Javelin and Slinger damage too high.

[AIEND]

This question should have been raised before, because of the borg expansion pack mod that existed on Alpha 23. But at present, the weapon damage of Alpha 25's ranged units is still more than 2~3 times that of melee units.
This makes melee units vulnerable, and theoretically, soldiers wearing bronze or steel armor and shields should be stronger. If the attack of the javelin and the slinger is adjusted to a level similar to that of the melee unit, the minimum range is given, and the damage to the elephant x 3 is given to the javelin, will the game experience be better?
I tried it with my own mod, https://www.moddb.com/mods/mirror1/downloads/mirror-220

[real_tabasco_sauce]

The difference in armor between melee and ranged units accounts for this difference. 20 swords or spears will easily defeat 20 skirmishers or slingers if the military upgrades are the same and if no micro is taken into account.

[AIEND]

1 小时前，real_tabasco_sauce 说：

近战和远程单位之间的护甲差异是造成这种差异的原因。 如果军事升级相同并且不考虑微，20剑或矛将轻松击败20小兵或投石者。

But the composition of soldiers in battle is not so pure, 20 swordsmen/spearmen + 40 javelins/slingers, often perform much better than 35 swordsmen/spearmen + 25 javelins/slingers . Before defeating the enemy's melee soldiers, the melee soldiers will be destroyed by the enemy's stronger firepower, which makes the melee soldiers a consumable item and it is difficult to accumulate experience and become a veteran.

[Lion.Kanzen]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 minutes ago, AIEND said:

Before defeating the enemy's melee soldiers, the melee soldiers will be destroyed by the enemy's stronger firepower, which makes the melee soldiers a consumable item and it is difficult to accumulate experience and become a veteran.

Yes, this indeed is the problem. ranged units default their attack to the closest unit, which is usually a melee unit. This makes melee inf, in particular pikemen serve as shield for ranged units behind them. This property of ranged units behavior is also responsible for archers seeming weak, since they often do not use their range effectively.

I think the game needs an improved form of control over ranged units, instead of nerfing/buffing ranged/melee infantry. What I have proposed in the past is "Attack-ground" where essentially ranged units can fire volleys where the player decides. Unfortunately, there was little agreement on how best to allow this control.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

12 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think the game needs an improved form of control over ranged units, instead of nerfing/buffing ranged/melee infantry. What I have proposed in the past is "Attack-ground" where essentially ranged units can fire volleys where the player decides. Unfortunately, there was little agreement on how best to allow this control.

There's also the question of whether players would use it, if attacking and defeating the enemy's melee troops first is always the most effective move.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

2 hours ago, AIEND said:

This question should have been raised before

It has been raised many times. It is a continued effort to find the best solution to the issue. Thank you for joining us.

25 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

There's also the question of whether players would use it, if attacking and defeating the enemy's melee troops first is always the most effective move

Right now in a25 players are learning how best to target slingers or skirmisher when they are behind pikes, fighting the units' tendencies to default to the nearest enemy. 

I am not sure how much melee damage would need to be boosted for melee to be a higher priority target. Even if they have super high damage, or if ranged units have super low damage, the fastest kills will still happen when targeting ranged units.

I think the best way to proceed if we dont have attack-ground would be to buff melee infantry damage by 9% as suggested by letswave earlier. This would make melee inf damage less negligible during fights and would help players at lower skill level who don't know micro skills to *try* to beat the pike meatshield.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think the best way to proceed if we dont have attack-ground would be to buff melee infantry damage by 9% as suggested by letswave earlier. This would make melee inf damage less negligible during fights and would help players at lower skill level who don't know micro skills to *try* to beat the pike meatshield.

An interesting issue to tackle as well is that I think Pikes are meant to be the consummate meat shield. So, then it creates an interesting conundrum where we want Pikes to be meat shields but we don't want it to always devolve into that. Honestly, IMHO, the game needs more infantry slugging it out instead of making ranged units the decisive units. 

