Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Also, please anyone leave some thoughts on the current naval balance. I haven't seen much naval gameplay, so I don't know what to change.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Converts citizen soldiers to legionary infantry, which are rank 3

Here are the details on this part of the reforms:

• Swordsmen -> legionaries, rank 3 swordsmen
• skirmishers -> lanciarius, rank 3 skirmisher
• both are trainable from the cc, barracks, and army camp for 50f 50w 15m after the reforms
• Cavalry availability remains the same
• spearmen, no matter what rank, will become "Conscript spearmen" that cannot promote.

The reasons for this change was that the power spike of suddenly having so many rank 3 swordsmen from spearmen specifically was too strong. At the same time, losing the spearman unit entirely would put the civ at risk to cavalry. Also, the conscript spearman fills an economic hole that would be too problematic after the reforms.

Edited August 31 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Grapjas]

5 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Walls can be built over trees, destroying the trees upon completion

Just a heads up this line should be

if (this.GetBuildProgress() == 1.0 && this.entsToDestroy)

and i also didnt check OOS (probably fine though). Was more of a prototype code.

Edited August 31 by Grapjas

[real_tabasco_sauce]

37 minutes ago, Grapjas said:

Just a heads up this line should be

if (this.GetBuildProgress() == 1.0 && this.entsToDestroy)

and i also didnt check OOS (probably fine though). Was more of a prototype code.

Thanks for the heads up. I doubt OOS will be a problem, but I typically make a test mod and send it to a couple people for testing before releases.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Hopefully tree-destruction feature will prompt someone to make it more full-featured visually, by making the trees and shrubs tint red when the wall preview is waved over them. It's something I've wanted for a long time for Delenda Est, which allows all buildings to destroy trees when placed. 

[Gurken Khan]

15 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Hopefully tree-destruction feature will prompt someone to make it more full-featured visually, by making the trees and shrubs tint red when the wall preview is waved over them. It's something I've wanted for a long time for Delenda Est, which allows all buildings to destroy trees when placed. 

I've even made a pic for that two years ago.^^

[chrstgtr]

12 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

• Walls can be built over trees, destroying the trees upon completion (Thanks @Grapjas)
•  

When do trees get deleted? Does it apply to Roman siege walls? If immediately and yes, then it could easily be abused to eliminate enemy's wood supply. Could also be a concern for Athenian Walls in neutral territory. 

12 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

• Macedonians arsenal available in p2, bolts available p2. (in a27)

Will need to watch. Bolts much stronger now than when we discussed for a27. Maybe nerf train time in p2. 

Edited September 1 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

14 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

12 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

• Walls can be built over trees, destroying the trees upon completion (Thanks @Grapjas)
•  

When do trees get deleted? Does it apply to Roman siege walls? If immediately and yes, then it could easily be abused to eliminate enemy's wood supply. Could also be a concern for Athenian Walls in neutral territory. 

The walls have to be completely built in order to delete the trees.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

14 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The walls have to be completely built in order to delete the trees.

That is a gameplay consideration which will look very weird in-game. DE will stick to the current method, where the tree is deleted once the foundation starts work. There is little worry of deleting a bunch of the enemy's trees, since DE uses forest groves, which are not destructible. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 31/08/2024 at 1:34 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

• spearmen, no matter what rank, will become "Conscript spearmen" that cannot promote.

 

Auxiliary Spearmen work too. Pedites Auxiliaris 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

38 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Auxiliary Spearmen work too. Pedites Auxiliaris 

These look great! these could be used when I update the community mod changes into the development version.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

44 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

These look great! these could be used when I update the community mod changes into the development version.

For base game, I'll change their helmets to Coolus helmets and their body textures to Germanic tunics or something. They can keep the same shields and spears.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

How do we feel about letting rams have comparable pierce armor to buildings (currently far greater), and slightly upping the hack armor (6 -> 7)

The idea is to make rams slightly harder to destory with just a handful of antiram, and more forgiving if all you have nearby are ranged units. Obviously, you will still be in trouble if you task all your ranged units to try and kill a ram in the middle of a battle.

[chrstgtr]

5 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

How do we feel about letting rams have comparable pierce armor to buildings (currently far greater), and slightly upping the hack armor (6 -> 7)

The idea is to make rams slightly harder to destory with just a handful of antiram, and more forgiving if all you have nearby are ranged units. Obviously, you will still be in trouble if you task all your ranged units to try and kill a ram in the middle of a battle.

I like the bold.

Don't care too much about the piece armor but it sounds fine. 

I think people will mostly adjust without any problems either way. 

[alre]

damage types based on the shape of the offending weapon will always make poor sense in a RTS (actually in any game probably) and the power of ram counters here is just one example of the distortions it produces.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, alre said:

damage types based on the shape of the offending weapon will always make poor sense in a RTS (actually in any game probably) and the power of ram counters here is just one example of the distortions it produces.

