Play Now Login Create Account
illyriad
  New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - Attack/Defence rebalance after 2 years.
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Register Register  Login Login

Topic ClosedAttack/Defence rebalance after 2 years.
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  123>
Author
 Rating: Topic Rating: 1 Votes, Average 4.00  Topic Search Topic Search  Topic Options Topic Options
Drejan View Drop Down
Forum Warrior
Forum Warrior
Avatar

Joined: 30 Sep 2010
Status: Offline
Points: 234 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: Attack/Defence rebalance after 2 years.
    Posted: 15 Mar 2012 at 23:57
I don't want to start a flame or to post math here, i think i have some experience and it's something devs can just check better than us and make their decision.

I think the balance between attack units and defend units is not working.
Except big mountains with t2 ranged (and only of some races) there's no way to have an efficent trade defending, with any unit you place, no matter how many you place, your going to loose more than the attacker if the attacker use the right units.
The attack/def values and the terrain bonuses have not been changed since the begin,  it's time to think of rebalancing them.

For example make T1 units really better on defence compared with T2,
 right now they are a LessExpansive-TimeConsuming-LessPerforming copy of the T2 one, after 2 years almost all medium-big players do not worry of the cost, they worry about the production time and efficency of the troops.
Make any territory defendable by one kind of troop, like plains by spears or t1 cavalry, forest by t1 infantry, ecc... just improve a lot their defence on that kind of terrain.
Improve the malus on the attacking units on terrain they should not fight on.

This kind of things will improve the specialization of player/alliances and will make tactics lot more interesting.

Some other random ideas:
Let us build some kind of temporary wall to help defending camps 
or
some structure/spell to temporary change the terrain type for battles.

PS. yes walls help on defence, but in Illyriad you never need to attack a city with a lv20 wall, you can reduce it to 0pop without doing any attack.


Edited by Drejan - 15 Mar 2012 at 23:59
Back to Top
HonoredMule View Drop Down
Postmaster General
Postmaster General
Avatar

Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 1650 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Mar 2012 at 01:09
I personally feel that the various units lack sufficient defense specialization.  Put enough units in a big pile and the per-type defense values are never very far apart.  The larger the army, the less significant any small differences become.  The lack of any sense of scaling with casualties is very odd too.  Attack should be considerably more powerful than defense, but in turn hitting massively larger occupations should have far less favorable results for the attacker.  Perhaps the terrain modifiers should be more substantial as well.

As the game has grown, it feels like we've moved from Age of Empires: Rise of Rome (wild tactical/strategic/economic diversity in the units/races themselves, and fluid change in engagements/infrastructure at all scales) to Age of Empires II (still lots of "stuff" but all with meaningless token variations, and painfully slow attrition in bunker warfare).
"Apparently, quoting me is a 'thing' now."
- HonoredMule
Back to Top
JimJams View Drop Down
Forum Warrior
Forum Warrior
Avatar

Joined: 20 Sep 2011
Location: Italy
Status: Offline
Points: 496 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Mar 2012 at 09:42
+1
Back to Top
Faldrin View Drop Down
Forum Warrior
Forum Warrior
Avatar

Joined: 03 Sep 2010
Status: Offline
Points: 239 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Mar 2012 at 21:09
I for one would like to see the training time for T1 units go down so they could be an alternative to T2 units.

I would also like to see more terrain differences. As it is now the best attack unit on all terrains are the human T2 cavalry. That is not a good thing for diversity in armies.
Back to Top
Ander View Drop Down
Postmaster General
Postmaster General
Avatar

Joined: 24 Apr 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 1269 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2012 at 04:13
Originally posted by Faldrin Faldrin wrote:

I for one would like to see the training time for T1 units go down so they could be an alternative to T2 units.

T1 pikes have the same training time as T1 archers. The spear is a unit with upkeep "1" while the archer is doubly strong and has an upkeep of "2".
Back to Top
Tordenkaffen View Drop Down
Postmaster
Postmaster
Avatar

Joined: 16 Oct 2010
Location: Denmark
Status: Offline
Points: 821 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2012 at 09:38
I rather think human cavalry are a bit over the top. Not that I refute their great strength and advantage on plains, but when they excel in attacking mountains wiping more than double their numbers of defenders (mostly archers and spearmen), something is slightly off imho.

