Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, Fabius said:

Alright, how then is a no opinion stance going to help. you just asked whether we count "no opinion" as a "yes" or  "no" , if that is the case you have no third option, simply an implied yes or an implied no.

Look if you remove the third option then the option that I would use most of the time would be a resounding no due to lack information.

[BeTe]

I am curious if nerfing cavalry will make early/mid game even more passive?

[alre]

right. cavalry rushes are not quite op I believe. many players never ever do them.

[alre]

10 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Look if you remove the third option then the option that I would use most of the time would be a resounding no due to lack information.

the third option is good, no need to remove it. you can say no, if you don't say no, then it's not a no.

[Nobbi]

14 hours ago, Fabius said:

I would say drop the third option of "no opinion" as its not at all helpful for decision making. A straight yes or no is all that is necessary. 

Please don't remove the 3rd option. I would even say add more options! Yes and no is pretty obvious but you can't know what the 3rd option means. People might choose the 3rd option for different reasons. For example the change might not effect their playing style, they might not understand what the change is about, or they think its the right direction, but to strong or to weak,  they want the change in a different way or as mentioned above, there is too many changes in one questions, which might be oppositional and therefore people can't give a clear answer.

I know this makes the poll a bit more complicated, but in this community driven process communication is the most important thing, and that is why it is very important to know why people make certain choices.

[Nobbi]

I really like that players have more control over balancing now, but right now I worry about the pace of the changes. If change gets too fast, players will not be able to adapt to the new "rules" of the game and can't say if a previous change was good or bad. Is there any rule how much time we give to the players to see if the last changes can be kept or need to be refused?

[alre]

48 minutes ago, Nobbi said:

I really like that players have more control over balancing now, but right now I worry about the pace of the changes. If change gets too fast, players will not be able to adapt to the new "rules" of the game and can't say if a previous change was good or bad. Is there any rule how much time we give to the players to see if the last changes can be kept or need to be refused?

I would say 2-3 months could be a good time for trying a set of changes. by that time the meta should settle. it would be nice if there was more testing before deployement, I'm to it if someone wants to, personally I had no responce yet.

56 minutes ago, Nobbi said:

Please don't remove the 3rd option. I would even say add more options! Yes and no is pretty obvious but you can't know what the 3rd option means. People might choose the 3rd option for different reasons. For example the change might not effect their playing style, they might not understand what the change is about, or they think its the right direction, but to strong or to weak,  they want the change in a different way or as mentioned above, there is too many changes in one questions, which might be oppositional and therefore people can't give a clear answer.

I know this makes the poll a bit more complicated, but in this community driven process communication is the most important thing, and that is why it is very important to know why people make certain choices.

I guess one can just comment here, so three options are mostly fine to me. it would be better yet if one could change their vote in some time from "no opinion" to another one, I don't think that's possible though.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, BeTe said:

I am curious if nerfing cavalry will make early/mid game even more passive?

5 hours ago, alre said:

right. cavalry rushes are not quite op I believe. many players never ever do them.

Well currently, the reason all in "chicken" rushes are so effective is because a small number of cav can pretty easily beat a larger group of infantry and because you can get the extra food required for cav very fast. Instead, success in these rushes should be earned by the skill of the player, so thats why the cav have less HP.

The use case of the unit should really be its mobility, not because of its innate strength compared to infantry. Don't get me wrong, cavalry will still be stronger than infantry (because they can't gather every res) but they will be less tanky, less forgiving when mistakes happen like running into spearmen.

The expectation I have is that you could instead see aggression with infantry as well, which would be more interesting. Currently you only see this if two players are very close.

1 hour ago, Nobbi said:

I really like that players have more control over balancing now, but right now I worry about the pace of the changes.

I imagine we will play version three for at least a month. I just put those out there so you guys can give feedback to me, so I might change things.

