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31Mar13 Military Unit Production Time Adjustments

Printed From: Illyriad
Category: News & Announcements
Forum Name: News & Announcements
Forum Description: Changes, patch release dates, server launch dates, downtime notifications etc.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=4913
Printed Date: 28 Mar 2024 at 17:37
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Topic: 31Mar13 Military Unit Production Time Adjustments
Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Subject: 31Mar13 Military Unit Production Time Adjustments
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 19:01
Hi everyone,

We're lowering production times for all of the Infantry and Spear units, and some of the ranged units.

The only numbers changing are the base production times by unit type, and they are being buffed for all races - with especial love for both the Dwarves and the Orcs.

There is a http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/03/unit-strength/" rel="nofollow - blog post on the dev forum explaining the rationale behind this change in more detail.

These new base production time numbers have gone into immediate effect.  Any player with existing production queues of troops that now have new production numbers will need to make some material building change (either level up or level down your barracks, or some related troop-type sovereign production building change), and you should receive the benefit of these new base production times.

Without further ado, here are the new (and for reference, old) base production times that have been changed.

Unit NameRaceOld Build Time (secs)New Build Time (secs)
MilitiamanHuman1000600
PikemanHuman1200900
SwordsmanHuman1200770
Man-at-ArmsHuman1400900
ArcherHuman1000750
ProtectorElf1000620
PhalanxElf1200920
WardenElf1200790
WardancerElf1400900
SentinelElf1000750
YeomanDwarf1000680
HalbardierDwarf1200880
AxmanDwarf1200780
StalwartDwarf1400960
SlingerDwarf1000780
Kobold CohortOrc1000370
Clan GuardsmanOrc1200890
FangOrc1200510
FistOrc1400840
ClanguardOrc1000760

Best wishes,

GM Stormcrow



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GM Stormcrow | http://bit.ly/rLKfoT" rel="nofollow - Twitter | http://on.fb.me/uvfajA" rel="nofollow - Facebook | http://bit.ly/rBzlzf" rel="nofollow - G+



Replies:
Posted By: twilights
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 19:10
thank you, thank you, thank you!Clap


Posted By: Salararius
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 19:23
Simple change, major impact.  Probably the highest game benefit/dev time for anything done in the last 4 years!



Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 19:50
Maybe it doest seem, but that's a huge update! 

Production time and then power given per time is a huge factor. In the case you use your unit pool regularly and then recycle your units often, power/time is more important than power/gold unkeep and then, than your gold pool (and if players recycle their units regularly, a 5 food city is not so far behind a 7 food one in terms of military capacities).

With this release , i see you want to reduce the overmight of cavalry. Also, you give more benefits to being a dwarf or an orc... talking about orcs' spears, they are given more balance with elven ranged. So there's clearly an attempt to balance the races. 

I also notice that for the presented units, T1 get proportionnally more power/time, compared with T2 units, than before. Which means T1 units of the said types of units are way more interesting than before; and i notice that specifically for orcs, T1 spear time prod is under 2 times the time for T2 spears, while 2 T1=1 T2 in terms of gold unkeep and in terms of power (but cav def)... experimented orcs will know what im talking about... it's just... awesome! ( i didnt make the calculation but i suppose even T1 cav def power/time = the T2 one now! ). 

So dwarves and mostly orcs are getting way more interesting to play (i know an orc based alliance which will be truely happy).

Now people will have to struggle themselves to balance the cities to be able to have enough weapons over time to produce those units constantly... and with the reduction of weapons' costs for T1 units, combined with more power/time given to T1 units (as said above), T1 for the said units will really become a more serious option.

More spear units produced will also mean harder to break sieges with cavs now, but there's a compensation with the reduction of infantry's build times (indeed, sieges are often or on mountains, or on foests). As Infantry is slow, it shall encourage alliances territorialism (to be able to break sieges efficiently, and in the given time).

That is for my little analysis ^^ . Sounds like the game will get more balanced in military terms; really, it's an awesome update; congratulations to the Dev Team!



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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Arakamis
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 20:03
hmms.. interesting.. now, where is my excel files? :P need to calculate this new stuff..


Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 20:10
Orcs and Elves have a huge bonus now that they can produce hundreds of thousands of Kobolds or Sentinels - they dont cost armors. 

Humans and Dwarves are highly disadvantaged - they need one kind of armor or saddle for every unit, which will be a bottleneck in their troop production. 




Posted By: Arakamis
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 20:18
if you are aiming for speed, one kind of armor shouldn't be a bottleneck.. well, it does cost more but not a bottleneck..


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 20:41
Originally posted by Ander Ander wrote:

Orcs and Elves have a huge bonus now that they can produce hundreds of thousands of Kobolds or Sentinels - they dont cost armors. 

Humans and Dwarves are highly disadvantaged - they need one kind of armor or saddle for every unit, which will be a bottleneck in their troop production.


You'r right Ander, i didnt see the time bonus for sentinels. I made the calculations, and i realised that sentinels already had almost the same power/gold than trueshots for all stats, and now they have exactly the same power/time prod too, and cost almost nothing (and if you miss some bows, they are quite cheap). Actually they are faster than trueshots... so it seems, for elves at least, that it's now better to produce T1 than T2 ranged... a huge advantage indeed. Same goes for orcs spears... T1 even produce more def/time than T2 ones for all stats (but cav def, for which it's almost equal) and cost only 1 spear (and 1 beer, which means it's free). Only thing with T1 orc spears it that they have less cav def/gold unkeep than T2 ones... which only means that when your army is full, it has less cav def with T1 than with T2, which is not relevant in the case you recycle your units before your army is full.

Hmm... so contrary to what i thought, elven ranged and orcs spears haven't been balanced between each other, while elven ranged are even better (if i recall well) than orc spears in forest for all stats but def cav (with previous build times at least)... so it would mean orcs are still more attractive than previously, but elves may still be more attractive than orcs, when it's about def.
Edit: actually, with the new building times maybe it's more balanced and orcs spears may be better than elven ranged on  forests now... to verify.

Edit: and for Dwarves, with T1 infantry, they still have to struggle with swords and chain. One important thing to note i think, is that with the siege stratagem, and the little effectiveness of direct attacks against cities, in Illyriad defense power means attack ability and attack power means defense ability. There's a further advantage given to siegers in this release in my opinion, which is a point to note.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 20:52
it now pays off for elfs to train t1 archers.This update has made elf units more deadlier compared to old version.It even looks that t1 elf archers has better stats then t2 when training time is compared


Posted By: Rorgash
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 20:55
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!   TO WAR ORKZ!!!

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Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 20:58
i knew you would be happy, Rorgash ^^'

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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: jordigui
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:05
 The rationale is to f*ck humans ... as the other major release ...
 THanks anyway
 PS. Could you also try to fix the combat system, as has already been reported in petitions.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:10
Humans will not be as simple to play as before now that there's more interest in building human def units. Maybe should change this on the welcomming page description. Elf is the easiest to play. 


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:16
I wonder if devs considered all aspects with this release.While cavalry only looked stronger then all other units it was perfectly balanced with other since its main use was as fast respons unit against sieges.This release will only benefit regional alliances, while spread out alliances will be harder to defend since now cavalry would not be able to remove sieges in time due to greater troop numbers involved in defending sieges.If anything this has not brought balance, it has just created situations in which it is easier then ever to siege towns considering disproportion of cavalry unit train time compared to deff unit train time.


Posted By: JimJams
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:33
the changes are big, and probably exploitable in some way (be sure I will study it deeply)
I don't have an opinion about it at the moment, but I think changes like that can completely change the way a player see his/her account.

