The biggest pacing problem in this game is how the defense stat works. My understanding of how it works is that it takes 1 damage away from whatever defense type it is. The problem with this is that it rapidly renders units completely useless, sometimes with a single tech level. You can see this very clearly with City Archers. They go from dealing 14 damage when there's no armor involved to 1 plink a shot.
It also becomes very apparent as sovereigns go from having little defense to a large number, possibly with stoneskin stacked on top. Making them essentially invulnerable to militia and the like. There's little point in defending your cities when the units that are used to defend them cannot do damage anyways.
I think defense needs to reduce but not eliminate damage. That way, weaker units do not become useless on the battlefield.
I love the concept of 'militia'. Very well done!
Great feedback here guys, I'll be working on this tonight.
There's already too little impetus to train units, toughening up militia would just make it worse.
That's what I fear as well, CogBurn. The stronger militia is, the less I actually have to care about defending my cities. I don't think militia is the problem. Frogboy thinks of them as "police", I think of them as vigilante mobs that don't want their homes burned to ashes. Keep them on that level - not dependable, but not harmless.
I think it's important to say what the problem is in order to fix it. I think the problem is that the mid- and late-game armor pieces simply have too much defense. Not only does it make units strong against the early-game units, but they are also strong against their late-game counterparts (as has been pointed out earlier in the thread). In addition, they are actually quite costly to build, which promotes a system where a player builds one or two units that are super-strong and wade through hordes of enemies unscathed. That is practically no gameplay at all.
Chainmail is the game-ender, the bee-line target, the best tech in the game. It is wearable without mounts, makes you immortal to cutting damage (bye backswing axes/counter-attack swords) and strong against everything else.
True, but the Glass Cannon issue was because of low HP. Armor has always been very very powerful.
Exactly. Although even leather decimates non-armored units.
Yes, agreed. But shouldn't a damn fortress be able to hold off medium threats with just its free defenders? I know i have not build a fortress in the past few games because the city improvements the fortress offers don't really have an impact when the city is attacked.
Axes... you actually use those? . I think the back-swing is rubbish in big groups of units, it will never trigger since one of the units atleast hits the target
I would also like to see some more incentive not to just use swords for heroes, and swords late-game. (Since there are no early-game swords, and the dagger is just too weak to penetrate armor).
Sincerely~ Kongdej
If armor was changed to my liking, it would go like this:
Chain is currently 2 x Leather + 100% vs. Cutting. That could be lessened to equal to leather +100% against cutting. Right there you have a decent amount of armor balance and still keep the power against cutting. Do the same for Plate.
If armor stays the same and weapons get balanced, it would go like this:
CoreWeapons.xml
The changes there have been giving me much better balance for both heroes and trained units. The nerfing of unique weapons lends to some additional attack given from Path traits.
Agreed. Shouldn't be able to hold off an army on their own, but I think militia should still play a role in a battle. Even if you had other troops in the battle. They shouldn't just take up turns and soak a hit.
I think the general issue is resolved as the weapons vs. armor strength balance issue is resolved a little bit more.
Again I'll say it: the developers designed themselves right into a corner they can't escape from by starting with such low values. When you start at 1, 2 is 100% better. When you start at 10, 11 is only 10% better.
I would personally use a base line of 100 so percentage modifiers really can matter (instead of constantly being rounded), but even 10 would be better than what we have now.
+1 for CogBurn.
I would also do the same for mana costs on spells. That way when the cost is reduced by modifiers, it actually feels like it's doing something, and you don't need to use too-high values to make the effect palpable.
For instance, you wouldn't need to set Mantle of Oceans at 40% reduction in tac mana cost. You could modify it to say 10% + 5% per water shard and it would be great.
On militia - I've always been for the opinion that cities of some reasonable level (say 3+) should be extremely hard points requiring serious armies and a lot of time to conquer. A village of a two score people might be sacked by a band of wandering darklings, but once you have a few hundred people living together there should be high walls, strong defenders, and powerful magic defending them, whether the settlement is a fort, conclave, or town.
I really like some of the ideas above on having additional buildings that provide for defense, but, rather than new ones, maybe add things to existing ones?
