I've been playing around with Juggernauts and have come to a fairly decent solution for balancing these guys out, so I'll just toss this out as a suggestion to improving these guys:
1. Remove the 25% Splash Damage from base Juggernaut ability (this is mainly to help the AI because they can't handle the tactical positioning voodoo that is needed to make the most use of it). Reduce cost to 250 (from 400).
2. Move the 25% Splash Damage into Uncontrolled Rage, making it 75% in total, this improves the trait to make it more worthwhile - primarily for players, encouraging more design diversity. Increase cost to 60 (instead of 16).
3. Lower the damage bonus of Brutal Nature trait to 50% damage bonus, this trait is just too much of a no-brainer at 100% bonus. Increase cost to 60 (instead of 16).
4. Reduce the HP bonus of Ignore Pain trait to 30, but move the 10 HP into the base Juggernaut unit, this is to lessen the effectiveness of the trait so as to give other traits a chance. Increase cost to 90 (instead of 35).
5. Add a -10 base Accuracy penalty to Maul trait, it's too easy to get high accuracy with Fortress upgrades. Increase cost to 60 (instead of 0).
6. Add a +1 Movement bonus to Frenzy trait, this helps Juggernauts chase down kiting archers. Increase cost to 60 (instead of 10).
7. Add a new trait "Harvester", that allows the Juggernaut to gain +5 HP whenever an enemy is killed. Costs 60.
The end result is a slightly nerfed base Juggernaut unit, 50% less atk (Brutal nature nerf), 10 less accuracy (Maul nerf) and no inherent splash (again, to help the AI) and costs a bit more (trait cost tweaks - 460 instead of 451, not including weapons/accessories). However, all the other Juggernaut traits are buffed up and given use (except for Heart of Stone - which is still a bit useless, maybe add 5 def for the other damage types?). This allows for more diverse Juggernaut designs (like a Brutal Frenzy Harvester...) to change up the core unit a bit. The cost change of the traits also introduces the possibility of using cheaper "base" Juggernauts without the extra traits.
Just my 2cents...
Brutal nature to 50% wouldn't be as big a nerf as you think. They get a +100% for just being a Jug, and then another +100% damage for brutal nature. I think they should remove the brutal nature buff all together. 300% damage is way silly high.
It was never meant to be a big nerf. The point was to reduce the extreme effectiveness of the trait so that you would say, well I can live without it, and pick another trait.
That's a good point. Because right now, you would never not pick that over other choices.
I agree, remove brutal nature, please!
Agree with the OP
Leave them as is.
Juggernauts are one of the very few AI units that I approach with caution. A stack of Juggernauts is about the only thing outside of dragons I'll run away from unless I'm using my "A" stack. even with the "A" stack I expect to take losses.
How about having a unit limit instead? After all you can only get one dragon, three or four ogres.... Maybe three juggernaughts is good enough?
Unit limits are only for the special resource units, at least at present, not for the special units that factions can train/build. I'm also generally opposed to any flat unit limit - three juggernauts might be plenty when I have three or four cities on a small map, but if I have ten or twenty on a large map it isn't really worthwhile (unless I'm really pushing the stack of death concept). I'd rather that they be limited by how many you can afford to field (and how many you feel are worth fielding), not by some arbitrary cap that someone made up for no particular reason.
Also, with the special resource units, you'll notice that the cap is per-resource. If I manage to get three or four dragon lairs in my domain, then I can have three or four dragons. If I have half a dozen ogre lairs, then I get eighteen to twenty-four ogres for my army. On top of that, the special resource units are usually either weak and numerous (darklings/wildings) or powerful and few in number (ogres, trolls, dragons), and don't cost any upkeep (with the notable exceptions of Knights of Asok, which are too expensive for what they give you, and Mercenaries/Hunters, which are garbage units). If juggernauts had a cap of three per city, it wouldn't be terrible (though I still don't agree with capping the number of units you can field by any means other than your economy's ability to produce and maintain them).
I also don't think that nerfing the juggernauts is really necessary. Human players can learn how to handle them (both on the controlling and on the receiving end of things), and the AI players don't currently know how to handle any units really well anyways.
I agree in that Jugs should offer some variety in traits. Currently I only decide if giving them a big axe or a big sword with a big shield, and some trinkets
I don't want to nerf Jugs, I just like the idea about giving them a bit more flexibility.
For me they are nice, but very limited - primarily in terms of mobility and defense. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I would like to reduce their power, keep maul and add mobility - so they don't hit as hard, but i can use them more often. Or alternately, reduce their power and add some defense so I don't have to heal them as much.
That's basically the idea behind my balance suggestions, it's not so much trying to nerf them, but rather it's to balance the traits out a bit so that you'd have more design options to make things more interesting. While they do end up slightly weaker overall, I don't feel like it has really hurt them (I've been playing around with these settings for a while), they can still be powerhouses mid game (they don't gain enough hp to complete with high end troops end game). In fact, the tweaks to splash (removing it from base bonus) in particular makes it possible to field a big groups of them easily without needing to carefully fight with them (again, a great boon for the AI). You can make offensive Juggs (Brutal, Frenzy, Maul) or more defensive ones (Ignore Pain, Harvester, Frenzy)... of you could still make those big splashers (Ignore Pain, Brutal, Uncontrolled Rage) to take out cluster of troops. Or, as I mentioned in the OP, you can even field a large amount of cheaper, no trait jugs.
Sorry, it's just that the set of 'remove Brutal Nature' posts and the suggestion to limit the number of juggernauts available caused me to think this was a 'nerf juggernauts' thread. Changing the traits a bit to make them more appealing relative to one another is fine with me.
Also:
[quote who="Kalin" reply="0" id="3286711"The end result is a slightly nerfed base Juggernaut unit, 50% less atk (Brutal nature nerf)[/quote]
This sentence in the main post is somewhat funny if it isn't realized that you're referring to a subtractive amount (200% -> 150%). "Slightly nerfed - it only does HALF the damage it previously did."
Such great ideas. I do like keeping the base splash on the Juggernaut, just because it ties a special mechanic to that awesome creature. It helps set its tone, I dont want players to be able to turn it off. But I'm checking in most of your other suggestions.
It's more like 300% -> 250%. With its base weapon (20 attack), its attack now starts at 50 instead of 60 (you can get better axes later or switch to maul for even more). While it certainly IS a reduction, you barely even notice it since it's already doing so much, especially with maul activating.
Completely understandable. As I explained in my OP, I mainly did it because I saw the AI hurting its own units way too often while I was testing it out (it's pretty easy to lure the AI, so you can get several jugs to practically kill themselves on throwaway units), but if the design is to reward tactical positioning and strategy, then that's fine. Maybe toss on some extra bonus into Uncontrolled Rage or something to make it more tempting (it's a bit pointless if the base Jug already has splash).
Did there end up being a mod for this? Mod manager compatible? Just found your golem post and checked back through your older posts.
it's being checked in as 1.1 vanilla
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