) and spear civs (Greeks, Carthage). 

#Both should keep their anti cav bonus but note that being more tightly packed to attacking behind one another and their lower pierce armour make their counter pretty obvious.

#Their rate of attack should stay the same.

#Another thing, pike civs shouldn't have access to spearmen except for mercenaries and/or champions, the same applies for spear civs.

#To further differentiate between civs, the Macedonian pike must have slightly better states than those of the successors to simulate the experience Macedonians had in phalanx warfare vs the native levies that the successors trained.

Champions

These for the most part are fine but like their citizen counterparts I propose that we change up champions. Take these 3 civs whose cavalry champions are spearmen: Macedon, Seleucids and Ptolemies and their hetairoi, kataphracktoi , agema cav respectively.  We could make gameplay more interesting and appease the historical accuracy crowd at same time. The hetairoi could be the less armoured of the three but more powerfull attack wise, the kataphraktoi could be exactly the opposite (as their name implies) and the Ptolemaic agema cav could be a middle ground. Of course, this was just an example, all champs could be tweaked in a similar manner.

 

@Yekaterina opinion.

[soloooy0]

9 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Como así. Más específico?

por ejemplo, las torres y castillos que tengan una zona de mayor ataque, ya que están pensadas para atacar por un sitio, ya que las torres y castillos están pensados para hacer una defensa de una ciudad y no para un ataque en 360º
igual los castillo, seria poner un ángulo de 90º en la puerta u opuesto a ella, que tenga el daño base y en los 270º restantes que haga el daño completo de tener mas unidades dentro y otros bonus 
 

for example, the towers and castles that have a zone of greater attack, since they are designed to attack from a place, since the towers and castles are designed to make a defense of a city and not for a 360º attack.
The same for castles, would be to put a 90º angle at the door or in front of it, that has the base damage and in the remaining 270º that does all the damage of having more units inside and other bonuses. 

 

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

Ranged Infantry:

 

Archer civs: Eastern Empires( kush , maurya and persia)

Skirmisher/javelineer civs: Greek States, Successor kingdoms

#Like the pike/spear dichotomy I presented earlier these will fill the same roughly the function with some specialization here and there, but also be exclusive to some factions with exceptions of course in the form of mercenaries/champs.

 

·        Archers

Archers should  have minimum range and way less damage than what they currently have (these values could be restored to archer civilizations via two upgrades: archer tradition, and a new one, or maybe just raise the cost of archer trad.).

 

.       Javelineers

The dedicated heavy infantry and elephant killers, contrary to the archers these shouldn't have a minimum range but have their attack interval increased to 2 seconds. Also dedicated skirmisher civs could have an upgrade  that improves their armor a bit ( "iphicratian peltast" or whatever). I still don't have an idea how to make them less effective against spear cav ( other than giving spear cav more armor) , which they should be.

 

.        Slingers  

 Slinger civs: Barbarians

Keep the ability to dmg buildings as normal but  could inflict a bit more damage to other ranged troops than what they do now, namely archers due to their lower armor. This will make the slinger a tad bit more specialized to counter archers and buildings. 

 

 

#With these changes I hope to make ranged infantry a minority in most armies save for Athenians, Mauryans and Persians. Where the archer would be all around unit, the skirmisher and slinger would be more specialized troops.

#Carthage and iberians are omited because they are/should be jacks of all trades in regard to ranged troops.

#Slingers would be the primary response to ranged infantry for the barbarian factions.

Edited May 18, 2021 by PyrrhicVictoryGuy

[LetswaveaBook]

 

21 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

@alre@LetswaveaBook did you guys get to play a23? I see that you joined the forum fairly recently. My hope is that you at least know what I am talking about... how much mobility there was in a24, and how turtling was only good for small areas.

Ah, nice lets make it personal. I did indeed not play a lot of A23. However I have played other well-balanced strategy games instead. Also I can say that I played a fair amount of 1v1s at 1600+ level. I am not an expert on team games, but I have some observations. On team games the largest map is being selected and once player reach city phase, the borders of flanking players touch each other. If there is so little space between players, you would never get the same gameplay as in 1v1s. Therefore I think the settings are close to ridiculous.

21 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

The main problem is not them hiding in one place however, the problem with them being the most maneuverable infantry unit lies when you try to avoid attacking the fort, and instead attack a weak place in their base.

This problem does not occur in 1v1s. In my view the problem lies with the settings in the team games.

 

22 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

What reasons? can you list them?

1. historical accuracy.

2. To give them equal value as economic units.

21 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Is it crazy to say that it should be possible to overextend or get flanked with archers?

It is not crazy. However I feel the same thing could be done better by decreasing their combat effectiveness. If they were less effective, you needed to retreat more often. This would also imply that you are overextended more often.

23 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I still think that simply differentiating speeds of mobile units would have great implications for large-area turtling, and would result in nicely balanced ranged inf

I think you are wrong on the fact that it would result in a nice balance. It does not solve the problem that archer cavalry create, which are from my experience as OP as infantry archers. At best only means that players soon learn to be a little more careful with their infantry archers and defensive.

I also made a mod for reducing combat effectiveness of ranged citizen soldiers and these units still have a very good role in this mod. I just think ranged units need a nerf in offensive power. @BreakfastBurrito_007, can you please explain why the current pierce attack values for ranged units are justified?

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

On 17/05/2021 at 6:21 AM, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

sword cav everytime since these outperform  spear cav

Excuse me for being off topic, but don't spearcav have better HP and armor?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

18 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

1. historical accuracy.

2. To give them equal value as economic units.

My arguments:

Historical accuracy should never make the gameplay worse.

We could just make all ranged units the same speed as archers when on "eco gather" order.

18 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I think you are wrong on the fact that it would result in a nice balance. It does not solve the problem that archer cavalry create, which are from my experience as OP as infantry archers. At best only means that players soon learn to be a little more careful with their infantry archers and defensive.

The only thing is... it has existed before, and everyone I have talked to who played a23 has argued that making archers the same speed has made them OP, and I have mostly agreement with the argument about them contributing to wide-area turtling. It is true that archer cavalry are op in a24, in a23 they were op as well, but there were more economic/strategic (early p3 attack with rams) risks to this as well. I think that archer cav should not be affected by archery tradition as a start. In general a23 was a game that was much faster paced and exciting.

For future releases, I think it would be awesome to have a cavalry momentum/acceleration system so that cavalry are not simply used the same way as powerful infantry.

18 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

reducing combat effectiveness of ranged citizen soldiers and these units still have a very good role

If you are unhappy with the prevalence of ranged units, you would have hated a23 XD. I think a24 has struck a good balance with melee units, the only times it is frustrating is being unable to catch up to archers. I have seen (in 4v4s) armies are between 1/3 ranged units and 2/3 ranged units, archers being op makes their ratio increase. I think a speed adjustment for ranged units is good enough for melee/ranged balance as well as ranged/ranged.

Edited May 18, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Freagarach]

25 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

We could just make all ranged units the same speed as archers when on "eco gather" order.

We cannot.

[LetswaveaBook]

29 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think a speed adjustment for ranged units is good enough for melee/ranged balance as well as ranged/ranged.

Do you have any non-hand-waving arguments those support this idea?

29 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

We could just make all ranged units the same speed as archers when on "eco gather" order.

Even if we could, players could instead of sending out archers to the fortress send them to a nearby resource, such that they would move faster. So that would be a nice ¨feature¨.

Edited May 18, 2021 by LetswaveaBook