I have been playing with 0.85 for a few hours.
Just focusing on horses.
1. Previously a ranch produced 1 horse per turn. I recommended 0.1 per turn. It was changed to 0.5 horses per turn.
I am in the mid-game, produced just a few units so far, and I have nearly a hundred horses spare. Talking to my neighbours, they have hundreds of horses spare. If I were short, I could easily trade for more.
If the idea of the resources is to provide a constraint on what you can build / buy, then the number of horses in the game has to be changed down.
Just looking at the numbers, and the number of units I actually end up building to play and win the game, I suspect even 0.1 per turn might be too much. Can we do numbers less than 0.1 and still have them displayed (say 0.02)?
2. There is an additional production cost to building cavalry. However, production cost is rarely a big consideration for my main fortress. This provides very little disincentive to producing an all cavalry army.
3. There are no tactical penalties for being cavalry. They move faster, dodge missiles better, and for wargs, even have higher initiative (which means, for example, they shoot bows quicker!).
The way horses are represented does not adequately reflect their 'real' advantages and disadvantages, nor does it provide a balanced mechanism for their 'abstract' powers in the tactical game.
I suggest:
- Bonus for spears vs horses (or negative for cavalry vs spears, or both)
- Do not have increased initiative for Wargs (in fact, perhaps have reduced initiative for both horses and wargs). Horse archers are historically useful, but do not shoot faster and longer than foot archers.
- Not able to mix Wargs and Horses in the one army, or nation. Use one or the other. Perhaps the old system of Horses for Kingdoms and Wargs for Empires.
- Reduced (not increased) dodge vs missiles. Also reduced defence against missiles. Cavalry typically avoids missile fire by moving fast, which is an ability they have already been given, and can use it to close with archers quickly, taking less shots.
- The main benefit of mounts is the speed increase and an impressive charge ability. Start from that.
Cheers
i think mounted units are getting there, slowly. current game they feel rather precious. i have 3 warg nodes now, so the situation is under control, but for the most part, i had only one warg in range, so my army didn't have a lot of mounted support. i guess it wouldn't hurt to have a real gameplay reason to mix your troops (other than limited resources). mounts are still a nobrainer if you have enough nodes to outfit most of your troops. different troops sizes for mounted and foot soldiers might work - add a percentage damage and health boost to the mounts, but have them at lower group size. infantry progression would still be 3/4/5/6, mounted units could be 2/2/3/4 -with say 50% HP and 25% attack bonus for horse units and maybe 25% HP and 50% attack for wargs, or something. this way, they would have lower stats than an equal tech infantry unit, but they'd still have the added mobility to balance them out - both options would be useful. also, i think there should be a tech/item that makes infantry move faster (at least on strategic map). i think the "rations" item would work for that purpose. infantry with rations could have 3 moves on strategic map instead of 2, so even if you don't have mounts availabel or want to use mixed stacks or infantry armies, you wouldn't slow down the later game too much.
Just on the fact that mounted units are immune to being knocked Prone:
I think this is because they would have to have new animations for it, which is too much work.
It MIGHT be easier (work wise) and realistic (game wise) to change it so that when they get knocked prone the become unhorsed (unwarged?) and fight as infantry. That would mean changing the definition of the troops mid-battle, and I am not sure how easy that is in the code base.
quoting Azuani_ : "i think the "rations" item would work for that purpose. infantry with rations could have 3 moves on strategic map instead of 2, so even if you don't have mounts available or want to use mixed stacks or infantry armies, you wouldn't slow down the later game too much."
That is a great idea!
This is a problem with how summoners work. I personally don't understand why a summoner can summon their dude anywhere at all on the map. I mean, I get that archers have unlimited range, so you might ask why summoners shouldn't, but I don't think archers SHOULD have an unlimited range either, so there you go. All of that aside, if you get hemmed in by enemy units, tough. You don't get a charge bonus, as you shouldn't if your cavalry are surrounded and unable to move.
This is true. This is still a problem with tactical combat that has not yet been resolved. It needs some kind of solution, I agree, so at the moment it would be kind of lame, but on the other hand, your horsemen would get to move the next turn so the momentum bonus would still apply on that turn instead.