Shrines could summon magical beings to help defend the city (maybe a low level elemental or two)
Temple of essence could summon higher level elementals to defend
Barracks give high level units
Command posts give some kind of hero / general
Maybe all town defenders are groups of 9 and bell towers grant impulsive to the defenders
A horses or wargs supplying the city could make the defenders mounted
An iron mine could improve their weapons
A shard shrine / altar could add a mage unit with some kind of staff
A monument (the resource, not the building) could give some kind of leader
And I'm sure there are 100 others that would fit the lore and add some really fun variety to city defenders.
On defense - something that exacerbates the problem is that champions and particularly sovereigns gain significant levels of defense long before their armies do. A champion can get partial chain or plate when the trained units are still using spears and leather. Add stoneskin and, for quite a long period of the game between early and mid, champions are nearly unstoppable.
This.
I like. Interesting idea Poko8
And then you would never ever ever ever actually have to bother training troops. Cities would completely take care of themselves and you could just concentrate on rampaging the countryside with your champions. Seriously, towns with high level elementals and heroes with improved weapons and armor and mages and magical beings? You couldn't even DESIGN units that good, much less feel the need to build them.
"You don't get an attack value anywhere close to a units defense value. "
Remember though: 10 attack vs 10 defense gives 5 max damage, 20 attack against 20 defense gives 10 max damage - but the HP stayed more or less the same!
To get the same max damage with 20 attack, you need 60 defense.
My belief is that armor is mostly fine - maybe SLIGHTLY strong mid-late game, but it costs a LOT.
You don't build fortresses?
You'd have to train troops because the AI cities would have the same thing. But I agree, you can't make that change by itself. You'd need champions that didn't slaughter everything. You'd need to make credible threats to player cities through things like random events and AI attacks. But, right now, there still aren't credible threats to player cities anyway. Do you even defend yours? The only time I've ever had an AI take a city was on ridiculous difficulty. Expert they don't even get close. What that change will do is make the AI cities harder to take (by a lot). The only other time I've lost a city is to one of the crazy wildlands guys when i built a city to close to the edge and he thrashed the place (it was epic).
Sometimes I create defenders, but I'll always bring them out of the city to meet threats, not sit tight and let them destroy my stuff.
I am very happy they way they work. Never envision them to be powerful, or need to rely on them. However they do give just enough oomph to make taking a city harder by a small degree. That is good.
Also apologize if I sounded obnoxious before. I think I am too blunt sometimes.
Every sheriff needs a leather hat
I've done some thinking about it, and post my latest round of thoughts here.
Weapon Recommendations:
*Note General assumption is that each tier of weapons are/will be designed to be used against latest armor. (IE like spears, axe, dagger, warhammer vs. leather. )
** Leather armored target is going to have 12 DEF , 2 more with latest shield, 5 more from defending, or 19.
** Chain armored target is going to have 22 DEF, 6 more shield, +15 defending, or 43.
** Plate armored target is going to have 56 DEF, 8 more shield, +20 defending, or 84.
*** Next thought was to make weapons to hurt/damage armored target w/o taking defending into account. (The bonuses seem huge, could be looked at to be lowered some)
1) Spears, Warhammer upped to 12 ATT(ack).
2) Axe upped to 13 ATT. Differentiation.
3) Dagger upped to 8 ATT. Differentiation again.
4) Shortbows upped to 12 ATT
5) Boar Spear upped to 16 ATT
6) Longbows upped to 32 ATT
7) Throwing Knives need to be adjust A LOT damage wise which doesn't seem likely, so next best thing would be to kick back to Training or Weaponry techs. They're going to do nothing against chain. Not a whole lot vs leather either, but at least they can be acquired when they're somewhat useful.
8) Mace upped to 32 ATT
9) Short Sword upped to 30 ATT
10) Battle Axes needs 36 ATT
11) Long Swords 48 ATT
12) Need a pierce weapon same tier as Longbows/Longswords (Longbows and War Colleges techs ) with same 48 ATT recommendation.
13) Pike, Greatsword, and Maul upped to 64 ATT
14) Need Axe to fall in with weapons in #13, and 72 attack ( axes are 2h and do more damage )
15) Magic versions of same weapons should have same base rating as weapon of that type plus doing whatever, extra fire damage, easier to crit, etc.
16) When it comes to Elemental Damage type weapons I suggest something like +8 bonus early (dagger/spear/axe/warhammer/staff ) , +16 midgame , +32 late game.