No, I think the system is fine. The only "distortion" was that ram armor was skewed to be overly vulnerable to hack and nearly invincible to pierce. So the damage/armor system didn't distort anything, its just the values for rams were a little extreme.

Edited September 2 by real_tabasco_sauce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, alre said:

damage types based on the shape of the offending weapon will always make poor sense in a RTS (actually in any game probably) and the power of ram counters here is just one example of the distortions it produces.

I tend to agree. Much simpler to just make hack = melee weapons. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Ok, I went and did some pretty large changes to navy, really curious to see how this plays out:

All ships have 1 population except for the siege ships.

• Arrow ships are somewhat expensive, general purpose ships. They are weak to ram ships and can kill fire ships quite quickly. They are also pretty effective versus land units.
• Ram ships are cheap and fast and can take out arrow ships (trade better than 1 to 1) and siege ships.
• Fire ships are very good against ram ships. They trade well in normal fire ship mode (damaging 1 unit at a time), and can instantly "add fuel" to quickly burn up, dealing damage upon death. It takes only 10 seconds for the ship to burn up. The ship is also a little faster when burning.
• Both melee ships are now capable of destroying docks in reasonable time.
• Siege ships do more splash damage with a larger radius so they are pretty effective against ships as well as buildings long as you keep them safe.

The idea with the above is that civs with fire ships will be going after enemy ram ship or going after arrow ships to tip the balance in their favor. With ram ships, you can try to maneuver them to quickly destroy ranged ships and use your arrow ships to stop fire ships.

I'm going to add an attempt to improve pathing at the expense of some ship overlap.

After a round in the community mod, I'll do adjustments to the ship techs as needed.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Most civs don't have fire ships, so what's the natural counter to ramming ships?

 

I put thought into this too.  

[real_tabasco_sauce]

40 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Most civs don't have fire ships, so what's the natural counter to ramming ships?

 

I put thought into this too.  

All the above counters are not hard counters. With good micro, arrow ships can beat an equivalent amount of ram ships. In general, fire ships and ram ships play pretty similar as they are both melee, except that ram ships do better vs arrow ships, and fire ships do better versus ram ships.

in aoe2, pikemen "counter" knights but actually lose convincingly in a 1v1. The idea is its a resource counter, and its the same idea here.

The civ that just has arrow ships (kush) is probably cooked in this balance, but tbh it was cooked before anyway. I'd be down to give them fire ships.

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

 

• Fire ships are very good against ram ships. They trade well in normal fire ship mode (damaging 1 unit at a time), and can instantly "add fuel" to quickly burn up, dealing damage upon death. It takes only 10 seconds for the ship to burn up. The ship is also a little faster when burning

10s feels a little long. This otherwise sounds like how I always envisioned it

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

13 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

10s feels a little long. This otherwise sounds like how I always envisioned it

Considering it needs player-input, I think you need some time for at least a little maneuvering. 

[chrstgtr]

13 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Considering it needs player-input, I think you need some time for at least a little maneuvering. 

I talked to @real_tabasco_sauce a bit in a MP host. 

I misunderstood. I thought he was saying that it would take 10s to kill an enemy ship. Not 10s for it to die to its own flames. 

10s (at most, will be less when absorbing dmg) to die to its own flames sounds a little fast when you consider how it will have to spam, get to wherever it is going, and then do dmg to another ship, which can run away at the same time. Maybe make fire ship super fast moving.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

10s (at most, will be less when absorbing dmg) to die to its own flames sounds a little fast when you consider how it will have to spam, get to wherever it is going, and then do dmg to another ship, which can run away at the same time. Maybe make fire ship super fast moving.

Well it can attack 1 unit at a time like the ram ship. When u want it to go boom, u start the burning and the ship gets faster and more agile. Then it go boom.

So it think it will be interesting when u choose which fireships to ignite. For instance u may not want to ignite all of them, u may just need one to gain an advantage.

Edited September 3 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I just added some hero balance adjustments

Kush:

• Champion discount hero is now -30% for the axe champions and has no tradeoff. The debuff for enemy healers is now 100%.
• Nastasen has a higher damage buff which now also applies to elephants.

Mauryans:

• Edict pillars have a smaller radius and can be built closer.
• Edict pillars now include a 10% movement speed buff and a +15 HP buff for traders and Human units.

Persians:

• Xerxes is currently just a weaker version of the Gaul's viridomarus.
• Xerxes eco buff radius increases to 100 meters, and includes +25% build rate instead of +15%.
• Xerxes gains a range aura helpful for offensive tasks: Siege, Elephants, and champion infantry +25% HP.
• These auras are mostly mutually exclusive except for when using elephants and champion infantry for defense.

Han:

• Wei Qing debuff against enemy cavalry radius increased to 45 meters to improve its affect versus ranged cavalry.