[AIEND]

 

1小时前，BreakfastBurrito_007 说：

它已经被提出了很多次。 这是一个持续的努力，以找到问题的最佳解决方案。 感谢您加入我们。

现在，在 a25 中，玩家正在学习如何最好地在投石手或散兵在长枪后面时瞄准他们，以对抗单位倾向于默认最近的敌人的倾向。 

我不确定需要增加多少近战伤害才能使近战成为更高优先级的目标。 即使他们的伤害超高，或者远程单位的伤害超低，以远程单位为目标时，仍然会发生最快的击杀。

我认为如果我们没有攻击场地，最好的方法是按照letswave之前的建议将近战步兵伤害提高9％。 这将使战斗中的近战 inf 伤害不那么微不足道，并且将帮助不了解微技能的较低技能水平的玩家*尝试*击败梭子鱼肉盾。

Because of the requirements of the Chinese player group I am in, I made a mod to make adjustments. This is the data I set, which can be used as a reference.

Edited February 25, 2022 by AIEND

[AIEND]

1 小时前，wowgetoffyourcellphone 说：

还有一个需要解决的有趣问题是，我认为派克是完美的肉盾。 因此，它创造了一个有趣的难题，我们希望派克成为肉盾，但我们不希望它 总是 演变成那样。 老实说，恕我直言，游戏需要更多的步兵来解决它，而不是让远程单位成为决定性的单位。  

In fact, my idea is to do the opposite, highlighting the advantage of the pikeman's attack range, rather than making it more passive as a meat shield.

[AIEND]

2 小时前，real_tabasco_sauce 说：

是的，这确实是问题所在。 远程单位默认攻击最近的单位，通常是近战单位。 这使得近战 inf，特别是长枪兵作为他们身后远程单位的盾牌。 远程单位行为的这种特性也是弓箭手看起来很弱的原因，因为他们经常不能有效地使用他们的射程。

我认为游戏需要改进对远程单位的控制形式，而不是削弱/加强远程/近战步兵。 我过去提出的是“攻击地面”，基本上远程单位可以在玩家决定的地方进行齐射。 不幸的是，对于如何最好地进行这种控制几乎没有达成一致意见。

Adjusting the Javelin and Slinger stats has another purpose to better balance the factions that have Javelins and Slingers with those that only have Archers, if ranged units are placed in a relatively secondary position, then at least all factions All can play fair with spearmen.

[AIEND]

2 小时前，wowgetoffyourcellphone 说：

还有一个问题是玩家是否会使用它，如果首先攻击和击败敌人的近战部队总是最有效的举措。

This is usually the case, because the long-range infantry is the main one, and the outcome of the battle between pure infantry is often not suspenseful, and whoever has more javelins/slingers has the advantage. In this case, instead of letting the infantry fight each other, it is better to use the cavalry to attack from the side and behind.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

There's also the question of whether players would use it, if attacking and defeating the enemy's melee troops first is always the most effective move.

It's usually not, especially for pikes.

In fact, recently I have seen lots of success with manually tasking 10 or so archers to kill 1 skirmisher at a time, since players expect them to be safe.

Really what I'm getting at is that if archers could use their range effectively, they would be much stronger.

5 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

buff melee infantry damage by 9% as suggested by letswave earlier

Yes, I think this is the way to proceed for now. An attack-ground solution will have to wait as seen in it's own discussion.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Can we rebalance some of the stats at some point? A 1.25 sec attack time and 4.5 pierce, 1.2 hack attack stats are needlessly complicated. I'd like to see these rounded up or down at some point and then comprehensively rebalanced. Just what I'd personally like to see eventually.

[LetswaveaBook]

12 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

20 swords or spears will easily defeat 20 skirmishers or slingers if the military upgrades are the same and if no micro is taken into account.

In most situations 20 spearmen struggle to beat 20 skirmishers even without micro. In reality the player with ranged units get the chance to decide when to fight, can micro during the fight and can easily retreat when needed. I tried going for high numbers of CS spearman in TGs and the results were very poor.

I don't think that is just an A25 conclusion. I think the spearmen never performed well. When talking about units, people are only obsessed by "This ranged unit is OP" or "This ranged unit is worthless". So melee units are ranked as Pikemen are the best for absorbing damage, spearmen are as good at absorbing damage but are a little cheaper than swordsmen. Can the melee infantry do enough damage for any other role? I don't think so and damage output is not their only disadvantage (lack of speed, can't hit and run on opponents).

Pikemen do so little damage that sometimes in a fight I consider it better to use them to capture a temple than actually attacking the enemy units. When I have javelin cavalry and the opponent has pikemen and infantry javelins, I don't bother if the pikes can attack my jav cav with their 3x multiplier, as longs as I can target and eliminate the more dangerous skirmishers.

