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

[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.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

10 minutes ago, ValihrAnt said:

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.

It is true that CS cavalry can be stopped fairly easily by spearmen, and if you expect a late-game cavalry raid, you can build well sealed walls and palisades to stop them, but this requires a lot of planning to do in advance and a lot of economic loss if doing it too late. It does take a lot more effort and skill to counter cavalry raiding than it does to do the raiding, so training 10-15 consular bodyguards is an easy way to gain an advantage over an otherwise better player. A defending player needs to either see it coming, or have 30+ spearmen fight your cav while building walls/palisades, which is more effort and economic loss than it takes to train 10-15 consular bodyguards and run around someones base. 

I will take your advice to use stone walls though.

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, ValihrAnt said:

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

Based on the games I've played, sword cav feels OP. They're able to run around so much that they never have to take a bad fight and can quickly find good fights. They can quickly collapse onto units and then can quickly escape when enemy reinforcements arrive. And if you ignore them, they can wreck your city. Your points are well taken, but I've seem some pretty absurd KDs wracked up by using sword cav. I'm not saying it's a must-fix right now--we need some time to adjust to the meta. But many games seem to come down to who made the most CS sword cav and who made the most champ melee cav. 
 

While this problem is obviously relevant in mid-game rushes, it is also relevant in late game when players mostly leave their bases to attack. In these late stage games, a relatively small group of cav can decimate an enemy's eco. Because this wasn't the case in previous alphas, I assume it has something to do with a25, the most obvious possible culprit being unit pushing. 

[alre]

let's not forget that sword cav was relatively OP in A24 too. it's just that cavalry wasn't nearly as effective as it is now. I think that comes from unit pushing and better turn times, and faster game turns pace. You can see, for instance, that sword cav not only has better pierce armor than axe cav, but even wins in a direct fight against it.

also spear cav is UP and already was (not drammatically, but yet, they would deserve a little buff).

[Dizaka]

1 hour ago, alre said:

let's not forget that sword cav was relatively OP in A24 too. it's just that cavalry wasn't nearly as effective as it is now. I think that comes from unit pushing and better turn times, and faster game turns pace. You can see, for instance, that sword cav not only has better pierce armor than axe cav, but even wins in a direct fight against it.

also spear cav is UP and already was (not drammatically, but yet, they would deserve a little buff).

Champ Calvary was effective back then (maybe not as as it is now).  IMHO, the main issue is the availability of metal.  Metal was so rare that having champ cav overpowering other units wasn't a problem since no-one could afford it.  However, currently metal is inexpensive and littered all over the map.  It makes more sense to go champions ASAP - especially with the faster game pace.

Note:  I like the current metal availability.  Therefore, I think in general cav champs are OP.

Edited August 26, 2021 by Dizaka