As a MINIMUM I think players should now have an option to change their race. 
It is not that hard to do, and you can limit the changes if you fear for abuse.(a change every 3 month ? something like that)


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Posted By: JimJams
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:34
Originally posted by Sloter Sloter wrote:

I wonder if devs considered all aspects with this release.While cavalry only looked stronger then all other units it was perfectly balanced with other since its main use was as fast respons unit against sieges.This release will only benefit regional alliances, while spread out alliances will be harder to defend since now cavalry would not be able to remove sieges in time due to greater troop numbers involved in defending sieges.If anything this has not brought balance, it has just created situations in which it is easier then ever to siege towns considering disproportion of cavalry unit train time compared to deff unit train time.

Cavalry is and will be still overpowered. Anyone who don't say  that, is an human :-)


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Posted By: JimJams
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:38
By the way developers, if this is a try to make defense stronger, it is the wrong way, absolutely.
We need better city defense, or, even better, a better city war interaction, where siege and defense are way more complex than how it is now. Actually even most of the already present mechanic of siege is unused (i.e. sally forth is pratically impossible to use because of the very easy way you can wipe a garrison INSIDE the city, even before to drop down walls).


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Posted By: Shella
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:41
So does this mark another aspect of the war mechanics that is unfair?  

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Knowledge to the ignorant is just ignorance, knowledge to the wise is Wisdom.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:49
Originally posted by JimJams JimJams wrote:

As a MINIMUM I think players should now have an option to change their race. 
It is not that hard to do, and you can limit the changes if you fear for abuse.(a change every 3 month ? something like that)

I would follow you on that suggestion JimJams, +1

About human cavalry talkings, Sloter isnt a human. Im human though and i would follow what Sloter said about cav. As i said, direct attacks against cities dont do any serious damage as far as the target is active (can avoid), while cities are often on plains (7 food). And with this release, cavalry is getting less effective on mountains and forests (which sound normal though) against orcs and elves, than previously, which is a furthur issue for siege breaking as siges are very often setted on mountains and forests. Cav is still impressive on plains, which is good for leveling up the commanders. But overall cavalry gets less useful, that is sure. 
I couldnt really say if it's good or bad for the moment, the cav subject is complex... but they'd get less useful during wars i think. As i said, attack power means def ability. They would get more useful if it was possible to inflict more damage to cities with attack stratagem, that's my opinion.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 21:51
Originally posted by JimJams JimJams wrote:

We need better city defense, or, even better, a better city war interaction, where siege and defense are way more complex than how it is now. Actually even most of the already present mechanic of siege is unused (i.e. sally forth is pratically impossible to use because of the very easy way you can wipe a garrison INSIDE the city, even before to drop down walls).

didnt read your post before my last post. It joins my comment about cav in some ways. +1


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Rorgash
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 22:40
the difference between getting your troops to a siege camp before the 12 hours then 3 days late is the difference between cav and infantry troops.. cav is VERY important

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Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 22:45
If idea for this update was to balance all races then maybe they should have change speed of units also.While some units apear to be more atractiv now like human infantry they are practicly useles in wars.Effectivnes of cavalry as best choice for siege removal is destroyed and no alternativ is offered to replace it since travel time was not considered in this changes.Alternativ could be infantry except with their speed they can never reach battle in time to attack siege camp.Devs simply did not considered that forming a siege alows well timed arrival of many players on same spot from distant parts of map, while attacking sieges means that real siege camp must first be detected and only then attacked which leaves verry little time for its removal and only unit that can do that is cavalry.For siege camp to be effectivly removed it must be destroyed within 36-48 hrs after first units arrive.With this update it can no longer be done since advantage will completly be on side of player who trains deff armies and it would not be posible to deliver concetrated cavalry attack on siege camp within needed time frame with any effect.Cavarly units were never too powerful, i think they were balanced as they should be considering role they have in conficts.Next time when devs make changes they should ask mе for advice so they dont repeat this kind of mistakes again :)


Posted By: Albatross
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 22:53
Heh, someone shook the sandbox :o)

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Posted By: The_Dude
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 23:03
faster build times do not make spears stronger.  Nor does it allow a city to support a larger spear army.  It only allows replacement of losses quicker.  This is only important in sustained wars and offers the defender an opportunity to erode the attacker's cav armies over time through attrition.  Frankly, spears were pretty good at that already.  But cav will still dominate the battlefield in any single battle.


Posted By: Gemley
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 23:13
I love this update!

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�I do not love the bright sword for it's sharpness, nor the arrow for it's swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend� - J.R.R. Tolkien


Posted By: Arakamis
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 23:17
Originally posted by The_Dude The_Dude wrote:

faster build times do not make spears stronger.  Nor does it allow a city to support a larger spear army.  It only allows replacement of losses quicker.  This is only important in sustained wars and offers the defender an opportunity to erode the attacker's cav armies over time through attrition.  Frankly, spears were pretty good at that already.  But cav will still dominate the battlefield in any single battle.

I agree with this. I haven't yet made the calculations but it seems that usage of T1 troops for troop replacement in sustained wars is now feasible, even replacement for cav. Other than that all remains the same.

So, it actually promotes regional alliances in case of a sustained war.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 23:21
Rorgash - Sure, but with this release, cav would be less efficient  to break sieges (in terms of killing ration, in terms of building efforts compared to killing ratio,...). I recall this is based on the fact most sieged are setted on mountains and forests (and many cities have some mountains or forests touching it). So if you can't reach a siege in time with massive infantry armies, you will use cavalry by default.
But the point which has been developped by Sloter and myself is that is now even more effective to break a siege with infantry. But infantry is slow, so it favors regional alliances, who could break sieges more efficiently than more spread out alliances, which will use cavalry by default, which is less efficient.

I think it's goodd to develop territorialism. But some old and spread out alliance will suffer from their distance between players further more because of reduction of cav efficiency against sieges, and cavalry getting less useful in already regional alliances, that is sure. 

Cavalry can indeed break sally forths, and as JimJams rightly said, it's not that much used cause of wiping with cavs, as cities are mostly on plains. So here is an usefulness of cav i forgot about: players dont sally forth because they fear some cav attacks. Personnally, i think as JimJams: a city should be better defended, to make sally forth more attractive. The interest to put units in a sieged city is to sally forth... with infantry then: the infantry can come in the city before the siege starts, and then get rid of travel times from the start of the siege. I think that's what the idea the Devs had when they thought about the sailly forth stratagem. Though, even with sailly forth was more attractive due to more defendable cities, the use of feinted sieges makes the sailly forth stratagem irrelevant cause you dont know which city will be sieged for real... So im traying to demonstrate by A+B that cavalry could be extremely useful against saimly forth, but that as sailly forth cant really be used, and as general attacks on cities give almost 0 casualties to the target city, cavalry can only be used to break seiges on plains/small hills (but that doesnt represent the majority of the sieges), or be used to break sieges on Montains/forests, where it's getting less and less efficient. 

So yes, i support that Cav is getting less useful, and when it's used in war it's by default, on terrains on which they are really not efficient, in terms of build efforts, angainst the defense. The defense on Montains/forests already recovered way more easily than the Cav attack on Montains/forest before this update. Now it's really prohibitive to attack with cav on Montain/forests (which is normal of course), but then i think Cav should have something else to be useful for, if you know what i mean. How? Tough question.



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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 23:25
It is not the same as before....When you form siege you can call for players from tallimar and Ursor to meet up on same spot on exact date, it does not matter in which part of map they have towns.And when you try attack that siege you can only use players that are close to it.Only way for that sort of siege removal to work was for cavalry to have high attack against defending army, and that is nwo gone.With spear training time reduced cities can no longer be defended effectivly against sieges since player producing cavalry close to sieged town will never be able to match players who produce spears in two diferent parts of map and can field their armies on same spot.Infantry no matter how fast to train has very limited uses.


Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 31 Mar 2013 at 23:59
I guess if they can't manage to release any new content or even have a tournament in the past six months or so, we should be glad they took 20 minutes to tweak a couple of numbers in the production time data array so it gives us all something else to fight over and talk about.

The phrase "fiddling while Rome burns" comes to mind.


Posted By: Gossip Boy
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 00:03
Personally, I feel beefing up defensive troops will encourage more aggressive gameplay.
Orcs can now produce nearly 45k t1 spears in a month (200% production bonus)/city and if 50 or so active mid sized orcs combine...they can successfully take on any alliance in elgea right now.

I am not sure if elves was the easiest race to play before (as their archers were weak against the unit they were most likely to face in the battle field) but now the only unit which can atleast hope to challenge them in  the battlefield is t1 elf archer.

As a human I would like to see our men at arms move faster (they are supposed to be less bulkier and have longer strides than dwarfs but still for some mysterious region they choose to travel slow or maybe they are just lazy Cry )

Atleast dorfs have that extra ordinaly ss sword and war axe to resort too but I won't mind if they get a little boost too






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Elessar2
[08:34]<Rill> when you've just had part of your brain taken out, you lack a certain amount of credibility
<KillerPoodle> I can say anything I like and it is impossible to prove or disprove


Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 00:08
IMO, correcting the cavalry imbalance may decrease the ability for alliances like H? Or Vic to be able to defend hundreds of cities all over the map. And you know what? Good! It is extremely illogical for us (and was a huge imbalance) for us to do so in the first place. We'll actually have to use proper organization and diplomacy to protect our far flung assets (ie play the game properly) as opposed to having a "that's easy" button to defend sieges.

I welcome the changes (even though we are probably the alliance most affected by it).


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 00:09
Originally posted by The_Dude The_Dude wrote:

faster build times do not make spears stronger.  Nor does it allow a city to support a larger spear army.  It only allows replacement of losses quicker.  This is only important in sustained wars and offers the defender an opportunity to erode the attacker's cav armies over time through attrition.  Frankly, spears were pretty good at that already.  But cav will still dominate the battlefield in any single battle.

Actually, it's a question of recovering times, linked to production efforts. In a sustained war, that's all that counts: how many attack or def power can you produce over time. For cavalry prod for exemple, you cannot sustain a lot of sovs for unit production, since your weapons prod has to follow. For elven ranged and orcs spears, what was true before and even more true now that T1 is as/more beneficial than T2, is that due to cheaper weapon demands, you can afford more sovs for respectively your ranged/spears unit, and if you make some calculations (which i did some times ago) you can see that in terms of power/time, ranged/spears recovered faster than cavalry if the battle took place on a mountain/forest... and now this is more true than ever: you can put 180% sov bonus to your elven/orc T1 ranged/spear, and you dont have to put any sov for your weapon prod. If you ever lack of of spears/bows, you can buy them on the market they are cheap (it's less costy to have more taxe and buy those with your excedent gold, than having smaller taxes and put 90% sov for spears/bows and 90% for the units... which is still extremely interesting production time, and self sufficient method, though, compared to cavalry recovery). 

From what i calculated quickly, i would have an orc or an elf with 10 cities (7 food), i would produce 390k T1 orc spears a month or 200k T1 elven ranged a month, whitout much annoyment, while i would produce around 40k human T2 Cav a month, with a good deal of annoyment. 
If you compare these numbers in the case of systematic Cav attack on Mountains/forest against racial spears/ranged (which is often the case during a war), you would see that in terms of power/time on those terrains, racial Cav recovers more slowly than racial T1 spears/ranged. 
I didnt verify on Innoble's calculator, but as it was already the case before, now this observation is more stressed out due to diminishing of trainning times. 

Warmasters know that even if your starting unit pool size is very important, your recovering time is what makes the difference between 2 opposants of the initial same size. And it's very true in Illy, where wars last for months as we saw. 
Taking this in account and what i said above, i confirm that it's more prohibitive now to use Cav to break sieges. And then goes what we evoked about travel times, infantry, alliances territorilism, cavalry usefulness problematics.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Epidemic
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 00:37
The way I see it, the troops that can be produced the fastest will win in a long drawn out war by default.

The production times should be the same for all troop types, by group and race, just like it use to be. Bad update.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 00:41
Originally posted by Kumomoto Kumomoto wrote:

IMO, correcting the cavalry imbalance may decrease the ability for alliances like H? Or Vic to be able to defend hundreds of cities all over the map. And you know what? Good! It is extremely illogical for us (and was a huge imbalance) for us to do so in the first place. We'll actually have to use proper organization and diplomacy to protect our far flung assets (ie play the game properly) as opposed to having a "that's easy" button to defend sieges.

I welcome the changes (even though we are probably the alliance most affected by it).

Indeed, to re-organisate a whole alliance, that's quite a story and a challenge. 
But when you will be a regional alliance (well H? is already half regional), you will see you will not know what to do with your cavalry, other than threatening inexistant sailly forths or suiciding them with bad killing ratios and recovery times on mountains/forests. Cavalry should get useful for something else.
Yes, that's my main point, sorry ^^'.

You may use infantry to break sieges, but with new times the problem is the same than for cavalry: due to weapon furnitures difficulties (2 swords + 1 chain while they are produced by the same building), you wont be able to put as many sov for racial Inf units than for racial spears/ranged units. So in terms of recovery, Inf is also disavantaged compared to spears/ranged on mountains/forests.
And as attack power means defense ability, and defense power means offense ability, offensive gameplay is favored further and it's hard to defend against a siege, even if you are a territorial alliance, and i can't imagine for a non-territorial alliance. 
Well i think i detailled the current problematics enough now. 
 






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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: DeathDealer89
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:08
It looks like the goal was to decrease the effectiveness of cav.   While I didn't expect them to do it in this manner I like the change even though it doesn't necessarily help my account out.  

Although i'm curious as to their reasoning, there were many other suggestions to decrease the effectiveness of cav.  Why did the devs decide this route not suggested anywhere as opposed to any of the other ones?


Posted By: GM Luna
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:21
Originally posted by DeathDealer89 DeathDealer89 wrote:

 Why did the devs decide this route not suggested anywhere as opposed to any of the other ones?

It's a bit hidden in the first post, but the dev blog about the update goes into a lot of detail behind the thought process of the change.

http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/03/unit-strength/" rel="nofollow - http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/03/unit-strength/

GM Luna


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GM Luna | Illyriad Community Manager | community@illyriad.co.uk



Posted By: The_Dude
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:24
Originally posted by Rill Rill wrote:

I guess if they can't manage to release any new content or even have a tournament in the past six months or so, we should be glad they took 20 minutes to tweak a couple of numbers in the production time data array so it gives us all something else to fight over and talk about.

The phrase "fiddling while Rome burns" comes to mind.
 LOLLOLLOL


Posted By: The_Dude
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:28
Well, It will be fun and interesting to see how these changes impact our tactics and strategies.


Posted By: Beecks
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:33
I'm happy about the changes. It certainly is making me rethink the way I have my cities setup and I'm glad this is coming as the current war is ending so that players have an opportunity to make changes during the upcoming 'rebuilding' period.

I don't suppose there's any chance for a race change option? Make it cost 200+ prestige maybe?


Posted By: JimJams
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:44
Originally posted by The_Dude The_Dude wrote:

faster build times do not make spears stronger.  Nor does it allow a city to support a larger spear army.  It only allows replacement of losses quicker.  This is only important in sustained wars and offers the defender an opportunity to erode the attacker's cav armies over time through attrition.  Frankly, spears were pretty good at that already.  But cav will still dominate the battlefield in any single battle.

Agree, but remember, cav is for defense, spears (and bows) are for offence. You use defensive units to siege and offensive to defend against siege. So this change in a way make long war like we just had, better for the offensive side of the game...


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Posted By: DeathDealer89
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:47
Originally posted by GM Luna GM Luna wrote:

[QUOTE=DeathDealer89] 
It's a bit hidden in the first post, but the dev blog about the update goes into a lot of detail behind the thought process of the change.

http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/03/unit-strength/" rel="nofollow - http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/03/unit-strength/

GM Luna

Cool makes way more sense now :D


Posted By: JimJams
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:55
Originally posted by GM Luna GM Luna wrote:

Originally posted by DeathDealer89 DeathDealer89 wrote:

 Why did the devs decide this route not suggested anywhere as opposed to any of the other ones?