So I feel the 9% damage boost is a very conservative boost.

[chrstgtr]

45 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

In most situations 20 spearmen struggle to beat 20 skirmishers even without micro. In reality the player with ranged units get the chance to decide when to fight, can micro during the fight and can easily retreat when needed. I tried going for high numbers of CS spearman in TGs and the results were very poor.

I don't think that is just an A25 conclusion. I think the spearmen never performed well. When talking about units, people are only obsessed by "This ranged unit is OP" or "This ranged unit is worthless". So melee units are ranked as Pikemen are the best for absorbing damage, spearmen are as good at absorbing damage but are a little cheaper than swordsmen. Can the melee infantry do enough damage for any other role? I don't think so and damage output is not their only disadvantage (lack of speed, can't hit and run on opponents).

Pikemen do so little damage that sometimes in a fight I consider it better to use them to capture a temple than actually attacking the enemy units. When I have javelin cavalry and the opponent has pikemen and infantry javelins, I don't bother if the pikes can attack my jav cav with their 3x multiplier, as longs as I can target and eliminate the more dangerous skirmishers.

So I feel the 9% damage boost is a very conservative boost.

If spears engage in direct fight with javs they easily win (i.e. start a fight where melee and range are right next to each other). The problem isn't the damage melee inflict. The problem is that melee can never inflict that damage. Changing dmg rates will do little to change the status quo.

 

If you want melee to play a bigger role, then you should increase walk speeds. It also makes sense in the current structure--units with largest range have the slowest walk speeds and units with the shortest range (except for melee) have the quickest walk speed (i.e., archers are slowest, then slingers, then javs). For whatever reason though, all melee is slower than the slowest of range units. That should change. 

[LetswaveaBook]

32 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

If you want melee to play a bigger role, then you should increase walk speeds.

Why would it be the only option?

 

32 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

It also makes sense in the current structure--units with largest range have the slowest walk speeds and units with the shortest range (except for melee) have the quickest walk speed (i.e., archers are slowest, then slingers, then javs).

I think it does not necessarily need to be this way. It is a decent start, but it is not the only option.

34 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

For whatever reason though, all melee is slower than the slowest of range units. That should change. 

I think it is fine if melee is slower. it does not mean that archers can endlessly hit and run, that is a false assumtion. Suppose you want to hit and run against this: If you get 80% sword/spear infantry and 20% javelin cavalry, the infantry can never catch the archers, but the archers can't afford to turn around to deal with the chasing jav cav or the infantry will close the distance.

Honestly, I think these 3 points made by you are more like assumptions than solid facts.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

43 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

The problem is that melee can never inflict that damage

On ranged units yes, it is possible that a skirmisher can infinitely outrun a spearman and kill it, but there are situations where that does not happen. A 9% boost would also affect melee on melee engagements as well, and perhaps dethrone the meatshield from being the only measure of melee inf value, which would undoubtedly be good.

Edited February 25, 2022 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[chrstgtr]

14 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Why would it be the only option?

 

I think it does not necessarily need to be this way. It is a decent start, but it is not the only option.

I think it is fine if melee is slower. it does not mean that archers can endlessly hit and run, that is a false assumtion. Suppose you want to hit and run against this: If you get 80% sword/spear infantry and 20% javelin cavalry, the infantry can never catch the archers, but the archers can't afford to turn around to deal with the chasing jav cav or the infantry will close the distance.

Honestly, I think these 3 points made by you are more like assumptions than solid facts.

What you are proposing is to totally change unit balance. That is the way balancing slides backwards. We’ve tried it. It’s failed. No one, including you and me, should think that were magically going to be the first to succeed here. 
 

The reason why I suggest changing speed is because (1) I said your proposal doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t address the problem (melee’s inability to actually engage in fights) and (2) it is the logical extension/refinement of what we know already mostly works. 
 

12 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

On ranged units yes, it is possible that a skirmisher can infinitely outrun a spearman and kill it, but there are situations where that does not happen. A 9% boost would also affect melee on melee engagements as well, and perhaps dethrone the meatshield from being the only measure of melee inf value, which would undoubtedly be good.