Yes, and? If they position their defenders in such a way you can't run past them, that just means you're forced to kill the defender before you continue moving. I don't get the issue, it makes sense.
Technological advantage? They might give you a "technological advantage" if they weren't the second technology along the warfare tree. You can grab horse technology way too early for them to be as overpowered as they are for purely "technological" reasons. And besides, cavalry units are and were never strictly superior to infantry units. Both had their uses and downsides in terms of upkeep, deployment, and maneuverability, both in combat and out.
Also, as many people have pointed out, immunity to prone makes no sense. People on horses could be knocked from their saddle in battle, and often were.
If one issue are horses/wargs being stockpiled and irrelevant, maybe more uses need to be added in for them. Some ideas could be buildings that require a lot of horses, like a market type, trade caravans, or using them as food for exotic mounts/units like dragons or trolls (they eat the horses).
I think mounted units should be powerful than an "equivalent" unit of infantry, but they are harder to field and there should be some quirks about both that make the decision not so one sided. Quirks can be stuff like long spears doing extra damage, fantastic monsters scaring the crap out of horses and reducing their combat stats, tighter formation for infantry, etc.
I'm for any kind of change as long as it makes the game more fun. Fun in a 4x game (for me) usually means some kind of balance and that I have decisions to make that will have real impact on my game as well as the AI.
@Animageous: Well Resoln faction is limited to leather armor. You win battles by having meatshields summons because your units no matter how you pimp them, will vaporize in contact with medium - high level enemies. Having a high initiative for a caster is a must, especially with this faction.
I think the balance is more shifted towards player VS world, rather than faction vs faction. You can't compare a mounted unit with a troll, ogre, elemental lord, slag, etc. The later will still be more powerful in all aspects, hence why you need a large party to attempt to take them down instead of sending a single mounted archer or w/e.
Then again, when you have units like Air elemental lords who can knock back & down entire armies, makes even more sense to have some units that can't be knocked.
It's a fantasy world, they don't try to recreate real world warfare, so different rules are expected The main focus of the game is magic, which utterly destroys any type of unit (except immune ones obviously), either by super weakening them or destroying them outright (lowering attack, initiative, movement, single and AoE damage, summons, etc).
The limitations to using horse / warg units comes from the inherent prices of using them and production time. For a group of 4 mounted archers you need 4 horses on top of what else you pimp them with (weapon, armor, accessories). Now make it a group of 5, or 6. You can never field a large army of mounted warfare as fast as you could have pedestrians.
Mixing your troops (in my experience) gives better results than stacking. Having several champions with mixed armies gives you more territory control / cover and faster expansion / access to goodies, than waiting to build a full mounted company for each.
/signed. Some serious balance issues with horses.
Would love to see new and better mounts in future expansions, however. Those new lizard-like monsters look like they'd be good mounts. Oh, and dragons. Those too!
Looks like they're trying to address the issue in .87.
Indeed, scarcity addressed in 0.87. Will be worth checking.
Also balance, with the dodge bonuses removed. Finally horses are edging towards balance.
One thing I did not mention, but I hope they have thought of, is that reducing the number of horses available should increase their trade value. No point making them scarce if you can buy them for a song.
That's exactly the issue, and that's exactly why I call it laziness.
Has the issue been resolved in 0.87?
There are still boots from magic research that makes your troops immune to being knocked down. And they are not so hard to get if you focus on research and magic
Would you please stop comparing mounted troops to infantry?
Mounts are upgrades like capes or boots. Troops using them should have some advantages over troops not using them.
The only concerns for balance are mounts vs other upgrade slots and atm mounts are winning the upgrade race by a horse length.
To decrease the issue you could increase the importance (and the diversity) of the other upgrade slots.
Another change I would like to see is more options for the mount slot. Panthers, spiders, lizards, whatever fun thing you can implement, different bonuses (abilities) and costs, not just aesthetic differences.
And since I mentioned it, I'd like more diversity for every upgrade slot. Fire armor, fire weapons, fire bows, bows that fire in a cone or whatever.
Realism shouldn't be a concern, just plenty of options so eventually the most expensive won't be the default choice.
It probably isn't fair to base my comments on 0.87 on one play through? I feel that the devs have listened to everything and made changes in response. It is much better.
<lowers voice>
I still have too many horses though.
<ducks>
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