It's a bit hidden in the first post, but the dev blog about the update goes into a lot of detail behind the thought process of the change.

http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/03/unit-strength/" rel="nofollow - http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/03/unit-strength/

GM Luna

I read it all, and still don't like the way they did it. Probably it is more about "how easy it was to code" than any other consideration.

As many people already pointed at, this makes offensive siege even easier than before. And on the long run cavalry will not keep pace with reconstruction times of defensive units (which will be used for offence). I don't think this is what we need in this game, at all.

Spears are the real winner in this change for defense and swords for offence. 
So I would like to have an option to switch to dwarf or orc.

To me , this change is bigger than you think.


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Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 01:58
Although this superficially seems great for dwarven infantry, you're still limited by swords and chainmail being produced in the same building. No other weapon or armor suffers from that bottleneck. It seems to me that this will allow a player to convert an existing armory stockpile into troops faster, but not necessarily to produce to maximum allowable speed.

Has anybody done the math on this to verify?


Posted By: Gon
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 02:17
Originally posted by Albatross Albatross wrote:

Heh, someone shook the sandbox :o)

Got a great laugh out of this one.


Posted By: DeathDealer89
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 02:23
Originally posted by Brandmeister Brandmeister wrote:

Although this superficially seems great for dwarven infantry, you're still limited by swords and chainmail being produced in the same building. No other weapon or armor suffers from that bottleneck. It seems to me that this will allow a player to convert an existing armory stockpile into troops faster, but not necessarily to produce to maximum allowable speed.

Has anybody done the math on this to verify?

Just buy extra equipment off the market.  This is hardly an issue for actual max production speed.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 02:23
I was continuing to think about the Infantry weapon furnitures issue, which is even more important now that infantry can be produced faster.
Actually i think there are ways to make this issue less important. I thought i would keep it for me and my alliance... but i also want to give solutions for balance and bring solutions for defending against siege, so...

Some ideas, but im sure the new changes can permit much more:
The collective work: as an orc, you can focus on producing T1 spears. Then you can use your forge and produce swords for your dwarves mates, instead of producing chain for your T2 spears. 
As an orc, you can also have some towns for T1 spears and some towns for T2 infantry, produce the swords for urslelf in the T1 spears cities and the chain in the T2 sword ones (less effective than sharing with dwarves, but it gives you more fighting options, individually).
A dwarf can hardly make a combination T2 Inf/Spear, unless it's T1 spears which just got more interesting. Same combination possible with T2 Inf/T1 ranged, specilising cities weapons prod accordingly. You'd produce less Inf but would have less issues to get the weapons for them. Of course, if your orc/elven mates give you the swords you need... and that you give your overproduced spears to orcs, etc... well it gets very interesting.
Same for Human who could make a Cav/Inf combination and get eventually some swords from orcs/elven mates who build T1 racial units. Actually Elves could also produce saddles for humans, instead of producing leather for temselves...
There are surely many other interesting combinations/cooperations.

Well, all that to say that the fact that some T1 units are getting interesting to produce may permit to balance/facilitate some units producion, notely Infantry, if players are cooperative enough (or through market availability/price lowerings). And then have a bigger and faster rebuildable Infantry pool. 
So i vanish for the moment my problematic about Infantry compared recovering issues, as the current release may permit more weapons availability for them. 

Though it doesnt solve the Cav usefulness issue :p






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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Mayflower
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 07:40
Actually cavalry doesn't become less useful. While they take longer to produce now, they can still move faster.

For example, if you might be able to produce 100 T1 spears in one day and 100 cavalry in 2 days. However the t1 spears take 2 days to reach a spot on the map and the cavalry only takes 1 day to reach the same spot. Therefore, both types of units take 3 days to reach a spot on the map (to break a siege, defend etc). This shows that the recovery rate of both types of units are roughly the same.




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http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/105635" rel="nofollow">


Posted By: Arctic55
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 08:00
Thank you. Maybe speed cav production?

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I'm pressed but not crushed.
Persecuted but not abandoned.
Struck down but not destroyed.


Posted By: Rorgash
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 10:00
complaining about gearing is a thing i dont understand, i havent really made my own gear to use in a LONG time, sure my towns are producing, but when i need some i just buy it off the market instead.


Awesome update, as Orcs we will now make sure we rule the land as we should be.


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Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 11:48
Originally posted by Mayflower Mayflower wrote:

For example, if you might be able to produce 100 T1 spears in one day and 100 cavalry in 2 days. However the t1 spears take 2 days to reach a spot on the map and the cavalry only takes 1 day to reach the same spot. Therefore, both types of units take 3 days to reach a spot on the map (to break a siege, defend etc). This shows that the recovery rate of both types of units are roughly the same.

About what is bold, you actually produce 4.3 T1 orc spear while you produce 1 T2 human cav in the mean time (and i dont speak even about advantage on sov for units production given to spears, due to almost inexistant weapons demands... cause then it would be around 9 T1 orc spear for 1 knight, if you compare the overall prod of spear based maxed orc and a cav based maxed human). And as said already T1 orc spears are even better than T2 overall, in terms of power given per time. And they cost almost nothing compared to the T2 version. 

You talk about moving speed, and T1 are indeed faster than T2, and cav are still the very fastest units. But during a war, the speed of your def units doesnt matter so much: when you set a siege, you have all your time and can coordinate the launching times of the various def armies, for them to land on the said spot at the said time, so that movement speed for def units isnt an issue. 
Also, whatever your speed is, if you attack a siege camp, you can anticipate your loss by starting to build few units during the travel, so that your recovery doesnt suffer of your speed.
So using the moving speed factor as to compare the recovery times isn't really relevant. 

Cav are still very fast and can reach some squares before others do. But during a war, they will then mostly be used to break sieges (generally on mountains/forests) due to that fact... but as def units recovers even faster than before, when you do so you are more than ever making a non efficient move as def units will recover way faster than you. So when you do so, you are wasting your knights against the defense, it's a desperate default move. 

As i already said, i think it's logical for cavalry to be less and less efficient on mountains/forests, but if you deeply think about it you wont really often be able to use the power of your knights in good conditions during a war (meaning on plains/small hills). You can't use Cav against sailly forths as noone use this, you can't inflict damage to a city with direct cav attack. Cavalry permit to threaten the plains so that people will avoid to defend on those, but you will rarely use your cav on plains during a war. 
Any other type of units are able to play their best game by going on best terrains during a war (even Inf, if your alliance is territorial), but not Cav.
For me that was already a subject before this release, but now the question of cavs usefulness is more stressed out. 
When you are a regional alliance, if you have good dwarves building infantry, you dont need to have cavalry units. Well, actually you need them to threaten the plains as i already said, but then, for your alliance to be efficient, you should never use them and let the Infantry do the work. They would only be used as unefficient and desperate move, only if your infantry fails. 
As with such release, alliances are encouraged to be territorial furthur, this is what we certainly will see. So in a regional alliance, a human building cavalry should get bored of not using his cav, or only in bad conditions. He can build Ranged/Inf/spears too of course, but will be less efficient compared to other races. 
That's why something could be done for cavalry to get a new ground of usefulnes, or to encourage battles on plain to happen a bit more often during future wars... but i dont have any idea about how to do this. 

But i think we should see how it will really work for cav, and maybe do something about it in a next release if humans complain too much ^^'


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Le Roux
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 13:38
Mudflation hits Illy?   Seems to happen eventually in all online games. Game becomes static, developers seek quick fix to breath life into it. I suppose this is indeed a way to change the dynamic, crumbs to the masses. . . .    I must admit, I would have preferred naval units, path finding , magic update or any of the host of things hinted at 18 months ago, but then again I am one of those sitting on very large numbers of Trueshot and Marshall's, clearly this change was not aimed at improving my view of Illy.

