Buildings (mostly palizades) - How is it possible for units to destroy them so easily?

[Jofursloft]

I think that palizades are not being enough effective against cavarly rushes. I noticed this in a 1v1 game I played against @ValihrAnt lately. As you can see from the replay, Vali is able to destroy my palizade and enter it in about 8 seconds using 14 sword cavarly men. How is this realistically possible in real life? I find that a heavy trunk for a palizade is something that should definitely not being easily cut by a one handed sword. 

This applies not only to palizades, but also walls and buildings like civic centres. In some of the team games I have played recently, I have seen civic centres destroyed easily (30 seconds or less) by an army of consular bodyguards or britons swordmen + champ chariots (units that should not deliver such a huge crush damage). 

I am not suggesting that walls and palizades should become undestroyable by units, but at least make them a bit more resistant against these units. Otherwise, there are no truly effective ways to counter a P2 athen or carthaginian rush. Thanks to palizades I countered P2 rushes against pro players but just because 1) (against @vinme) he hadn't been confident enough to attack my palizades walls and preferred to go for a P3 boom 2) (against Vali) soon after what you see in the replay I attacked him with a full upgraded P3 army so he had to use his cavarly to protect his base. 

 

 

  

 

[Gurken Khan]

@JofursloftThe attached vid only shows 17 secs of white?

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

Well 15:39 min ain't a rush,were are your pikes? Also Vali is a madman, playing athens.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I agree that palisades should be useful in stopping eco raids. I also think that palisades should be less useful against large, infantry armies, so that the game does not get covered with palisades in the ways we saw in a24.

Because of this I would be in favor of giving cavalry a 0.3x counter versus palisades. This would mean that a good way to counter cavalry raiding would be to build palisades to block routes to vulnerable parts of the base and allow your spearmen to catch up to the cavalry and deal damage. This already is the case, but as evident by the video it is very easy for CS swordcav to break through 1 layer, and even easier if it is 15-20 consular bodyguards.

[Player of 0AD]

I think that buildings are not too weak, rather too strong, too hard to take down by soldiers. So please don't change them. Palisades are something very ugly anyway: Cause lag, attract pointless attacks on them, favor ugly turtle matches.

[Jofursloft]

8 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

@JofursloftThe attached vid only shows 17 secs of white?

I don't know if you can see it. What I see from my computer is this: 

[Jofursloft]

8 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

Well 15:39 min ain't a rush,were are your pikes? Also Vali is a madman, playing athens.

Civilizations were random, and I think that athen is a good civilization to play against macedonians (the speed of the boom is pretty the same). 

I am playing macedonians, whose pikes as you know are also slower than usual pikes. In this game Vali decided to go for a P2 cavarly spam, which resolves in a rush that cannot happen before minute 9-10 (because you must have a solid eco and be P2). The strategy of P2 rush consists of a endless rush of your secondary woodlines and fields by 20+ cavs. In the whole game Vali didn't only try this attack, but killed many of men in the woodlines and constantly kept his cavarly men around my city. 

Moreover, the game was additionally slowed because of a cav rush around minute 4 and a following slinger + cav rush. So 15:39 is absolutely not unrealistic. Also, as you can see from the video my skirm+pikes arrived before that Vali could kill my women, but that's not the point of this post. If palizades were originally created to slow down the enemy units in order to defend my base, how is it possible for 14 cavs to destroy it in 8 seconds?

In addition, in a lot of 1v1 in this alpha high level players use their cavarly to destroy the enemy eco (secondary woodlines and fields mostly) independently from the minute of gameplay. When you exhaust the stone/metal resources next to cc it's impossible to keep constantly idle pikes + skirms around it, so you have to go for palizades/walls in order to protect it. 

7 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Because of this I would be in favor of giving cavalry a 0.3x counter versus palisades. This would mean that a good way to counter cavalry raiding would be to build palisades to block routes to vulnerable parts of the base and allow your spearmen to catch up to the cavalry and deal damage. This already is the case, but as evident by the video it is very easy for CS swordcav to break through 1 layer, and even easier if it is 15-20 consular bodyguards.

Good idea!

56 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:

Palisades are something very ugly anyway: Cause lag, attract pointless attacks on them, favor ugly turtle matches.

Against turtling I think that a good idea should be increasing the cost of palizade while increasing also their resistance against units. 

Edited August 25, 2021 by Jofursloft

[vinme]

dont remember a game in which you made palasides vs me.(not saying it didnt happen im sure it did)

either way i think palasides are fine, yes swordcav are op but thats separate topic.

palasides are really cheap, 14 cav is 2100 res +stable, ect unless mercs which is a civs specialty so it being op is fine(altho i think mercs rly op a25).

so 100-250 wood palasides that are instant to build couldnt stop 2100 + 300 + buildtime+ tranitme alone?

seems fine to me, only mele can effectively get thru palasides at such speed because of low hack armor from what i recall.

have some men around to chase the cav away from palasides is the best solution i can think of.

use palasides as buffer, ez to repair too im sure if he retreats.

usually when you have men in minerals its not nearly enough time to send them to help farms especially if farms around farmstead so the palasides should give a good amount of several sec, worst case he kills palaside, runs away, you repair hole in 5 sec with 3 men or something and 10 wood.

to end this spear cav are horrible terrible unusable barely viable vs other cav even with 1.75X .
 