Armor Recommendations:
*Note largely looked at this issue with the idea was going to leave armor alone, but the following issues stood out
1) Largely thought about leaving leather alone
2) Chain mail should offer a small bonus towards piercing damage. Cutting or edged weapons will lead to cutting of the chains, reducing effectiveness and exposing a weakness. So this is counter to how chain mail works. The bonus should be +2 per piece, save for greaves and breastpiece which get +3. (Chain Greaves and Breastpiecs have defence stat of 6, not 4 like the others. )
3) Plate Mail should offer a small bonus towards cutting / piercing damge. The same idea, bonuses being +4, +5 for greaves, and +7 for breastpiece (since armor stats are 8, 10, and 14 respectively) Also interesing is Blunt damage is how you take people wearing plate out of battle.
If you want to code in penalty vs damage types be my guest. But I'll settle for reducing the bonuses and correcting types. For example: consider a defensive type unit wearing all chain armor, mace and kite shield. 28 DEF. (Let's seperate the Kite shield out of this, so 22 DEF. ) Say you made chain have a penalty and it's 50% less effective vs cutting / edged weapons. Instead of 22 Def from chain, he's going to get 11. (But he'll still be able to use his shield ). So a Mace or Bow would work against 28 DEF, while versus sword 17 DEF.
4) I don't think ignoring % of targets defence should work when its piercing damage up against plate mail. Arrows are gonna bounce, spear shafts will break.
Is it perfect, no. It's a start at least to get something working, without having to completely re-balance armor too. Hopefully spurs discussion
Armor is stronger than weaponry and the max attack shouldn't go down to 1 so quickly. That's the point I'm making.
Especially with the amount of hitpoints you gain with levelling.
once your units get hundred HP, the 1 point attacks get meaningless.
not sure if the formula should change, I like it, but the trained units should have higher values attack compared to hitpoints.
probably (especially in case of archers) the level should add attack values don't know but +3 per team member per level is a good value, and maybe +5 dodge/accuracy.
militias should be upgrade'able. one per faction (not world wonders, but something along the tower of dominion) type of building like great forge/ master blacksmiths should equip all militias with better weapon/aromor (like best current tech).
wonder type of building should improve level of all militias and fortress cities should have catapults.
The police type militias make AI cities to easy to conquer. It's important that as the game progress cities are increasingly more difficult to get. Currently if you defeat the main army, you just steamroll over remaining AI cities, and once you steamrolled over one, the rest is too far below you to pose any significant threat and they just surrender. With the change, the time needed to conquesr the nation, allows other civs to progress in technology so teir cities would be more difficult to take, prolonging the fun. Maybe enugh to make those Wildland a viable choice to level up before taking on further nations.
Honestly, I've played most of my games to late game, and by mid-game, the AI can't even slow me aside from dragons. Chainmail means that the AI trained units can't even touch me. Chainmail! I mean, plate maybe, but not chainmail... The other problem is that the late game weapons are so hard to get, and so little function. And yes, crystal is supposed to balance things out, but with a strong economy that's not too much a problem until you make a unit like I had in my last game with a magical cloak, full champion plate and a lightning pike. Which, by the way, is ridiculously powerful, I took two units of five and shattered AI army after AI army. And like I said, chainmail is ridiculously powerful for what it is. Leather isn't too bad, but chainmail is so easy to get, and the non-magical weapons can't do anything to get through it, until you get to the weapons of war trait, but the AI never gets that far.
Armor bonuses (or mechanics concerning damage mitigation) definitely should be toned down, while damage scaling with weapon technology should go up. I wouldn't mind +attack on level-ups rather than only +HP.
I'd hate to see non armored or lightly armored units become completely meaningless vs plate or other heavy armors. Item weight and the encumbrance system also need to play more of a factor in the equation. -4 init penalty means nothing to a heavily encumbered unit.
These, I think, are the most pertinent to the issue. You need exponentially more defense to get the same effect you do against low attack values, which are unfortunately very common. I've been modding weapons/armor this weekened and tightening the minimum and maximum weapon attack has been extremely effective in opening tests for reducing the overpowering effect of armor and, when it comes to the high-end, top defense can reduce but not make completely irrelevant most damage against decent equipment.
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