In the precise case, 12k T2 horsemen wiped out over 29k defenders on a mountain whereof at least 30% were  archers. The death toll for the horsemen were a little over 11k.

Is this how its suppose to work? 

Edited by Tordenkaffen - 19 Mar 2012 at 09:39
Back to Top
Createure View Drop Down
Postmaster General
Postmaster General
Avatar

Joined: 07 Apr 2010
Location: uk
Status: Offline
Points: 1191 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2012 at 10:45
I like your post Tord.

Further to your point on production time and efficiency of troops I'd like to add that I would love to see ALL the production times tweaked.

At the moment there is not a huge difference in production time as you rise from T1 spears up to T2 cavalry [a factor of 1.6 only] but the variation in upkeep [a factor of 4] and unit stats [~10 for elf attack and ~3 in defence] means that based on the fact that terrain bonuses (which have quite small variation) are almost insignificant consideration when trying to train the strongest army for a job in the shortest time... T2 cavs are favoured over pretty much everything for attack and T2 bows are favoured over almost everything for defence based purely on production time considerations.

IMO unit production times should more closely reflect a unit's upkeep value. This would really give some of the T1 units SLIGHTLY more potential for use (aswell as very under-used units, like all spear classes)... maybe we would even see people chosing something better to attack large mountains with than a stack of T2 cavs...
Back to Top
Ander View Drop Down
Postmaster General
Postmaster General
Avatar

Joined: 24 Apr 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 1269 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2012 at 14:01
Agree createure. T1 spears take too long too train and T2 cavalry takes too less. Training a lot of cheap militia during the peaceful times and training knights as an emergency army seems awkward. But maybe the current numbers make more sense from the game play point of view.

Lowering the training time of lower tier units will be highly unfavourable to humans. Every other race some units which are cheap and worth their cost. Orcs can train strong spears and elves can train strong archers without spending leather armor. Dwarves can train infantry almost as strong as cavalry with regard to their upkeep. 

Human militia is the weakest trainable unit available in the game, human archers have the lowest attack of all four races, human infantry move at 5 squares/hr. Knights are the only human units that are comparatively better - you can't even say best, because knights are only 10% stronger than other races while the elven cavalry moves 42% faster (17 square/hr). If Marshalls are overlooked, that is only because Trueshots are too good. 




Edited by Ander - 19 Mar 2012 at 14:03
Back to Top
Createure View Drop Down
Postmaster General
Postmaster General
Avatar

Joined: 07 Apr 2010
Location: uk
Status: Offline
Points: 1191 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2012 at 15:46
Well it's true... all races have their ups+downs [altho tbh I think complaining about human archers is pretty LoL - yes they are slow but they still are on-par with or marginally better than Orc+Dwarf T1 ranged - and additional to that humans have the fastest and second strongest T2 range unit which gives humans a great capacity for quick defences alongside their huge offensive capability.]

But my comment was not really about racial strengths/weaknesses anyways - it is about relative production time between different unit classes... somthing which affects everyone... it's a simple fact that that dividing a unit's stats by their production time will quickly show you that T2 ranged and cav units are the only viable option for trying to achieve the most powerful army within a limited time period...

You may argue that this is no bad thing... but personally I prefer a game where there is more than 1 good strategy and everyone is not just doing the exact same thing (and totally disregarding all terrain and racial modifiers because the production time factor overrides everything).

Maybe people disagree with me on this... perhaps I am wrong. But I have seen the general composition of the colelctive armies of all the top 5 alliances currently and I have seen the casualty lists from several previous tournaments and it is pretty obvious to me that T2 cavalry is massively favoured regardless of race... and T1 units and spear units barely feature in any notable way.
Back to Top
SugarFree View Drop Down
Forum Warrior
Forum Warrior
Avatar

Joined: 09 Feb 2012
Status: Offline
Points: 350 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2012 at 16:02
+1 rebalance stuff please..
really do.. it would be a shame otherwise 
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  123>
  Share Topic   

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.03
Copyright ©2001-2019 Web Wiz Ltd.