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Posted By: twilights
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 13:57
i wouldnt mind for the build times be quicker for all aspects of illyriad. we lose so many new people because of the slow pace. this change primarily favors  just certain groups of people playing, mainly fully developed players and those that use prestige. just a second, i got to buff my resource plots, those sov 5s cost alot to maintain and i need gold to buy war equipment and schedule several troop builds. is 500k from one city possible now? ouch!Ouch


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 14:01
you can just make sentinels and sell all cows you produce since you no longer need leather armour, that should give you more then enough gold for troops.


Posted By: Elmindra
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 14:23
Trueshots are still as good as always , as are your marshalls. If you are already sitting on a ton you ate still in great shape. All this did was make your t1 archers more evenly matched on a power vs build time and you t2 swords are now better than marshalls on the same power vs build time. This change only effects those who are not sitting maxed troops in their towns, and actually lessens the blow of loosing a large amount of troops in one go.

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Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 14:33

Oh, your right Sloter. Then elves can now increase their max unit capacity further.

Lets see... 8.57 cows/h, you sell it at 950 gold/cow... it's an additional 8k gold prod/hour... it means you can have 4k more Sentinels in each city... but you certainly have 2 lvl 20 archers fields... so your sentinels cost 0.9 gold/h... 8000/0.9= 7.2k... so sow maxed out elves can sustain 7.2k more sentinels per city which equals 4.5k trueshots/city in terms of power/gold upkeep, just for the comparison. 
Not counting the fact that elves were already able to sell chain/sword, spears, horses, plate armor to increase their max Ranged amount capacities... while humans building Knights cant sell no weapon, or very occasionnally, and then can't increase their unit pool capacity that way. 
Now same for Orcs as for Elves, as they can focus building T1 spears.
It's an important factor too, indeed. 

Edit: calculation corrections, i initially counted a sentinel costing 1 gold/hour, while it's 2.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 14:35
Actualy it seems that t1 elf archers now give better def stats compared to t2 archers when production time is considered.Not to mention they are almost as fast as human cavalry.And there is also a matter of leather armor which can be sold to pay for upkeep of even more units.Most important about this change is that from now sieges on plains will be posible.


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 14:38
Exactly OPK, and orcs are now also able to siege from plains.it wont be easy but since location of siege camp on cities surounded by plains can not eb anticipated it will be scenario that we can expect to see in future.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 14:53
Originally posted by Sloter Sloter wrote:

Most important about this change is that from now sieges on plains will be posible.

I didnt think about that, but indeed it's now less problematic to siege on plains, if we compared def units recovery time-effort with Cavalry recovery time-effort. 

So people will certainly be less hesitant to siege on plains, well seen. Hmmm... as a side effect, it may give back some usefulness to cavalry, while decreasing their overmight on plains though.

I see some people think that as units stats didnt change, their power didnt change... which is totally wrong. It takes months to build an army, and if you can produce faster and dont have to worry too much about the weapon fees, your power produced/hour increases and that's the whole thing: you can max out your power/city faster (smaller base traing time + less sov bonus restrictions), rebuild your power faster, have even a better power capacity (see selling cows comment).  


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: surferdude
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 15:46
You seem to be mixing your arguements
Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

You talk about moving speed, and T1 are indeed faster than T2, and cav are still the very fastest units. But during a war, the speed of your def units doesnt matter so much: when you set a siege, you have all your time and can coordinate the launching times of the various def armies, for them to land on the said spot at the said time, so that movement speed for def units isnt an issue.
Nor is build time a factor in this; this is the standing army so only the upkeep cost is relevant; e.g. this is what units were built ahead of time. Upkeep costs haven't changed, unit stats haven't changed.
Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

Cav are still very fast and can reach some squares before others do. But during a war, they will then mostly be used to break sieges (generally on mountains/forests) due to that fact... but as def units recovers even faster than before, when you do so you are more than ever making a non efficient move as def units will recover way faster than you. So when you do so, you are wasting your knights against the defense, it's a desperate default move.
Except as you have pointed out the defensive units for the siege army are from far away, so even though they can build faster, they take longer to get there and reinforce, so the cavalry still has the advantage on breaking the siege. Also with a max of 5 armies after 4 reinforces an army will have to be recalled to be resupplied; with the slower return time and slower sending out time because of the slower units so organization will be more complicated.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 15:55
Ok, i made a spreadsheet quickly just to explain some of the points said above with more accuracy.

I place myself in the case im an Orc. I have a 7 food city at around 18k pop, with 2 lvl Spearmen's Billets.
I have 180% sov bonus available for weapons or units. 55% taxe, 35k net gold income. In this config, im maxed at 60k T1 spear or 30k T2 spear (but i can increase that capacity by 50% by working my sov out when i reach this hoof). Ok so that the exemple a top Orc city which aim is to produce Spear units. I admit i can permit myself to spend 5K gold/h to buy weapons.

Previously: I built T2 Spears.
It requires 2 spears, 1 leather armor, 1 chainmail, 1 beer. 
How i used my sov: 
0% to spears
40% for livestock
10% for leather
30% for chainmail
80% for T2 spearmen
I payed around 4600 gold/h to buy spears and chain, so im good.
I produced 8640 T2 spears/month. 8640*33= 285K cav def/month

Now: I can build T1 spears.
It requires 1 spear, 1 beer.
How i now use my sov:
60% for spears
60% for beer
60% for T1 spearmen.
I pay around 5000 gold/h to buys spears and beers.
I produce 22420 T1 spears/month. 22420*13= 291K cav def/month

so with the same town, the same sov capacity, the same gold/h used to buy weapons, i produce as many cav def with T1 than with old T2 spearmen build times. And in bonus i have chain and leather to sell.

More than that, T1 orc spear is better that T2 one now for the other stats.
I now produce (comparison between new T1 orc spear and old T2 orc spear):
- 9*22420 = 201k attack/month, instead of 19*8640 = 164k
- 12*22420 = 269k spear def/month, instead of 18*8640 155k
12*22420 = 269k sword def/month, instead of 18*8640 155k
6*22420 = 134k Bow def/month, instead of 11*8640 95k

As T1 spear get less cav def/unkeep compared with T2 ones, you only are a bit penalised about cav def when your army is maxed. Which dont mean a lot, compared with the rest of the great benefits. 

Same system goes for elven T1 and T2 ranged. Though, i seems there is not really significant benefit to take T1 instead of T2 in terms of power/time or power/unkeep. Though, im bored to calculate it for them now, but as you dont have to bother with leather, you can certainly adjust your sov to produce more power/hour following the same conditions from my previous exemple... which dont really reflect the reality... as for real, players wont try to be almost self sufficient on bows, spear or beers. They will just sell their overproduced weapons to get gold, then buy spears, bows and beers on the market, which are the cheaper goods, and then will be able to put comparatively even more sov to their T1 units than for their T2 ones, and will then produce even more Power over time. 

But that's for the exemple.



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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 16:20
Originally posted by surferdude surferdude wrote:

Except as you have pointed out the defensive units for the siege army are from far away, so even though they can build faster, they take longer to get there and reinforce, so the cavalry still has the advantage on breaking the siege. Also with a max of 5 armies after 4 reinforces an army will have to be recalled to be resupplied; with the slower return time and slower sending out time because of the slower units so organization will be more complicated.

I will try to explain it more clearly: whatever the moving speed of you def units is, it has no effect on the recovery time of thee units you will lose. We are only talking about recovery time of power when your army got destroyed, or partially destroyed (difficulties to resupply an encampment is an other subject, it doesnt affect your recovery time). The travel time only affects the time at which both defending and attacking side will lose units, which has no impact on recovery time--> the power you can produce over time in your cities. Which is only influenced by: basic training time, sov prod bonus, unit stats, weapon furnitures limitations.

Let's say you didnt anticipated your loss by starting your production again beforehand... an Elf will start to build back his T1 ranged, as soon as he lost them. Same for the Human, he will build back his Knights as soon as he lost them. But now, power recovery time of T1 elven ranged has increased and is even better than T2 ones (see previous comment), while the recovery time for knights didnt move. So elves got better ranged recovery now than before, compared with Knight recovery. Same for orcs.


Edit: Hmm... actually there is only one case i can think about, in which in which travel speed may affect the recovery time comparison some day. When pathfinding will come, we certainly will be able to attack def units which are comming to reinforce a siege, during their travel in direction to the future encampment. So you may intercept them with cav on a plain instead of a mountain/forest... the slwoer the def armies, the more chances you would have to intercept before it lands, and predict the area of the encounter. Recovery time comparison between attack and def unit depends on the terrain where the battle happened, cause it depends on the killing ratio.... that's the only impact travel speed may have some day on the comparison of recovery time between attack and def.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: surferdude
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 16:31
Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

I produced 8640 T2 spears/month. 8640*33= 285K cav def/month
I produce 22420 T1 spears/month. 22420*13= 291K cav def/month
Except your T1 spears cap out at x2 units in upkeep in terms of gold per hour so (13 *2 / 33) = 26 : 33 so is worse in terms of standing army that you can commit at the start of any engagement.

Of course, you could boost this with sales in the market, when your forces will be at the mercy of market trends.


Posted By: KillerPoodle
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 16:36
" In this config, im maxed at 30k T1 spear or 60k T2 spear"   I think you mean that the other way around.



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"This is a bad idea and we shouldn't do it." - endorsement by HM

"a little name-calling is a positive thing." - Rill


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 16:38
Originally posted by surferdude surferdude wrote:

Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

I produced 8640 T2 spears/month. 8640*33= 285K cav def/month
I produce 22420 T1 spears/month. 22420*13= 291K cav def/month
Except your T1 spears cap out at x2 units in upkeep in terms of gold per hour so (13 *2 / 33) = 26 : 33 so is worse in terms of standing army that you can commit at the start of any engagement.

Of course, you could boost this with sales in the market, when your forces will be at the mercy of market trends.

Indeed, i pointed that out a bit after. I prefer the term maxed cap army than standing one, as it only makes a difference when your army is maxed. But that is only for cav def, that was the counter-exemple. I also pointed out later that maxed cap army will be better for all the other stats, as for all the other stats, the power/gold of T1 orc spear is better than the ones for T2 orc spear. 
And similar problem than cav def isnt faced by T1 elven ranged, as they have the same (even abit better if i recall well) power/gold for all stats.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 16:39
Originally posted by KillerPoodle KillerPoodle wrote:

" In this config, im maxed at 30k T1 spear or 60k T2 spear"   I think you mean that the other way around.


Thank you KP, edited.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: surferdude
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 16:53
Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

Originally posted by surferdude surferdude wrote:

Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

I produced 8640 T2 spears/month. 8640*33= 285K cav def/month
I produce 22420 T1 spears/month. 22420*13= 291K cav def/month
Except your T1 spears cap out at x2 units in upkeep in terms of gold per hour so (13 *2 / 33) = 26 : 33 so is worse in terms of standing army that you can commit at the start of any engagement.

Of course, you could boost this with sales in the market, when your forces will be at the mercy of market trends.

Indeed, i pointed that out a bit after. I prefer the term maxed cap army than standing one, as it only makes a difference when your army is maxed. But that is only for cav def, that was the counter-exemple. I also pointed out later that maxed cap army will be better for all the other stats, as for all the other stats, the power/gold of T1 orc spear is better than the ones for T2 orc spear. 
And similar problem than cav def isnt faced by T1 elven ranged, as they have the same (even abit better if i recall well) power/gold for all stats.
That's because T2 spear are an attacking unit rather than a defensive unit?


Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 17:27
Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

But during a war, the speed of your def units doesnt matter so much: when you set a siege, you have all your time and can coordinate the launching times of the various def armies, for them to land on the said spot at the said time, so that movement speed for def units isnt an issue.


I've really enjoyed your analyses, Opk, please keep them up! But allow me to correct the above statement. As a member of one of the alliances who was sending out the most sieges in this most recent war, allow me to correct the above statement. It is simply not the case.

Defensive unit speeds make a huge difference in how easy, expensive, and successful sieges are. Since incoming Sieges, blockades, and city clearing attacks can be seen, the element of surprise is directly related to how quickly you can get there. Also, fighting wars in places one can get to quickly makes siege a ton easier. Long distance warfare is much more prone to failure and you need to budget significantly greater troop numbers, as you do not have the capacity for quick resupply...

Also, on the cavalry front, do not forget that the need to clear cities will never go away and that is a primary purpose for cavalry...


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 17:29
No, T2 orc spear is clearly a defensive unit. Though T2 are suited to def against cav, but are less good against others types of units. I suppose the Devs made T1 orc spears less good against cav but better against the others so that an orc could specialise his def depending on what units he thought he would face the more. But before this release, it was extremely time consuming to build a T1 orc spear army, in terms of power/time compared with T2... now it's the opposit and T1 orc spears get the same cav def/time and other stats get more power/time, than old T2 orc spears. 
As for elves, it changes nothing to build T1 ranged instead of T2 (be it for power/time or power/gold), other than the weapons requirement and what it implies.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 17:42
Originally posted by Kumomoto Kumomoto wrote:


I've really enjoyed your analyses, Opk, please keep them up!
Thanks ^^

Originally posted by Kumomoto Kumomoto wrote:


Defensive unit speeds make a huge difference in how easy, expensive, and successful sieges are. Since incoming Sieges, blockades, and city clearing attacks can be seen, the element of surprise is directly related to how quickly you can get there. Also, fighting wars in places one can get to quickly makes siege a ton easier. Long distance warfare is much more prone to failure and you need to budget significantly greater troop numbers, as you do not have the capacity for quick resupply...

Indeed indeed, you'r right. Well i shouldnt have talked about travel time and sieges. Sure, siege arrival time is reduced by engines speed and also by arrival time of reinforcement-linked to their moving speed. But as i developped a bit later, it's a bit out of subject so i apologise for that as travel speed has no impact on recovery times, which was the real subject.

Originally posted by Kumomoto Kumomoto wrote:


Also, on the cavalry front, do not forget that the need to clear cities will never go away and that is a primary purpose for cavalry...

Indeed. But well, when your city pop is 0... you still have your research , but i think you are as angry as if it had been razed ^^'. As for me it's not an absolute necessity to raze after a siege it's not absolutely necessary to have cav for that... but well indeed, that's something cavalry are used for that i didnt think about.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 18:00
Originally posted by opk opk wrote:



Indeed. But well, when your city pop is 0... you still have your research , but i think you are as angry as if it had been razed ^^'.


Trust me. There is a vast difference between rebuilding the city with research and building a new city. If you have an alliance sending you vast numbers of resources, in the former, you can prestige rebuild in a few days. In the latter it will take a few months...


Posted By: Aha
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 19:44
In the Dev blog the adjustments are motivated by the fact that there many well established players in Elgea now. There is sufficient supply on advanced resources to build t2 units, most importantly cav.

However that's not the case in the new lands (BL). It seems to me that the changes favor Elves, Orcs, and a more aggressive approach in general.

It is somewhat odd to be able to train the equivalent to trueshots armies by using only bows and beer. I won't complain though.


Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 19:50
how are sentinels the equivalent to trueshots?


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:35
Your right, sentinels are not the equivalent of trueshots, they are the same in basic power/time, almost equal in power/gold, but better in weapon demand (sentinels ask for a bit more beer over time, but ask less bows and no leather). They are faster too.
See the sheet below:

  train time gold unkeep Move speed carrying cap attck Sp def Sw def Bow def Cav def
Sentinel 750 2 10 25 20 23 23 24 16
Trueshot 1200 3 8 30 32 36 34 36 25
   
  attck Sp def Sw def Bow def Cav def
  Power/time Sentinel 0,027 0,031 0,031 0,032 0,021
  Trueshot 0,027 0,030 0,028 0,030 0,021
  Power/gold Sentinel 10,0 11,5 11,5 12,0 8,0
  Trueshot 10,7 12,0 11,3 12,0 8,3
   
  Beer bow leather  
  Wp demand Sentinels 1 1 0  
  Trueshots 1 2 1  
  dmnd/time Sentinels 0,00133 0,00133 0,00000  
        Trueshots 0,00083 0,00167 0,00083    


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Arakamis
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:37
It doesn't favor a specific race, it does favor infantry units.. Now that stalwarts actually are a lot more meaningful. If only we can make them run.. :)

cav armies will still be used though, they are still the fastest and the strongest units in the long run. However, things now have changed significantly in sustained wars and for regionally located alliances..


Posted By: Garth
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:39
Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

Your right, sentinels are not the equivalent of trueshots, they are better in basic power/time, equal in power/gold, better in weapon demand (sentinels ask for a bit more beer over time, but ask less bows and no leather). 
See the sheet below:

train time gold unkeep Move speed carrying cap attck Sp def Sw def Bow def Cav def
Sentinel 750 2 25 25 20 23 23 24 16
Trueshot 1200 3 30 30 30 36 34 36 25
   
  attck Sp def Sw def Bow def Cav def
  Power/time Sentinel 0,027 0,031 0,031 0,032 0,021
  Trueshot 0,025 0,030 0,028 0,030 0,021
  Power/gold Sentinel 10,0 11,5 11,5 12,0 8,0
  Trueshot 10,0 12,0 11,3 12,0 8,3
   
  Beer bow leather  
  Wp demand Sentinels 1 1 0  
  Trueshots 1 2 1  
  dmnd/time Sentinels 0,00133 0,00133 0,00000  
        Trueshots 0,00083 0,00167 0,00083    



Trueshots attack is 32, not 30.


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Garthen


Posted By: Rorgash
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:41
seeing as infantry is nearly useless, or was atleast useless before, more expensive then spears, not as fast as cav, just a middle ground, and seeing as cav is the most used offensive unit, spear is more useful. 

So now infantry can be trained fast enough to make them a worthwhile defensive/offensive unit.


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Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:41
Originally posted by Arakamis Arakamis wrote:

It doesn't favor a specific race, it does favor infantry units.. 

if you look well, Inf have different build times, depending on race. About Inf, Orcs are justly favored cause their Inf has lower training time. I wonder why. 


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Rorgash
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:43
because we are the BEST!!!! our units are the strongest and fastest and THE best. BOW BEFORE THE ORKZ!  WAaaaaaagh!

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Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:44
Originally posted by Garth Garth wrote:

 
Trueshots attack is 32, not 30.

Thanks Garth, bad manual copy, edited.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Arakamis
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:47
Originally posted by opk opk wrote:

Originally posted by Arakamis Arakamis wrote:

It doesn't favor a specific race, it does favor infantry units.. 

if you look well, Inf have different build times, depending on race. About Inf, Orcs are justly favored cause their Inf has lower training time. I wonder why. 

yea figured that not yet checked actually. Only calculated for Elves and Dwarves. Playing as a dwarf has just become much more interesting that's for sure.


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 20:48
Like opk said they sentinels are not equivalent to truehots they are more effectiv then trushots now, in same given production time sentinel give better deff stats then trueshots, and keep same off stats.When commander that gives deff divisonal bonuse is used on sentinel army while they are defending that advantage of sentinels over trushots in increased even more.They are also cheaper to make and they are faster which makes them good for attacks especily considering that in future there will be more spear units used to protect siege camps then there was before and those have low deff against attacking bows.


Posted By: Arakamis
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 21:05
Originally posted by Sloter Sloter wrote:

Like opk said they sentinels are not equivalent to truehots they are more effectiv then trushots now, in same given production time sentinel give better deff stats then trueshots, and keep same off stats.When commander that gives deff divisonal bonuse is used on sentinel army while they are defending that advantage of sentinels over trushots in increased even more.They are also cheaper to make and they are faster which makes them good for attacks especily considering that in future there will be more spear units used to protect siege camps then there was before and those have low deff against attacking bows.

That is, imo, the idea behind this update, to promote usage of different types of troops.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 21:15
Did the same for Orcs spears. I let you judge by yourself:


train time gold unkeep Move speed carrying cap attck Sp def Sw def Bow def Cav def
T1 Spear 370 1 8 25 9 12 12 6 13
old T2 Spear 1200 2 6 18 19 18 18 11 33
new T2 Spear 890 2 6 18 19 18 18 11 33
attck Sp def Sw def Bow def Cav def
Power/time T1 Spear 0,024 0,032 0,032 0,016 0,035
old T2 Spear 0,016 0,015 0,015 0,009 0,028
new T2 Spear 0,021 0,020 0,020 0,012 0,037
Power/gold T1 Spear 9,0 12,0 12,0 6,0 13,0
old T2 Spear 9,5 9,0 9,0 5,5 16,5
new T2 Spear 9,5 9,0 9,0 5,5 16,5
Beer spear leather chain
Wp demand T1 Spear 1 1 0 0
old T2 Spear 1 2 1 1
new T2 Spear 1 2 1 1
dmnd/time T1 Spear 0,00270 0,00270 0,00000 0,00000
old T2 Spear 0,00083 0,00167 0,00083 0,00083
new T2 Spear 0,00112 0,00225 0,00112 0,00112


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 21:58
Originally posted by Sloter Sloter wrote:

Like opk said they sentinels are not equivalent to truehots they are more effectiv then trushots now, in same given production time sentinel give better deff stats then trueshots, and keep same off stats.When commander that gives deff divisonal bonuse is used on sentinel army while they are defending that advantage of sentinels over trushots in increased even more.They are also cheaper to make and they are faster which makes them good for attacks especily considering that in future there will be more spear units used to protect siege camps then there was before and those have low deff against attacking bows.


Actually that what Opk's table shows is that this only true for ongoing wartime production, not standing armies. Quite the opposite for building your standing armies.


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 22:35
I have probably calculated things diferently then opk since i used train times from lvl 20 barracks, i just compared stats of 10 sentinels trained within 62,5 min to 6,25 trueshots trained within same time time of 62.5 min.I dont know why i chosen those times, maybe because it was easier to calculate on paper with help of cell phone calculator.Anyway it looks to me that it pays of to train sentinels even in peace time, especialy since they would get 10-15% bonus from comm with divisional deff upgrade not to mention speed and profit made on cows/leather armour.I am not that good with math so maybe i have miscalculated.I am not sure about gold, i think it is 20/19 or so ratio on favor of trueshots being cheaper but i dont think that should stop anyone from making sentinels.

10 sentinels     attack   200  spear deff  230 bow deff  240 sword deff 230     cav deff 160
6,25 trueshots attack   200 spear deff   225 bow deff  225 sword deff 212.5  cav deff 156.25


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 22:43
Originally posted by Kumomoto Kumomoto wrote:

 
Actually that what Opk's table shows is that this only true for ongoing wartime production, not standing armies. Quite the opposite for building your standing armies.

Well actually, not in the case of sentinels and trueshots. When you look at the table, you see that there is no significative difference of power given per gold unkeep between sentinels and trueshots. That means that with the same gold production pool, you will have as many power with sentinels than with trueshots, for All stats. And now, power given per time for sentinels equals the one for trueshots. So you can max out your power in as many time with sentinels than with trueshots and end up with the same overall power. 

This is not the exact same story for orcs spears though, where maxed out army of T1 is less good in attack and  cav def than T2, but better for the rest... so for them, it defavors the standing army, indeed, for cav def, and a bit for attack. Though, when you talk about ongoing wartime, T1 orc spears are amazing when you look how much more power you produce overtime for all stats, compared with old T2 orc spear unit. For some stat you produce twice more power/time than previously!! and of course they are cheaper and faster. (see table).
Edit: actually, T1 orc spear being cheaper than T2 in weapons is a say to balance: they ask much more beers and spears over time than T2 (see table), but you can sell leather/livestock and chain to compensate that fact and create the gold needed to buy more beers and spears. 



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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 22:53
You calculated it differently Sloter, but the result is the same. And shown like that, you see better that sentinels give even a little more power per training time, though im personnally thinking, seeing the very little bonus, that it's not the main argument to build sentinels instead of trueshots. Speed and mostly weapon demands being the main arguments.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Sloter
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 22:58
I agree that speed is most important, to compensate all those spears that will be used in deff in future.Considering bonuses that bows receive on mountains compared to cav penalties i think sentinels are good replacement for cavalry attacking siege camps on mountain which will probably in future have atleast 50% spear units which was not the case before.Even used for attacking sieges in forests they are more likely to get better results then cavalry considering that defender would use mostly spear for deff in forest.


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 23:11
Sentinels are almost as fast as cavalry, and they have an excellent recovry time for mountain attack, for all the reasons developped in the preevious pages (less weapon restictions, more sov availability,...), so it's totally possible for them to replace cavalry in the role of siege breakers on mountains, and i agree even on forests. Poor cavalry... the problem about their decreasing usefulness is serious... while cavalry is a unit mainly used to defend onself.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 23:11
??? The power/gld is better for Trueshots in 3 of the 5 and equal in 1 of the 5...


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 23:19
Originally posted by Kumomoto Kumomoto wrote:

??? The power/gld is better for Trueshots in 3 of the 5 and equal in 1 of the 5...

Indeed, but when i see this (see below), it doesnt make me feel it's actually significant. But that's my feeling, everyone can judge this differently. 

 
Power/goldSentinel10,011,511,512,08,0
 Trueshot10,712,011,312,08,3

To be accurate, in terms of gold/h (only important for full army), this is the bonus you'd get with trueshots compared with sentinels:

Attack: +7%
Sear def: +4%
sword def: -2%
bow def: 0%
cav def: +4%


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Elmindra
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 23:20
In comparing Elven T1 to T2 archers, it is very simple.  In the long run, the T2 gives slightly superior power per gold upkeep.  This means if you have infinite time to max troops, T2 is a better choice.  In the short term, T1 is even on attack per hour trained and slightly better in every type of defense per hour trained.

Your choice is simply do you have enough time to rebuild your troops to full before using again or not.  If yes, then T2 is a better choice.  If not, then T1 is a better choice.

What I think is the most dramatic change to elves is the massive boost their swords and spears received.  The elven T2 sword is now on par with the elven T2 cavalry in terms of offensive power per hour trained (1:1 ratio).  To be quite honest, given the greater amount of terrain that swords are not assessed a negative terrain bonus the T2 sword should be a much larger part of the Elven offensive arsenal.


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Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 23:22
Totally agree Elmindra. That's my read on things.


Posted By: Elmindra
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 23:26
I am sure many older players find the T2 required to build a merely trivial thing and not an influence on what to build, and even I find myself not really worrying about it.  The only thing I would say is they lack of leather required for the T1 may lead me to producing saddles in my archer towns, since you well know that I am not maxed out in troops so I will be giving my T1 a spin  :)

I also find myself rethinking my town design, since while I love cavalry I do believe I would like 2 sword towns now instead of 1 to take advantage of their superior terrain advantage.  Sigh, and our T2 spears are finally worth making but we only have 10 towns to work with.....


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Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 01 Apr 2013 at 23:37
About if you have all your time to max out your army, Trueshots would be a bit better indeed.

Originally posted by Elmindra Elmindra wrote:

 To be quite honest, given the greater amount of terrain that swords are not assessed a negative terrain bonus the T2 sword should be a much larger part of the Elven offensive arsenal.

Indeed. Though, T2 elven inf is quite costy in weapons (2 swords+2chain Oo), so it's quite prohibitive seen like this, it'd be a challenge to sustain the basic prod rate of this unit, which just increased. But i think that an Elf building only Sentinels as ranged units could afford 2 or maybe 3 Inf towns. But Elven infantry is not the fastest produced compared to other races and the one with the lowest attack. 

Edit: though, real interest is in their speed, T2 elven inf getting 8. It's the only T2 inf faster than its T1, and the fastest inf overall if im right. Good for siege break.


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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: opk
Date Posted: 02 Apr 2013 at 00:58
I've came up with interesting things about recovery.

I talked about recovery sooner. What is this concept: if 2 players start to build their army from 0 at the same time and send their armies to fight each other (defender and attacker have to be defined) on a certain terrain type, who would win? The winner is the one who recovers the faster. Interesting to know for periods during which players have to produce units constantly and send them constantly on the battlefield. The one with the more recovery overpowers the other one over time. 

For exemple now, if i only talk about basic training times, you produce 6912 Sentinels a month. You also produce 3240 Knights a month. If you make them fight on a Large Mountain, cavalry wins but with only 100 survivors (i would have thought knights would have lost actually). So on large mountain, knights has the same recovery as sentinels. Seen differently, sentinels will recover as fast as knights, but there is no comparison about their weapon demands, sentinels cost almost nothing, compared with knights. For that reason you can sustain a higher prod rate for sentinels (with sov) than for knights. So in reality, recovery of sentinels is better than knights on large mountains, and requires way fewer efforts too.

Recovery of knights is still good against sentinels on small mountains. So it might be still be interesting to break sieges with Knights on small mountains? But there are spears too:

You produce basically 14010 kobold cohorts a mounth. Your 3240 knights lose, leaving 3000 kobold alive. So even on small mountains, T1 orc spears's recovery is way better than Knights one... and same way, kobold are way cheaper than knights and can get more sov to unit prod than them, so that in reality, this recovery is even more advantageous for T1 orc spears. 

So it's not a good idea anymore to break sieges with cavalry, even on small mountains. On Large hills, we have the exact same result than on small mountain so not a good idea either to use knight there. And on small hill knight recovery roughly equals T1 orcs one... so it's very limit.... would still be a bad idea, but knights are the best to attack small hills. 

Well, it was just to explain the concept of recovery, as i think it wasnt very clear when i used that term earlier. It's an important factor. If you know your recovery will be longer and harder than the one of your opponent on that or that terrain, you may avoid to meet him there.




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Old Penitent Knight


Posted By: Salararius
Date Posted: 02 Apr 2013 at 21:18
so, elves building T1 bow are probably planning to use them ASAP, elves building T2 bow are probably not.  Same could be said of other races and T1/T2 spear but orcs will just build T1 unless they very specifically plan to attack humans or others with large cavalry.  Seems like with these changes there is more possibility in certain instances to determine what a player intends (or believes will occur) based on what they are building.  That could be interesting?



Posted By: Winter_Shard
Date Posted: 13 Apr 2013 at 00:10
I was hoping a GM or an established Orc player could assist me with working out what the production times are for making a Kobold Cohort are as I have delevelled my Lvl 20 Barrack and relevelled and the production time does not appear to have changed?

At the time of the production change I had 200 Kobold Cohorts in a queue. As instructed in the update I delevelled and relevelled back up to 20.

The production time change from 1000 to 370 confuses me in terms of how many per minute can be made. My Level 20 barracks states I can make 19.46 per/hr or one every 3m 5 sec which is the same it was when queued.

Any advice on whether this is correct or whether I have to delevel a second time or have a problem would be greatly appreciated.

I guess I am envious of a dwarf player who can build a Stalwart every 90 secs!

Thank you.


Posted By: DeathDealer89
Date Posted: 13 Apr 2013 at 02:36
I could be wrong but I show stalwarts taking 8 minutes.  So unless you happen to have 1000% sov you can't build Stalwarts that fast.

Course if you have 1000% sov then you can build whatever you want and an absurd speed.  


Posted By: Winter_Shard
Date Posted: 13 Apr 2013 at 06:04
Not me I play orcs ... though a player on GC said they could make a stalwart in 90 secs perhaps with sov as you say ;) .

Seems they were stretching the truth ... those dwarfs are short after-all and need all the help they can get.







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