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Darkwords View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jan 2013 at 13:14
Originally posted by Elmindra Elmindra wrote:

Get involved in a war and you will shortly see the best tactic for defending a town is to NOT leave your armies there to get wiped out by masses of cavalry.

LOL... get involved in a war, may main account is Darkone btw.  And yes, I have been involved in many wars and I have defeated MANY seiges, when they were much harder to defeat.

 
Originally posted by Elmindra Elmindra wrote:

And yes, you still send cavalry to wipe siege camps in forests and even mountains since they still get better than a 1:1 kill death ratio even in these terrains.  And I am not mad my cities are getting attacked, I actually feel bad for the people who I can wipe their defenders from their town with minimal cavalry losses.

You can also get a much better than 1:1 ratio with other (cheaper and faster to produce) troops in these terrains, as I keep saying try using some strategy, rather than just moaning that you think this game doesn't have any.

Originally posted by Elmindra Elmindra wrote:

I don't think you need to weaken cavalry themselves, just change the terrain modifiers.  I am even in favor for upping the plains defense modifier for cavalry on plains.  They should be the best offensively AND defensively on the plains (and better on small hills). 

reducing their terrain adv for plains IS weakening cav, upping the terrain def of all other troop types is weakening cav.
How will making the same troop type best for def and attack on certain terrains going to increase strategy?  It will purely mean everyone producing the same troops to fight over particular squares and would prove extremely boring game play.

Originally posted by Elmindra Elmindra wrote:

The actual troop numbers are fine, there just needs to be more of an incentive via terrain modifiers to make other troops useful.  Make cities always be classified as buildings, not just during the capture/raze attempt.  Increase the terrain modifiers from 30 to 50% in the extreme cases (both on offense and defense).  Increase the wall bonus from 115% to 215% or higher.  Increase the T1 and T2 spearmen training speed to match their upkeep.


Your idea regarding altering spear recruitment speed is fine, I do not see why a standard wall bonus should be increased, but I do like the previous idea of adding to the wall in another way.  Although I would rather see optional upgrades rather than another tier.

Changing the terrain of all cities to buildings or some unique 'city' terrain will only remove all reason for building on any squares other than the food boosting ones and therefore limit the game even further, you started to post claiming you wanted to add strategy to this game, yet all your ideas will reduce game strategy.

I am not against ideas for making seiges slightly more defensible, even though they are much easier to defend now than before, but I do stand against ideas that merely make this game more and more mechanical.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jan 2013 at 15:13
The problem with changing/altering stats is that is would drastically alter the existing efficiency of armies. This could lead to a huge disadvantage for someone as soon as the change is put in place. 

Take for example Mal Motsha (sorry Dominion). An immediate "tweek" that favors increasing effectiveness of spearmen would be huge for the spearmen heavy Black Skull Horde. If they also tweak it so that cavalry aren't as effective at attacking cities, then that could reduce the effectiveness of the cavalry of The Colony. Now the BSH has a huge advantage over it's neighbor, the Colony, and is more likely to win any battles between the two of them. What sucks is it isn't The Colonies fault. They were just on the bad end of the nerf hammer. 

The devs attempted to balance out some of the stats by implementing crafting. The idea was that it would take everyone a long time to build enough gear for anyone to have an advantage. Not to mention the research times associated with the crafting. This all was a way to keep anyone from feeling the pains of a nerf hammer, even tho some races/units got a larger statistical advantage (Silversteel Sword vs Silversteel Spear). 

I do agree that there is room for improvement. I think everyone here agrees there is room for improvement. 

I created a seperate thread to discuss an idea I had for improvement. I do not want to derail this thread, but if anyone is interested in a different suggestion please check out http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/strategic-divisions_topic4713.html 

Also here is a seperate post detailing some ideas for balancing siege mechanics. 

-http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/siege-counter-measure_topic4423.html?KW=

Edited by geofrey - 30 Jan 2013 at 15:15

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jan 2013 at 15:58
It takes a ratio of 6:9 gph upkeep for cavalry to kill archers in a large forest, while taking a ratio of 7.5:9 gph upkeep for swordsmen to kill archers in the same large forest.  Tell me when you would ever send swords over cavalry when attacking in a large forest.  If you do then I call you a fool for wasting 1.5gph upkeep needlessly in an attack.  Now if more players other than orcs actually crafted spears things might be more even, but when replacing troops is the name of the game in war it is less efficient to craft spears at a 1:3gph upkeep than archers at 1:2gph upkeep.  

You also get a 12:9 gph death ratio when attacking archers on a large mountain with cavalry, but it barely gets better at 11.4:9 gph death ratio when attacking archers on a large mountain with archers.  When the cavalry can get there twice as fast, once again there is rarely a point to attack it with archers.  Those are the two most extreme cases, in small forests and mountains the favor swings even more in favor of cavalry.  So we can see that cavalry are the absolute best attacking force on plains, small hills, large hills, small forests, small mountains, large forests.  How is that not imbalanced?  Shouldn't swordsmen be best at more than just attacking buildings?  Shouldn't archers be best at attacking more than just large mountains?

I also never stated that cavalry should lose their plains bonus to attack, and I actually think cavalry should get a better bonus to defense on plains and also small hills.  Cavalry should still remain king there, and honestly they would still be the best attack unit because of their speed.  But cavalry should not always be the best attacking unit, and they definately should not be able to kill troops inside a town with a wall regardless what terrain the town sits on.  It is a friggin wall, how do the cavalry charge the troops inside it?

All I see in every single battle report is cavalry vs archers.  I fail to see how making changes to empower swords and spears would reduce the amount of strategy already involved.


Edited by Elmindra - 30 Jan 2013 at 16:07
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jan 2013 at 18:57
The preponderance of cav vs. archer engagements might also be related to the racial balance in the game -- that is, a game in which there are mostly humans and elves.  Of course it can be argued that this is a feedback loop, where the most efficient combination of alts is human-elf. 

(That's IF your alt will get up off her butt to make an army, which CERTAIN PEOPLE won't.)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jan 2013 at 23:30
Originally posted by Darkwords Darkwords wrote:


You can also get a much better than 1:1 ratio with other (cheaper and faster to produce) troops in these terrains, as I keep saying try using some strategy, rather than just moaning that you think this game doesn't have any.


reducing their terrain adv for plains IS weakening cav, upping the terrain def of all other troop types is weakening cav.
How will making the same troop type best for def and attack on certain terrains going to increase strategy?  It will purely mean everyone producing the same troops to fight over particular squares and would prove extremely boring game play.


Your idea regarding altering spear recruitment speed is fine, I do not see why a standard wall bonus should be increased, but I do like the previous idea of adding to the wall in another way.  Although I would rather see optional upgrades rather than another tier.

Changing the terrain of all cities to buildings or some unique 'city' terrain will only remove all reason for building on any squares other than the food boosting ones and therefore limit the game even further, you started to post claiming you wanted to add strategy to this game, yet all your ideas will reduce game strategy.

I am not against ideas for making seiges slightly more defensible, even though they are much easier to defend now than before, but I do stand against ideas that merely make this game more and more mechanical.

A: Do you routinely keep a large force of overall less-effective troops on hand just in case an enemy places a siege camp in a location where it will be marginally more efficient to attack with these instead of cavalry?  The fact that these units are cheaper and faster to produce doesn't count for much if you don't have them waiting when the siege camp arrives, because you still can't produce enough of them in time to turn the tide.

B:  Having everyone produce multiple troop types and studying the map looking for the best place to set a siege camp in order to nullify an opponent's likely counterattack based on the troops you have available and what you know of their army would actually require a good bit of strategy.  Piling a mass of archers and pikemen an any adjacent square that isn't plains and waiting to see how much cav they hit you with?  Not so much.  Right now basic siege strategy is to arrange a precisely timed arrival of as many defensive troops as you can muster on a square minutes before the siege camp arrives so the enemy doesn't have time to coordinate a counter-operation to kill the first arrivals and control the site before the catapults arrive.  You pretty much know that the counterattack is going to be cav based because this is what most people build in mass and because when the victim calls for help cavalry is going to get there first.  Everyone is already producing the same troops, and that makes this more a game of massing the greatest number of those troops and finessing your sovereignty to rebuild them faster than the other guy.

C: The only optional upgrade that would make much sense would be to make the wall more powerful against attack.  You can have options to make walls more effective against one troop type or another, but since 80% of attacks are going to be cavalry the choice would be rather self-evident.

D:  I don't see how making all cities an Urban terrain type will " remove all reason for building on any squares other than the food boosting ones".  If you look around, the vast majority of effective players have all their cities on a 7-food plains tile.  The cities they don't have on 7-food plains are on those 7-food large forest tiles you have in the jungle.  Or, if they are new enough, they may have done the Exodus/Tenaril's trick and managed to manufacture a 7-food mountain somewhere.  
There is already precious little sense in building a town anywhere that isn't good for seven farms... while you may gain some defensibility you are taking a 40% food production nerf, which equals significantly less tax income an a significantly smaller army.
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