Edited November 2, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

16 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

There's a lot of changes already. I would suggestion caution

That's a good point. While I think we can test some gameplay things the mod still needs to be fun to play, which is the primary reason for it being as popular as it is, and that is what gives us good feedback and good voting.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

5 hours ago, alre said:

right. cavalry rushes are not quite op I believe. many players never ever do them.

Sometimes it depends on balance. If your team is balanced with 3 noobs and then some 1800, you can't really afford to have the 1800 slowed down by rushing. The main issue with cavalry rushing is before 3 minutes, where it is easy to mass a devastating amount of cavalry and enemies will be slowed down if they prepare or not, since you can just move on to the next player if your first enemy is prepared.

The chicken rush is OP for sure, but I am not sure how we should nerf it in particular.

[alre]

what's the chicken rush exactly? attacking whith 4 cav at minute 1?

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

a small number of cav can pretty easily beat a larger group of infantry

that's just false. a larger group of infantry if managed well can negate a cav rush.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 minutes ago, alre said:

that's just false. a larger group of infantry if managed well can negate a cav rush.

no, its not actually false for the following reasons:

• all cavalry do more damage than infantry (ex. 16 pierce vs 18 pierce for jav cav),
• javelin cavalry have double the health of javelin infantry, (not double for melee, but almost),
• javelin cav have +2 armor compared to infantry javelins (other cav has more armor too)

all in all, you need much more infantry than your opponents cavalry if you expect to win. This is hard to do in the early game when the limiting resource is usually wood, not food. Importantly, you are often unlikely even to get kills on cavalry in an early game situation due to how tanky they are (and their speed). This is why cav are often needed to defend from a "chicken" rush.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

19 minutes ago, alre said:

what's the chicken rush exactly? attacking whith 4 cav at minute 1?

no chicken rush is 11 cav at 1:30 or so

I wonder if It would be good to half the number of chickens at game start for random maps?

Edited November 2, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Fabius]

17 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Look if you remove the third option then the option that I would use most of the time would be a resounding no due to lack information.

Then simply add in the relevant information, adding at least an overview of the specific changes would be helpful anyway  

[Lion.Kanzen]

8 minutes ago, Fabius said:

Then simply add in the relevant information, adding at least an overview of the specific changes would be helpful anyway  

is not enough in all cases. for example in the case of the Ram siege. It is not something that has a favorable opinion, but it is not related to the patch. I just think rams should work differently.

[Fabius]

8 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

no chicken rush is 11 cav at 1:30 or so

That seems tied to a map with a lot of early hunting, and given walking times I feel like that time was be seriously hard to reach even under ideal circumstances

[Fabius]

Just now, Lion.Kanzen said:

is not enough in all cases. for example in the case of the Ram siege. It is not something that has a favorable opinion, but it is not related to the patch. I just think rams should work differently.

Well to be fair rams are already a core unit and annoying to deal with at the best of times. So it is understandable that people don't want them "buffed" for instance stick a few in front of your army and watch them win because everything tries to kill them on account of the combat ai always trying to hit the closest thing.

That is the biggest irony of rams, they supposed to be a siege unit, but they work just as well as a "Taunt" unit that  punishes whoever does not immediately deal with them, and you still get indirectly punished for dealing with them by the troop block that goes with them. So on either account you will lose anyhow.

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

no chicken rush is 11 cav at 1:30 or so

To create 3 batches of 3 cavalry units, you need 108 seconds and then the final cavalry leave your CC instead of being at your opponents base.

 

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

no, its not actually false for the following reasons:

• all cavalry do more damage than infantry (ex. 16 pierce vs 18 pierce for jav cav),
• javelin cavalry have double the health of javelin infantry, (not double for melee, but almost),
• javelin cav have +2 armor compared to infantry javelins (other cav has more armor too)

It is actually correct that infantry can manage against cavalry. Your points are partially invalid. I will write why I think they are partially invalid for jav cavalry.

-The jav cav deals more damage, but that is less impactful than it seems. A jav cav need 4 javelins to kill a ranged infantry, so the 18 damage would in that situation not be better than 14. Against melee infantry it might be helpful.