That isn’t what I am saying. I am saying that javs kill melee before the melee ever reach the javs. This happens with 0 micro and efforts to micro don’t help (no matter what direction the melee come from they still die before they reach range units)

 

Increasing melee dmg will only mean that melee units may die faster to each other. That doesn’t change the current meta because range will still do the bulk of the damage and melee units still won’t be able to reach the range units before they die (ie they’re still a meat shield)

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

What you are proposing is to totally change unit balance.

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Increasing melee dmg will only mean that melee units may die faster to each other. That doesn’t change the current meta because range will still do the bulk of the damage and melee units still won’t be able to reach the range units before they die (ie they’re still a meat shield)

Please give me a day to think about how these two will fit together.

[bug]

I know I'm new here, but balancing issues, especially ranged/melee are ubiquitous.  Regardless, take this as a "for what it's worth".

IRL ranged units exist on the battlefield (as opposed to only existing behind fortifications) because they ARE (or can be) devastating to other units, and because melee units DO take time to reach them.  That's just reality.  If that is well simulated in a game, then that is not, in itself, a problem.

As suggested in the OP, units with shields (e.g hoplites), especially if they are in good combat order, are generally well-defended against ranged units when not in melee.  Therefor, a normal order of battle was to bring archers to the fore as the armies were arranging themselves, and then move them to the flanks where quick, and less well armored, troops would be attempting to flank their opponent's center (don't waste troops in ranged v ranged fights).

Setting aside the protection of shields, a huge reason armies weren't comprised predominantly of ranged units is because they can't shoot into melee without a generally 50/50 chance of hitting the friendly unit.  That can be simulated by an in_melee flag which makes the unit no longer attackable by enemy ranged units.  That would, of course, increase the cycles needed to find a viable target, but that might be balanced by losing a shot (or shots) as a shooter hunts for a new target after a set in_melee flag has been encountered.  Another way to reduce cycles is for the shooters to search for targets by range.  Check first the closest few enemies to shoot and then, if they are all in melee, look for the closest few at mid-range, and then for the closest at long range.

Of course the quickest and dirtiest method is to simply reduce ranged damage done to any unit while it is in_melee.

If you wish to be able to have the option of ordering ranged units to attack in melee, perhaps even limited only to large units like elephants and siege, then something like an in_melee_with list can be used to divide the probability of hit among the target and all units in melee with it, weighted by the size of the units.  Whether that level of detail is feasible for a real time game of this complexity is, of course, another question, but limiting in_melee ranged units to very large targets may be doable, even if the best relative damage approximation is to reduce ranged damage done to those large units while they are in_melee.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think mechanics can win the day. I think melee infantry can still have a slower base speed, but they "sprint" over the last 20 meters to (unit) target.

[AIEND]

5 小时前，chrstgtr 说：

你提议的是完全改变单位平衡。 这就是平衡倒退的方式。 我们已经尝试过了。 它失败了。 包括你和我在内的任何人都不应该认为这会神奇地成为第一个在这里取得成功的人。
 

我建议改变速度的原因是（1）我说你的建议没有意义，因为它没有解决问题（近战无法真正参与战斗）和（2）这是逻辑扩展/改进我们所知道的大部分都有效。
 

这不是我要说的。 我是说javs在近战到达javs之前杀死了近战。 这发生在 0 微并且努力微无帮助（无论近战来自哪个方向，他们仍然会在到达远程单位之前死亡）

 

增加近战伤害只会意味着近战单位可能会更快地相互死亡。 这不会改变当前的元数据，因为距离仍然会造成大部分伤害，而近战单位在死亡之前仍然无法到达距离单位（即它们仍然是肉盾）

That's right, simply increasing the damage of melee units doesn't help, either increase their defenses against arrows, javelins and slings, or weaken the damage of ranged units, otherwise melee soldiers will always be knocked down before they get close to the enemy.

[AIEND]

1 小时前，wowgetoffyourcellphone 说：

我认为机械师可以赢得胜利 。 我认为近战步兵仍然可以有较慢的基本速度，但他们会在最后 20 米范围内“冲刺”到（单位）目标。

Do you mean let the infantry sprint like cavalry? this is a good idea. And it seems like it could be used as a trait to enhance Celtic infantry, increasing the speed of their charge.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

increasing melee HP/armor will only decrease the amount of melee units required for shielding ranged units. The melee will still die first.

Edited February 26, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce