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.
This also becomes a problem because it contributes to one problem I see in gameplay which is that you wind up with a single death fleet (the sovereign and champions) and many cities. So you wind up running that one fleet all over the place trying to protect all of your cities all of the time because your other units just can't handle the task.
You are misinformed. Defense works in a much less intrusive manner than that. I don't now the exact formula, but it certainly isn't DAMAGE = ATTACK - DEFENSE.
Max Attack = Attack * Attack/(Attack +Defense)
Min Attack = Max Attack/2
Elemental Damage is added after this calculation.
City militia are supposed to be weak compared to a normal army. You can increase the strength of a city by leveling it as a Fortress. Getting some Guardian Statues is also a great thing for defense. In general, if you have burning axes, shortbows, and a guardian statue you at least stand a chance at defense. The higher tier armors are designed to make units extremely strong. This is balanced out by elemental damage, which ignores armor.
Max Damage = Atk*(Atk/(Atk+Def))
So if the defense equals the attack, max damage is 1/2 the attack.
I don't think that there's anything wrong with the way defense actually works. I actually like that you can still chip away at a high defensive unit with almost anything.
However, it is slightly easier at present to outpace the game's threats in terms of defense, than it is to accumulate offense in units. +Defense options are abundant, defensive buffs are overpowered.
It didn't used to be this way.This was in response to a previous builds that favored offense, and "glass cannons" were a problem. So I think you can expect to look forward to further fine tuning as the game systems come into balance.
yes but in some way it doesnt make sense
leveling as a fortress means that city will be the source of troops and so will be likely never undefended or at least the one you could create troops sooner
there is no reason to have it also defended even more with walls etc
because you most likely would need those extras in a far away city where it takes lot of time to move your army
i just dont like actual fortresses, or at least the lvl 4 (5 as fortress is so hard to get unless you gimp the city on 5 food) bonus and 5 should be towards giving defenses to OTHER cities, not the fortress that is already good
as for the city militia i agree with those saying its too weak
maybe it would be enough instead of increasing the number of militias (that deal no dmg anyway) keep the number low but increase the dmg with city lvl AND improvement
imo ALL cities should have lvl 1 walls
fortresses should have lvl 2 and 3 walls too maybe and boosted troops
lvl 4 5 fortress should give a bonus to other cities ( ability to build lvl 2 walls on all other cities or +1 lvl for militia, or +1 city archer etc etc)
One of the problems the system has is that the numbers are low, whole numbers. In order to have each upgrade be minor, you go from pieces of armor having 1-3 defense to having 3-5 defense. Then that gain is multiplied by the total number of armor slots a trooper can wear armor on, and you end up with a total net gain that is greater than the damage rating of a standard hand axe and such, when you move from leather to chain armor. That one tech tree step almost totally invalidates the weapon class below it.
Armor either needs to have fractional number values, if it's going to stay with low numbers, or the numbers need to come up so armor improvements can happen in smaller increments.
Anyone else noticed that Fort and Castle only increase the defending unit's Initiative by 1? Not really worth the time to build it. Really, you could go two ways on improving city defense. You could have militia use the latest armor techs as they do weapons. You could also beef up the current units by increasing their numbers and then make a "Heavy Defender" unit that comes with level 2 walls.
The current design seems to want cities to be weak. Cities can defeat a pack of wolves or other low level monster, but when faced with any kind of enemy army, they need trained units. That is certainly one way to go. There are certainly some improvements and specializations that help. There are even some factions that have a natural ability to defend and yet others that can use slaves to defend. I would still ask for more power. I want cities to have late game options to make a citadel of pain. Something like Switzerland circa 1942. Is that too much to ask? Perhaps. Is that too much to add myself? Certainly not.
No it is not. In the game right now, it is almost impossible to win peacefully unless all the A.I. are the same faction as you. In E:WoM and E:FE war is the only answer. Why can't we all get along. Why can't the A.I. see that I am holding a whole lot of nukes and I am willing to annihilate them, but all I want is to be left alone in my corner of the world.
I thought the purpose of the militia was to keep out the wolves. Not keep out an army.
Why indeed? I don't think the Empires should be getting along with each other. They should be more powerful, but more likely to go to war. Kingdoms should be more peaceful, but slightly weaker in warfare. Not to sidetrack the conversation.
I've not seen this ability to chip away at ALL. My misunderstanding about how Defense work aside, I still seem nil damage in attacks, which is pointless. I'm fine with militia not keeping an army away. I'm less fine with 6 militia dudes and three archers not only not keeping one guy and his spells away, but not even capable of doing any damage.
What is the point of those guys as defenders? I can build my own units to supplement, but that's not supplementing. They're utterly useless. I need my own actual army in the city. And if my militia doesn't have the capability to do damage, I can build more militia, but that's not really going to matter is it? Because those units won't do damage either. I can have a stack of 60 militia in my city, and they are going to go down.
Armor is stronger than weaponry and the max attack shouldn't go down to 1 so quickly. That's the point I'm making.
There's more than one way you can fail to do damage. Dodge, for instance. Your militia archers could just be missing. Generally, though, even against an opponent whose defense outstrips your attack, you can still chip away doing 1-2 points at a time. A somewhat higher defense than the opposing attack does not make you completely immune to damage, although it makes you very tough to kill.
Defense is not stronger than attack. If they have defense equal to your attack, you would still be able to damage them. But like I said, at present, it is easier to rack up higher defensive rating in the game, than attack. It's an ongoing balance process. Beta, and all that.
The purpose of city militia is not to replace the need for defensive troops. They just supplement any defense, and keep the city from falling to something stupid, like a lone wildling.
I think Bingjack has the correct point about the militia. They are there as an added bonus, the city militia is the games way of demonstrating that peasants want to help defend their city (or are forced to defend). They are not a free powerful defense force for you.
I don't mind seanw3 suggestion about upgraded armor, but then an upkeep should be made. A building of somekind within the city called weapon racks that force an upkeep on the city, but gives your militia particular upgrades to weapons and armor.
Yeah. Viable combat troops are not supposed to be free. There's supposed to be a cost for them somewhere along the line in researched tech, in upkeep, production costs and resources (or mana) and effort to produce.
In the case of city militia, I would say you're simply getting what you pay for. But they will save you the embarrassment of your thriving city falling to a stray wolf if you leave it unguarded. Maybe.
Actually weapons are weaker than armor. There is an assumption by the devs that units will be using attack bonuses from the unit design tree. So armor is balanced to work against a three trait enemy. City militia do not perform well because they have no armor and no traits. They only have as good of weapons as you have researched and bows are drastically underpowered. I think even giving them the latest breastpiece would go a long ways towards a fair shake. Getting what we paid for is not entirely true when you think about taking a hit to your economy by choosing Fortress. Part of that fortress needs to pay off as city defense.
I recently noticed though that Guardian Idols are a big deal in defense. They can cast any spell the Soc can. So there's that.
You can only have one Guardian Idol per faction though. The Guardian statues aren't too bad when you look at their power/defense, but they have some big negatives too.
Like I said elsewhere today though, if free city milita were as good as troops you could build at that level (or good enough), why would you ever bother building troops to defend your cities? I like to think at some point, the game might offer enough of a challenge that I might actually have to defend my cities in the game, and have a reason to build armies and garrisons.
I think city militia are best left as a token measure for frivilous threats, not a real defense. There's room for tweaking, sure. But I would never want them to be able to fend off a real monster, band of ruffians, or even a single squad of trained enemy troops.
If the AI is smart enough to get a squad of trained troops to one of my cities that I have left unguarded, that city should fall. Otherwise, it would negatively impact the amount of strategy involved in maintaining an infrastructure capable of supporting troops, and the logistics of how to defend my cities.
no one asked militia as good or even close to trained troops
the point is they are nto even remotely close after mid game
if normal troops are worth 1000, militia is 200 early game, 10 mid game, and 1 end game
basically they are just lag
they serve no purpose, dying in 1 hit (and enemies have too few spells otherwise they would die second turn from some aoe) and doing 1 dmg if not dodged
they just slow my game being useless
militia should just be useful, ofc you would need to build defenses on your own, but when you get attacked they should be able to take couple of hits and deal 5 10 dmg or so
and i repeat we dont need 6 militias, we just need them to work
so if to balance and give them 10 dmg they need to be reduced in number is ok
Its a nice idea to give them a piece of breastplate (or a hat, or whatever) and I hope the Weaponry gets rebalanced slightly.
I do agree on your sentiment on bows being terrible atm. And hope to see it fixed, would be awesome to see the rare "Mage Militia"... there must be mages somewhere in the city.
Would also help if militia in fortresses started out a lvl higher or so, due to training.
Edit: Fixed that I lacked half a sentence in the 1st line. (of my own writing)
Sincerely~ Kongdej
I am going to offer up my own take on attack vs. defense. Having gotten heavy into a long game, defense/armor way outpaces attack/weapons on the tech tree. By the time you can get into chain you are godly. Bows are utter crap at this point, initiative penalty and poor attack to boot. 9 Att on a Longbow. Crap!. Chain Helmet, Chain Armguards, Chain Breastpiece, Chain Greaves, Chain Boots. Godly!. No Comparison. Longsword? *Laugh* 12 Att. With chain on your going to have like 20 defence (not counting shield ) and like double that vs. cutting.
You don't get an attack value anywhere close to a units defense value.
That is essentially the problem. Too few beta testers have played the mid to late game extensively. So these issues are just now becoming popularized. One day a beta tester will research Weapons of War and discover a horrible truth. Greatsword and Maul are totally useless, despite being one of the last tech tiers in the game. Late game magical weapons cost less research and are leaps and bounds more powerful. Yew Longbow does 1-2 damage against chain and plate combos.
There is alot to be said about the latest patches, which have fixed many a stability issues. But now we are testing the part of the game that is the least balanced. The AI is the least optimized. The game is the least interesting. The late game needs balance. The endgame needs structure. Armor versus weapons is just one aspect of it.
So true. Although the midgame's own unbalances and boring play is what makes the late game so bad. It's easy to exploit things like armor midgame to crush the AI and NPCs. Thus you never get to late game or of you do it's just to mess around and mop up. For instance anything in Plate laughs at even Elemental Lords. For the longest time champion armor has been easier to get then plate as well. Right now it costs around half the research. How does that make sense?
I've honestly known it was rubbishly balanced in some time, I just had little ideas what I thought was silly, until now (I needed time to play late-game a lot more, usually my hero cleave stuff all over anyways).
We've gone from debating whether units are glass canons to whether they're too tough.
As for cities, the free defenders are there to defend against minor threats. They shouldn't be able to hold off an army on their own. I think of them as being like the police.
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