 

[Player of 0AD]

8 minutes ago, vinme said:

to end this spear cav are horrible terrible unusable barely viable vs other cav even with 1.75X .
 

 

I don't think so, they win vs other cav. So it's fine. Making them stronger would make them OP I guess

[Jofursloft]

1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

I think that buildings are not too weak, rather too strong, too hard to take down by soldiers. So please don't change them.

This video shows what I said in the original post: a cc taken down by sword cavarly + jav cavarly in 28 seconds (watch the time of the gameplay not the one of the video). 

19 minutes ago, vinme said:

so 100-250 wood palasides that are instant to build couldnt stop 2100 + 300 + buildtime+ tranitme alone?

Good point! However, what you have to take in account is that if I want to rebuild a palizade I need way more men than 3 or even 10 (because they can be easily killed by 14 sword cavarly men). In the game also Vali had more cavs around, so he could have attacked that hole in the palizades with maybe even jav cavs, and in that case at least 20 men are needed. When you repair, the opponent can easily come back and destroy it again. All this results in 20+ soldiers who are idle because they continue to move around rebuilding holes. 

I think a solution could be increasing the cost of palizade while increasing also their resistance against units. 

[Player of 0AD]

So what, @Jofursloft? Why wouldnt a big army take out an under-guarded cc?

Edited August 25, 2021 by Player of 0AD

[Yekaterina]

Proposal: give infantry and cav hard 0.25x counter against palisade, so that palisade can stop any infantry or cav rush. 

Give siege 20x bonus against palisade so that palisades are destroyed instantly by siege weapons - no more confused pathfinding. 

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, Jofursloft said:

In addition, in a lot of 1v1 in this alpha high level players use their cavarly to destroy the enemy eco (secondary woodlines and fields mostly) independently from the minute of gameplay. When you exhaust the stone/metal resources next to cc it's impossible to keep constantly idle pikes + skirms around it, so you have to go for palizades/walls in order to protect it

This indicates that cav, I particular melee cav, are too strong this alpha—not that palisades are too weak. 
 

palisades and walls are just meant to delay attackers fir long enough for reinforcements to come. Palasaides and walls are not meant to be an impenetrable barrier (and they would be OP and result in the turtle mats he’s of a24 if they were). Palisades are also buoy extremely quickly, so they should not be too strong 

[Yekaterina]

1 minute ago, chrstgtr said:

palisades and walls are just meant to delay attackers fir long enough for reinforcements to come. Palasaides and walls are not meant to be an impenetrable barrier (and they would be OP and result in the turtle mats he’s of a24 if they were). Palisades are also buoy extremely quickly, so they should not be too strong 

I agree. Need to nerf sword cav. Please propose stats. 

[chrstgtr]

5 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

I agree. Need to nerf sword cav. Please propose stats. 

Biggest problem is that sword cav is too fast with unit pushing. I would start by decreasing speed by 1 or so and seeing how that looks. 

[Jofursloft]

7 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

palisades and walls are just meant to delay attackers fir long enough for reinforcements to come.

Completely agree. The purpose of this post is to find a solution to the fact palizades are not a counter for cav rushes, not necessarily to make palizades impenetrable. So nerfing cavs is a good idea

[a 0ad player]

Hi,
I think the palisades are fine. Rather, the curve with the upgrades for cavalry is too steep. I don't like this part of the balance, because every game can be won with cavalry army = op.

The last defensive upgrades in the forge should be only for soldiers and the last offensive only 10% or not for cavalry. The starting values of cavalry start higher and the difference between upgraded soldiers and cavalry becomes too big. In addition, the cavalry is in too small a space. 10 sword cavalry vs 1 palisade seems unrealistic to me, too high dps concentration.

Also the buildings are quasi fixed in their values. Optional upgrates and lower starting values could open up the game.

 

[Yekaterina]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Biggest problem is that sword cav is too fast with unit pushing. I would start by decreasing speed by 1 or so and seeing how that looks. 

That would make them weaker against infantry but not really weaker against palisades. I think we can change attack repetition, perhaps increase it to 850ms instead of 750ms? Also no more unit overlapping please!

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

That would make them weaker against infantry but not really weaker against palisades. I think we can change attack repetition, perhaps increase it to 850ms instead of 750ms? Also no more unit overlapping please!

Disagree. As I said above, I don’t think palisades are too weak. They are the same strength as before as were a big part of the turtling problem in a24. — they’re cheap and quickly built. So I don’t think having weak palisades is a problem as I said above. Palisades are meant to slow down attackers and give your army a chance to react—not to stop the attack. 
 

to the extent palisades are too weak, slower cav would still help with the “problem” because inf would have more time to react.   
 

change rep rate would have a big effect on the strength of the unit which wasn’t a problem until a25, where the rep rate and attack strength wasn’t changed. This the problem is something else (ie, the better path finding makes them quicker (and hence stronger) than before, as I suggest above). 

[borg-]

Maybe giving the same farm rate to soldiers will solve the problem.

[LetswaveaBook]

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

This indicates that cav, I particular melee cav, are too strong this alpha—not that palisades are too weak. 

I don't think spear cav is OP, it is just sword cav, who have 55% more DPS than spear cav and on top of that they deal full hack damage.

@Jofursloft Also I think the palisade fell, but it did a decent job of buying time. If there would be no pallisade, you would have lost 15 women in the situation.

[Jofursloft]

31 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

@Jofursloft Also I think the palisade fell, but it did a decent job of buying time. If there would be no pallisade, you would have lost 15 women in the situation.

Absolutely. In fact, I lose none because my men arrived quite quicly. The problem is 1) if the stone and metal mines near the cc are consumed they have no enough time to arrive from woodlines and I cannot keep 20 idle soldiers around my cc; 2) Vali decided not to keep pushing that way, but if he did he would have probably killed some or at least slowed my food eco. 

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, LetswaveaBook said:

6 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

 

I don't think spear cav is OP, it is just sword cav, who have 55% more DPS than spear cav and on top of that they deal full hack damage.

@Jofursloft Also I think the palisade fell, but it did a decent job of buying time. If there would be no pallisade, you would have lost 15 women in the situation.

See above where I later say sword. 

with respect to point 2, I agree the palisade did exactly what it’s supposed to do—buy you time to respond. 

putting men in fields doesnt address half the problem here, which is sword cav is op. And putting men in fields (which is already possible) takes away unit differentiation (ie men and women are different). 
 

note: the fix shouldn’t be one where we get rid of field raids as that eliminates a part of the game. It should be just to balance it, which is achieved by making op sword cav more easily countered (which is a problem here and elsewhere in the game)

Edited August 25, 2021 by chrstgtr

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

7 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Proposal: give infantry and cav hard 0.25x counter against palisade, so that palisade can stop any infantry or cav rush. 

I would say just cavalry .25x , as infantry rushes are much rarer and easier to prevent. Also we don't want to see them being spammed up too much. Although I do think that we can give ram counter to them, since I feel they should go down in 2 hits from an un-upgraded ram.

I am not terribly concerned about wall spam, since palisades to prevent raiding are more about sealing off places, slowing down the cav so that local spear production can catch up with them.

In a24 walls were sometimes spammed in haphazard ways just to mess with the pathfinding and allow towers and forts and archers to kill most armies stuck in the "maze". Because of unit movement improvements, I think having a sealed wall is necessary.

I agree with @chrstgtr that we need to see a careful nerf of CS-swordcav, and perhaps a little buff of CS-spearcav. 

On champion side, I think armor nerfs for both, but a bigger one for consular bodyguards.

Edited August 25, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[ValihrAnt]

Do pallisades really need a big change? The way I see it is that pallisades are there to buy you some time and if you want to really protect an area you build the proper city walls. There could be an upgrade to increase the hack armor of buildings to deal with late game melee units.

Maybe it's just me but rather than sword cavalry being op, I'd say it's players not knowing how to counter them.

1) It is getting better now but players don't seem to realise that spearmen counter cavalry. So many people just don't make spearmen and then are surprised how a unit that's pretty much intended to counter ranged inf actually does well against ranged inf.

2) Not adapting to the situation. After the 2nd raid on farm economy you should probably start thinking about how to protect it.

3) Blacksmith upgrades or civ bonuses. Most often the cavalry player will have made significant investment into blacksmith upgrades and will do the rush with Gauls or Carthaginians who have stronger sword cav. The defending player hasn't made any such investment making the cav seem stronger than they really are.

4) Cavalry require more investment than infantry. The defending player should easily outnumber the cavalry as the attacking player has to also keep investing into eco.

This game against Jofursloft demonstrated these points really well. We were even before going into P2, but he quickly pulled ahead in population due to not needing to set up extra farms and stables. He further walled off his farm economy before I could get even a single raid in and prioritised strong unit production making it impossible for me to find any significant damage. After pulling ahead in population he just got a strong push going and there's nothing I can do as investing into cavalry just set me too far back.

It does also partly come off to how insane the woodlines in most biomes are where you can have 20k+ wood in a single forest and can get well into the late game before needing to start gathering wood elsewhere.  It also kills the importance of map control which hurts aggression.