- cavalry has more HP for sure, but they are also bigger units. Bigger means being a bigger target and being easier to hit by ranged units. That means cavalry might take more damage than you would expect.

-Most of the damage received is pierce damage, so the hack damage only is a very minor part.

There are also some things you completely ignore, like cavalry being more expensive and slower to train. Also, for rushes players get only melee or ranged cavalry, whereas both types are available for infantry. On top of that, spear and pike infantry have a 3x multiplier against cavalry.

 

There might be a cavalry problem for late game in TGs. However I fail to believe that there is a cavalry rush problem.

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, LetswaveaBook said:

It is actually correct that infantry can manage against cavalry. Your points are partially invalid. I will write why I think they are partially invalid for jav cavalry.

Almost every high level 1v1 is dominated by early cav rushes. Often, the winning player wins because they do just enough eco to make slightly more cav or they manage their cav slightly better than the opposing player. To be honest, I cannot remember the last high level game I watch that wasn't won (or all but officially won) before p3.

Many late p3 games are dominated by cav. 

A unit is not balanced if the strategy in early game and late game is to spam that single unit. 

Talking about stats is meaningless if experience shows us that a unit is OP. 

9 hours ago, alre said:

right. cavalry rushes are not quite op I believe. many players never ever do them.

See above. Also, a game isn't balanced just because many players don't exploit OP units. Many players never made fire cav in a25. Does that mean fire cav was balanced? No. 

[alre]

8 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Almost every high level 1v1 is dominated by early cav rushes. Often, the winning player wins because they do just enough eco to make slightly more cav or they manage their cav slightly better than the opposing player. To be honest, I cannot remember the last high level game I watch that wasn't won (or all but officially won) before p3.

Many late p3 games are dominated by cav. 

A unit is not balanced if the strategy in early game and late game is to spam that single unit. 

Talking about stats is meaningless if experience shows us that a unit is OP. 

See above. Also, a game isn't balanced just because many players don't exploit OP units. Many players never made fire cav in a25. Does that mean fire cav was balanced? No. 

which kinds of cav are op in early game? which in late game?

[Feldfeld]

I have not seen evidence of cav domination in 1v1s. My first 3 games against ValihrAnt this alpha were victories from me after he committed to making more cavalry than me, resulting in myself having eco advantage. I played 3 games against vinme where he was trying to make a point about hunt biomes supposedly forcing games to be about making more and more cav, only for me to win by making (way) fewer cav and focusing on defense.

Of all 1v1s I played this alpha, I only ever lost once to an opponent making a lot of cav early on, and that only was because I was taken by surprise from my own mistake.

[chrstgtr]

8 minutes ago, alre said:

which kinds of cav are op in early game? which in late game?

Jav and archer in both.

Sword in late, at least. Maybe both. 

This is observable in many, many games. 

[chrstgtr]

Just now, Feldfeld said:

I have not seen evidence of cav domination in 1v1s. My first 3 games against ValihrAnt this alpha were victories from me after he committed to making more cavalry than me, resulting in myself having eco advantage. I played 3 games against vinme where he was trying to make a point about hunt biomes supposedly forcing games to be about making more and more cav, only for me to win by making (way) fewer cav and focusing on defense.

You're just too OP. 

[Feldfeld]

2 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

You're just too OP. 

Else perhaps lower rated players could take some reference on how to beat the chicken strategy.

From my experience, the best way on how to play against it is scouting it, then if there are more cav coming than you can fight, just take all woodcutters back to the CC to take straggler trees. You should have still a way better eco than your opponent so then you can build numbers of men who can fight, and go out when ready. Counterattacking can also be effective in that situation although it requires some technique.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

There are also some things you completely ignore, like cavalry being more expensive and slower to train.

it's crazy that you say I ignore that. I literally said food economy is not a limiting resource at 30 seconds. Ie 50 wood = 50 wood. I agree however, that train time is a difference.

Edited November 2, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce